When the Real Lever Is Locked, Everything Else Is Theater
H. Derbala
On September 22nd, Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan stood at the 81st UN General Assembly and denounced Israel for a ‘genocidal mindset,’ calling Gaza the "most inhumane and shameful concentration camp of our time" (Al Jazeera; TRT World). Following these statements, the delegation of Israel walked out amidst the speech. As Palestinian representatives applauded the moment (Al Jazeera), Erdoğan did something more structurally interesting than either of the delegations: he called out for the Security Council's five permanent members to be stripped of their veto power entirely, emphasizing that "the world is bigger than five" (Directorate of Communications).
But how significant is a statement if it carries no real possibility of change?
Calls to abolish the P5 Veto are not new. This issue resurfaces almost every UN General Assembly session, usually from states that have had their resolutions turned down under a single no vote. Yet, abolishing the veto would require amending the UN Charter, needing the ratification of two-thirds of member states, including all five permanent members, the exact states being asked to vote away their own power ("Charter of the United Nations," art. 108). It has never happened and structurally cannot happen without their consent. Everyone making the proposal is aware of this since saying it out loud is the only lever left when the actual lever of a Security Council vote is not available.
Looking closely at what the walk-out really is. It is an expression of view. It carries no legal weight, triggers no institutional consequence, and changes no resolution’s text. It is a genuinely old diplomatic tool since UN sessions took place during apartheid-era South Africa, precisely because it costs nothing and signals everything. For the past few years, Israel's delegation has either supported or opposed a concerted UNGA walkout. The fact that walkouts have increased in frequency as the Security Council has consistently reached a deadlock over the issues causing them is not a coincidence. Symbolic channels take on the load when formal channels cease to yield results.
The walkout was one outlet for that redirected pressure. The speech's own language supplied another. Genocide is the word doing the heaviest lifting in Erdoğan's address, and it belongs to the same pattern: it carries a ring of the single most legally loaded term available, reserved by treaty for the gravest category of crime, and used deliberately for the shock it carries. However, the word also has a courtroom home, and that courtroom is not fast. South Africa's genocide case against Israel has been before the International Court of Justice since December 2023 (International Court of Justice); a final judgment on the merits remains years away, built on an evidentiary standard designed to withstand exactly the kind of political pressure a General Assembly speech is meant to generate. A podium can deploy the word "genocide" in a sentence.A court needs years of documentation, testimony, and legal argument to determine whether it applies. That gap is not a flaw in the court; rather, it's the entire point of having one. It means the word now circulates in two completely different registers at once: as rhetorical ammunition in real time, and as a precise legal finding that may or may not eventually arrive.
This is where all the threads converge. The Security Council is prevented from converting indignation into legally binding action by the veto. The outrage doesn't go away as a result of this blockage; instead, it is redirected into the few remaining places of expression, such as speeches, walkouts, and terminology taken from courts that operate at a pace that is entirely different from the politics surrounding them. There is no loss of seriousness in performative diplomacy. Rather, it's what's left when the serious channel is structurally locked, and states know it, but they act anyhow because being perceived as acting still has value.
In the grand scheme of things, this matters beyond one General Assembly session. It means the international system is increasingly organized around two parallel tracks that rarely touch: a visible track of rhetoric, walkouts as a statement of their own, and reform proposals everyone knows will fall short, and a nearly invisible track of slow legal process, ICJ proceedings, ICC investigations, that will eventually produce actual findings, long after the news cycle has moved on and largely without the public that watched the events unfold during continuous GA sessions ever seeing the verdict. The louder the first track gets, the easier it is to mistake it for accountability itself.
A sincere reform agenda, if there is one, must balance the two: pursue the realistic fixes that don't require unanimous P5 consent, such as the 2022 "veto initiative," which now sparks a General Assembly debate every time a veto is cast, is a real if modest step in that direction (United Nations, General Assembly; Barber), while resisting the temptation to let political speed borrow legal words before the legal process has actually justified and earned them. Political platforms and courtrooms both have their place. The risk lies in treating them as interchangeable and confusing a protest or walkout with a judicial verdict.
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