[Prefatory Note: The text below is a written interview with Naman Bakaç, an independent Turkish journalist]
Q1. As you know, the Republic of South Africa brought a case before the International Court of Justice (ICJ) in 2023 on the grounds that Israel had violated the international Convention on the Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide. As an academic and activist who has worked in the field of international law for many years, what did you think of the ICJ decision? Who will be responsible for implementing the decision on the ground? Have those responsible taken action on the ground? How should international law be mobilized on the ground? Or are we to say that the UN’s highest judicial organ is ineffective?
R1. In what may yet become the most important judicial initiative in the 81 year history of ICJ, due to the gravity and visibility of the South African submissions charging violations of the Genocide Convention in December 2023. To date the court has only rendered a series of preliminary decisions in 2024 on Interim Measures involving requests by South Africa that Israel be ordered to stop its assault on Gaza and an emergency is unfolding. The majority opinion of the ICJ agreed that the combat tactics during the first five month after the October 7th by Israel constituted ‘a plausible genocide’ that should be paused pending a final decision and that Israel must immediatelu stop its interference with the delivery of humanitarian aid so that it can reach the 2.3 million civilian population of Gaza. These ICJ rulings were viewed enthusiastically throughout the world except of course for Israel and its complicit North American and European supporters.
As anticipated, Israel defied these Interim Measures, and nothing effective could be done to implement the ICJ decisions on the ground at the UN or elsewhere. In the absence of voluntary compliance with its rulings, the ICJ is dependent for enforcement upon a veto-free süper-majority vote of 9 affirmative votes of the 15 states in the UN Security Council. It is also controversially possible for the imposition of national sanctions by Member states to function as a supplemental enforcement mechanisms. Neither mode of enforcement was forthcoming in this crucial situation. We can conclude that the ICJ is only effective if none of the five permanent members of the Security Council invokes its right of veto or if these states, the major winners of World War II who were given managerial control over the implementation of international law in global situations as embodied in the UN Charter approach to ICJ enforcement.
From the Gaza experience it should not be concluded that the ICJ is entirely ineffective. Its judgments in high-profile litigation of this sort can exert a strong influence on public discourse and stimulate protest activity in çivil society worldwide. Such was the impact of the first of the Interim Measure ICJ decisions. Many influential media platforms also responded by tending to offer somewhat more balanced coverage of the daily happenings in Gaza, street and campus demonstrations spread, and the taboo on describing the violence as genocide was greatly weakened if not altogether abandoned. These pro-Palestinian developments are partially attributable to the legitimacy accorded to the legality of outcomes at the ICJ regardless of whether the losing side complies or the UN enforces.
A final point: it is a mistake to regard international law in its totality as ineffective because of its failures in the all-important war and genocide prevention contexts. In many routine yet vital transnational settings of international law works without regard to the inequality of political actors. International law provides reliability through compliance in such settings as respect for diplomatic immunity, air and maritime safety, tourism, freedom of navigation on the high seas, that is, in relation to behavior regulated by the win/win logic of reciprocity rather than the win/lose logic of power.
Q2. In our interview in October 2024 (https://perspektif.online/tufandan-sonra-askeri-ve-jeopolitik-kirilmanin-ilk-yili/), you said, “The US’s support for Israel at the expense of disregarding international law is an example of moral hypocrisy.” Does this moral hypocrisy also apply to Europe? Can we say that the Gaza Genocide has destroyed the West’s claim to moral superiority?
R2. Yes, more so than in 2024 the comparison between the outrage over the Russian attack on Ukraine and undisguised complicity in the most tramsparent genocide perpetrated by Israel in Gaza, undermines the authority of international law in the context of issues of global security. International law shifts its functionality from being a regulative process applicable to all sovereign states to being a policy instrument useful to mount state propaganda against adversaries but to be disregarded and circumvented when it involves strategic allies.
Europe has certainly joined the U.S., Canada, and Australia in closing ranks both with respect to denouncing the unlawfulness of Russia’s behavior in Ukraine while supporting the genocidal assault by Israel in Gaza. In relation to both of these conflicts NATO solidarity unified Atlanticist responses. This solidarity fractured to some extent in relation to the second Iran War of 2026.
Q3. In some of your articles and books that I reviewed, beginning in the 1970s and continuing through 2008, I came across the following titles: The Status of Law in International Society, The Future of the International Legal Order, International Law and World Order, International Law, the UN and World Order after Iraq. My question is this: Is there still such a norm as International Law? If the international legal order has become dysfunctional following the Gaza Genocide and Israel’s unlawful occupation and attacks against regional countries in the Middle East such as Lebanon, Iran, and Syria, what should take its place?
R3. am impressed that you took time to look at some of my past writings on international law. I am quite sure that I would find my views naive by placing hope in the confluence of international law and prudent geopolitics in the Cold War Era. I was part of the post-1945 generation that worried above all about the dangers of an apocalyptic nuclear war that would have catastrophic effects on the future of humanity. I hoped that humane rationality would prevail over the type of ‘political realism’ that operated as a hegemonic ideology in the inner circles of foreign policy decision-making.
I was greatly influenced by the U.S. involvement in the Vietnam War both for reasons of compliance with law and morality, and by the existential experience of witnessing first-hand the cruelty and onesidedness of a high-tech military superpower devastating a vulnerable, poorly developed society in Global South with no means of retaliation. I also saw that despite this unchallenged military superiority of the United States, it managed to lose the war, allowing a victimized people to achieve their goals of decolonization, national liberation, and self-determination. These latter perceptions cannot be learned by Western governing elites increasingly subject to the militarizing influence of their private sector arms industries that profit whether the war is won or lost, and use their political leverage to exaggerate security threats as the military budgets approved to prepare for a range of possible future wars can be as profitable or more that is the actual waging of war.
I now believe that the dangers of this resilient war system is menacing a humane future given the heightened fragility of the planetary ecosystem and a psychotic denial war planners of risks associated with AI, climate change, and geopolitically sensitive frozen conflicts, which tempt recourse to nuclear threats and as well as destructive applications of AI. In a sense, international law under these circumstances is a forlorn recognition of the legacy of the Enlightenment stress on facts, science, rationality as the basis of public policy. Trump epitomizes a post-truth contrary legacy of pre-modern times associated with metaphysical beliefs, divine revelation, and a mercenary opportunism that sneers at justice, Thees traditions joining technological innovation to a deadly phase of capitalism that embraces Malthusian solutions to the expected massive displacement of workers producing ‘a human surplus’ coupled with the related decline of person-centered systems of governance.
I favor a continued appreciation of international law in an atmosphere of eco-patriotism as an instrument of rescue under present perilous circumstances of a seemingly unstoppable slide toward an unprecedented historical abyss that could signal the ironic end of the Anthropocene Age if not jeopardize the human species itself.
Q4. In another interview we conducted in 2025, you described the October 7 Al-Aqsa Flood as “a protest born out of desperation against the genocide-like atrocity taking place before the eyes of the world.” Looking at the last three years of this protest, what impact has it had on Palestinians, HAMAS, and the Middle East?
R4. would not retreat from that provocative language that I used 2025. I had not thought then that a perverse peace process set forth in the Trump 20-Point Plan would be welcomed at the UN by many other governments, especially those in the region. The argument relied upon by reluctant supporters of what seemed envisioned by the Trump diplomacy and is now unfolding is that this was the only path to sparing the people of Gaza a further tsunami of suffering and even a prospect of coercive elimination death or forced departure. In fact Israeli violations of the ceasefire established on October 10, 2025 has resulted in almost daily attacks so far killing over 1,440 Palestinians, and what is worse in some respects, not a whimper of official criticism or pushback from the endorser governments or international institutions, signifying that complicity persists.
As matters now stand, Palestine and Hamas face further punitive outcomes. Unlike Israel, Palestine has been excluded from planning the future of Gaza, and Hamas is scheduled to be totally demilitarized. In contrast, the perpetrator of genocide faces no demands for reparations or for accountability despite the enormity of its crimes, while the master complicit state is given the keys to the house in the form of receiving widespread approval of the proposed colonialist transition arrangement, which implicitly ensures that vulture capitalism will gain from restoring some kind of residential normalcy to Gaza, almost devoid of Palestinian habitation. Whether under these circumstances, Palestinian resilience and resistance, despite its heroic perseverance can survive the Trump tornado diplomacy is in doubt.
Hamas is unlikely to play an important direct role in any likely scenario for the future of Gaza. Hamas is current slated for demilitarization and demonized as a terrorist threat if given access to legitimate governance. If so, Hams might well emerge in an altered organizational form with a new name, and possibly providing an activist base for renewed Gaza resistance likely resituated in the refugee camps located in neighboring countries.
It is too early to pronounce upon regional developments. Much will depend on how the Iran War ends, whether Iran emerges as a major regional actor or is, as Trump threatens or bluffs (one never knows!) made to disappear as a political and even civilizational presence. Another uncertainty is whether the major Arab states reconsider their security dependence on the United States or seek to have better connections with China. The Mecca Accords are a sign of declining confidence in the U.S. for regime security and regional stability, but whether this loss of confidence is a temporary reaction or something more fundamental is not yet claar.
Q5. International law norms, the UN, and other international institutions have failed to stop Israel. As you know, killings and occupations in Palestine also continue. So far, neither the West nor the Muslim world has been able to stop this genocide. So, how will the problem be resolved? Will the world remain a spectator while the killings and occupations continue unabated? What is your proposed solution to this?
R5. This is not an easy question to answer persuasively. The established world public order failed for two princip al reasons: first, Israel was not acting alone, but was supported by the main constitutional democracies, particularly by the U.S. with dominant military capabilities and strong strategic interests in the region, including energy, containment of Islam, sustaining regime stability among leading Arab countries, and partnering with Israel as a tactical, ideological, and civilizational ally. Such a constellation of forces inhibited substantive solidarity with the Palestinian struggle and also undermined the political will of most UN members to take effective steps supporting the people of Gaza even in the face of this transparent genocide of a helpless and vulnerable people.
Even where symbolically important steps were taken, as with the ICJ response to South Africa’s allegations of violations of the Genocide Convention, the issuance of arrest warrants for Netanyahu and Gallant by the International Criminal Court (ICC), and the reports of Francesca Albanese, the UN Special Rapporteur for Occupied Palestines, no meaningful official efforts to implement international law followed. On the contrary, these calls for opposition to the ongoing genocide were met with derision and pushback from Israel’s supporters, most directly by the U.S. Government and European Union. Sanctions were imposed on the ICC and Special Rapporteur for doing their duty under difficult circumstances. This gave concrete expression and well-evidenced confirmation to these repudiations of Israel’s criminality and recourse to state terrorism.
There were also positive results. These included a growing legitimation of the responsibility and opportunity accorded tp global çivil society, the peoples of the world, to fill the normative vacuum created by these expressions of global conscience backed by formal legal authority and carefully documented factual assessments. In the year since the Trump Plan was accepted by Hamas and Israel there is reason to doubt whether the pro-Palestine civic mobilization possess sufficient leverage, even as reinforced by Palestinian sumud, to address the deep, long neglected, grievances of the Palestinian people.
Against this background, there are several lines of potential solution, that is, of a fundamental reckoning with international law and morality that is embedded in principles of justice, although none can be viewed as more than desirable alternative possibilities at this state: (1) the overt abandonment or drastic revision of Zionist by the government and citizenry of Israel; (2) a shift in the foreign policy of complicit countries in the direction of implementing Palestine’s right of self-determination; (3) the continuing resilience and resistance by the Palestinian people, including an upsurge of activism in foreign Palestinian refugee camps; (4) the defeat of Trump and Trumpism in the United States, and the cancellation of the Trump Peace Plan, including the dissolution of the Trump Board of Peace, and its replacement by an alternative framework more compatible with UN Principles.
Developments along these four behavior vectors can be considered preconditions for a solution to Palestinian grievances.
Q6. How do you think the Board of Peace, proposed by US President Donald Trump and established on January 15, 2026, will play a role in preventing the genocide in Gaza and establishing the legitimate rights of Palestinians? Is there anything the Board of Peace is currently doing on the ground? Can it do anything? What is your view of the analyses suggesting that the Board of Peace will be ineffective?
R6. As indicated in my earlier responses, I regard the Trump Plan as a legal and moral fiasco from the outset, and more recently as a crude political failure. The state propaganda that led to its initial acceptance by way of a criminal threat of intensifying genocidal terror, quite possibly to be carried out with the help of tactical nuclear weapons, has not even achieved compliance with a ceasefire arrangement or the secure delivery of urgently needed humanitarian aid to Gaza with respect to food, medicine, construction materials and rubble removal machinery. The Trump framework has played into the ethnic cleansing schemes of Israel based on the dual goals of seizing as much land with as few Palestinians as possible. As Israel’s priorities have down-shifted from high velocity violence to policies designed to make Gaza unlivable while extending the orbit of strategic ambition to the West Bank and southern Lebanon, and even Syria and Iraq while the world is distracted by the Iran War, Such Israeli warmongering is generating immensely harmful impacts on human wellbeing and regional stability. Even Israel, evidently a co-developer of the Trump plan, now that it has recovered Israeli hostages, seems ambivalent about its further implementation, and may have actually become opposed to the further implementation of the plan except for the demilitarization and political delegitimation of Hamas.
This situation should cause embarrassment in the UN in light of the unanimous SC endorsement of the entire Trump Plan, including the Board of Peace, in SC Resolution 1803, with China and Russia abstaining. Such a diplomatic gesture represents nothing less than an act of implicit endorsement of the ongoing genocide as it became transformed into a Mafia style peacebuilding diplomacy.
Q7. How do you assess Türkiye’s role within the Peace Council as well as its efforts to mobilize other regional and global institutions? We also see that Türkiye has made strong statements against Israel at the level of rhetoric and that the diplomacy it has pursued has been unable to change the situation on the ground for three years. A single country cannot overcome such a deeply rooted problem, but what do you think about whether it might use the military and defense capabilities it possesses in the future? Could the Mecca Defense Agreement provide the basis for this?
R7. As you suggest, Türkiye’s role in the current phase of the genocide is most unusual given its diplomatic posture of partisan support for the Palestinian struggle. On the one side, the rhetoric of its highest officials remains extremely critical of Israel, while at the same time it refrains from giving material support to the Palestinian resistance in contrast to the behavior of the countries supporting Israel that are somewhat cautious about their rhetoric of support, while being unashamedly complicit when it comes to material contributions facilitating Israel’s unabated genocide.
To some extent this apparent tension can be explained as political realism. It is an implied policy of engaging Israel with hostile words, while avoiding an Israeli military response, and a possibly devastating war with an unscrupulous government that possesses an arsenal of nuclear weapons, as well as advanced conventional military capabilities. I think Türkiye will continue to walk that treacheroustightrope, now coupled with a delusional belief that its diplomatic influence will be enhanced by participating in the Trump administrative framework.
If attacked by Israel, Türkiye can be expected to respond, at least in a limited manner and coupled with an effort to isolate Israel internationally even further. It should be appreciated that an attack on Türkiye will test the NATO collective defense core obligation, which might induce Israel to avoid a direct attack, and rely on an indirect form of provocation such as stimulating a revival of insurgent Kurdish militancy.
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