Assoc. Prof. Dr. CAGLAR ERBEK
The New Pulse of the
World
The world no longer revolves around a single center. The
heart of power no longer beats solely in the West.
Today, the rhythm of the global system echoes from multiple centers —
Washington, Moscow, Beijing, New Delhi, and even Ankara.
This new rhythm reveals that the world is not a single
symphony orchestra, but rather a symphony of chaos, composed of hundreds
of overlapping melodies.
Yet this chaos is not necessarily destructive — it creates its own order, its
own logic, its own rhythm.
Is Order Collapsing, or
Simply Being Rebuilt?
With the end of the Cold War, the liberal world’s claim of a
“unipolar victory” faded into the dusty shelves of history.
What Francis Fukuyama called “the end of history” was, in fact, the beginning
of a new one.
The crises we face today — from Ukraine to Gaza, from Taiwan
to the Sahel — are not merely conflicts; they are the labor pains of a mental reconstruction of the international
order.
Realists interpret this as the return of balance of power, liberals see it as the erosion of institutional structure, and constructivists frame it as the redefinition of identity and meaning.
But perhaps the truth is that all these theories are right —
simultaneously.
The world has become too multidimensional to be explained by any single theory.
The New Map of Power
Hegemony today is no longer measured by military or economic
might alone. Whoever controls data, governs. Whoever shapes perception, directs the course of history.
From artificial intelligence to cyber warfare, from energy
corridors to media empires — everything has become a new form of geopolitical
weapon.
Power now rises not on the shoulders of tanks, but on the algorithms of
machines.
And perhaps that’s the real danger: Those attempting to govern the world are no longer humans, but the systems
humans have created.
Crises are no longer managed by diplomats — they are designed by data.
Turkey and the New
Paradigms
Amid this multipolar chaos, Turkey stands on a historical
threshold.
On one side lie its institutional ties with the Western alliance; on the other,
its deepening strategic proximity to Asia.
This is not a contradiction — it is the very reflection of
the new world’s multicentric nature.
The era of “choosing sides” is over; this is the age of balancing.
And that balance requires not only political agility but also an epistemic
transformation in the way we think about global order.
Order Within Chaos
Perhaps the greatest mistake was to see chaos as the
opposite of order.
Yet history has always taught us this: Every chaos gives birth to its own order.
The turmoil we witness today may well be the birth pangs of
a new global mindset.
Perhaps humanity’s task is no longer to preserve order — but to understand
chaos.
Final Reflection
Multipolar chaos is humanity’s fractured mirror: Each shard reflects a different image, yet together they still form one face.
And perhaps, for the first time, that face belongs to a truly global
humanity.
