These include two Turkish vessels, the Ya-Sa Neslihan and the Karagöl. More recently, pirates also hijacked a giant Saudi tanker.The pirates are reportedly Somalis. Somalia has been suffering from instability for a long time. When Islamists maintained rule and control in the country, the US and Ethiopia launched attacks against Somalia. The government was overthrown, and subsequently a civil war erupted, leaving in its wake thousands of casualties. Currently, Islamists and nationalists are trying to preserve stability in different parts of this poor African country, whereas a substantial part is still suffering from ongoing anarchy. In 2003 and 2006, the US interfered; each time, the situation got worse, and the internal war became more severe. Reports note that the US is preparing for a new operation.
It is strange to hear of "pirates" and "piracy" in the 21st century. The first thing that comes to mind is "Piracy? In this age?" Globalization has integrated the world not only in economic terms but also in communication, transportation and military terms.
With that said, initial attempts at colonization were justified by pirate attacks against commercial vessels on the sea. The history of colonialism in the 18th and 19th centuries has many examples of this. In 1794, the US outlawed piracy and then created a big navy. In 1805, this navy arrived on Egyptian shores. Subsequently, it rescued American seamen in a desert operation in Libya. European states' justification in starting their colonialist ambitions was war against pirate states. In reliance on this pretext, African and Asian lands were partitioned among the British, Spaniards, French, Dutch and Portuguese. Meanwhile, historians fail to mention a small detail: The European states have failed to take measures against pirates for a long time; to the contrary, they agreed to pay a certain fee to the pirates in the event of a pirate attack. But when piracy became widespread, they resorted to military-colonialist methods, followed by occupations and invasions. Back then, the official pretext was formulated as "combat against the pirates and bandit states."
Coming back to postmodern pirates, strangely, we are seeing that history repeats itself. For a long time, a bunch of criminals have been hijacking large tankers and demanding large ransoms for their hostages. Uğur Mümtaz Temel, captain of Turkish vessel Karagöl, held at the port of Ely in the Puntland autonomous region, a stronghold of the pirates in northeast Somalia, says, "We asked for help from the NATO boats monitoring the area for a probable pirate attack, but none of them responded to our call." Let me recall that Turkey is a NATO member country.
The US, NATO and EU warboats are monitoring the area for piracy activities and assaults. So, it could be said that pirates are conducting their attacks despite the presence of a military force stationed to deal with the situation in the region. Besides, during an attack, this military force is asked to help. It seems that the actual mission of these warboats is to protect the pirate attacks rather than the security of the region.
The history of colonialism and the course of piracy attacks bring these concerns to the fore: Postmodern pirates will continue with such attacks for some time to come. When the situation worsens, NATO and the Western powers will intervene; of course, they will rely on the justification of war against pirates and invade the region as they did in Afghanistan and Iraq by using the pretext of the war on terror.
