-The author holds an MA and PhD in History from Sabanci University, where he taught Turkish history for nine years
ISTANBUL
The Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center Towers in New York remain a defining event of the era we live in. The decisions taken by the Bush administration in the aftermath had far-reaching consequences for the entire world, but especially for Türkiye’s region. The US embarked on two predictably ill-fated and disastrous invasions that upended societies and politics from the Mediterranean to the Indian subcontinent. Türkiye lives daily with the repercussions of those decisions.
As a historian, a person who is intensely concerned with not only information about the past and the past’s connection to the contemporary world but also with the way that information is expressed, the element in the George W. Bush administration’s response to the Sept. 11 attacks that most caught my attention was its rhetoric.
Specifically, in Bush’s well-known speech on Sept, 20, 2001, through which he declared the "global war on terror," Bush used rhetoric that fundamentally changed how the US would approach armed political resistance organizations; that rhetorical change had important global implications that became apparent to most people only over time. [1]
‘Terrorism’ before and after 9/11
Today the way armed insurgents were usually approached by the US and Western Europe before the 9/11 attacks is fodder for historians but largely forgotten by the general public. Up until that point, the general understanding broke along the following lines: If an insurgent group intended to or was using violence in order to struggle for political rights against a violently repressive non-democratic political system, that use of violence was granted legitimacy as long as only the non-democratic state and its security forces were targeted. [2] If an insurgent group used violence against a democratic political system, then the violence was seen as illegitimate and "terrorist." These designations can provide a basic guideline for understanding US and Western European reactions to violent insurgencies around the globe in the era before Sept. 11, 2001. [3]
Bush’s war on terror speech changed the parameters used to differentiate between "legitimate" and "illegitimate" violence. First of all, Bush defined al-Qaeda in expansive terms, stating that "its goal is remaking the world and imposing its radical beliefs on people everywhere.” Later, while indirectly referring to Afghanistan’s Taliban government, Bush widened the parameters even further, averring that the enemy is not just terrorists but "every government that supports them."
Immediately following that sentence, Bush then declared that the ''war on terror begins with al-Qaeda but does not end there. It will not end until every terrorist group of global reach has been found, stopped, and defeated." This last statement echoes the postwar Truman Doctrine in its threat of American military force applied worldwide. [4]
Immediate beneficiaries: China and Russia
This definition also benefited other countries. Russia and China have also misused this definition. We can observe this in Vladimir Putin’s policies in Chechnya during both his prime ministry and presidencies. Only muted criticisms were heard from the West because Putin could couch his policies towards the Chechens in the war on terror rhetoric. Now the only remnant of that era is Putin’s hand-picked ruler, Ramzan Kadyrov, the son of Akhmad Kadyrov, whom Putin made Chechnya’s president in 2003.
Similarly, it was not difficult to predict that Beijing would label Uyghurs "terrorists" to gain the same international support and acquiescence to its policies there. [5] The Chinese state subsequently ramped up Han Chinese immigration to Eastern Turkestan/ Xinjiang, implemented policies to reduce public evidence of Uyghur and Muslim life, and, in the past 10 years, resorted to mass incarceration and "reeducation" in order to cement its hold over the region, all justified with "war on terrorism" rhetoric. Only when China’s growing strength was coupled with President Xi Jinping’s more aggressive foreign policies did Washington suddenly become concerned by Beijing’s ongoing repressive policies towards the Uyghurs.
Rhetoric matters
As mentioned above, even before Sept. 11, 2001, the determination of who was a "terrorist" and who was a "freedom fighter" was subject to rhetorical sophistry and commonly determined by political junctures. All that Russia and China had to do was label the Chechens and Uyghurs terrorists and act supportively towards the US. This was already stated explicitly in Bush’s speech: Every nation, in every region, now has a decision to make. Either you are with us, or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime. That rhetoric was a gift to Moscow and Beijing, both of which speedily asserted their willingness to support the US effort to combat terrorism, starting with their own domestic "terrorists."
However, Russia and China were not alone in those policies. As many other commentators have pointed out over the years, the policies of Moscow and Beijing were mirrored by the shameful and violent policies that the US implemented in addition to the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq, such as "extraordinary renditions" and the widespread use of brutal torture methods. The resulting spectacles, such as Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib, were just the tip of the iceberg.
British economist John Maynard Keynes famously wrote that he was sure that the power of vested interests is vastly exaggerated compared with the gradual encroachment of ideas. Not, indeed, immediately, but after a certain interval ... But, soon or late, it is ideas, not vested interests, that are dangerous for good or evil. [6] And the rhetoric with which those ideas are expressed can have its own unforeseen and unintended consequences.
[1] President Declares "Freedom at War with Fear" (archives.gov)
[2] An important side note: This is a main ideological source of Western support for the terrorist organization PKK. For many decades, the Turkish state was seen by Westerners as non-democratic even though Türkiye’s elections became democratic in 1950. Justifying the PKK’s (or terrorist group FETÖ’s, or the DHKP-C’s, etc.) violence is an important reason why so many of Türkiye’s Western detractors try to brand Turkish politics or politicians “non-democratic,” or try to question the democratic integrity of Turkish elections.
[3] For example, both al-Qaeda and the Taliban, according to the West’s designations, started out as “freedom fighters” during the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan in the 1980s, but later became “terrorists” and “abettors of terrorism” in the 1990s.
[4] Truman Doctrine (1947) | National Archives: “I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures … The free peoples of the world look to us for support in maintaining their freedoms.”
[5] The history between the Turkic peoples and the Chinese state in the region today known as Eastern Turkestan/Xinjiang goes back 1,400 years to the Tang Dynasty’s brief extension into that region.
[6] John Maynard Keynes, The General Theory of Employment, Interest, and Money, 1936.
*Opinions expressed in this article are the author’s own and do not necessarily reflect the editorial policy of Anadolu.
