Category Archives: Turkey

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations (ICMLPO): On the International Situation

The most significant development in the world capitalist economy, since the last meeting of our Conference is undoubtedly the intensification of the symptoms that prove the trend toward a new recession in all fields, after a certain rise in the second quarter of 2009, followed by a period of stagnation. Despite the trend towards a rise in the second quarter, world industrial production shrank 6.6% in 2009 and rose 10% in 2010. The industrial production of June 2010 exceeded its previous level before the crisis of 2008. But starting from the first quarter of 2011, the growth lost momentum and fell to 0.4% in the last quarter of that year. In 2011, world industrial production declined by half (5.4%) compared to the previous year. In the first quarter of 2012, after a weak rise, the growth declined. The growth was 1.8% in the first quarter, 0% in the second and 4% in the last quarter of 20l2. All the data show that, despite fluctuations, a decline persists that began in the first quarter of 2011, which led to zero level in the middle of this year [2012] and is heading for a new period of decline.

Industrial production in the European Union, which is a larger economic power than the U.S.; in Japan, which is third largest world economic power; in India, one of the largest economies in Asia, have had consecutive declines in the third quarter of 2011 and in the first two quarters of 2012 compared to the same period last year. Industrial production in Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America, has also entered into decline in the last two quarters. North African countries like Tunisia and Egypt, and other countries such as Argentina, Colombia and Peru, are in similar situations.

The rate of growth of industrial production in China, in the first and second quarters of 2012, was 11.6% and 9.5%, while it was 14.4% in 2010 and 13.8% in 2011. The downward trend continued in July, 9.2% and in August, 8.9%. China, which grew by 12.9% and 12.3% in the crisis years (2008 and 2009), was, along with India, one of the factors that prevented a further sharpening of the crisis and that allowed the world economy to enter into a new period of growth. The situation in that country has changed considerably. Now it is a country that is accumulating stockpiles in the steel industry, which is facing a slowdown in the construction sector, which has important holes in the financial sector. Those countries that saw lower growth rates despite the stimulus measures to revive the domestic market, are now unable to play the same role as before. The industrial production of Mexico and the Confederation of Independent States (CIS), including Russia, continues to grow. However, while the industrial production in the major countries and the volume of international trade are falling, for these countries also, a decrease is expected.

Unlike simple commodity production, a more rapid growth in the production of the means of production, compared to consumer goods, is a condition for expanded reproduction. But with the capitalist mode of production producing for an unknown market, with the sole purpose of obtaining profits, a consistent development of the two sectors is impossible and this is one of the factors that makes crises inevitable. In the last three years, as well as before, these two sectors have not developed consistently. In the first sector, demand has fallen, the volume of growth has fallen, stockpiles are accumulating and capacity utilization has fallen. In 2010 and 2011 the steel industry, an important component of the production of means of production, grew faster than the consumer goods sector. According to data from the World Steel Union, the growth rate in production was 15% in 2010 compared to the previous year, but in 2011 the figure fell to 6.2%. In January raw steel production saw a sharp drop to 8%, and it has stayed at 0.8% in the period from January to May of 2012. In August of 2012 raw steel production fell 1% in relation to 2011. In the same period, raw steel production rose 3.3% in Japan (a significant increase if one takes into account the major fall due to the tsunami) and 2.6% in India. It has fallen by 1.7% in China, 3.8% in the U.S., 4.4% in the EU, 7.1% in Germany, 15.5% in Italy and 3.8% in the Confederation of Independent States (CIS). The iron stockpiles in Chinese ports reached 98.15 million tons (an increase of 2.9%) belonging to the steel complexes. And stockpiles of Chinese coal are at their highest level in the last three years.

In manufacturing, a very important element of the production of the means of production, production and demand have declined in many countries. This decline has been one of the reasons for the cooling of industrial production in Germany, for example. In the capitalist mode of production, the agricultural sector, by its level of development and its technical basis, is always behind industry. Agricultural production is largely affected by the natural conditions, climate changes, droughts, storms and other natural catastrophes. Agricultural production is increasingly under the control of the monopolies and the speculative maneuvers of finance capital. In 2010 world agricultural production, including the production of cereals, has shrunk due to various factors such as bad weather or the expansion of plots reserved for bio-fuel production. On the other hand, in 2011, agricultural production has progressed thanks to better weather conditions, and also to increased demand and higher prices due to speculation. For example, wheat production increased by about 6%.

In 2009 the volume of world trade has declined 12.7%. According to data from the World Trade Organization (WTO), that volume registered a growth of 13.8% in 2010, and only 5% in 2011 (according to figures from the CPL, the growth was 15.2% in 2010, and 5.8% in 2011). The volume of world trade has grown by 0.5% in the final quarter of last year, and by 0.9% and 0.5% in the first and second quarter of 2012 respectively. During the first two months of the third quarter (June and July), the volume of world trade recorded a negative growth of -1.5% and -0.2% compared to the previous months.

World industrial production reached and surpassed the pre-crisis level of 2008, in June 2010, while the volume of international trade did not surpass this until November 2011. If we compare the data of July 2012 with the level reached before the crisis of 2008 (that is, April 2008), we see an increase of 9.5% in world industrial production and an increase of 5% in the total volume of growth in world trade.

The data on the increase of the volume of world trade is one of the most important that shows an evolutionary trend, although it does not exactly reflect the volume of growth of world trade. These data show that for the last three years, the world capitalist production has increased rapidly and that the capitalist world is once again facing the problem of overproduction, which is the source of all its crises. Decreased production, closing or reduction in work capacity of enterprises, rising unemployment and poverty; needs in abundance and the restriction of markets are the inevitable consequences of overproduction. The sharp slowdown in world industrial production has been shown above. The events in North Africa and the austerity measures taken in countries like Greece, Spain, Italy, Portugal, etc., are factors that are aggravating this process and its consequences.

Towards a New Financial Crisis

The crisis of 2008 broke out as a financial crisis, at the same time as the crisis deepened in other sectors, such as industry and trade, it developed with contacts in the finance sector with serious consequences for the following period. The most destructive consequences for the monopolies and the eventual collapse of the financial sector were avoided by transferring of billions of dollars into the coffers of the monopolies by the capitalist States. This rescue operation was only possible by accepting a debt to financial markets with very high interest rates, and the issuance of money into the markets. The end result is an extreme State debt, an increase in the debt and interest burden, a rise in the price of gold and the loss of value (devaluation) of almost all currencies.

Countries at different levels have entered a vicious circle that has elements of new currency and financial crises, in which they can finance their budget deficit, their debts and interests, having to borrow again. The capitalist world began a period of growth starting in the second quarter of 2009, with the weight inherited from the 2008 crisis. However, this period of growth has enabled recipient countries to breathe a little, turn the wheel that was on the verge of suffocating them. The growth of the world economy stopped and even lowered the price of gold for a moment. In some countries, such as China that had a significant growth rate, the ratio of the public debt to GDP decreased. But in other countries, such as Japan and the U.S., a substantial debt has continued, even during the period of growth of the capitalist world economy. The U.S. public debt represents the sum of $16 billion (the debt of Germany, which grew until the second half of this year, is 8 billion). Other capitalist countries are in a similar situation. The increasing debt is almost the condition of financial sustainability and economic growth. And this is the path that is leading directly to a new financial crisis that may profoundly affect all sectors of the economy.

The highly indebted countries have not been able to achieve a period of growth after the financial crisis and the fall in world industrial production that took place between the second quarter of 2008 and the second quarter of 2009; this period has led to a financial crisis that has affected the other sectors of the economy that has led them to bankruptcy. The first example of this process was in Greece, where the weakness was such that the industry, very weak, was largely liquidated when it joined the EU. After the 2008 crisis, in 2009, the economy of this country did not grow, and by the end of the year it was on the verge of bankruptcy. This country, followed by others such as Portugal, Spain, Hungary, etc., has not been able to get out of the crisis and stagnation. However, important differences should be noted in its debt in relation to the GDP.

Austerity measures never seen before, except in times of war or crisis as deep as 1929, have been imposed on the indebted countries. The result of these measures has been to impoverish the people, destroy the economy and reduce the internal market and foreign trade. These austerity plans have been applied (despite the opposition and struggle of the working class and peoples) under the control of the creditor imperialist powers, the international institutions such as the IMF, World Bank and European Union, and above all with the support of the collaborator monopoly bourgeoisie and its representatives, these enemies of the people. They have transferred billions of dollars to foreign banks, completely betraying the national interests. The national pride of the people, their right to sovereignty and independence have been trampled upon. A country like Britain that had a strong financial sector, but since mid-2011 has seen its industrial production and its economy reduced, has been forced to march along with the countries implementing austerity measures.

The significant decrease in the volume of growth of world industrial production, which began in the second quarter of 2011, is developing the elements of a new international financial crisis and is contributing to the degradation of the situation of the highly indebted countries. They failed to enter a period of growth parallel to the process of growth of the world capitalist economy following the crisis of 2008-2009. While the debate over the future of the Euro and the European Union is sharpening, the communiqués on the economic trends of the advanced capitalist countries and the indebted countries have sown confusion in the stock markets, barometers of the capitalist economy. Although world industrial and agricultural production and the volume of international -trade have exceeded the highest level before the crisis of 2008, the indices of the most influential stock markets remain below that level.

Although we are not yet experiencing the outbreak of a financial crisis of major proportions, everything makes it appear that the process is advancing towards such an eventuality. The U.S. Federal Reserve Bank (FED) has announced that it will not raise interest rates and that it will start a process of purchasing bonds for an amount of $2,000 billion dollars, at the rate of $40 billion per month. Japan has announced a similar measure and has begun a program of buying bonds to the tune of $695 billion.

Germany has had to relax its rigid policy towards the indebted countries and the European fund for the intervention in countries facing difficulties has increased. China, along with measures of revival that it has already applied, announced a new investment package to renovate its infrastructure. The price of gold is rising again. In 2008, the intense intervention of the capitalist States began after the outbreak of the crisis. Now, however, the capitalist States have gone into action before the shocks and bankruptcies at the same level as in 2008 start in the major capitalist countries and worldwide. However, these interventions, which can have some influence on the process of development, cannot change the orientation and the inevitable outcome.

The Sharpening of the Inter-Imperialist Contradictions and the Growing Danger of Conflicts

Uneven, unbalanced development is the absolute law of capitalist development. This process after the crisis of 2008 was not balanced, it deepened the antagonistic contradictions in the evolution and development of the relations between sectors, countries, regions, production and markets, etc. The industrial production of the advanced capitalist countries, including the U.S. and Japan, except Germany (ignoring the high level of 2008), did not reach the level of 2005. Germany, which has exceeded the pre-crisis level and has had a growth in industrial production of 11.5% in 2010 and 9% in 2011, has consolidated its position within the European Union and the Euro zone. Without separating itself from the bloc led by the United States, it has penetrated into new markets, new fields of investment, sources of raw materials, basing itself on its economic and financial strength, and above all, on its technical superiority in the industry of machine construction.

As in previous years, China, both because of its industrial production and its economy in general, was the country that had the most significant growth among major economies. It has modernized and increased the technical basis of its industry, and it continues to reduce the difference in its level of development with the other imperialist powers. Russia is going through a similar process. For the United States and its allies, these two countries, one considered as a vast market and production area with a trained and cheap work force, and the other a solid country, appear today as their main rivals to fight against.

The inevitable result of the change in the balance of power is the great demand for a piece of the pie by the emerging forces, using all means to get it and a new redivision of the world according the new balance of power. The recent development of the world economy is another factor that exacerbates the contradictions and the struggles among the major imperialist powers. Last year in the Middle East, in Africa and the whole world, the rivalry and struggle to expand their sphere of influence has accelerated. The production of weapons, the arms race is intensifying. China and Russia have renewed the technical basis of their arms industry. According to a report by the Congress of the United States, arms sales by these countries have tripled in 2011.

China, which increasingly needs more raw materials, energy and fields of investment for its growing economy, and Russia, which is slowly recovering, are intensifying their expansionist desires and their efforts to get their piece of the pie. Therefore, it is a top priority for the U.S. and its allies to prevent China, a young imperialist power in full development, and Russia, from achieving new markets in the field of energy and raw materials. When the Obama administration states that beginning next year the priority strategic objective for the United States will be Asia, and that the deployment of the U.S. military will be renewed according to the new situation, this is merely affirming that reality. The crisis of the archipelagos shows the level of tension between Japan and China; Japan has declared its intention to improve its military capability. The military maneuvers in the region have intensified.

The consequences of the change in the balance of power in the world have been clearly visible since last year. Russia and China were forced to accept Western imperialist intervention in Libya, even though that intervention was contrary to their interests. The intervention ended with the overthrow of the Gaddafi regime, the near collapse of the country, the destruction of its economy, the degradation of working and living conditions, the transfer of the country’s wealth into the hands of the Western imperialist States, etc. Russia and China lost a good part of their positions, including their oil agreements. After the fall of the Gaddafi regime, Mali has been dragged into war and divided. But the main objective is Syria. The attempts by the Western imperialist powers to topple the Syrian regime and put in a puppet government to fully control the country are intensifying. The United States and its allies have mobilized all their forces within Syria and outside of it in Turkey, Jordan, Saudi Arabia and Qatar. They are stirring up the religious contradictions, they use and manipulate the popular discontent towards the regime and they try to prepare the ground for a military intervention as in Libya. Meanwhile Russia is arming Syria, strengthening its military base located in that country and sending more warships to the Mediterranean.

To bring down the Syrian regime, put in place a puppet government, dominate the oil-rich Middle East, control the eastern Mediterranean, block the expansion of China and Russia in the region and expel them as they did in Libya, to encircle Iran, weaken its influence and liquidate its closest allies, are very important objectives. Syria is the only country in the Middle East and the eastern Mediterranean where Russia has a military base. This small country has become a place of intense struggle between Russia and China on the one hand, and the United States and its allies on the other. The Middle East is a powder keg on the verge of religious conflicts.

Contrary to what they did in Libya, Russia and China are opposing a military intervention that would alter the balance in the Middle East and result in the domination of the United States and its allies over Syria. But they have left the door open for a possible compromise that would guarantee their interests and renew the Syrian regime which is having more and more difficulties to survive.

As the case of Afghanistan, former Yugoslavia, Iraq, Ivory Coast and Libya show, the imperialist interventions that have had the support of the liberal “defenders” of freedom and democracy, of the pseudo-socialist parties that emerged from the former revisionist parties, have resulted in increased military budgets at the expense of the workers, in the destruction of the productive forces of those countries, in many disasters, the impoverishment and decline in all social aspects. The aspiration of the peoples for the right to sovereignty and national independence, democracy and freedom has never been the concern of the occupiers. Their objective was to further prolong their system maintained by the defeat inflicted on the working class in the middle of the last century, a defeat that guaranteed their super-profits, the expansion of their spheres of influence and the weakening of their rivals. The imperialist powers, which are using all means to achieve this goal, do not lack in demagoguery and low maneuvers to disorient the people’s anger.

Now a period of sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions is beginning, which economic-financial and political-military interventions will multiply. It is increasingly important to fight against such intervention, to develop the united fight of the workers and peoples, in both the advanced and backward countries,.

Organize the Resistance of the Workers in the New Stormy Period

The army of unemployed is growing on the world level, especially in countries in total-debt crisis, in the countries in which the economy is declining, stagnating or is in crisis. In Greece and Spain, unemployment has reached 25%. In these countries, unemployment among the youths, including college graduates, reached 50%. In the Euro zone in the second quarter of 2012, the level of unemployment reached 11.2%, according to official figures. In countries such as Egypt and Tunisia, where manufacturing has fallen from 9.6% to 7.5% in the first quarter of this year (2012), the number of unemployed continues to grow. In South Africa, the most developed country on the continent, the unemployment rate exceeds 25%.

In the current period, in almost all fields, from education to health care, drastic measures have been taken, the retirement age has been delayed and pensions have fallen. The gains of the working class worldwide are targeted for cuts or elimination. While direct taxes on the workers are increasing, no measures are taken to disturb the local and international monopolies, when even within the framework of this system one could increase taxes on the banks and the local and foreign monopolies. Wages continue to fall, etc. Many countries are suffering from a process of absolute impoverishment.

In recent years practices have been imposed worldwide such as sub-contracting labor, precarious and part-time work, an increase in the age for retirement, etc. In Germany, for example, one of the most developed countries in the world that has had significant growth rates in industrial production, according to the Federal Administration of Statistics, 15.6% of the population lives below the poverty line, a figure that rises to 26% among the immigrant population.

Last year, on a world scale and in each country, the workers and peoples movement has developed with various demands, in different forms and also at different levels. The struggles carried out in those countries with a “debt crisis” have been outstanding for their broad social base, for their responses and the experiences gained. The miners’ strike in South Africa, the youth movement and the strikes in Chile, the popular movements in Tunisia and Egypt, etc. are powerful examples of the workers and peoples struggles.

Starting with Greece, Spain and Italy, in various countries with a “debt crisis,” strikes, general strikes and huge demonstrations have taken place. In Greece and Spain, hundreds of thousands of people have expressed their anger in front of the parliaments on the days when these were voting for austerity measures. But the workers and peoples movement, despite some more advanced attempts, has remained within the framework of peaceful demonstrations, general strikes of one or two days and limited resistance. The strikes of long duration, the resistance or occupation of factories, have been limited to one enterprise or one sector.

The austerity measures have affected not only the proletariat and semi-proletarian masses of the cities and countryside; they have also affected the petty bourgeoisie and non-monopoly bourgeois strata. Even the less dynamic strata, the traditional base of the bourgeois parties, have been mobilized given the current situation. The social base of the struggle against the bourgeoisie in Power and against imperialism has expanded, to the point where in some dependent countries the mobilization has taken the character of a movement of the whole nation, except for a handful of monopolists. The conditions are maturing for the working class and its revolutionary parties, as representatives and the vanguard of the nation, to decide to organize and advance the movement and the united front of the people.

But despite the great movement, the groups of international finance capital and the local monopoly bourgeoisies have not given in (except in the recent delay of the austerity measures in Portugal). They have decided to implement these measures even at the cost of demeaning the image of the parliaments and weakening their social base. However, the masses are realizing through their own experience the impossibility of repelling the attacks with one or two day strikes or through peaceful demonstrations. Sharper forms of struggle and unlimited general strike are beginning to be considered by the more advanced strata.

It is clear that the bourgeoisie in Power, with their hostile character towards the people, is assuming a position of national betrayal. The traditional parties of the bourgeoisie and parliaments have lost credibility and the mass support for those parties is weakening (especially toward those in government that are implementing austerity measures). The social basis of monopoly capital is weakening. Among the masses who have felt their national pride hurt by the imperialists, the discontent, anger and will to struggle against the major imperialist powers, beginning with the United States and Germany, against institutions like the IMF or the EU, and against the local monopoly bourgeoisie that is collaborating with them, is developing.

The trade union bureaucracy and reformist parties and social trends are following a backward line of “least resistance,” not only in their forms of organization and struggle, but also at the level of political demands and platform. Clearly, this attitude is contributing to weakening their influence among the workers. The attacks and harshness of the social conditions are also affecting the lower strata of the labor bureaucracy and aristocracy and are sharpening the contradictions within their ranks.

The struggles in the countries with “debt crisis” are being developed on a program of protest against the bourgeois governments and parties, against institutions such as the IMF and the EU that are imposing draconian measures and they are demanding their withdrawal. At first this was natural and understandable in the context of a spontaneous movement. But the inability to go beyond those narrow limits is one of the major weaknesses of the movement. This weakness can be overcome with the work of agitation that shows the masses the way out of this difficult situation in which the people and the country find themselves, denouncing the social forces that are an obstacle to that way out. This work of agitation is reinforced by putting forward appropriate demands, slogans and forms of struggle among the masses.

Especially in Greece, certain small groups (that also have weaknesses) have proposed relatively advanced demands and platforms. But the forces capable of influencing the movement are not even concerned with organizing the work necessary to promote the fight on all fronts. The absence or great weakness of a revolutionary class party, has been felt strongly, as it cannot influence the movement.

Linked to the evolution of the world economy, the period that is beginning will be one of further degradation of the living and working conditions for the workers and peoples, a period of intense economic and political attacks, of discontent, anger and militancy among workers, as well as sharpening of inter-imperialist contradictions and conflicts. We must draw lessons and conclusions from the recent developments and the historical experience of the working class and peoples; we must advance, renewing our work and reorganizing our parties.

Tunisia, November 2012

Source

International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations: Resolution on the Situation in Syria

handsoffsyria

The plenary of the ICMLPO, held for the first time in Africa, reaffirms its support for the right of the Syrian people to live under a democratic regime: a regime that guarantees freedom, equality, social justice and dignity, as well as assures the unity and total independence of the country, including the recovery of the Golan Heights occupied by Zionism since 1967.

The ICMLPO:

1. Denounces the dangerous development of events in Syria. The popular movement of protest has been transformed into a destructive civil war. The bloodthirsty repression is striking the people, and since the beginning, the Assad regime has rejected any democratic reform that would satisfy the aspirations of the Syrian people. This situation is the consequence of the foreign reactionary, imperialist and Zionist intervention, through Turkey, Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which masked by the so-called “Free Syrian Army” and under the pretext of “saving the Syria people”

2. We reaffirm that this war has nothing to do with the interests of the Syrian people and their aspirations. On the contrary, it serves the reactionary forces of the country, the region and internationally. Syria is at the moment the place of confrontation between, on the one side the U.S., France and Israel and Arab and Turkish reaction that are trying to subject Syria to Western rule and make it break its ties with Iran and Hezbollah. On the other side, Russia and China are supporting the regime to preserve their strategic interests in Syria and the region, after having lost their influence in Libya.

3. We reject all intervention by NATO in Syria under any pretext, given the dangers that this represents for the Syrian people, the peoples of the region and world peace in general. The Conference calls on the Turkish people to oppose Turkey’s intervention in Syria. It sends a call to the workers and peoples of the Western countries, in the first place of the United States, Great Britain and France, whose leaders are threatening military intervention in Syria, to pressure their governments to stop them from carrying out their criminal strategy that caused disasters in Iraq, Afghanistan, Somalia, Libya, etc. in the past

4. It is up to the Syrian people, in all cases, to determine their own future. The ICMLPO calls on the Syrian patriotic and democratic forces to unite to save their country from the claws of the Assad regime and the armed gangs and to prevent the foreign powers from mortgaging their future and making use of a part of their minorities to undermine their unity. The ICMLPO calls on those forces to strive to build a new, democratic, secular, independent and united Syria in which the different religions and nationalities live together in freedom and equality.

5. Calls on the patriotic, democratic and progressive forces of the region to urgently mobilize and to undertake the necessary measures of solidarity to support the patriotic and democratic forces of Syria, forces that must act to end the slaughters perpetrated against the Syrian people, to stop the destruction of the country and prevent the foreign intervention, to facilitate dialogue among its inhabitants to achieve their aspirations and break with the tyranny and foreign domination.

Organisation pour la construction d’un parti communiste ouvrier d’Allemagne

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers du Danemark – APK

Parti Communiste d’Espagne (marxiste – léniniste) – PCE(ml)

Plateforme Communiste d’Italie

Parti Communiste des Ouvriers de France – PCOF

Organisation Marxiste Léniniste Révolution de Norvège – Revolusjon !

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Turquie – TDKP

Parti des Travailleurs de Tunisie – PT

Parti Communiste Révolutionnaire de Côte d’Ivoire – PCRCI

Source

The Comintern on Colonial Countries & National Liberation

In the colonial countries with an oppressed native peasant population the national liberation movement is composed either of the entire population, as for example in Turkey, in which case the struggle of the oppressed peasantry against the landlords inevitably begins after the victory of the liberation struggle; or the feudal landlords are allied with the imperialist robbers, and in these countries, for example India, the social struggle of the oppressed peasants takes place at the same time as the struggle for national liberation.

  — Jane Degras, ed., The Communist International: 1919-1943 Documents London: Frank Cass & Co., Ltd, 1971, Vol. 1, p. 396. 

Forbidding the “G-Word”: Holocaust Denial as Judicial Doctrine in Canada by Ward Churchill

“Where scholars deny genocide, [they] contribute to the deadly psychohistorical dynamic in which unopposed genocide begets new genocides.”

—Roger W. Smith, Eric Markusen and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and Denial of the Armenian Genocide” (1995)

Denial of genocide has become a matter of increasing concern in recent years, primarily as a result of efforts by a relative handful of neo-Nazi “scholars” to rehabilitate their ideological heritage by advancing arguments and “evidence” that the Hitlerian Holocaust of the early 1940s never occurred. (1) So insidious has Holocaust denial been considered by many governments that they have criminalized it, and prosecutions of deniers have occurred in France, Canada and elsewhere. (2) The United States bars known deniers from entering the country, and has supported civil litigation against individuals and institutions engaging in such activities. (3)

A related but far less noticed phenomenon has been the efforts of a significant number of ostensibly more reputable scholars to indulge in a sort of reverse denial. According to this group, the Holocaust undoubtedly occurred, but it was something experienced exclusively by Jews. (4) Here, the fates of the Gypsies, Slavs, homosexuals and others at the hands of the Nazis are routinely minimized and consigned to the ambiguous category of “non-genocidal suffering.” (5)

In their more extreme formulations, proponents of Jewish exclusivism hold not only that the Holocaust was a uniquely Jewish experience, but that it is history’s sole instance of “true” genocide. Exclusivists have gone on record, explicitly and repeatedly, denying that everything from the extermination of the Pequots in 1637, to the Turkish slaughter of more than a million Armenians between 1915 and 1918, to the more recent genocides in Cambodia, East Timor, Bosnia, Rwanda and Kosovo aren’t really examples of genocide at all. (6) Hence, while neo-Nazis deny a single genocide, exclusivists deny many.

There are of course other distinctions to be drawn between Holocaust deniers and those championing the exclusivity of suffering embodied in the Nazi Judeocide. Although their influence often exceeds their actual numbers, (7) the propagandists of neo-Nazism are by any definition a tiny fringe group. Those promoting ideas of Jewish exclusivism, on the other hand, comprise substantial majorities at the very hearts of the academic and media mainstreams. Moreover, their outlook has been adopted as official or quasi-official policy by numerous governments, including most prominently those taking the strongest stands against neo-Nazi deniers. (8) In sum, the Holocaust uniqueness postulations of Jewish exclusivism have assumed the status of an orthodoxy in historical/sociological interpretation, while those of neo-Nazism have not (and hopefully never will).

The reasons for this are not especially mysterious. The magnitude of their people’s catastrophe has generated among Jews an understandable need to find spiritual meaning in the experience, a matter which had led many to an unfortunate perversion of their own tradition in which they, a “chosen people,” were uniquely selected by God to endure the Holocaust. (9) More pragmatically—or cynically—others have realized that such suffering can be translated into a kind of “moral capital” and used to political advantage, particularly in garnering support for the Israeli state. (10) There is thus a clear, and often quite overtly expressed, desire among many Jews to claim an absolute monopoly in terms of genocidal suffering. (11)

For the elites of gentile societies, meanwhile, affirming the pretensions of Jewish Holocaust exclusivism carries with it an automatic absolution: If only the Nazi Judeocide can be qualified as genocide, it follows that only Nazis have ever been perpetrators or beneficiaries of the crime. The point is not insignificant. Genocide has been all but universally decried as a not merely “incomparable,” but an “unthinkable” offense, (12) one defying any possible redemption of those committing it (which is of course why neo-Nazis seek to “prove” their ideological forebears did not engage in it). As the Germans have long since discovered, the citizenry of no nation can take pride in a history besmirched by genocidal comportment. (13) Nor can any citizenry be counted upon to conveniently acquiesce in contemporary policies of genocide carried out in their name.

Far more than mere conceptions of “national honor” are at stake. Among those wishing to see themselves as “good people”—which is virtually everyone—the very term “genocide” provokes such deep and generalized revulsion that any official admission of its descriptive applicability to the national character, even historically, might threaten the hegemony upon which systemic stability largely depends.14 Genocide must therefore be denied at all costs, most often by explaining it away as being or having been something else altogether. For this purpose, constraining perceptions of genocide to the terms set forth by Jewish exclusivism serves non-Jewish interests as readily as Jewish.

Definitional Distortions

Genocide is not an old word, having “naturally” evolved over time to hold meanings contrary to its own. Nor was it meant to serve as a synonym for mass killing. When Raphaël Lemkin coined the term in 1944, he went to considerable lengths in explaining that it was intended to describe policies and processes designed to bring about the dissolution and disappearance of targeted human groups, as such. He wrote “Genocide has two phases, one, destruction of the national pattern of the oppressed group; the other, the imposition of the national pattern of the oppressor.” (15) If these two conditions have been fulfilled, a genocide has occurred, even if every member of the targeted group has survived the process in a physical sense.

Generally speaking, genocide does not necessarily mean the immediate destruction of a nation, except when accomplished by mass killings. It is intended rather to signify a coordinated plan of different actions aimed at the destruction of the essential foundations of the life of national groups, with the aim of annihilating the groups themselves. The objectives of such a plan would be a disintegration of political and social institutions—of culture, language, national feelings, religion, and the economic existence of national groups, and the destruction of personal security, liberty, health, dignity, and even the lives of the individuals belonging to such groups. Genocide is directed at the national group as an entity, and the actions involved are directed at individuals, not in their individual capacity, but as members of the national group (emphasis added). (16)

In 1946, Lemkin was retained by the United Nations Secretariat to draft an international convention codifying the crime. Therein, genocide—that is, “policies aimed at eradicating targeted ethnical, racial, national, religious or political groups”—was defined in a twofold way: “(1) the destruction of a group,” and “(2) preventing its preservation and development.” (17) The offending policies were themselves grouped in three categories, all of equal gravity:

· Physical Genocide, meaning outright extermination as well as the imposition of “slow death measures (i.e., subjection to conditions of life which, owing to lack of proper housing, clothing, food, hygiene and medical care or excessive work or physical exertion are likely to result in the debilitation and death of individuals; mutilations and biological experiments imposed for other than curative purposes; and deprivation of livelihood by means of looting or confiscation of property).

· Biological Genocide, meaning the prevention of births among the target group (i.e., involuntary sterilization or abortion, as well as compulsory segregation of the sexes).

· Cultural Genocide, meaning destruction of the specific characteristics of the group (i.e., forced dispersal of the population; forced transfer of children to another group; suppression of religious practices or the national language; forced exile of writers, artists, religious and political leaders or other individuals representing the culture of the group; destruction of cultural/religious shrines or monuments, or their diversion to alien uses; destruction or dispersion of documents and objects of historical, artistic or religious value, and objects used in religious worship). (18)

The draft was then turned over to a committee composed of nation-state delegates to be “revised and condensed” before its submission to the U.N. General Assembly. During this process, the United States and Canada, acting in concert, were able to arrange deletion of almost the entire provision on cultural genocide, as well as all explicit references to slow death measures.19 As the matter was finally framed in international law on December 9, 1948, “genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial or religious group, as such:”

(a) Killing members of the group;

(b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group;

(c) Deliberately inflicting on members of the group conditions of life calculated to bring about physical destruction in whole or in part;

(d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group;

(e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group. (20)

Strikingly, even in this greatly-truncated delineation, only one in five criteria pertain to direct killing. Eighty percent of the legal definition of genocide thus devolves upon nonlethal policies and activities. The responses of the U.S. and Canada to this are instructive. The United States simply refused for forty years to accept the result. Finally, in 1988, embarrassed at being the only country so openly rejecting the rule of law, it attempted a ratification in which it claimed a “right” to exempt itself from compliance whenever convenient. (22)

Canada also submitted an invalid ratification, but much earlier, in 1952. The subterfuge in this case was to write domestic implementing legislation in such a way as to excise from the country’s “legal understanding” those classifications of genocidal policy in which Canada was actually engaged, retaining only those involving “physical destruction… killing, or its substantial equivalents” (that is, Article II(a), (c) and (d) of the 1948 Convention).

For purposes of Canadian law, we believe that the definition of genocide should be drawn somewhat more narrowly than in the [already much narrowed] international Convention so as to include only killing and its substantial equivalents…The other components of the international definition, viz, causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of a group and forcibly transferring children of one group to another group with intent to destroy the group we deem inadvisable for Canada. (23)

In 1985, the parliament went further, removing the prohibition on involuntary sterilization (1948 Convention, Article II(d)) from Canada’s genocide statute. (24) No country, of course, whether it be Canada or the U.S. or Nazi Germany, holds a legitimate prerogative to pick and choose among elements of international law, electing to abide by some and not others. It possess even less of a right to unilaterally “revise” the Laws of Nations in conformity with its own preferences. As the Nazis were informed at Nuremberg, the requirements of customary law are binding, irrespective of whether individual sovereignties wish to accept them. (25)

Nonetheless, taking the cue from their governments, a range of “responsible” scholars shortly set themselves to the task of deforming Lemkin’s concept even further. In 1959, Dutch law professor Pieter Drost published a massive two-volume study wherein he argued that usage of the term “genocide” should be restricted to its physical and biological dimensions, and that cultural genocide should be redesignated as “ethnocide,” a term he erroneously attributed to “post-war French scholars.” (26) Thereafter, biological genocide was also quietly dropped from discussion as writer after writer defined genocide exclusively in terms of killing. (27) Forty years of this continuous “genocide equals mass murder” distortion has yielded an altogether predictable effect, not only on the popular consciousness but on that of many otherwise critical activists and intellectuals. This last is readily evident in the recent release of a book by Native Hawaiian sovereigntist and professor Haunani-Kay Trask, wherein genocide is defined as simply the “systematic killing of a people identified by ethnic/racial characteristics.” (28)

Friends of the Lubicon

Questions arise as to whether, after all this, Lemkinesque understandings of genocide still prevail at all, and if so, whether they retain the capacity to galvanize public sentiment. The answers rest, to some extent, in a handful of examples. In 1968, as part of the Russell Tribunal’s verdict condemning U.S. aggression in Vietnam, Jean-Paul Sartre concluded not only that was the policy itself genocidal, but that colonialism as a system inherently produces genocidal results.29 Considerable support was lent to the latter of Sartre’s findings in 1980, when the Tribunal published a report on conditions imposed upon the indigenous peoples of the Western Hemisphere.30

Still further expansions on the theme have accrued through publications like Cultural Survival Quarterly, and in the Native resistance movements which emerged during the 1980s in places like Wollaston Lake, James Bay and Big Mountain, Arizona.31 Perhaps the most potent example, however, concerns the experience of a tiny Cree band at Lubicon Lake, in northern Alberta, who have been confronted with sociocultural eradication as the result of maneuverings on the parts of both the federal and provincial governments to allow the Daishowa Corporation, a transnational manufacturer of paper products, to “deforest” their traditional territory (within which government-sanctioned oil and gas exploration had already wrought a noticeable degree of havoc).32

After fruitlessly attempting to negotiate a resolution with both the corporation and participating governmental entities, the band, working through a non-native Toronto-based organization calling itself Friends of the Lubicon (FOL), announced a boycott of Daishowa products in 1991. The FOL made the genocidal impacts of the corporation’s planned clearcutting of Lubicon territory the centerpiece of its effort, developing a well-conceived media campaign to put its message across. As a Canadian court later put it, the “results of the Friends’ campaign against Daishowa…were, in a word, stunning.”33 Not only did typical Canadians prove quite capable of understanding nonlethal modes of genocide, they displayed a pronounced willingness to decline to trade with businesses complicit in such processes. On this basis:

Approximately fifty companies using paper products (mostly paper bags) from Daishowa were approached by the Friends. The list of these companies reads like a Who’s Who of the retail and fast food industries in Ontario—Pizza Pizza, the Liquor Control Board of Ontario, Cultures, Country Style Donuts, Mr. Submarine, Bootlegger, A&W, Kentucky Fried Chicken, Woolworth’s, Roots, Club Monaco, Movenpeck Restaurants and Holt Renfrew, to name but a few. Every one of the companies approached by the Friends joined the boycott of Daishowa products. All but two did so…before their stores were picketed…Pizza Pizza was subjected to picketing outside its store on two occasions; Woolworth’s had a single store picketed on two occasions…Both Pizza Pizza and Woolworth’s joined the boycott.34

By 1994, the boycott was costing Daishowa millions of dollars annually in lost sales.35 Under such circumstances, it stood to lose money rather than profiting by cutting timber on Lubicon land. One result was that, although Daishowa had indicated that it would commence logging operations “as soon as the ground freezes over” in the fall of 1991, not a tree was felled.36 As FOL leader Kevin Thomas observed in 1997, the success of the boycott demonstrated clearly that there are viable alternatives for those genuinely opposed to genocide. Rather than simply bearing “moral witness” to what is happening half-a-world away in Tibet or Kosovo, it is entirely possible “to actually make a difference by focusing attention mainly on what our own government is doing right here at home and undertaking direct action to stop it.”37

“This can have a precedential effect,” Thomas suggests. “Halting genocide in one place helps lay the groundwork for halting it in all places. But, for this to happen, it’s essential that people be made aware of what genocide actually is. We’ve all been pretty systematically misled on that score, but if we’re confused, if we can’t recognize genocide for what it is when it’s happening right in front of us, there’s no way in the world we can change anything for the better. That’s why there’s been so much effort expended on keeping everybody confused about it: business as usual pretty much depends on an ability to perpetrate genocide more-or-less continuously, without its being recognized as such and, as a result, without its encountering significant opposition from average citizens.”38

Judicial Repression in Canada

The lesson was lost on neither the corporate nor the governmental sectors of Canada’s status quo. Consequently, naming Thomas and two other key organizers as principle defendants, Daishowa filed a SLAPP suit against the FOL on January 11, 1995. Citing millions in lost revenues and a steady erosion in its client base as damages, the corporation contended that the three men had conspired to employ illegal tactics such as an illegal secondary boycott, and were guilty of defamation by using the word “genocide” in their public outreach efforts.39

Even before the defendants had an opportunity to file a response to the allegations against them, a temporary injunction was issued to prevent them from engaging in boycott activities of any sort for ninety days. By then, Daishowa’s attorneys had requested an interlocutory injunction to extend the prohibition for the duration of the suit. This motion was “substantially dismissed,” but the FOL was ordered not to describe Daishowa’s planned activities as genocidal until a final ruling had been made.40 The following trial ended with one of the more brilliantly obfuscatory rulings in Canadian history.

At one level, Judge J.C. MacPherson’s lengthy verdict was a study in liberal legal scholarship, rejecting in an almost contemptuous tone each of Daishowa’s claims that the FOL’s boycott techniques had been in themselves unlawful. On the contrary, he concluded, “the manner in which the Friends have performed their picketing and boycott activities is a model of how such activities should be conducted in a democratic society.”41 All of this progressive cant, however, was simply a gloss meant to disguise the unmistakably reactionary core of what the judge had to say: that the FOL’s characterization of Daishowa’s corporate policy as genocidal constituted “an enormous injustice…bordering on the grotesque…cavalier and grossly unfair to Daishowa.”42 Having thus found that the FOL had indeed defamed the corporation, he forbade them—and everyone else in Canada—from ever again employing such accurate terminology to describe what the corporation was doing.43

It was not that MacPherson was unaware of the “plight” in which Daishowa’s activities had placed the Lubicons. Indeed, he remarked upon it at some length.

The essential subject matter of everything the Friends say and do is the plight of the Lubicon Cree…There can be little doubt that their plight, especially in recent years, is a tragic, indeed a desperate one…The loss of a traditional economy of hunting, trapping and gathering, the negative effect of industrial development on a people spiritually anchored in nature, the disintegration of a social structure grounded in families led by successful hunters and trappers, alcoholism, serious community health problems such as tuberculosis, and poor relations with governments and corporations engaged in oil and gas and forest operations on land the Lubicon regard as theirs—all of these have contributed to a current state of affairs for the Lubicon Cree which deserves the adjectives tragic, desperate and intolerable.44

Nor was he unaware that imposition of such conditions by “governments and corporations engaged in oil and gas and forest operations” conforms quite precisely with both the etymological and legal definitions of the crime of genocide, even under Canadian law. In his verdict, the judge quoted Raphaël Lemkin, the 1948 Convention and the relevant Canadian statute all three, only to disregard them, along with testimonies of a whole series of expert witnesses,45 in favor of the “plain and ordinary meaning of the word ‘genocide’” contained in Webster’s Dictionary. This, he insisted—although the dictionary actually didn’t—was “the intentional killing of a group of people.”46

MacPherson never specified the point at which he believed the content of abridged dictionaries had come to outweigh black letter legal definition in Canadian jurisprudence.47 Less did he explain how, using his “common sense” approach, anyone is supposed to distinguish between the Nazi extermination of the Jews and such relatively trivial phenomena as the St. Valentine’s Day Massacre (both involve the “intentional killing of a group of people,” and would thus seem to be equally genocidal under the judge’s “plain, ordinary” and utterly absurd interpretation).48 Nevertheless, he went on to assert that characterizations of genocide deriving from other definitions—those found in international law, for example—do not constitute “fair comment” about perpetrators and their activities.49

It follows that organizations like the FOL, devoted not only to direct action but to what even the judge described as a broader “educational” purpose, are left with an ability to confront genocidal processes only by referring to them as something else (which is to say, in effect, by implicitly denying that they are genocide).50 In the alternative, should such groups—or, presumably, the victims themselves—insist upon calling things by their right names, perpetrators have been perfectly positioned by MacPherson’s judicial prevarications to claim “damages” and/or take other legal action against them.

The Wages of Denial

As prominent exclusivist Deborah Lipstadt has noted, the “general public tends to accord victims of genocide a certain moral authority. If you devictimize a people, you strip them of their moral authority,” and thus a substantial measure of their ability to attract public support.51 Lipstadt was writing from an explicitly Jewish perspective, of course, and of her own people’s natural desire to be compensated in various ways for the horrors of the Nazi Judeocide. Her point, however, is equally valid with respect to any genocidally victimized group. Moreover, where genocide is an ongoing process—as with the Lubicons—the need for public support goes not to securing compensation, but survival itself.

This is by no means an academic consideration. Cumulatively, one result of a half-century of “scholarship” by people like Lipstadt has been the functional devictimization of literally hundreds of indigenous peoples, even as their very existence has been systematically extinguished. Refused moral authority by those better stationed to monopolize it for themselves—and thus unable to command public attention, much less support—a truly staggering number of Native societies have been pushed into oblivion since 1950.52 It is in some ways a perverse testament to the effectiveness of exclusivist propaganda that most such passings—whether physical or “merely” cultural—have gone not only unprotested but unnoticed by the general populace.

In this, the convolutions of legalism have played their role. Arcane preoccupations with the standards of proof required in establishing perpetrator intent, and exactly what scale, mode, tempo or proportionality of killing should be necessary for instances of mass murder to be considered “genuinely” genocidal, have done far more to mask than to reveal the realities of genocide. (53) Small wonder that there has never been a concerted attempt by the international community to enforce the 1948 Convention. Now J.C. MacPherson places his personal capstone on the whole sordid situation, entering a ruling which by implication transforms law from its potential as a weapon against genocide into one with which those engaged in it can shield themselves from any sort of effective exposure and intervention.

Denial of genocide, insofar as it plainly facilitates continuation of the crime, amounts to complicity in it. This is true whether the deniers are neo-Nazis, Jewish exclusivists, renowned international jurists or provincial Canadian judges. Complicity in genocide is, under Article III of the 1948 Convention, tantamount to perpetration of genocide itself. It is formally designated a Crime Against Humanity, those who engage in it criminals of the worst sort. There is no difference in this sense between a J.C. MacPherson, a Deborah Lipstadt and an Adolf Eichmann. (54)

And what of the victims? Unquestionably, any group faced with the prospect of systemically-imposed extinction holds not only the right but the obligation to defend and preserve itself by the best means available to it. Afforded the moral currency attending its circumstance, it may well be able to undertake this task both nonviolently and successfully. This, surely, is a primary lesson of the recent collaboration between the Lubicons and the FOL. Denied such currency, however, the victims can hardly be expected to simply “lie down in a ditch and die.” (30) To paraphrase Martin Luther King, Jr., those who endeavor to make the success of peaceful resistance to genocide impossible only make violent resistance inevitable. They can have no complaint, morally, ethically or otherwise, when the chickens come home to roost.

____________________________________________

Endnotes:

1. Pierre Vidal-Niquet, Assassins of Memory: Essays on the Denial of the Holocaust (New York: Columbia University Press, 1992); Deborah Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust: The Growing Assault on Truth and Memory (New York: Free Press, 1993).

2. In France, there was the 1981 trial of Robert Faurisson, the country’s leading denier, for defaming Holocaust witnesses and scholars. In Canada, the most notable cases have been the 1985 prosecutions of James Keegstra, an Alberta school teacher who’d spent fourteen years indoctrinating his students that the Holocaust was a “hoax,” and Ernst Zundel, a Toronto-based publisher who is one of the world’s leading purveyors of such tripe. See Nadine Fresco, “Denial of the Dead: On the Faurisson Affair,” Dissent, Fall 1981; Alan T. Davies, “A Tale of Two Trials: Antisemitism in Canada,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, Vol. 4, 1989.

3. The primary case in the U.S. was Mel Mermelstein v. Institute for Historical Review, et al., Superior Court of California, Civ. No. 356542 (Feb. 1981); British “historian” David Irving is among those barred from entering the United States because of his record as a denier.

4. See, e.g., Martin Gilbert, The Holocaust: A History of the Jews of Europe During the Second World War (New York: Henry Holt, 1985); Leni Yahil, The Holocaust: The Fate of the European Jewry, 1932-1945 (New York: Oxford University Press, 1990).

5. This happens by way both directly and by way of omission. In Deborah Lipstadt’s Denying the Holocaust, for example, there is not so much as an index entry for Gypsies, despite the fact that this smaller people was subject to exactly the same Nazi racial decrees as Jews, were exterminated in precisely the same manner and in the same places as Jews, and, proportionately, suffered equivalent or greater population losses; Ian Hancock, “Responses to the Porrajmos: The Romani Holocaust,” in Alan S. Rosenbaum, ed., Is the Holocaust Unique? Perspectives in Comparative Genocide (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1996). For direct assertions, see, e.g., Michael Berenbaum, ed., A Mosaic of Victims: Non-Jews Persecuted and Murdered by the Nazis (New York: New York University Press, 1990).

6. Although there are literally hundreds of iterations of the notion available from other authors, the most comprehensive assertion that the Nazi Judeocide is “phenomenologically unique” has been that advanced by Steven T. Katz in his massive The Holocaust in Historical Context, Vol. 1: The Holocaust and Mass Death Before the Modern Age (New York: Oxford University Press, 1994).

7. A poll conducted in Italy during the fall of 1992, for example, revealed that nearly 10 percent of the country’s adult population have been convinced that the Holocaust never happened; Jewish Telegraph News Agency, Nov. 11, 1992.

8. Examples of official policy include the quid pro quo entered into between the governments of Israel and Turkey by which the Israelis ban public characterizations of the Armenian genocide as genocide. In exchange, the Turks pronounce the Nazi Judeocide as the “real” genocide. Working together, the two governments were able to prevent the Armenians from being listed as victims of genocide in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.; Roger W. Smith, Eric Marusen and Robert Jay Lifton, “Professional Ethics and the Denial of the Armenian Genocide,” Holocaust and Genocide Studies, No. 9, 1995. Insofar as it has received not inconsiderable governmental support and endorsement, the Holocaust Memorial Museum itself, though nominally private, may be viewed as an example of quasi-official policy.

9. See, e.g., Arthur A. Cohen, The Tremendium: A Theological Interpretation of the Holocaust (New York: Holmes & Meier, 1981); John Roth and Michael Berenbaum, The Holocaust: Religious and Philosophical Implications (New York: Paragon House, 1989). For critique, see John Murray Cuddahy, “The Holocaust: The Latent Issue in the Uniqueness Debate,” in Philip F. Gallagher, ed., Christians, Jews and Other Worlds: Patterns of Conflict and Accommodation (Landham, MS: University Press of America, 1988); Arno J. Mayer, Why Did the Heavens Not Darken? The Final Solution in History (New York: Pantheon, [2nd ed.] 1990).

10. The term “moral capital” is taken from exclusivist writer Edward Alexander, The Holocaust and the War of Ideas (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction, 1994) p. 195.

11. E.g., Yehuda Bauer, “Whose Holocaust?” and Edward Alexander, “Stealing the Holocaust,” both in Midstream, Vol. 26, No. 9, 1980.

12. Roger Manvell and Heinrich Fraenkel, The Incomparable Crime; Mass Extermination in the 20th Century: The Legacy of Guilt (London: Hinemann, 1967); Israel W. Charney, How Can We Commit the Unthinkable? Genocide, the Human Cancer (Boulder, CO, Westview Press, 1982).

13. See generally, Richard Evans, In Hitler’s Shadow: West German Historians and the Attempt to Escape from the Nazi Past (New York: Alfred A. Knopf, 1989).

14. As the Italian theorist Antonio Gramsci described it, hegemony functions by way of a master narrative designed to convince the great mass of people that the prevailing order is natural, right and thus inevitable. Any concession by ruling élites that there is anything fundamentally wrong with the order over which they preside would of course undermine the very belief system upon which their own ascendancy depends; Walter L. Adamson, Hegemony and Revolution: A Study of Antonio Gramsci’s Political and Cultural Theory (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1980) esp. pp. 170-9.

15. Raphaël Lemkin, Axis Rule in Occupied Europe: Laws of Occupation, Analysis of Government, Proposals for Redress (Washington, D.C.: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 1944) p. 79.

16. Ibid.

17. U.N. Doc. A/362, June 14, 1947.

18. Ibid. For further discussion, see Robert Davis and Mark Zannis, The Genocide Machine in Canada: The Pacification of the North (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1973) pp. 15-21.

19. On Canada’s role, see Canada and the United Nations (Ottawa: Dept. of External Affairs, 1948) p. 191. Overall, see M. Lippman, “The Drafting of the 1948 Convention and Prevention and Punishment of the Crime of Genocide,” Boston University International Law Journal, No. 3, 1984.

20. U.S.T. _______, T.I.A.S. _______, 78 U.N.T.S. 277 (1948), Article II. The Convention’s third article makes it a crime not only to perpetrate genocide, but to conspire or attempt to commit it, to incite it, or to be otherwise complicit in its perpetration; for text, see Ian Brownlie, ed., Basic Documents on Human Rights (Oxford: Clarendon Press, [3rd ed.] 1992) pp. 31-4.

21. Lawrence LeBlanc, The United States and the Genocide Convention (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 1991) pp. 7-12.

22. There can be no question whether parliament was aware its Native residential school policy violated Article II(e) of the Genocide Convention, the prohibition on forced transfer of children. The issue was raised repeatedly during the debates on ratification; Canadian Civil Liberties Association, “Brief to the Senate Standing Committee on Legal and Constitutional Affairs, “April 26, 1969, p. 6. Yet this is one of the provisions deleted from the Canadian genocide statute, ostensibly because it had “no essential relevance to Canada where mass transfers of children to another group are unknown”; Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada (1948); quoted in Davis and Zannis, Genocide Machine, p. 23. For background, see J.R. Miller, Shingwauk’s Vision: A History of Native Residential Schools (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 1996).

23. Special Committee on Hate Propaganda in Canada (1948); quoted in Davis and Zannis, Genocide Machine, p. 23.

24. Criminal Code, R.S.C. 1985, c. C-46.

25. As the matter was put by a principle advisor to the chief U.S. prosecutor at Nuremberg, many of the charges brought against the Nazis were based in upon their violation of “customary international law—a system [evolving] under the impact of common consent and the demands of world security. Acquiescence of all members of the Family of Nations is not necessary for this purpose. All that is needed is reasonable proof of the existence of widespread custom”; Sheldon Glueck, “The Nuremberg Trial and Aggressive War,” Harvard Law Review, No. 59, Feb. 1946, pp. 396-456. This rule was affirmed by the International Court of Justice with respect to the Genocide Convention in an Advisory Opinion issued on May 28, 1951: “The principles inherent in the Convention are acknowledged by civilized nations as binding on [any] country, even [those] without a conventional obligation.” In effect, “reservations” to the Convention like that attempted by the U.S., or attempts to limit its scope by deleting portions of it in domestic implementing statutes, as Canada has, have no legal validity at all; see generally, Robert K. Woetzel, “The Eichmann Case in International Law,” Criminal Law Review, Oct. 1962, pp. 671-82.

26. Pieter N. Drost, Genocide (Leyden: A.W. Sythoff, 1959); The Crime of State (Leyden: A.W. Sythoff, 1959). In actuality, Lemkin himself coined the term “ethnocide” in a footnote on page 79 of Axis Rule—the same page on which the neologism “genocide” itself was invented—explaining therein that the two words are synonyms. Interestingly, subsequent researchers have simply repeated without further investigation Drost’s false attribution of “ethnocide” to French scholarship, as well as his unfounded contention that it describes something other than genocide; see, e.g., Kurt Jonasohn and Frank Chalk, “A Typology of Genocide and Some Implications for the Human Rights Agenda,” in Isador Walliman and Michael Dobkowski, eds., Genocide and the Modern Age: Etiology and Case Studies of Mass Death (Westport, CT: Greenwood Press, 1987) pp. 7, 37.

27. Frank Chalk, “Definitions of Genocide and Their Implications for Prediction and Prevention,” in Yehuda Bauer, et al., eds., Remembering for the Future: Working Papers and Addenda, 2 vols. (Oxford: Pergammon Press, 1989) pp. 76-7.

28. Haunani-Kay Trask, From a Native Daughter: Colonialism and Sovereignty in Hawai’i (Honolulu: University of Hawai’i Press, [rev. ed.] 1999) p. 251.

29. Jean-Paul Sartre and Arlette El Kaim-Sartre, On Genocide and a Summary of the Evidence and Judgments of the International War Crimes Tribunal (Boston: Beacon Press, 1968). Although he was highly critical of Sartre’s “overgeneralized” formulation, Leo Kuper, one of the more astute analysts of genocide, by-and-large incorporated it into his own books: Leo Kuper, Genocide: Its Political Uses in the Twentieth Century (New Haven, CT, Yale University Press, 1981); International Action Against Genocide (London: Minority Rights Group, [rev. ed.] 1984); The Prevention of Genocide (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1985).

30. Russell Tribunal, Report of the Fourth Russell Tribunal on the Rights of the Indians of the Americas (Nottingham: Bertrand Russell Foundation, 1980).

31. Cultural Survival Quarterly is the journal of Cambridge, Massachusetts-based Cultural Survival, Inc. On the resistance movements, see Miles Goldstick, Wollaston: People Resisting Genocide (Montréal: Black Rose Books, 1987); Boyce Richardson, Strangers Devour the Land: The Cree Hunters of the James Bay area versus Premier Bourassa and the James Bay Development Corporation (Post Mills, VT: Chelsea Green Publishers, [rev. ed.] 1991); Ward Churchill, “Genocide in Arizona: The ‘Navajo-Hopi Land Dispute’ in Perspective,” in my Struggle for the Land: Native North American Resistance to Genocide, Ecocide and Colonization (Winnipeg: Arbiter Ring, [rev. ed.] 1999).

32. The story of the Lubicon is quite complex; see John Goddard, Last Stand of the Lubicon Cree (Vancouver/Toronto: Douglas & McIntire, 1991).

33. Daishowa Inc. v. Friends of the Lubicon, Ontario Court of Justice (Gen. Div.), File No. 95-CQ-59707, Verdict of Judge J. MacPherson (Apr. 14, 1998) p. 21.

34. Ibid., pp. 21-2.

35. Thomas Claridge, “Judge to Rule May 19 on Lubicon boycott: Daishowa says $3-million annual sales lost,” Toronto Globe and Mail, May 1, 1995.

36. FOL briefing paper distributed by the Sierra Legal Defense Fund, beginning in 1996 (copy on file).

37. Conversation with Kevin Thomas, June 14, 1997 (notes on file).

38. Ibid.

39. Christopher Genovali, “Multinational Pulp Company SLAPPs Suit Against Activist Group,” Alternatives Journal, Vol. 22, No. 3, 1996.

40. Daishowa Inc. v. Friends of the Lubicon (1995), 30 C.R.R. (2d) 26 (Gen. Div.). The corporation immediately filed an appeal which resulted in reinstatement of the injunction against the FOL’s boycott activities more generally. This higher court ruling was later expanded to prohibit the defendants, their attorneys, and even selected expert witnesses from publicly discussing the case; Christopher Genovali, “Daishowa Tries to Gag Critics,” Alternatives Journal, Vol. 23, No. 2, 1997.

41. Verdict, p. 50.

42. Ibid., pp. 72, 68, 76.

43. Ibid., p. 76.

44. Ibid., pp. 42-3. MacPherson’s description of the situation in which the Lubicon have been placed should be compared with the explanation offered by the Saudi delegate to the drafting committee of what was/is meant by the language contained in Article II(c) of the 1948. This includes not only the “planned disintegration of the political, social or economic structure of a group or nation,” but the “systematic debasement of a group, people or nation”; quoted in Davis and Zannis, Genocide Machine, p. 19.

45. Among the expert witness submissions MacPherson ignored were an article, “Modern Genocide,” prepared by the McGill University law faculty and published in Quid Novi on November 30, 1987 (submitted in evidence as Defense Exhibit 30; Thomas Affidavit); a 1990 letter to Prime Minister Brian Mulroney prepared by the late James J.E. Smith, Curator of North American Ethnography for the Museum of the American Indian/Heye Foundation, in which it is concluded that “social and cultural genocide” is being perpetrated against the Lubicons (Defense Exhibit 4; Ominiyak Affidavit); a 1995 affidavit prepared by Dr. Joan Ryan, an anthropologist who combined 15 years experience documenting the destruction of Lubicon society with the very dictionary definitions the judge relied upon in arriving at an diametrically opposing conclusion. Both Dr. Ryan and I presented direct testimony during the trial. None of this is so much as mentioned in the Verdict.

46. Verdict, p. 71. MacPherson in fact quotes three different dictionaries, none of which posits “intentional killing” as synonymous with genocide. Webster’s refers to “the deliberate and systematic destruction of a racial, political or cultural group (emphasis added).”

47. MacPherson claims to have followed the dictum that “defamatory meaning must be one which would be understood by an ordinary and reasonable person”; Verdict, pp. 70-1. He neglects to mention, however, that the rule pertains only to instances where the terms at issue are not defined in law; R.E. Brown, The Law of Defamation in Canada (2nd ed., Vol. 1, p. 52).

48. Even MacPherson seems a bit uncomfortable with his definition. He suggests at one point that “physical destruction” rather than direct killing alone might add up to genocide. But then, apparently realizing that the sorts of conditions he’s already conceded the Lubicons are suffering would all too obviously fit this description, he simply drops the subject; Verdict, p. 71.

49. Ibid., p. 76.

50. Ibid., p. 39. This clearly goes to compelling the employment of euphemisms, the purpose of which is well-known. The Nazis, after all, referred to their Judeocide as the “Final Solution,” the transport of Jews to Auschwitz and other extermination centers as “Resettlement,” the literal killing therein as “Special Handling.” Such innocuous terminology was designed to obscure genocidal reality and thus constrain the probability of popular revulsion and unrest.

51. Lipstadt, Denying the Holocaust, pp. 7-8.

52. In the United States alone, nearly a hundred such peoples have been declared “culturally extinct” by the federal government during this period; Raymond V. Butler, “The Bureau of Indian Affairs: Activities Since 1945,” Annals of the American Academy of Political Science, No. 435, 1978, pp. 50-60.

53. The implications were brought out clearly in March 1974, when, in one of the few instances where charges of genocide were filed with the U.N. Secretariat, the International League for the Rights of Man, the Inter-American Association for Democracy and Freedom and several other organizations accused the government of Paraguay of physically exterminating the Aché Indians. Paraguay’s formal response to these allegations was that, “Although there are victims and victimizer, there is not the third element necessary to establish the crime of genocide—that is ‘intent.’ As there is no ‘intent,’ one cannot speak of ‘genocide’”; Paraguayan Minister of Defense, quoted in Norman Lewis, “The Camp at Ceclio Baez,” in Richard Arens, ed., Genocide in Paraguay (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1976) pp. 62-3.

54. Those who experience a visceral reaction to my “overstated” comparison should recall that Eichmann was not accused of actually killing anyone. Rather, he was convicted of having devoted his bureaucratic and technical expertise—that is, his intellect—to organizing the delivery of Jews and others to extermination centers; Hannah Arendt, Eichmann in Jerusalem: A Report on the Banality of Evil (New York: Penguin, 1964).

55. Unidentified Lubicon, quoted in Thomas Affidavit, p. 24.

Lenin on Colonialism

“For example, if tomorrow Morocco were to declare war on France, India on England, Persia or China on Russia, and so forth, those would be ‘just,’ ‘defensive’ wars, irrespective of who attacked first, and every socialist would sympathize with the victory of the oppressed, dependent, unequal states against the oppressing, slave-owning, predatory ‘great’ powers.”

 – Lenin, Socialism and War

“Socialists must not only demand the unconditional and immediate liberation of the colonies without compensation—and this demand in its political expression signifies nothing else than the recognition of the right to self-determination; they must also render determined support to the more revolutionary elements in the bourgeois-democratic movements for national liberation in these countries and assist their uprising—or revolutionary war, in the event of one—against the imperialist powers that oppress them.”

  — Lenin, The Socialist Revolution and the Right of Nations to Self-Determination

“We welcome the close alliance of Moslem and non-Moslem elements. We sincerely want to see this alliance extended to all the toilers of the East. Only when the Indian, Chinese, Korean, Japanese, Persian, and Turkish workers and peasants join hands and march together in the common cause of liberation—only then will decisive victory over the exploiters be ensured.”

 – Lenin, To the Indian Revolutionary Association

“From these fundamental premises it follows that the Communist International’s entire policy on the national and colonial questions should rest primarily on a closer union of the proletarians and the working masses of all nations and countries for a joint revolutionary struggle to overthrow the landowners and the bourgeoisie. This union alone will guarantee victory over capitalism, without which the abolition of national oppression and inequality is impossible.”

 – Lenin, Draft Theses on the National and Colonial Questions

“[...] the Communist International should advance and theoretically substantiate the proposition that with the aid of the proletariat of the advanced countries, the backward countries can pass over to the Soviet system and, through definite stages of development, to communism, without going through the capitalist stage.”

 – Lenin, Report of the Commission on the National and the Colonial Questions

VI Congress of Emek Partisi

From En Marcha
# 1562 January 5 to 13, 2012

Resolution

We support the peoples who have rebelled for their rights and their freedom; we condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran.

Throughout 2011, the Arab peoples of North Africa and the Near East have risen one after another. They do not want to be victims of the consequences of the hegemony of monopoly capitalism nor to be subjected to poverty and unemployment, and they rejected the repression of the autocratic dictatorships that safeguarded such hegemony. The despotic regimes that have lasted for 30 to 40 years have been the main reason for the disorganization of the oppressed masses and have served as an obstacle to their attaining consciousness. The peoples who have risen up have achieved some victories but they have not been able to reap important fruits of this struggle, such as for example to achieve their own political power. Therefore, these reactionary bourgeois forces supported by Western imperialism have maintained or have tried to maintain their hegemony through the strengthening of their pillars with new collaborators, seeing that their hegemony was in difficulty.

The Arab peoples, who have risen up, have realized their potential and have tasted certain victories, which is why their struggles have still not been repressed in any country except for Libya. Despite their low level of consciousness and organization, the peoples are carrying forward their uprisings with an effort to try to overcome their weakness, and they insist on opposing the attacks by reactionary forces that have been organized especially by elements of political Islam, which has become more moderate and pro-American in almost all those countries.

We understand that the communist parties and organizations that are signing this document, gathered at the Sixth Congress of the Party of Labor of Turkey, express our pride and solidarity with the struggles of the masses of the people, not only in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Near East, but also in Europe, from Spain to Greece, and in Latin America, from Venezuela to Ecuador, for their social and popular rights and freedoms; as well we proclaim our support for the just struggle of the Palestinian people against the Zionist imperialism of Israel.

However, we are aware of the fact that our main weakness is the inadequate level of consciousness and organization of the peoples of the world, with a view to any process of struggle. The imperialists and their collaborators take advantage of this weakness in their efforts to renovate the weakened bases of their hegemony and to repress those struggles through ideological penetration and infiltration in those struggles of the peoples that imperialism claims to support, manipulating these struggles towards their own interests and eliminating the popular features of these struggles.

Western imperialism, which maintains hegemony in its hands and tries to strengthen its position in relation to the ascending imperialist powers, not only aims to reinforce its hegemony in the countries under its influence through the repression of the popular struggles, but also tries to establish its hegemony by extending its influence on the peoples and their struggles and using them as a tool in countries such as Syria and Iran, which have not yet been subjugated.

We do not support the regimes of either Assad or Khamenei. However, we stress the fact that the imperialist powers are intervening with the support of the reactionary forces in the region such as Turkey and the Saudis, in the name of support for the so-called “opposition” in Syria and Iran under the pretext of the struggle for “democracy” and “repression of the dictators”; these policies have nothing to do with the right of self-determination of the peoples or the democratic and social aspirations of peoples. We are opposed to imperialist interventions – economic as well as political and military – for whatever reason, whether they are called by their obliging collaborators or not, and we condemn such policies that only lead to war, bloodshed and suffering.

We call on the peoples of the world, especially the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be alert to the interventions and imperialist tricks such as those that have taken place in Libya, to show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to support the fight against imperialism and its reactionary forces.

Ankara, December 2011

Communist Party of Albania
Communist Party of Benin
Party of Labor of Belgium
New Party of Cyprus
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
Communist Party of Spain (ML)
Organization for the Reconstruction of the Communist Party of Greece
Communist Party of the Workers of Tunisia
Emek Partisi of Turkey

Source

MLKP: The Turkish bourgeois state made a massacre in Kurdistan with fighter aircraft

01 January 2012 /International Bureau / Stament No: 58

The colonialist fascist regime committed a new massacre in Roboski village of Uludere district in Kurdistan on December 28 with F-16 fighter aircrafts. 35 Kurdish poor peasants who lives on cross-border small commerce between Southern and Northern Kurdistan have been assassinated in a planned and organised manner as a part of the attack against the Kurdish freedom movement. Those killed in the massacre were young Kurdish people between the age of 12 and 28.

The colonialist state that had hidden the civil massacres by the counter-guerrilla after 1990 has been caught red-handed this time, because it carried out this massacre with the unmanned war vehicles and fighter aircraft. Most of the young Kurds killed in the massacre carries the same surname. Therefore, the AKP government was not able to pass over or hide this massacre by presenting it as the punishment of some ” PKK terrorists” or an accident.
Since the general elections in 2011, the war government of AKP continues with the total liquidation attack against the Kurdish freedom movement through dirty war methods. These attacks do not only target the guerrilla forces but also the Kurdish open organisations, Kurdish journalists, lawyers, elected majors and artists. At the moment there are 12 thousands of political prisoners in the prisons of Turkey. Moreover, in addition to setting the forests on fire, eviction of villages and forcing the population to immigration through hydroelectric power plants and by using the earthquake in Wan, the colonialist regime started to utilise from the massacre of civil peasants.

The Kurdish labouring peasants were targeted, because the political and military army of the national resistance is formed by the poor Kurdish youth, labourers and women of the urban and rural areas. Through this massacre, they openly threaten the Kurdish people and try to intimidate them. The Uludere massacre is a new massacre that has been included in the list of hundreds of massacres carried out in Kurdistan by the colonialist forces until now. This massacre has alarmed and created a great anger and pain among the Kurdish people and labourers and the Turkish communist and revolutionary forces. Huge and effective protest movements in all parts of our region target the war government of AKP and the fascist Turkish bourgeois army and put them in a difficult situation.

Our party MLCP has called upon all its forces to increase the fight against colonialism and the dirty war in all political and military fields in face of this crime against humanity, these psychological and dirty war policies carried out by the colonialist fascist regime under the support of the EU and US imperialists.

Our Kurdish people and the guerrilla forces have lost 40 thousand people in the guerrilla war and the serhildan struggles and millions of Kurds were organised and became a political army. Today the achievements and the products of the national freedom struggle is under the siege of imperialist and the colonialist regime. In our region of Anatolia and Mesopotamia, the revolutionary movement and the Kurdish freedom movement is getting organised and growing their action in order to fight back this liquidation attack through united revolutionary struggle.

MLCP called upon the international revolutionary and communist movement, international revolutionary circles and platforms, parties, organisations, groups and individuals who are part of this movement in each country to raise their protest and increase their action against the colonialist fascist regime that provokes war in the Middle East and climbs the dirty war in our country. Let’s take action in front of the embassies of the Turkish bourgeois state. Let’s protest the Turkish Prime Minister, government and the President through telephone, fax, e-mail and similar methods and call them to give up the attacks.
The Kurdish people are not alone!

Long live the international unity of struggle of the proletariat and the peoples!

MLKP: Seminar against revisionism in Paris

Our party discusses international relations concrete, not in an abstract way. It considers these relations as comradely solidarity relations. Our party continuously arranges international meetings and thinks that these meetings play an important role to forward class struggle and international relations. The seminar, “Construction of socialism in Albania and Enver Hoxha in the struggle against modern revisionism”, which we organized together with the Party of Labour of Albania (PLA), is an example of these relations. The PLA Central Committee and International Bureau member Laver Stroka joint in our seminar, which was hold on 15th April in Paris, as panelist. A film about the resistance against Hitler fascism in Albania and construction of socialism was shown after the minute of silence for all the revolutionary martyries in the name of Enver Hoxha. Our seminar, where there was a photo exhibition about the costruction and progress of socialism in Albania, was participated by 70 people.

Laver Stroka gave some examples from the process of construction of socialism and the Albanian laborers heroic struggle leaded by PLA against the fascist occupation. Stroka stressed that “PLA showed that cobstruction of socialism is possible even in a little country” and said: “Enver Hoxha, guided by Marxism-Leninism, has an important place in the struggle against Soviet revisionism, Titoism and Chinese revisionism leaded by Mao. Especially in the struggle against the ‘three world theory’ of Mao, which denials presence of classes, defends wrong alliance in class struggle, and includes racist approaches, Hoxha made significiant contributions. E. Hoxha always defended Marx, Engels, Lenin and Stalin’s theory.”

Comrade Demircioglu, who spoke in the name of our party, said: “We felt the contributions of the Chinese Communist Party which was on the anti-revisionism front for a while, against modern revisionism. We discussed the ‘three world theory’ in our country for a time. E. Hoxha’s contribution is important for the analyze and refuse of this theory as theory of class coorporation. In addition, Hoxha played an important role in the struggle against Khrushchev and Chinese revisionism. Albania, which has honorable communists and people, has an instructive role as declaring ‘we eat grass but do not submit’ against economic and political sanctions of Khrushchev and Chinese revisionism to Albania.” And Demircioglu added to his words: “We, as Marxist Leninist Communists, have to learn from Enver Hoxha’s struggle against revisionism and have to make new contributions to this struggle.” Demircioðlu said that “we can grow the struggle against revisionism by establishing strong relations with the masses and including the workers and laborers to the economic, cultural and political life. We have to embed Leninist party theory into our struggle, against bureaucratism which is a basic problem in the restoration process. Capitalist restorations cannot be explained by single persons. We have to make new contributions with new mechanisms and elements, by embracing the Leninist theory.”

Source

EMEP: Violence against women is rising!

Today, 25 November and Solidarity Day Against Violence Against Women ‘in the violence against women in our country, hidden and open forms is in progress.

2011′s Turkey the right to life, the woman is one of the biggest problems. Killed in Sudan reasons, the rape, beaten, tortured and tormented, forced to commit suicide in a horrific increase in the number of women there. According to official records of the General Directorate of Security only 138 days, 6 hours, every 10 minutes, 1 family is experiencing domestic violence incident.

Retain her state, the law applicable

The women said they were in danger of their lives in their hands while stating that the announcements of the crime, the state, women are obliged to provide the security of police stations, municipalities, institutions like the judiciary protects the perpetrators of violence. Killers of women in the courts, incentives, good conduct, and drive yararlandırılıyor, violence, abused and raped, even murdered women’s experiences and responsible, guilty of being advertised.

Law enforcement officials are insensitive, slow to investigate, family courts, unauthorized, became insufficient protection, women are left helpless. State officials “holy” the family said, “breaking” the woman said slots are grave.

On the one hand that says do not believe in gender equality, women at every opportunity, “at least three children,” doğurmalarını who advised the Prime Minister, the AKP government during the 1400 percent in the face of increasing women’s murders, “the media exaggerate” giving speeches.

On the other hand, Fatma Sahin AKP government’s Minister of Family and Social Policies, the most comprehensive law against violence against women, they will ‘glad tidings’, but why not apply the existing laws do not mention the rights of women.

To break the integrity of the family, the family babysitter, cleaner, cook woman struggling to sound as the AKP, the law enforcement solution, not the family is referred to the Imams. Their recommended that women should be given more trust in the arm in Cyrillic So you’d like the yen.

Poverty, insecurity, unemployment, fueling violence

Maintenance of any service not met by the state, the AKP government in Turkey, carried out his hand as a result of neoliberal policies in the face of violence than women in the güçsüzleştirildi tırpanlanan social rights. Millions of women have no income and no insurance. Women’s labor force participation rate fell to its lowest level in recent years, the period of the AKP government. The greatest harm to the forms of flexible working, more women working part-time jobs and see a short-term.

World Economic Forum’s Global Gender Gap Index released every year, this situation once again revealed. Politics, education, employment and health, equal to men and women in 122 countries of 135 countries this year was Turkey. On the other hand, inequality of women and men in Turkey, participation in the economy 132, 106 in education, in health 62 and 89 are equal opportunity ranked.

Poverty, insecurity and fueling a domestic violence women’s unemployment. For fear of becoming unemployed women, gender discrimination in the workplace, harassment audio çıkaramıyor, even afraid of becoming pregnant.

Zamlara-breathing “update,” he said, as the wave passes “binmeyin luxury car, do not buy the second house,” said the Prime Minister’s ‘advanced’ democracy, bread, even when you have to think twice, does not cover the demand for equality of women with no field.

Increases the severity of the war

Created by the war, hate, fear and hostility, violence normalleştiriyor environment. Obstructing a peaceful solution to the democratic demands of the Kurdish problem in the ear of power, aggressive attitude of war, violence, and discriminatory mentality fueling ötekileştirmeci, paves the culture of lynching.

Adversely affect the lives of working people all forms of violence, results in the form of burning women alive. All citizens, not only the Kurds, not only the mothers of all women in dire need of peace.
Burning of women in peace and hope for the request, the government and the opposition’s provocative / deceptive trying to strangle the duels. For a peaceful democratic solution to the Kurdish problem, women engaged in politics, being placed in the target, funny reasons were arrested.

This is the common sufferings in the country where the Turkish and Kurdish workers exploited, discrimination, hostility and alienation is the source of the animosity to violence.

The responsibility of the State should meet!

Important dates of the fight against violence against women in the 25 November, the disclosure of the source of violence in the history of the symbol of a struggle. What makes people’s lives unbearable in their struggle against the dictatorship in 1960, Dominican Mirabal sisters were murdered, women all over the world have suffered sexual, political and cultural commemorating the struggle against violence.

The Labour Party, in all forms of violence against women and discrimination continue our resolute struggle against violence against women reddettiğimizi and on this occasion we declare once more. An end to violence against women and women’s murders, but on the prevention of violence and the elimination is possible with the development of coherent and concrete policies. To do this, first hand, and immediately the following conditions must be fulfilled:

- Turkey has signed international agreements need to be met, urgent measures should be taken in this direction, to ensure cooperation between government agencies;

- Regulation and sanctions to ensure genuine equality of men and women bring, establishing budgets accordingly;

- Penalties for violence against women and killing of the immediate end to the practice of hardening, relaxation vetahrik reduction;

- Removal of the law of prevention of violence against women, violence, psychological and legal support to women who, work, social security and amenities such as the provision of independent housing;

- An adequate number of shelters open, municipalities that do not fulfill the obligation to punish;

- Women in shelters, social, economic, adjusted so as to participate in political life;

- The definition of a special clause in the Constitution the principle of equality between women and men;

- Women’s low-wage, uninsured, unsecured, disorganized çalıştırılmalarının prevention;

- Disabled, elderly, child, patient care services free of charge by the government to undertake;

- To fulfill its obligation to ensure equality in all areas of women, combating violence against women and follow-up will take further steps to realize the immediate establishment of the Ministry of Gender Equality.

Selma GÜRKAN
General Chairman

Source

Joint Statement on the situation in the Middle East

January 16, 2012

Support the people who have risen up for their rights and their freedom! We condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran!

During 2011 the Arab people in North Africa and the Middle East stood up, one after the other. They did not want to be exposed to the consequences of monopolistic capitalist hegemony, as unemployment and poverty. They said no to oppression from the autocratic dictatorships that have watched this hegemony. But the 30-40 year-old despot regimes has been the main cause of the disorganization of the oppressed masses and has also prevented them from developing their awareness. The people who stood up have won some victories, but could not reap the real fruits of their struggle, to be able to form their own political power. At the same time, these bourgeois reactionary forces, supported by Western imperialists, preserved or try to preserve its hegemony by strengthening the power base with its new partners, although this hegemony has encountered certain difficulties.

The Arab people who stood up realizing their potential and tasted victory, and their struggle has not yet been turned down in any country, except in Libya. Despite the low consciousness and organization continues their people revolt and tries to overcome their weaknesses. They insist on resisting the reactionary forces that have reorganized themselves, especially through the advent of political Islam, which has been moderate and pro-American in almost every country.

“We oppose all imperialist interventions, whatever pretext”

We, the undersigned revolutionary communist and working parties that meet the Turkish Labor Party 6 Congress, expressing our pride and solidarity with the peoples’ mass struggles, not only in the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, but also in Europe, from Spain to Greece, and in Latin America, from Venezuela to Ecuador, who are fighting for their national and social rights and freedoms, and we declare our support for the Palestinian people’s just struggle against imperialism and Israeli Zionism.

However, we are also aware of the fact that our biggest weakness is the inadequate consciousness and organization level of the world’s people, whether to rebel or other fields. And the imperialists and their collaborators exploit this weakness in attempts to renew the decaying basis of its hegemony and suppress the fighting by infiltrating the ranks of the people they claim to support, by manipulating these games in their own interest and remove them from their popular content.

The western imperialists, who have world domination in their hands and trying to strengthen its positions in competition with the rising imperialist powers, has not only aims to strengthen its domination in the countries that traditionally have been under their influence by suppressing the people’s struggles but they are also trying to establish its hegemony by influencing people and their struggles and use them as lifting rods in countries like Syria and Iran, as they have not been able to force the knee.

We support either Assad or Khamenei regime. But we also underlines the fact that when Western imperialists intervene with support from the reactionary forces in the region, the Turkish and Saudi reactionary forces, under the pretext of “democracy” and “dictator’s repression” has such a policy has nothing to do with people’s right to self or with people’s social and democratic aspirations.

We oppose all imperialist interventions – economic, political and military – whatever pretext, whether they are invited by the cooperative lackeys or not, and we condemn such a policy, which only brings war, blood and tears.

We ask all people of the world, and particularly the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be on guard against the imperialist interventions and traps in the style of the Libyan example, to show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to continue the struggle against imperialism and the reactionary forces .

Ankara, 20.12.2011

Albania’s communist party
Benin Communist Party
Belgium’s Labour
Cyprus’ new communist party
Ecuador’s Marxist-Leninist Communist Party
Spanish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninists)
Organization for the reconstruction of Greece’s Communist Party (Anasintaxi)
Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party (PCOT)
Turkey’s Workers’ Party (Emek Partisi)

Source

Turkey: Sixth Congress of the Labour Party (EMEP) Resolution

We support people who have rebelled for their rights and freedoms, condemn the imperialist conspiracies against Syria and Iran.

During 2011, the Arab peoples of North Africa and the Middle East have raised a after another. They did not want to be reported to the consequences of the hegemony of monopoly capitalism, nor voted on unemployment and poverty, and have rejected the repression of autocratic dictatorships that preserved this hegemony. The regimes despotic that lasted for 30 or 40 years have been the main reason for disorganization of the oppressed masses and have served as obstacles to the realization. The people who have raised have won some victories, but failed to collect the real fruits of their struggle, such as risucire to conquer their own political power. Therefore, the bourgeois reactionary forces backed by Western imperialism have maintained or are trying to maintain their hegemony, which has been questioned, strengthening their bases with new workers.

The Arab peoples that have been raised, have realized their potential and have tasted some victories, their struggles have not yet been crushed in any part, except Libya. Despite the low level of consciousness and organization, people have brought continue their uprising with an effort that aims to overcome the weaknesses, and continue to against the attacks of the reactionary forces that have reorganized especially through of political support, which has become a force moderate and pro-U.S. based in almost all countries.

We, the communist and workers parties and organizations have signed this document, meeting in VI Congress of the Workers’ Party of Turkey, we express our pride and solidarity with the mass struggles of the peoples, not only of the Arab countries of North Africa and the Middle East, but also of Europe, from Greece to Spain, Latin America, Venezuela and Ecuador, for the rights and social freedoms and national, as we proclaim our support for the Palestinian people’s just struggle against imperialism and Zionism in Israel.

Nevertheless, we are aware of the fact that our main weakness is the inadequate level of consciousness and organization of the peoples of the world, both during the uprisings in other processes. The imperialists and their accomplices take advantage of this weakness in their efforts to restore the decaying bases of their sovereignty and punish these struggles by ideological penetration and infiltration into the ranks of the people who claim to want to support, exploiting the struggle for their interests and by eliminating popular features.

The Western imperialism, which keeps the global hegemony in his hands and tries to strengthen its position in competition with the imperialist powers on the rise, not only aims to strengthen its hegemony in countries traditionally under its influence of suppressing popular struggles, but also attempts to establish its hegemony influencing people and their struggles, using them as levers to countries like Syria and Iran, which have not yet been subdued.

We do not support schemes and Assad | Ahmadinejad. However, we stress the fact that when the imperialist powers involved with the support of the reactionary forces of region such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia, in the name dell’apoggio the so-called “opposition” Syria and Iran under the pretext of fighting for “democracy” and “suppression of dictators, “these policies have nothing to do with rights to self-determination and their democratic aspirations and social. We oppose all actions imperialist – both economic and political and military – whatever their reason, they are desired by their accommodating staff or not, and condemn these policies only bring war, bloodshed and suffering.

We appeal to the peoples of the world, especially the peoples of Syria and Iran, to be in guard against the traps and imperialist interventions like those that occurred in Libya, show solidarity with the struggles of the peoples of the region and to support the fight against imperialism and the reactionary forces.

Ankara, December 2011

Communist Party of Albania
Communist Party of Benin
Workers’ Party of Belgium
New Cyprus Party
Marxist Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
Spanish Communist Party (Marxist-Leninist)
Movement for the Reorganization of the Communist Party of Greece (1918-55)
Communist Party of Workers of Tunisia
Turkish Labour Party

Source

EMEP: Turkish planes killed 36 civilians

36 civilians have been killed by the bombardment of Turkish F-16 warplanes in Ortasu (Roboski) of Uludere district of Şırnak last night.

Among 50 people whose ages range between 15 and 30, 36 have been confirmed dead so far. 15 others are reported missing.

Relatives of victims are trying to find the scattered parts of bodies in the area. The bodies are reported to be completely burnt and unrecognizable. Four bodies were brought to the Şırnak State Hospital, while peasants took many charred bodies to the Ortasu village atop tractors and mules. According to the villagers, the bodies were charred as their diesel drums exploded, while some were left under the rubble of a big rock under which they took shelter.

Fehmi Yaman, the mayor of Uludere said: “We have 30 corpses, all of them are burned. The state knew that these people were smuggling in the region.”

The killing of 36 civilians in an air raid in the southeastern province of Şırnak is an “unfortunate operational accident,” ruling Justice and Development Party deputy chairman Hüseyin Celik said.

General President of the Labour Party (EMEP) Selma Gurkan called Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and General Staff to resign. She added: “This crime can not be legitimised by any reason or cause. The main responsible of this attack to the people are the government and the General Staff. Committers and soldiers must be on trial immediately and give the account of this brutality.”

Labour Party (EMEP)
International Relations Bureau
http://www.emep.org

Source

EMEP: AKP government has broken a record: 29 journalists were arrested in one day

There is no other example of such a thing, before neither in Turkey nor in the world: 29 journalists were arrested in one day. The number of the detained journalists has raised to 96…

49 journalists and media workers, most of which work for the Kurdish press, were arrested on 20th December in the context of nation-wide so-called KCK (Koma Civaken Kurdistan- Union of Communities in Kurdistan) operation.

There have been 36 detained people in total (29 journalists, 7 media workers) in one day by the decision of Istanbul specially authorized 9th high criminal court.

This is an obvious massive injustice against the journalists.

It is obvious that we confront the most massive injustice to journalists during the history of the Turkish Republic, if we exclude the period of 12th September coup just because we do not have any sufficient statistical information. Further more there is no other example of 29 journalists being arrested in just one day in the world.

The AKP government has broken a record.

Just now there are 96 journalists detained, including the 29 journalists being arrested on 24th December 2011. 17 of them are concessionaires and responsible editors. Thanks to AKP, Turkey is the leading country in terms of the amplitude of detained journalists. The AKP government has already converted Turkey into a big prison full of journalists. Turkey has already broken its own record on the numbers of detained journalist by the last detentions.

The main reasons for coming to this point are the Anti-Terror Law (TMY), which social opposition forces call Anti-Social Law, Courts-Martial, State Security Courts (DGM) and specially authorized high criminal courts, which are the favourites of AKP.

It is time to promote the solidarity with the detained journalists, revolutionary, socialist press, especially the Kurdish press. Freedom of press, freedom of thought and expression and the defenders of human rights are now facing another struggle.

Anti-Terror Law (TMY) must be annulled, specially authorized high criminal courts (OYM) must be abolished, the detained journalists must be released.

Labour Party (EMEP), Turkey
International Relations Bureau

Source

Communist Party of the Workers of France (PCOF): No to nationalist outbidding, Yes to solidarity among peoples

The law against “denial of genocide recognized by law” causes great tension with the authorities in Turkey, which refer, not without relevance, Sarkozy and Co. for past massacres (Algeria) and later (in several countries of Africa) committed by the French army.

The tension that developed between our two countries and the bidding nationalists who meet, have nothing progressive. We deny to Sarkozy, and the French bourgeoisie in general, the right to speak for the victims of genocide.

The crude maneuver that would seek election to win the votes of the Armenians living in France, and does not serve the cause of the Armenian people who suffered a genocide by the Ottoman Empire.

The answer to this reactionary campaign is to develop solidarity between peoples and the common struggle against imperialism and reaction.

Paris, December 23, 2011

Communist Workers Party of France

Source

EMEP: Provincial congresses completed

ISTANBUL

Who died in the struggle for working-class revolutionaries special honor for the opening speech of the President of the EMEP Istanbul Provincial Trust In fact, the language of the discourses of democracy, the AKP government’s reduction in its policies and vice versa, he said. Who want democracy, for freedom, everyone who is opposed tutuklandığına remarkable fact, noted that 5 thousand prisoners BDP’linin.

The AKP’s own country to bring democracy to neighboring countries which claim to democracy, freedom bombs on the Kurdish people who want real yağdırdığını that the AKP government adopted it as its task to protect the interests of the imperialist powers in the region said.

Vandal’s organize

And workers to increase with each passing day that the attacks against the real, asked to be removed from severance pay, flexible working and asked to apply to the regional minimum wage, he added. In fact, urban renewal and public housing also said that the problem will grow.

All these attacks against the workers, the public-laborers, women, young people and stressed that they have to organize the public the real, the People’s Democratic Congress (NGO) also noted that it is a tool.

Attacks against the Kurdish people but also for workers pointed out that fact, “Anyone who says this is why labor must go with the Kurdish problem,” he said.

SHOULD unite

“In our country, a battle which lasted for 30 years, workers, working people, a bomb on them sending their children to the mountains, who lead the AKP government are faced with,” said Leather-Binali Thai Business Tuzla branch president, said the arrest of freedom, those who want to special prosecutors.

Workers, public workers and Thai people who note that the merger of the squares, Bell and leather workers in trade unions because they are SAVRANOGLU telling their troubles, “I just lived in them for using their constitutional rights. So need to unite, “he said.

Branch Manager Training You No. 2 in the Hasan Soil public sector workers and workers must unite, the contribution of EMEP’in it said it would be great.

Councillor Ibrahim Dogan Kartal Municipality of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and also warned the people of urban transformation.

POLICY OF WORKERS

Sabri Topcu, Deputy Chairman of the EMEP, 12 September, the slaughter of thousands of people recalling the name of democracy, “the problem of the system, the layout problem. Article 82, but Sept. 12 changed the Constitution, the laws have not changed. This is why the problem system problem, “he said.

Imperialism would have left their children in case of continuation of such attacks is a beautiful language in the world will not bring artillery, for the people, brought together in a common struggle of the workers should be organized, he said. Artillery, “the class has to make policy for the power of workers. There is only one correct. EMEP is right also. Wherever we were, let’s policy, the party, let us explain to the public, “he said.

THE IMPORTANCE OF BEING ORGANIZED

Following the speeches of the delegates took the floor guest.

“I started to work as child labor in textile, taken from school at age 12. I was a young woman, I became the mother of textile workshops. Managers bosses have lost my child because of the pressure, the hospital’s been left alone in front of the time, I realized I should have thought about and organized. I joined the Labour Party of such “idea Akgul said textile workers, 5 women murdered each day goes, every year 80 thousand workers spent in work accidents, recorded live in a country where thousands of workers. Akgul, “a working shipyard worker falls jetty, divers searching for it finds the body of another worker. Disorganization such a thing. Even when you have no idea of ​​the happens. EMEP’te organized for it to be meaningful, “he said. 10 trade union formed by the Union Platform Emphasizing the importance of trade union power Union Akgul, “the districts of the trade unions of workers, kıraathanelerine, tea is not going olacaklarına, the opposition can not be birleşmiyorsa with the NGO,” he said. Akgul, EMEP’in said that the first duty should be to organize the women.

We can not talk WITHOUT UNIVERSAL

EMEP’te is organized for many years, the party who said that school is a dock worker Ali Dogan, “If you are going to be graduating and working as Memet Kılınçaslan olabilmeliyim party,” he said.

The bosses at Tuzla shipyards in reducing the number of workers, Yalova not stop moving the deaths that Dogan, arise where the trade unions with workers ‘struggle, workers’ caucuses and the road next to the workers when there is a problem, he said.

Dogan, Universal newspaper without reading the discussion be done daily, every worker should be taught in the Universal said.

Universal Culture Magazine Editorial Director Nuray Sancar, said the work carried out within EMEP’in intellectuals.

Hunter Revolution lawyer criticized the AKP Government policies regarding women.

Onur Aydin, speaking on behalf of Labour Youth, young people under the umbrella organization of the party struggles to büyüteceklerini said.

UNIONS MUST BE A PARTY TO Kurdish Question

Sayyed, who spoke on behalf of the EMEP Istanbul Provincial Organisation Leo gave his speech made the following statements: “The Prime Minister apologized to the people of Dersim. The Prime Minister today that region is cut off people’s suffering knows and them knowing that the apostle of democracy. This is really no excuse for the war policies of the last gonna wish it, to stop the fighter jets, 5 thousand BDP’li politicians free to leave. CHP also have to confront its own history, in the eyes of the AKP fails to do what you do not go one step further in the eyes of the Dersimis. Discharged in the struggle for survival as thousands of workers coming from the village give metropolises. Today, the PKK announced that the workers are being resisted union recognition. It divides the workers at the factory boss. This is why the unions to resolve the Kurdish problem peacefully and on the basis of equality must be a party.”

Those in attendance

Leather-Business Tuzla branch president of the Congress Binali Thai, Harb-business Anatolian Side Branch President Hussein over, Cooperative Thesis No. 5 Branch President-Business Rabia Özkaraca, Road No. 1 Branch-Business President Michael Arcan, the Haber-1 No. ‘lu Branch President Ahmet Karatay, Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality and the City of Eagle Councillor Ibrahim Dogan, President of Branch No. 1 of all Bel-Sen Kadri Sword, No. 2 Branch Manager Training You Hasan soil, EMO, Haber-Sen, the SES Sisli Branch managers also attended.

—————

IZMIR

Organization of the Labour Party in Izmir Province, 6 Congress made the day before the local Victims of Ataturk Stadium Referees. EMEP and EMEP, Deputy Chairman of the General President of the Selma Gurkan Varlı’nın Abdullah also attended the congress, in resisting the demands of the workers took part in SAVRANOGLU and Hugo Boss.

Who participated in the resistance and the concentration of establishments sendikalaşan new congress hall, hung, “Imperialism and the War Against Business, Peace, Freedom” and “not be American Shield” drew attention to the signs.

In his opening speech the President of Congress in Izmir Province Jabbar blacksmith, who teach the AKP’s mercy even in periods of the junta, told everyone to pay obeisance to inhibit. Smith, chauvinism, as the winds of democratic forces in Izmir estirilmeye attempted, to do propaganda for peace and brotherhood, he added.

‘POLİTİKLEŞMELİ WORKERS’

President of the rostrum chanting slogans from the EMEP Selma Gurkan, acquired rights of the working class all over the world to speak with the crisis began by telling how they received. In Turkey, the dismissals, showing the effect of overtime and slavery working conditions of workers to organize activities to the crisis, stating that in the Gurkan, the working class should be organized as a political or vested rights of the working class at the first time gasbedeceğini stressed the rise of the bourgeoisie. The only way to starting your own power, the working class, union with the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom and unity of faith to other parts of society, he said. Every segment of society trying to put pressure on the AKP government said Gurkan, “trying to give the Kurds and Alevis setting. Trade unionists trying to parse. Arresting intellectuals. Izmir municipality and trade unionists in the operation, the Prime Minister’s apology in Dersim, the AKP’s ‘I want to Izmir and Dersim’ must düşünmememiz serzenişinden independent, “he said. Democratic Peoples’ Congress (NGO) formed by touching on the importance of unity Gurkan, the words “If you fail to be together, baby Ryan, Ugur Kaymaz and Ceylan Önkol’a conscience that can not pay our debts,” he concluded.

‘Combine the power of the AKP stop’

BDP Council Member Hayri Fever Party, evaluated the developments in the international arena, the AKP government in Turkey through the struggle for democracy and freedom of expression has been asked to being closed. Prime Minister’s apology evaluating Dersim Fire, “the AKP government, has to face in the 80-year history of the republic. Because Dersim, the Kurdish question, and that denial is a product of politics can not be assessed independently. Lighted in the dark on this, “he said.

‘Trade union struggles SİYASALLAŞMALI’

Single Food-Business Advisor to the Governor General Gursel, Kose, adopt the Kurdish problem in these situations, capital, language, religion and attacked anyone regardless of race, he said. “That’s Hugo Boss and SAVRANOGLU resisting. But this fight siyasallaşmalıdır. The trade unions, labor organizations, may be peace without entering into the work? “Said Kose, combative trade union power of trade unions came together and formed a union that fights for the Union, not only economic demands, but also women’s, youth, the environment will fight against the invasion is noted in many fields, such as . Leather-Business Branch Chairman of Maku Alagoz, workers, women, Kurds, Alevis, is the problem of students and unite themselves to the problem by asking what other workers stressed the need for unification. Ramis, Scott BES Izmir Branch President, highlighted the importance of combining political struggle with the trade union struggle.

The speech in resisting WORKERS

Resistance and the Hugo Boss factory in front of the sacked workers Gülten Genghis, the constitutional rights for the use of trade union rights are not unionized jobs have been booted, and now the interior in the direction of his friends said applied pressure.

Aydin Gençaslan SAVRANOGLU workers, the new boss wants to go to get compensation from them, saying, “We passed the size of the work material, we want to work decently. Each one of us with asthma, bronchitis, diseases such as I have. Women have children but treatment can be friends. We live in what era? “He said.

Schneider succeeded in unionization in the working Cihan workers, the next tasks in the industrial region of Cigli organize unorganized workplaces, he said.

DEU AUDIO Workplace Representative Gunseli Ugur, only the right to health care workers gasbedilmediğinden, speaking of the decree law of privatization in health, he said the last strokes.

UNION emphasis came to the fore

NGO Delegate Semra Uzunok Izmir, this congress is a way of salvation, and all the oppressed against the AKP-CHP said they are not without options, it is everyone’s duty to strengthen the unity, he said.

Spokesman of the period in Barka EGEÇEP Ertugrul, he is an American magazine, read an article about Arab baharıyla began by telling. Determinations by Labor Party there, said he wrote much earlier, “So this party, to interpret the world and Turkey. Environment is also the right of the struggle of this party is still here. Capital, energy resources, and the waters are attacking. However, this can not continue like this, “he said.

The Executive Board Member Ozer is EGEÇEP Akdemir, local environmental resistance trapped in the platform must be bridged and HDK’nin revealed a very important opportunity in this regard, he said. Poet and Author, Asim Gonen, buluşturulması art should be pointed out that the class struggle. (Izmir / UNIVERSAL)

—————

ANKARA

CALL FOR JOINT FIGHT AGAINST WAR POLICIES

Labour Party (EMEP), “Imperialism and the War Against Business, Peace, Freedom” launched şiarıyla and conference process was completed in Ankara.

EMEP Ankara Provincial Organization 6 Congress of South Stage Yilmaz was the day before. The AKP government’s policies and the war continued, both inside and outside workers announced that they would fight for the all-out attack against the laws.
“No to war, long live the brotherhood of peoples”, “Business, peace, freedom” slogans from a large number of trade union congress, was the guest of the democratic mass organizations and political party leaders.

In his opening speech, Deputy Chairman of the EMEP Haydar Kaya, drew attention to the hypocritical attitude of the AKP carried out over the Dersim. Kumar, “Erdogan said Dersimis apologized, today the people of Dersim, continues to rain bombs on the Kurds,” he said.

‘WAR bill paying Workers’

Ankara Provincial Chairman of the EMEP Sağdıç Principle of Light, the AKP government has expressed okuttuğunu grace period of September 12. Government and domestic politics, and foreign policy that uses the language of war Sağdıç, called on to fight together against the politics of war.

Referring to discussions of paid military Sağdıç, 30 thousand dollar bill for the war policies of non-poor people’s children would have to pay with their lives, he added.

Referring to the light on women’s murders, murders of women struggle against the work, bread, drew attention to the importance of presenting the freedom struggle.

Countries in the world and the bankruptcy of capitalism that says Ankara Provincial Co-Chair of the BDP Vuranok Meral, in search of new market capitalism is targeting the Kurds, he said. Now, “I wonder whether today was nobody,” but, “How many people were taken,” he came to a state that asks Vuranok, believed in freedom, peace and called on all forces to fight together.

AKP KHK’lerle function of the Assembly expressed the CAP Provincial Board Member Arif finished Basa, said there were an open lawlessness. Organized attack against the forces of law stated that the Basa, the answer could only be said that the organized forces.

CALL unions

Organized Industrial Zone in Xinjiang working metal worker Unaldı War, touched on the rights gaspları and layoffs. Unaldı, trade unions, “the boss of organized industrial zones, everything between the two lips. Come here to start work, we also let you, “he made the call.

Universal Newspaper, Sultan Özer Ankara representative, the workers and working people taking power through which the growing Evrensel’in difficult process in the country was becoming more and more important, he said. Under the pressure of the organs of power in almost all the newspapers and the press spokesman of the government stating that they are becoming Ozer, Evrensel’in more laborers to be taught to read and made the call. Sağdıç re-elected president of the provincial elections held in the light of Policy. (London / Universal)

—————

ESKISEHIR

YOUTH CONGRESS ATTENDS walk

Eskisehir Province before the Labor Youth Organization convention, congress delegates and conducted a walk Pandora Wedding Hall, accompanied by slogans.

Speaking on behalf of the management board of the Congress President Abraham Akgun Eskisehir Province, workers and laborers taken mangle, oppression and exploitation increased with each passing day, the shadow of imperialism created the climate of war and the growing chauvinism, work, peace and freedom in the provincial congress in şiarıyla gerçekleştirdiklerini said.

Organising Secretary of the United Fuat Fabric, Metal-strike from the Labor Party and Universal periods in Eskisehir and the other provinces, the newspaper constantly reminding them that they, too, would be with them always stressed that the Labour Party and the Universal newspaper.

6 Organisation of Aydin Province Congress, EMEP, Deputy Chairman Abdullah Varli were present. Many political parties and democratic mass organization representatives attended the congress. Newly elected president of the provincial Attorney Advisor Hicran.

Chairman of the Provincial Congress, a new provincial organization Kirsehir Hasan Altınşık, şiarını all the people in the party congress called on to fight to accomplish more.

MERSIN

MERSIN WORKER PARTICIPATION WAS GREAT

Organisation, the speeches delivered in Mersin Province has come forward calls to unity and struggle.

130 days left behind the direnişleriyle Mersin port workers attended the congress. Nedim Koroglu participating in the congress, Deputy Chairman of EMEP, the AKP government period, unemployment, poverty, hunger, said they were facing more attacks such as a raise. Education and health, which expressed to customize the Koroglu, the government now says the severance indemnity diktiğini eye. Referring to Prime Minister Erdogan’s Dersim özrüne Koroglu, “Kurdish problem is the problem of Dersim. No one örtmemeli the top. Apology or something it would not work. The identity of the Kurdish people, culture, mother tongue, is the value of everything he recognizes an apology, “he said.

Van after the earthquake in the urban transformation of government, providing lesson where it stated that proponents of rent Koroglu, “it is used for urban regeneration. Now, with the Decree çıkarıyorlar laws without asking anyone. The result of this, “he said.

CALL FOR TURKISH-business

Speaking at the congress in Port Worker November Kilic, said not enough support for the ongoing resistance of the port has called for unity. Previous resistance, unions, political parties that had seen them more Sword, Port-Business, criticized the attitude. Addressing the Turkish-Business management, Sword, “There are a lot of Kurdish workers. Whether a day is a pattern of unfair to the Kurds. Peace in the fraternity, as well. Damn you, such as the head of the confederation, “he said.

—————

GAZIANTEP

POWER SHOULD BE FIGHTING FOR

Member of the EMEP GYK İlbay Ilhan, Gaziantep Provincial Congress in his speech pointed out that the global economic crisis.

Greece, Italy, to rescue the situation after the crises of the imperial states, and until yesterday they received a common attitude of democracy, elections, such as the words were uttered, but the order for the protection of the public will forget everything in two days left unchecked governments, the governments were left technocrat.

Fenugreek Fenugreek strike lasted 74 days old worker, Mehmet Celik recalled, “He knew that after the strike, reach a point, only the working class by fighting within the law. This is why working class of Turkey will never sacrifice the power struggle, “he said.

Speaking on behalf of the youth labor Sezin Ugur, youth riots took place in the world and in Turkey, but Turkey, noting that this situation occurs very unorganized manner, all segments of the youth around their own demands of organized labor in his youth called for a fight.

—————

ADANA

CALL FOR FIGHTING ADANA’DA

6 organization EMEP Adana Province Altıhan music hall was the usual convention. Speaking at the congress, President of the Seville City Tool, the AKP trying to intimidate the opposition and said that war against each segment. Adana, anti-democratic practices are widespread in the tool that transfers, in every action, the sound is cut and the penalties that everyone said that these groups are asked to be kept under pressure and called for struggle against oppression.

—————

KAYSERI

I communists AKP MÜSLÜMANSA

The Labour Party Kayseri 6 Hall of the Provincial Congress, Provincial Directorate of Culture was the usual. Approximately 150 people attended the Provincial Congress, delegate of the NGO Tacer Isaac, Egitim-Sen Branch Chairman Unsal Sadat, Haci Bektas-i Veli Association President Kenan Akpinar, Kayseri Province Alevi Cultural Centre and SDP President Sadat Arrow Representative Armanç Lightning also made a speech.

Text metal worker who spoke at the congress Stars, “I make prayer, worship as a Muslim I am a worker makes. AKP supposedly defending Islam, but ‘give workers the right to sweat dries.’ Called even if it does not fit. Theirs Müslümanlıksa, I communists,” he said.

Labor Party Member of GYK Aslandogan Jacob, the Wall Street invasions, Europe, strikes and riots in the Arab world should be read correctly, in the light of developments in all of Turkey’s oppressed segments of the parties to act together HDK’yı care about the request, he said.

After speeches of the delegates, the annual report and financial report, unanimously acquitted, the elections were made available. Provincial elections held re-elected as President Ismet Gümüşoluk. EMEP’in Kayseri Provincial Administration occurred the following names: Ismet Gümüşoluk, Adile Flower, Action Sarioglu Aslandogan, Metin Yıldız, Murat Arpaci, Hope Eagle, Veli Sahin.

Source

Marxist-Leninist Communist Party (Turkey): The duty of defending the Kurdish freedom movement has international character!

23 October 2011 / International Bureau / Statement No: 57

The Turkish bourgeois state represented by the AKP (1) government has been choked by the heavy losses resulting from the extensive guerrilla operation of the HPG (2) units on October 19. What they try to conceal under the oaths of revenge, racist provocations, lynching attempts and bringing the bourgeois media to line through the briefing of Prime Minister Erdogan is the reality that the denial and assimilation policy has suffered a heavy defeat once more in front of the Kurdish freedom movement.

Right after the general elections, the Turkish bourgeois state had put the total war plan called “new concept of war” into operation against the Kurdish freedom movement. Within the context of this wave of attacks, the Turkish colonialist fascism, the reactionary states of the region and the imperialist forces carried out important negotiations directly related to the Middle East politics, including the deployment of the NATO antimissile shield in Turkey. While the military operations, predominantly in the form of air attacks, continue in Southern and Northern Kurdistan uninterruptedly, they try to intimidate the Kurdish people through the attacks of extensive and massive arrest and imprisonments against its democratic organisations and cadres.

Within the same context, 7 fighters including Rustem Cudi, member of the Council of KCK (3) , and Cicek Botan and Aliser Kocgiri, members of the Military Council of HPG, were killed in an air attack against the guerrilla zones of Xakurke and Xinere in Southern Kurdistan on October 10. This massacre, which was carried out under the technological support of imperialism and Zionism, and the on-going preparations of the Turkish colonialist army for a land operation were responded by the HPG with the Operation of Martyr Cicek on October 19. HPG announced that 81 soldiers were killed and tens of soldiers were injured in the operation against 18 different military targets in and around Cukurca.

Being one of the most extensive operations carried out so far by the Kurdish guerrilla forces, the Cukurca operation is a turning point for the latest military-political expedition of AKP. The “new war concept”, too, has failed in face of the resistance of the Kurdish people based on the guerrilla and the serhildans (4). The discord in the ranks of the Turkish bourgeoisie about the possibility of solving the Kurdish question by military methods has deepened even further.

Among the Turkish workers and labourers, there is a developing tendency for peace and a reaction against the fact that their sons are being garbed in military uniforms and sent to die in attacks of occupation, of which they have no benefit. This tendency has not yet turned into the conscious of defending a just peace on the basis of the democratic solution of the Kurdish question; however, the demand of “stopping the blood shed” is growing. Although the Turkish bourgeois state tries to suffocate and disable this demand through media manipulation and lynching provocations, the demand for peace has inevitably taken its place in the agenda of the Turkish workers and labourers and this will undoubtedly turn into the conscious and action of democratic and just peace as a result of the struggle of the progressive and revolutionary forces.

It is a duty of international character to defend the Kurdish freedom movement which is one of the important centres of resistance in the world in such period where the armed resistance forces through ideological, political and military attacks are tried to be liquidated and the people’s rebellions and the resistances from North Africa to Europe and from Asia to Latin America are tried to be manipulated and suffocated. The operation for the liquidation of PKK (5) and the Kurdish freedom movement is a covert NATO operation. In this sense, solidarity with the Kurdish freedom movement means resistance against the imperialist terror organisation NATO. It means resistance against the Middle East policies of the USA and Israel. It means resistance against the ideological and political attacks claiming that the peoples, the working class and the labourers have no will and power to make history.

We call upon all the progressive, revolutionary and the communist forces of the world to keep alive the memory of the immortal martyrs of the Kurdish freedom movement, to stand against the military operations of the colonialist fascism supported by the US and other imperialist forces and to defend the Kurdish people’s organisations which are exposed to political genocide through arrest and imprisonments.

We salute the operation of Cukurca by HPG, who, using their right to resist against the colonialist yoke, oppression and violence, carried out this action in memory of the martyrs of Xakurke-Xinere against the preparations of the colonialist fascist Turkish state for land operation.

We salute with great respect the martyrs of the Kurdish freedom movement in the name of our comrades-in-arm Rustem Cudi, Cicek Botan and Aliser Kocgiri, the dedicated guerrilla commanders, each of whom have many years of experience in war, and the 4 HPG fighters and the 7 immortal fighter who turned into martyrs in the operation of Cukurca. Their memories will live forever in the free, democratic and just peace of the Turkish and Kurdish people, in the victory of the Kurdish people’s freedom movement and in the victory of socialism in our region.

Rustem Cudi, Cicek Botan, Aliser Kocgiri and the martyrs of freedom of the Kurdish people are immortal!

Down with the colonialist fascist dictatorship! Peace, equality, brotherhood and freedom for the Kurdish nation!

NOTES 

1) Justice and Development Party

2) People’s Defence Forces (HPG) are the armed forces of the PKK.

3) Kurdistan Democratic Confederation

4) ‘Uprising’ in Kurdish language. This word has become a symbol for the Kurdish people’s mass uprisings, such as the meaning of ‘intifada’ for the Palestinian liberation movement.
serhildan

5) Kurdistan Workers’ Party

Source

En Marcha on Libya

Gaddafi’s murder puts an end to its contradictory policy

After the siege of Sirte by rebel forces and the continuous support of the NATO bombing, dropped the last bastion of resistance to Gaddafi and with it came his lynching and death.

At the closing chapter of this macabre American imperialist intervention and its European allies, which began in Tunisia, Yemen and Egypt, the brunt of the savagery of NATO, which fell to Libya UN resolution 1973 gave the green light for murder of thousands of children, youth, women and elderly innocent and the destruction of hospitals, schools and homes of poor people by planes from the U.S., France, England, Italy, Canada, Qatar and Spain 14 000 attacks carried out under the cynical pretext to protect civilians.

War of aggression that took advantage of the discontent of the masses secular and Islamist Libyan mobilized to demand the resignation of Gaddafi for his corrupt and repressive dictatorial policy in 42 years of dictatorship submitted to the people and their political opponents, the miserable conditions of life, prison and exile.

This does not justify the genocidal actions of the U.S. and its followers against the Libyan people, other than by oil, gas and water, for their benefit; impede the flow of oil to China and strategic control of northern Africa and the Near East.

Muammar Gaddafi was characterized by contradictory political and ideological position and winding with democratic reforms undertaken as dictator from 1969 to overthrow the King Idrissi, presented as experiences and examples of the third way (or socialism or capitalism), but history of the transformation of Libyan economy popular capitalism, privatization of public enterprises and foreign oil producers and distributors, such as Italy’s ENI, Austria’s OMV, Repsol of Spain, Total of France, BP of the UK, Petrobras of Brazil, more the U.S. Marathon Oil, Amerada Hess, Conoco-PHLLIPS, OCCIDENTAL PETROLEUM, EXXON-MOBIL and the China National Petroleum, and the opening up and encouraging foreign investment.

The open door policy to the highest bidder and its weight would encourage authoritarian dictatorial corrupt economic ambition that would lead to rapid personal enrichment and family, with the acquisition of a fortune as gold reserves, foreign exchange and investment exceeding 200 billion dollars (Los Angeles Times), which doubles annual industrial production over Libya before the U.S. intervention.

In this position fro the imperialist governments of England and Italy and of Spain fought to curry favor with Gaddafi for their investments and oil business. He was invited to the treat-as did Berlusconi, or were “official visit” with the list of prayers and investment proposals.

All under the supervision and consent of the International Monetary Fund (IMF) neoliberal recipes applied against the economy of poor households and workers, that paid for the first turns of the Libyan people.

Muammar Gaddafi humble home in the Bedouin, formed by the English with an anti-political conception, governed, enriched and betrayed his people and from 1986 he was a partner of Fiat, the Italian companies and Infinvest, Swiss and French and strut NATO in the region.

The story of betrayal does not forget that most computers, weapons and equipment of repression that Gaddafi had at his disposal were supplied by the U.S., Britain, France and Spain, whose members, with his murder, was charged dearly for his politics and ideology contradiction in which he embarked and which he died.

Libya, imposed arbitrary arrests and torture

In Libya, things have not changed at all, at present there are cases of torture to extract confessions or simply as a punitive measure, risking that the practices of the past be repeated in the present, when the arbitrary arrest and torture was marked the whole Gaddafi.

Amnesty International (AI) accused the interim government of Libya, coordinated by the National Transitional Council (CNT), making arbitrary arrests and practices of torture and abuse against soldiers and followers of Muammar Qaddafi.

The organization claims that the majority of detainees are imprisoned without the respective orders of the prosecutor and executed by military authorities or non-competitive.

Sub-Saharan African suspected mercenaries constitute between one third and half of those arrested are also vulnerable Libyan Tawargha region, which was the basis of gadafistas troops. On the other hand a number of children are detained together with adults and women arrested in this process and put under surveillance of men who play the role of guards.

PCMLE: “The real emancipation of the peoples is the revolution and socialism”

From En Marcha, #1545
Organ of the Central Committee of the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador
August 19 to 25, 2011

As part of the work that the International Conference of Marxist-Leninist Parties and Organizations is carrying out, last July a meeting of the Latin American parties took place. At the meeting were the Revolutionary Communist Party of Brazil, the Communist Party of Colombia (Marxist-Leninist), the Communist Party of Labor of the Dominican Republic, the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Ecuador, the Communist Party of Mexico (Marxist-Leninist) and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party of Venezuela.

After evaluating the work that these parties are carrying out in each of the countries and discussing the most important events that are taking place in the region and the world, the meeting approved a Political Declaration that we reproduce below.

U.S. imperialism and its European allies: France, England, Spain, Italy, are trying to manipulate the just struggle of the Arab peoples, to channel the indignation of the working masses and the youth towards a change of names, maintaining the economic and social structures and the weight of dependency.

After reviewing the latest events in our countries, in Latin America and the world we declare:

1. The stories told by imperialism claiming that there is a recovery from the crisis are falling apart every day, with the increasing numbers of unemployed, the decrease in production, the worsening of the fiscal deficits and the increase in the foreign debt in most of the countries of Europe, in Japan and the U.S.A., which seriously affect the supposed stability of the capitalist system and sharpening its inherent contradictions. This prolonged crisis that is affecting all the countries of the world shows not only the failure of the recovery policies implemented by imperialism, but also the decay of the system, which is mortally wounded and incapable of guaranteeing the well-being and freedom for which humanity is struggling.

2. The struggle of the working class, the working people, the youth and the peoples is spreading all over the world. Tunisia, Egypt, Libya, Jordan, Syria, Yemen and other countries of North Africa and Asia Minor are an example of the struggle against the reactionary dictatorships and governments, who with the applause of the bourgeoisies and the imperialist powers have sunk these peoples into the deepest crisis, hunger and the cruelest misery, despite the immense wealth generated by the exploitation of oil, gas and other natural resources. In addition, with the complicity of the UN they resort to military intervention, to the bombing of the civilian population in Libya, using the pretext of the fight against tyranny, all with the aim of guaranteeing the established order and the continuity of all its profits that are the product of colonization and exploitation of these peoples. We completely reject the foreign intervention in Libya. It is up to the Libyan people themselves to resolve the problems of their country. No more military aggression and intervention in Afghanistan and Palestine! We Communists raise the banner of self-determination, sovereignty, well-being and freedom!

3. Active and valiant opposition to imperialism and the reactionary governments is also alive in Europe. In Greece, Turkey, Italy, Spain, Ireland, France, England and other countries of Europe there has been a general rejection of the reduction in wages, the pension reforms, the increase in taxes, privatizations and the reduction of the budgets for health care, education, housing and in general of all the legislative programs by which the crisis is being placed on the shoulders of the working masses. Numerous strikes and mobilizations are showing an important revival of the working class and youth that is again speaking out for unity and the political initiative to confront the recovery policies and to reject the reactionary governments. The great mobilizations of youths that are taking place in Spain and other European countries deserve particular mention, which show the exhaustion of bourgeois democracy and the search for roads to social liberation.

4. In Latin America the struggle continues, it is showing a greater advance and development. The structural adjustment policies implemented by most of the governments in the last years have not achieved their expected objectives, much less do they represent measures aimed at the well-being of the masses. The different struggles that are developing in our countries calling for higher wages, labor stability, respect for the right to association, negotiation, collective contracts and strikes, the rejection of outsourcing, the demands for health care and education, greater rights and liberties are arousing the ever greater participation of numerous organizations on the continent that do not kneel before the measures of the bourgeois governments and that struggle for political freedom for the people. The student youth in Chile together with the working masses and the Mapuche people are carrying out large mobilizations in defense of freedom, public education and democracy. The desire for change is breaking through in our various countries, large contingents of the masses are participating in the political struggle and are taking up the banner of working for the victory of democratic and progressive governments that really promote the defense of sovereignty, respect of human rights, well-being and political freedom. The democratic and anti-imperialist tendency in Latin America is an unquestionable fact that is opening the way, is growing and offering numerous possibilities for the advance of the revolution.

5. The rise through elections of several democratic and progressive governments in Latin America constitute important steps in that direction. Nevertheless today, the existence and continuity of these governments is threatened by the rightist offensive of imperialism and the local bourgeoisies that have not given up the privileges that they have enjoyed in our countries for centuries. The offensive of imperialism and the oligarchies has reversed the direction of several of those governments, which have been transformed into open defenders of the capitalist system, of foreign domination; into a form of the old ways of governing, into those who carry out repression against the working masses and the youth, into prettifiers of representative democracy and promoters of developmentalist and reformist measures. In fact, these governments and history show that real change, the social revolution and national liberation cannot be carried through to the end under the leadership of bourgeois and petty bourgeois classes and parties. That responsibility belongs to the working class, the working masses, the peoples and the youth, to the revolutionary party of the proletariat, to the genuinely revolutionary organizations and parties.

6. Imperialism, its allies and servants, the local bourgeoisies in all the countries are persisting in their reactionary policies of repressing the struggle of the working masses, of the indigenous peoples and the youth by fire and sword, at the time that they try to co-opt the social movement by means of social welfare policies and one reform or another. One expression of those policies is the presence of U.S. imperialist troops and those of their Latin American servants in Haiti. In the same way it is continuing the trade embargo against Cuba and actions aimed at subverting the Venezuelan process. The persecution, jailing and assassination of social fighters and revolutionaries are irrefutable testimony of the fact that the struggle continues and that repression, however harsh and bloodthirsty it may be, cannot do away with the ideals and the determination to fight for social and national liberation. We emphatically express our solidarity with the comrades who are suffering repression and torture in Honduras, Mexico, Guatemala, Colombia, Paraguay and Peru. In particular we demand the freedom of the Ecuadorean student leader Marcelo Rivera, who remains in prison, accused and condemned as a terrorist by the Correa government, for defending university autonomy.

7. The betrayal by the government of Rafael Correa and the struggle of the Bolivian workers against “the gasolinazo” in Bolivia are making clear not only the real limitation of these governments, but also the need to make clear to the working class and the social and mass organizations what is the real road to social change. Experience shows that neither reformism nor class conciliation can lead to change. Real change, the genuine emancipation of our peoples is the revolution and socialism, which is only possible if there is a revolutionary political vanguard capable of pushing through a genuinely revolutionary program at the head of the struggles of the working class, the working masses and the peoples.

8. The continuity and development of the struggle of the workers, the peoples and the youth in the countries of Latin America is guaranteed by historical tradition and the present combats, the perspective is the developing along the road of the social revolution. Our Continent is and will be the scene of great liberating struggles and we Marxist-Leninist communists will fulfill and affirm our position as shock troops of the revolution and socialism.

9. The strengthening of the right-wing, corporatist and social welfare policies in most of the governments of Latin America will not make us back down from the search for true social and national emancipation. We Marxist-Leninist parties of Latin America reiterate our commitment to link ourselves boldly and decisively to the struggles that the working class, the working people, the peasantry, the youth, the women and the peoples in general are developing, as well as our irrevocable decision to advance in the unity and leadership of their struggles, winning them for the revolution and socialism.

10. We make the words of Lenin ours: “If in the course of the struggle we win the majority of the workers to our side – not only the majority of the exploited, but the majority of the exploited and oppressed – we will really win”.

July, 2011

Marxist-Leninist Communist Party: Chemical Massacre at Kazan Valley

Through a statement made on October 30, the Central Command of HPG (1) announced that the colonialist fascist Turkish army has carried out a chemical massacre. Following the Martyr Cicek Revolutionary Operation of HPG on October 19 in Cukurca, the Turkish army had launched extensive air attacks and military conflicts in Geliyê Tiyarê (Kazan Valley) on October 22-25. After the military operations, it was announced that there are 24 bodies at the morgue of Forensic Medicine Institute of Malatya. A delegation of BDP (2) members and human rights activists went to Malatya for investigations, where they announced that the bodies are unrecognisable.

HPG cleared the situation by its statement on October 30. According to the statement, they suffered disconnection with their units in the region consisting of 35 guerrillas. It has turned out that 24 of them turned into martyrs and their bodies are in the morgue of Malatya. There is no connection at the moment with the other 11. HPG stated that they have not clarified which 24 of the 35 guerrillas have been definitely killed and taken to Malatya, so they decided to announce the identities of 35 guerrillas: Mizbah Kızıler, Ali Hasan Pervizi, Cevdet Örtaş, Sultaneli Julide, Behice Bedro, Giyasettin Kaval, Şilan Ergün, Minnan İsmail Akkaş, İkram Kara, Çetin Modanlar, Saniye Mustafa, Geylani Reşidi, İpek Çiçek, Suna Özdemir, Gülistan Koç, Ebru Muhikancı, Ayşe Amra, Derviş Özkan, Leyla Halimi, Emine Altun, Oktay Çelik, Ahmet Mirza, Aziz Balıkçı, Sezar Arslan, Gulale Yusufi, Cemil Erol, Reşat Aslan, Enver Akçay, Mahmut Bor, Abdurrahman Enüştekin, Ümit Ramazani, Sevcan Algünerhan, Bereket Aşan, Aynur Kırbaş, Belkız Yeşilyurt.

HPG also informed that the Turkish army, after failing at breaking the resistance of the guerrilla forces, intensified its attack with Cobra helicopters, howitzers and mortars and used napalm bombs, and the HPG units who made investigations in the region found signs of use of chemical weapons. After the announcement, some of the martyrs’ families went to Malatya to identify their sons and daughters. 15 of them could not identify the bodies since some of the heads were cut off and the bodies were destroyed. One of the martyrs, Ebru Muhikancı was sent to eternity on the same day by more than one thousand people including some MPs of BDP.

A delegation of IHD (3) and BDP members went to Kazan Valley for investigations about the use of chemical weapons.

FOOTNOTES

1) People’s Defence Forces (HPG) are the armed forces of the PKK

2) Peace and Democracy Party. Party of Democratic Society (DTP), the legal and legitimate party of the Kurdish national struggle, was banned and closed down by the Turkish burgeois state in November 2009. After that, BDP was established as an expression of the will of the Kurdish people in this field.

3) Human Rights Association

EMEP: The Country is still governed with the zeal of a diktat!

We left behind a referendum campaign full of lies, threats and dirty tricks, forced on the people by the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government, and resulted in a patchwork style amended constitution which was originally imposed by the 1980 military coup. In an effort to strengthen its own power and assert its status quo this government, which represents the repressive and exploitative capitalist order, managed to get people’s approval for its amendments on the constitution. In order to maintain its rule for another term the government manipulated people’s aspiration for democracy and change. For the same purpose, they initiated discussions for preparing a new constitution. Yet, after the referendum country’s same immediate problems and need for democratisation remain to be resolved, not by the AKP government or the forces of the bourgeois order but by the initiative and intervention of the workers and the working people.

Constitutional amendments did not receive the support of the majority.

The AKP government, its supporters and the bourgeois media in its service have portrayed the referendum results as a big success with popular support, with some going as far as to say that the people have seized power.

Despite government’s propaganda based on dirty tricks, threats, lies and manipulation only 58% of the voters voted Yes, with a remaining 42% saying No, and 23% of the electorates not participating. This explains why in the eyes of the public this constitutional amendment, which was initiated by an illegitimate government and parliament, would not be considered legitimate because it did not get the approval of a reasonable majority. The fact that those who did not seek public consultations for their amendments and who subjugated people by use of power and money call these referendum results as a manifestation of “free will” shows how barefaced and zealous they are for a diktat.

It is not a case, as suggested, of higher level of democracy or popular gains.

There have always been discussions about our country’s democratisation problems and, in conjunction with this, the need for a new and democratic constitution. However the changes proposed through the referendum of 12 September were not concerned with any of this. Demands from the workers for the urgent need for democracy were not regarding how the members of the Constitutional Court or of the Board of Judges and Public Prosecutors would be elected. These were the demands of the power hungry AKP and capitalists seeking full hegemony and stability.

These arrangements would, without a doubt, serve further unbridled and aggressive exploitation, through a plundering and ranting system. Yet, the masses demand for democratisation were evident in many fields: removing obstacles to political and trade union organisations of workers; a constitutional guarantee for the demands of the Kurdish people regarding their identity, language and equal rights; a genuine secular state ending discrimination on and manipulation of the freedom of religion and conscience. Unless these demands are met it will not be possible to talk about a democratisation process. For this reason, this referendum did not contribute to the democratisation process or the improvement of people’s conditions. The winner is the repressive and reactionary capitalist rule and as long as the AKP government is ruling, a popular gain will not be possible.

Continue reading

American Party of Labor Statement on the Killing of Muammar Gaddafi


No the Colonization of Libya!

With the victory of the NATO-backed rebels and the National Transitional Council, Libya has been colonized once again. Moammar Gaddafi, the leader of the Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, has been killed according to the country’s rebel government on October 20th, 2011. Gaddafi was murdered in his hometown of Sirte, a stronghold for his supporters.

From 1911 to 1943, Italy ruled Libya as a protectorate. Under the reign of fascist dictator Benito Mussolini, the colonialists ruthlessly crushed any national resistance to fascism that would threaten Italy’s imperial interests over this oil-rich country. Now, in 2011, the country is once again under the control of foreign powers. Italian Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi has states that the war against Libya is “over,” declaring the domination of Libya complete. Libya’s rich natural resources and enormous oil wealth, estimated to be among the greatest on earth, is once again to be siphoned by imperialism.

Gaddafi was executed on the spot in a brutal and arbitrary way, which raises questions about what sort of regime the Libyan “rebels” are going to build, as if the ethnic cleansing of black Libyans and foreign migrants from cities under their control, as well as their cozy relationship with the Western powers and NATO didn’t raise enough already.

A convoy of Gaddafi loyalists' vehicles is pictured destroyed ny NATO bombs and littered with bodies near Sirte

Bodies of killed Gaddafi loyalists around the drain pipe where the Libyan leader was allegedly found

Gaddafi’s Execution

Gruesome images of Gaddafi’s bloody corpse have been telecast with glee by TV channels all over the world. The circumstances for his death are reprehensible – he had attempted to flee the bombing assault on Sirte in a military convoy when NATO hit two of the vehicles with a Hellfire missile. The rebel forces allegedly found him hiding in a drain pipe near Sirte. Badly wounded in both legs from the bombs, Gaddafi was captured and executed by rebels.

Photos and cell phone video footage of the event, released shortly after the story of the capture broke, show a wounded and injured Gaddafi with his face and shoulders awash in blood. He appeared to have a wound on his head.


The rebel forces that captured him then began their assault, dragging him from his hiding place and beating the former Libyan leader. Video footage clearly shows Gaddafi grimacing in pain, being humiliated, shoved, beaten and bludgeoned. A dazed Gaddafi is then paraded around in the streets of the city to the sound of the baying mob of rebels, shortly before being shot several times in the head and stomach. Some claim he was shouting, “Don’t shoot!” before he was killed, but no one has verified that claim.

Images from Al-Jazeera show his body being dragged on the ground and paraded through the streets before being taken to a morgue, where rebels flocked to take photographs of the body. Afterwards, his body was taken to Misrata, a rebel stronghold, to be displayed in a freezer. Most reports say he was shot in the head with a 9mm while helpless after being captured and severely beaten. News sources are now changing their story, saying Gaddafi was shot while trying to flee.

Gaddafi’s son Mutassim was given a similar treatment by the “freedom fighters” of Libya. The news is now claiming he was killed in a “firefight” in Sirte, but pictures and video have already emerged of Mutassim lying on a sofa, injured and bloodied after his capture but still alive. Pictures of his executed corpse emerged hours later. Gaddafi’s Defense Minister Abu Bakr Jaber Younes was also killed during the capture, as was Abdullah Senussi and about fifty others.

Mohammed el-Bibi, a 20-year-old rebel fighter who is reportedly the one who pulled the trigger, has been hailed as a “hero,” brandishing a gold-plated gun said to have been owned by Gaddafi. Fittingly, he also donned a baseball cap with the New York Yankees logo. After the shooting, he was hoisted up by rebels, who fired volleys of bullets into the air and loudly chanted, “Allah Akbar.”

Mohammed el-Bibi (right) and another rebel waving a golden pistol allegedly taken from Gaddafi

The barbaric condition of Gaddafi’s death is symbolic, showing the nature of the rebels and giving indications of what life for the Libyan people will be like under their regime. Widespread destruction, poverty, dependence and humiliation, not “freedom” or “democracy,” will be the result of this aggressive attack and occupation of Libya.

Rebels celebrating Gaddafi's death

Lies & Propaganda in the Attack on Libya

Much like other wars the United States and NATO have waged, particularly the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the war on Libya began with lies. Much like the media told us the war on Iraq was because Saddam Hussein was building weapons of mass destruction and was going to attack the U.S., they have insisted this is a war to protect innocent civilians. In fact, recent events have shown that the Libyan rebels are not nonviolent, unarmed civilians, and many of the stories of Gaddafi’s atrocities were highly exaggerated.

To begin with, the media ceaselessly compared the Gaddafi government’s actions to the genocide in Rwanda in 1994, where ethnic Hutu militia murdered hundreds of thousands of Tutsis. Since then they have accused Gaddafi of “genocide.” As if that was not enough, accusations of “war rape” and “mass rape” by troops loyal to Gaddafi were spread by mainstream news, backed up by frivolous stories of Gaddafi distributing Viagra to his soldiers to encourage them to rape women.


Months into the civil war and NATO’s campaign, no evidence of a governmentally-sanctioned campaign of genocide or mass rape has been found. In fact, Time Magazine printed a retraction of the Viagra story soon after, and many other news sources admitted there was no evidence of such an action – it was pure warmongering propaganda.

The imperialist coalition of NATO has violated all international laws by waging aggressive and destructive war for their own economic self-interests in the name of “humanitarianism,” as they did in Yugoslavia, as they did in Afghanistan and as they did in Iraq.

Libya and the Arab Spring

Western leaders have tried to say that the revolt in Libya is exactly like the ones happening across the Middle East, including the successful popular revolutions in Egypt and Tunisia, seamlessly integrating the events in Libya into the “Arab Spring” of revolutions and uprisings throughout the Middle East and North Africa.

The uprisings of the “Arab Spring” began in Tunisia, where protests led to the overthrow of pro-US dictator Ben Ali after twenty-four years in power. In neighboring Algeria, the people also flared up in resistance. Soon after, protests erupted in Egypt against the autocratic neo-liberal Hosni Mubarak, who was ousted from office by the revolution. After these events, the “Arab Spring” expanded in the region, and none of the ruling governments could stop them. In this context, Gaddafi took an opportunist position, claiming that the revolts in Egypt were led by Mossad, the Zionist secret service, and announcing that if he were in Tunisia at the time of the revolt, he would have supported Ben Ali. Jordan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Yemen and many others have since been the scene of protests and riots by opposition groups.

In contrast to the various revolts however, it has become obvious since the NATO intervention that the revolt in Libya is not a popular revolution or progressive. It is primarily an attack by racist and reactionary elements of Libyan society against the government of the Libyan Jamahiriya. This uprising might have been legitimate at one point, but it has been hijacked by reactionary pro-imperialist factions.

The Gaddafi regime, before its destruction by the rebels, did promote such privatization and neo-liberal policies to the detriment of its people. However, the NTC has not arisen to combat this turn to the right, but to make Libya even more right-wing. Libya has one of the highest GDP per capita in Africa, as well as the highest Human Development Index. Libya under Gaddafi also had free education, as well as free studies abroad, free medical care, free water, almost free electricity and homes funded by the state. Libya under Gaddafi was the most developed nation in Africa and much of the Middle East.

The anti-Gaddafi forces formed a committee named the “National Transitional Council” on the 27th of February, consisting of defecting interior ministers, various neo-liberals and former justice minister Mustafa Abdul Jalil, who under the Gaddafi regime oversaw and promoted privatization and liberalization policies.

What really reveals the rebels as puppets of foreign powers however, is that they were completely unable to secure victory without the help of NATO. Up until March 7th of this year, the forces of Gaddafi held the rebellion at bay. On March 10th to March 19th, at the request of NTC leaders and with the approval of the Security Council of the United Nations, the imperialist powers imposed a “no-fly-zone” on Libya. As early as March 17th, the United Kingdom and France recognized the NTC as the legitimate government of Libya.

The events came to a head on March 22nd, when the United States, France and Britain deployed a major bombing force to attack pro-Gaddafi targets, afterwards involving all of NATO in the brutal bombing campaign. Since then, the Libyan “rebels” have shown themselves to be a dangerous, crazed hodgepodge of a mob at best, and a ruthless band of killers at worst. They have lynched black Libyans for their skin color and have ethnically cleansed entire cities, all the while waving monarchist flags. Recent reports have even suggested they are rounding up black Libyans and placing them in concentration camps, where widespread rape and executions have been reported.

Omar Mukhtar, led native resistance to Italian colonization of Libya for decades

History of Libya

Libya, a Saharan country located in the heart of North Africa which dared to defy the United States and the European powers, has a fascinating history that is not often reported in the media. The reason being that if they reported on Libya’s past, it would expose how Africa’s right to economic self-determination has continuously been taken away, politically and militarily.

The same NATO countries currently bombing Libya have a history of occupying the country. Libya was a colony of the Turkish Ottoman Empire. After its liberation from Ottoman forces, it became an Italian colony. By 1931, more than 750,000 Libyans had died fighting the Italian occupation. Ironically, both Turkey and Italy are NATO members participating in the attack against Libya.

During World War II, Winston Churchill sought rapprochement with Mussolini, whom he described as a “Roman genius,” claiming that he “rendered a service to the whole world,” calling him “the great law-giver among living men for his anti-Communist stand.”

King Idris the I of Libya

After the war, the Kingdom of Libya under King Idris the I proclaimed its independence on December 24, 1951. Libya became a pro-US and pro-British monarchy. During the reign of King Idris, the Allied powers of Britain, France and the United States (also current members of NATO) enjoyed de-facto control of Libya. The United States built its first air base in Africa, the Wheelus Air Base, on the outskirts of Tripoli for $100 million. The entire country was devastated by the Second World War, which had obliterated what little infrastructure there was in one of the poorest countries in the world. There was virtually no education system or medical care in the country, no stable government and no administrative services.

King Idris & Richard Nixon

In contrast, the West had unhindered access to Libya’s oil and resources. The Wheelus Air Base was used in the Korean War and became a strategic asset for the U.S. Libya was the only source of Middle Eastern oil that wasn’t shut down by the closure of the Suez Canal, and soon the country had hundreds of millions of dollars worth of foreign private investment.

Flag of the Kingdom of Libya under the King - the favorite flag of the rebels

The true nature of the rebellion is shown by the fact that they wave the flag of British and U.S. puppet King Idris the I. After years of poverty under the corrupt monarchy, which sapped the national wealth for the rulers of the Kingdom and not for the people, a bloodless coup was staged by the Free Unionist Officers on September 1, 1969, led by Muammar Gaddafi.

After the coup, the new government assumed full control over oil production and refused to renew licenses for foreign military bases in Libyan territory. 51% of foreign banks and 51% of all oil companies such as Shell, Exxon, Texaco, Socal and Mobil were nationalized by 1973. Oil prices were raised for crude oil when Libya insisted on setting its own prices, and soon agrarian reform and social programs funded by oil revenue helped Libya build itself into the most developed country in Africa. The Western powers have never forgiven the Gaddafi Jamahiriya government for overthrowing their puppet monarchy, and since then Libya has been labeled as one of the “bad Arab states,” with Gaddafi being the lead “bad Arab.”

Where is Libya Heading?

Despite criticisms one might have of the Gaddafi government, NATO has no concern for the Libyan people. Its only mission is the hunger for its world domination.United States Vice President Joe Biden told the press that this invasion will set the stage for future military attacks. “This is more of the prescription for how to deal with the world as we go forward than it has been in the past,” he said. With this statement, the brutal power of NATO to violate the sovereignty of states anywhere they want, and to make the law everywhere in the world as they see fit, is put plainly for all to see.

Gaddafi loyalists fight with the green flag standard of the Libyan Jamahiriya

The foreign policy of U.S. imperialism for years to come will be shaped by bloody invasions which back reactionary puppet governments and suit the Western power’s economic interests. Powers like the United States use humanitarian justifications like “human rights” and “democracy” to support local rebellions and portray them as democrats even if they are little more than terrorists, thugs, drug traffickers or worse. Foreign imperialist powers do not intervene in oil-rich countries for “humanitarian” reasons, for but self-interest, for territorial conquests, and to gain new access to markets and resources.

The fighters against reaction and domination, who struggle still against leaders backed by imperialism’s ambition, must now keep in mind that NATO is watching and waiting to strike. Imperialism is out for blood, out to restore the hegemony it has built all over the globe that enforcers like Ben Ali and Mubarak pushed onto their people for decades. This is imperialism’s response to cries for liberation.

The death of Gaddafi will no doubt have the West proclaiming its “victory” over the resistance, but the Libyan people’s heroic resistance to imperialist war has not been in vain, because the world has been watching and all the peoples of the world have learned from their example.

Source

Partija Rada: New terror of the Turkish military regime

Turkish army is on another mission of slaughter in Kurdistan. After the changes in the military top, Turkish regime adopted a new strategy of fighting against Kurdish people and its movement. Economic crisis and imperialist war against people of the world allowed all regimes of the Imperialist Internationale to wage wars of limited character in order to solve their internal issues without condemnation of the worldwide community.

“Chemical” Nejet Ozel is the new commander of the Turkish army, who “earned” his nickname after just a couple of days of military operations, which fits the nature of this filthy war just right.

It’s obvious that the main goal of Turkish army is not only retaliation and attempt of destruction of PKK as the representative political and military force of Kurdish people, but also to control the mass uprising of the Kurdish people who demand their rights of self-determination and national rights.

In the same time, it is the beginning of the new sense of Turkish militarization, which serves not only surpression of national movements, but also regional imperialst interests of the Turkish regime – which are directly connected to the interests of western imperialists in the region (situation in Syria, relationship between western imperialism and Iran etc…)

The new strategy of the Turkish army consists of use of chemical weapons and attacking the villages, which forces the peasants into leaving their homes and cuts the link between people and Kurdish military movement. Military actions in Southern Kurdistan are performed with backing of US army, helped by the puppet regime in Iraq and with collaboration of Iranian army. The numbers of dead civilians and Kurdish fighters are growing every day.

But, this war only strengthens the Kurdish people, and words of solidarity come from all over Turkey, Europe and other parts of the world. The youth of Southern Kurdistan is forming live shields in order to stop the attacks of the Turkish army, and plans for the marches up the mountains where the battles are fought are in preparation. Although Turkish police and army are trying to prevent the rise of peace movements in Kurdistan, “Mothers for Peace” will join the youth and form live shields all over borders with Iraq. Political importance of having peace movements in this moment is crucial, since Turkish regime can use the situation and commit even greater atrocities against Kurdish people.

Solidarity with Kurdish people in their struggle for self-determination!

Down with colonial fascist dictatorship of Turkish state!

TDKP: On the Armenian Question and Reactionary-Chauvinist Campaigns

As a response to two significant “external” events of the last couple of years -events with roots in prolonged domestic problems- the ruling classes of Turkey did everything to mobilise the people onto the streets for their own reactionary aims. The government and its institutions launched hysterically nationalist campaigns, first against Italy, based on the Kurdish question, then against France, on the question of Armenian genocide. These campaigns went on for some time and involved reactionary incitements and various forms of action such as demonstrating in front of the embassies and consulates of these countries, boycotting and burning the goods produced by them, even banning education in their languages, etc.

The main objective for these campaigns was to incite the Turkish people with reactionary-nationalist prejudices and win them over to the establishment ideology, rather than to harm those countries economically or politically. In this way, the ruling classes would not only attain social support for their reactionary theses, which lack fairness and historical correctness, but they would also draw the attention of the working people to artificially created external problems, making sure that they support or at least keep silent about domestic problems, undemocratic and repressive practices and economic plunder. And, it did not take long before the organisers of this reactionary campaign held hands with the Italian and French imperialists.

What was the cause for these campaigns and for the worsening of the relations with France?

In January 2001, France officially recognised the genocide suffered by the Armenians in 1915.

It must be noted that the recognition of the genocide by French government was to do with its short and long term political interests rather than its sympathy for the sufferings of the Armenian people. With this recognition, it would secure the votes of the Armenian population in France as well as the support of Armenia in the fight for hegemony in the Caucasus. It was an irony that French imperialism was concerned with the Armenian genocide when it has a shared responsibility for dozens of massacres and genocides all over the world such as Rwanda where one million poor and defenceless people lost their lives.

Continue reading

EMEP: On the course of the crisis and the international situation

The economic crisis with its sharp deterioration especially in the last quarter of 2008 and the first quarter of 2009 -much sharper than that of the 1929 crisis-, relatively slowing down in the second quarter.

One of the characteristics of the recent crisis is the fact that it started in the US, the largest economy in the world, in the construction and manufacturing –especially metal, automotive and related industries- simultaneously with a crisis in the financial sector, overshadowing the former and profound enough to cause a total destruction, that it speedily joined up with the crisis burst out in the other advanced capitalist countries and has become a general crisis spreading over to dependent countries. This course of development has created the impression that the economic crisis had originated from the crisis in the financial sector in the US.

Bourgeois-capitalist circles claim that this crisis is a product of the economic policies, especially wrong financial and monetary policies which led to increasing speculation, over-inflation and “bubbles” in the financial sector; and they try to disseminate these theses using every means available. This misinformation campaign is accompanied by the propaganda that economic crisis can be prevented and overcome by correct economic policies and tighter regulations in the financial sector. This propaganda is designed to conceal the fact that capitalist economic crises are inevitable stages in the process of capitalist development, that they are a product of capitalist mode of production driven by profit and the market, thus developing in an anarchic and uneven way, that they are the apex of the contradiction between the productive forces and the relations of production, and an exploding manifestation of this contradiction. It aims to whitewash the capitalist system and prevent the discontent and anger of the workers and labourers from targeting the capitalist system directly. Moreover, this and similar other propaganda are used to stop people understanding the real cause of the crisis, its magnitude and its destructive effects; and legitimize the economic policies and attacks used to shift the burden of the crisis onto the shoulders of the proletariat and the peoples.

Continue reading

EMEP: No to NATO and Missile Defence System

The Justice and Development Party (AKP) government keeps lying to the peoples of Turkey. Prior to the NATO’s Lisbon meeting, AKP authorities, Prime Minister Erdogan and Foreign Minister Davutoglu both stated that they had objections to the certain articles of the Missile Defence System Project that was put on agenda by NATO.

Following the Lisbon meeting, in which Turkey was represented by President Abdullah Gul, official statements said Turkey succeeded in presenting its case, as if its objections to the Project were actually put under consideration. During NATO Lisbon meeting the Missile Defence System Project was approved, NATO – EU relations were discussed with both non-NATO member EU countries and NATO member non-EU countries as well as updating the road map and making new decisions on Afghanistan occupation. The objections of the AKP government to the Project were represented as not mentioning any country name as the Project is organised against any particular country or countries (from which Iran should be understood), employing some Turkish staff members in the command echelon and specifying where exactly the enemy missiles would be shot by the Missile Defence System.

None of these objections were put on the agenda during the Lisbon summit. Despite not mentioning any particular country name, it is obvious that this Missile Defence System Project was organised against the peoples of the Middle East, notably of Iran and Syria. Certain critical issues such as where exactly the enemy missiles would be shot by the Missile Defence System, in which country the System would be located and who would push the launch button were not negotiated during the Lisbon summit. When the Missile Defence System Project is actualised, whatever are the objections of the AKP government, the United States administration would be the one, which will be in charge of decision making and pushing the launch button as the head of NATO. The Missile Defence Projects also paves the way for missile and missile hardware sales to Turkey and other NATO members. The US weapon monopolies are certainly the ultimate winners of this Project. The Missile Defence System Project caused the AKP foreign policy to collapse. The policy called “zero problem with neighbour countries,” which is so called conducted by the Foreign Minister Davutoglu, has also turned out to be a monstrous lie. Missile Defence System Project means problems with the neighbours; it means the participation of Turkey as a border gendarmerie in the threat posed by the EU and US to the neighbour countries.

It also means being a part to the conflict on Israel’s side on behalf of the US. Since the day one of its foundation, our Party (EMEP) defends the idea that Turkey should drop out of NATO membership. NATO is not a defence organisation; it is a war machine that aggressively poses a threat for the peoples of the world as well as standing as the gendarmerie of the international imperialist capital. NATO, which tried to fool the peoples of the world with the big lie that it was defending the so called World Peace against the threats posed by USSR and Warsaw Treaty for a long time, increased its power and strengthens its presence after the collapse of the Soviet Union and Warsaw Treaty. When the role of NATO in the recent occupations and assaults is considered, it is clear that NATO is not an organisation which protects the World Peace, but threatening it. Turkey should immediately drop NATO membership and focus on peace and friendship policies with its neighbours.

NATO should be dispersed.
Nuclear weapons should be eradicated.
The armament race that is teased by imperialist monopolies should be terminated.

Kamil Tekin Surek
Vice President
Press Statements

TDKP: Kurdish movement’s direction of development


The Turkish bourgeoisie’s war threat to Syria with the support of US imperialism, the driving of the PKK leaders out of Syria, and the bringing of A. Ocalan to Turkey through an international operation -all these events have inflamed discussions about the Kurdish question both in Turkey and in the international arena. Although it is not the first time it appeared on the agenda, the question which arises now is: “What will happen next?” Besides their declarations about the “importance of co-operation against terrorism”, the leaders of the US, the EU countries, Russia, the Arab and Balkan states expressed their views that “Turkey should utilise this opportunity to recognise the cultural rights of the Kurds”. It was obvious that they all were concerned about their own bourgeois imperialist interests and objectives, and that they were making plans as to how and to what extent they could benefit from this question.

The ruling classes of Turkey have chosen to use the “Apo operation” (Apo is the nickname for Abdullah Ocalan) as an instrument to conceal the Kurdish question and the country’s social problems. The authorities, including the Military General Council, the President and government officials, claimed that there is no such thing as a Kurdish question, and intensified propaganda about the “elimination of terror”. Military and police attacks have been intensified and the state of emergency has been spread over the whole of Turkey.

Following Ocalan’s flight from Syria with the intervention of US imperialism and his arrival in Rome, the Turkish authorities sought to create a “national mobilisation” with the propaganda that Italy and Germany as well as Syria and Greece “support separatist terrorism”. Chauvinist and reactionary propaganda was designed to promote reactionary prejudices amongst the most backward sections of the working people and to cover up the attacks and repression on the Kurds. The collaborator bourgeoisie and the top officials of the dictatorship too knew well that the “Apo operation” would in no way keep the Kurdish question out of the agenda.

Continue reading

TDKP: The Latest Attack Directed at Iraqi Kurdistan: Turkey Takes a Further Step towards Middle-East Quicksand

In the second half of March, the collaborator ruling classes of Turkey launched a large scale attack on Iraq-Kurdistan. According to official statements, this attack aimed “to eradicate the PKK in this region”. Turkish troops would withdraw “when this mission was completed”. However, as evidenced by these vague statements, the authorities have been making contradictory announcements about the duration of the presence of Turkish troops in this region. The spokespersons and defenders of the dictatorship are also calling for the “power vacuum” in the region to be filled by Turkey. All Establishment parties, from the most reactionary to the social democrats, have the same view on this matter. However, close examination of the regime’s justifications reveals more. The fact is that the aim of this attack is not limited to extermination of the PKK but directly linked to US imperialism’s policy in the Middle-East.

For example, it was claimed that the attack was “exclusively in the form of a raid”. However, the fact is that everybody was aware of the military deployment on the frontier which began many days before the attack. Thus, it was not a “surprise raid”, the most effective form of counter-insurgency military action. More elaborate and drawn out operation enable the guerrillas to re-position themselves and to disperse into the field in small groups. In fact, two days before the attack, a PKK radio broadcast in that area speculated about a possible operation by the Turkish army and announced that the organisation would withdraw into “inner regions”. Even if some PKK forces could not withdraw from this region, there is no reason to suppose that these remaining forces would be “eliminated totally”. Similar operations have been taking place in Turkey-Kurdistan for years. Their results are well-known. The PKK continues to exist and fight. Also, the effectiveness of PKK does not depend on its military capacity or skill but on the policies it pursues. PKK’s dilemmas are fundamentally a result of these policies.

Undoubtedly, the reactionary forces of Turkey did not decide on this latest attack themselves, as was claimed. However, it certainly represented a great opportunity for the ruling classes to launch this operation immediately after the explosion of accumulated anger of the labouring people in the Gazi district of Istanbul against fascist massacres. Reactionary forces attempted to cover up internal problems through this military operation. No matter how well it is concealed, the truth is that in reality US imperialism planned and directed this occupation. US imperialism obviously now gives a greater role to the Turkish ruling classes in the Middle-East. Through this operation, the reactionary forces of Turkey are getting ready to be one of the most important “cat’s paws” of US imperialism in this region. This operation has also provided an answer to the debates around the need for “a more mobile army with a high striking power” and on “taking part in the imperialist operations in the region”. These questions have been on the agenda for some time. In other words, the ruling classes are practising for their expansion in the region. That is why this operation seemed a sort of military “manoeuvre”.

Continue reading

TDKP: On September 11 and a new wave of attacks by reactionary forces

The 11 September attack on the USA caused the death of thousands of innocent people. There is no doubt that this attack is indefensible as far as the peoples of the world are concerned. However, equally clear is the fact that this attack is the fruit of the situation which has been imposed by the US-led imperialism onto the peoples of the world, a situation characterised by hunger, poverty, degrading and inhuman conditions. It is not surprising to see such actions being reaped by imperialist aggression which has been shedding the blood and getting the “curse” of millions of oppressed people. The US imperialism is harvesting what it had sown. Therefore, the people of America must question the reasons why they had to go through all this, and surely they will.

With a mind of an ambitious merchant, the US-led imperialist states are trying to use terror and sorrow for their own purpose. They considered the 11 September attack as an opportunity and launched a campaign of a broad offensive and expansion in the name of “fight against terrorism”. Yet, it is imperialism itself that feeds terrorism, in such an ironic way that it becomes self-destructing.

In the aftermath of a short-lived shock and panic, US imperialists first declared war against an unknown enemy, then launched an investigation to “identify” it. For the time being, American reactionary forces are using Osama Bin Laden in order to divide the groupings that had been formed against itself in Asia, thus have greater influence in the region. The US is trying to take Afghanistan into its sphere of influence since it is a country which borders the region of a rich source of energy. It is doing this with the excuse of getting Bin Laden whom it now holds responsible for the 11 September attack. However, it is a well-known fact that the US once supported him against Russia, but ironically he got out of hand later. It seems that Afghanistan on its own does not satisfy the American reactionary forces, as they make a list of the countries which “harbour terrorism” in order to attack them.

Although it may seem that an “international coalition against terrorism” is being formed through a spinning “diplomatic traffic”, what is in fact taking place is negotiations with an agenda for redivision. Furthermore, in a matter of a week, the so-called “fight against the war that had been launched against the civilised world” has also begun to have an element of the “fight” among the “civilised world” itself. In this respect “international coalition against terrorism” is nothing more than a lie. The only “coalition” one can talk of is the agreement of big imperialist powers on the necessity to intimidate the oppressed peoples.

The reactionary forces of Turkey, an American ally and a member of NATO, have hastily declared their “support” for US imperialism. Turkey can easily be dragged into the war, not only because of the American base in Incirlik but also because of it being America’s “trusted friend”, the closest one to possible “American targets”. The collaborators in our country see the war as a medicine for their incurable illnesses. However, it is obvious that such an adventure would only bring suffering to the peoples of Turkey and of the region. Although a war adventure may seem as a “way out” to the troubled ruling classes, it would probably worsen their problems, up to the point of their overthrow. However, it would also help, even if temporarily, to distance the working masses, who have been suffering in the hands of poverty and unemployment, from their demands.

Some of the consequences of the 11 September attack have already shown themselves in the rising wave of reactionary forces. With their attempts to pass “anti-terror laws” and restrictions on bourgeois democracy, reactionary forces, especially in advanced capitalist countries, are trying to gain new positions.

On the other side of the coin, however, we see a process of rising sensitivity and awakening on the part of the workers and labourers of the advanced capitalist countries. This is a process that they have been pushed into with the events of 11 September. In these countries what is rising is not only the demand for peace but also the tendency among the progressive forces and intellectuals to question, in a self-critical manner, their lives and the relations of their countries with other parts of the world, how they had become accustomed to injustice, inequality and oppression in the world, and why they had kept silent.

There is no doubt that the events of 11 September have marked a turning point in terms of political relations in the world. Although this turning point is clearly reflected on the concrete forms that domestic policies of advanced capitalist countries are taking, its reflection on foreign policy is not as yet clear. What is also obvious even today is the fact that imperialist aggression will create its opposite, which will be embodied in the anger and struggle of the peoples.

The workers and working people of Turkey must intensify their struggle against the politics of imperialists and their collaborators. This is necessary to win their demands against imperialist globalisation and to keep away from the calamities of a war.

Brief Information About the TDKP

The Revolutionary Communist Party of Turkey (TDKP) announced its foundation at its First (Foundation) Congress held on 2 February 1980. However, the roots of the communist movement in Turkey and the process of the TDKP’s construction go very far back.

The TDKP was founded in an ideological struggle against the opportunist heritage and tradition. TKP (The Communist Party of Turkey) was the first communist party in Turkey. It was founded in 1920 as a branch of the Communist International. A short while after its foundation, the founders of the party, under the leadership of Mustafa Suphi were murdered as a result of a plot by the Kemalist movement. Although TKP remained as a member of the Comintern in the following period, it followed a compromising-opportunist and bourgeois-tailist policy.

What remained in the name of communism in Turkey was the TKP’s opportunism until the late 1960s when the People’s Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO) and other radical revolutionary organisations were founded.

The TDKP developed from the THKO. It was founded by Deniz Gezmis, Yusuf Aslan and Huseyin Inan, who were executed on 6 May 1972, and by some other revolutionary youth leaders. It was an organisation of struggle against imperialism and the fascist dictatorship. It was founded as a reaction against the compromising passivist tradition of revisionism. It represented the disillusionment with revisionism. However, on the other hand, it remained as a Guevarist petit-bourgeois organisation which could not go beyond the platform of revisionism in the ideological sphere. It was eventually subjected to the blows of the dictatorship. Its leaders and militants were murdered either on the gallows or in the mountains.

In 1975 a new process started with self-criticism and continued until the foundation of the TDKP in 1980. This was the Party’s construction process in which it was orientated towards the working class and Marxism-Leninism. It was also a process in which an intense struggle was carried out as a part of the International Communist Movement led by comrade Enver Hoxha and the Party of Labour of Albania against Krushchevite modern revisionism, petit-bourgeois revolutionaries and Maoism. Also in this period tens of thousands of workers, labourers and youngsters were organised and mobilised for the struggle against fascism. Within this foundation process, our organisation lost about 200 martyrs in this struggle.

Continue reading

Is the New Ottoman Empire Possible?

From EMEP

The executives of AKP (Justice and Development Party) have been designating The Ottoman Empire as an enviable ‘model’ for a while; and comparing the policies of Turkey with the power and impression of self-confident Ottoman. The Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, has just stated: “We have to bring the Republic to that position.” by referring to the Empire. Additionally, Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu relates their government with the omnipotence of ordering the region. Fetullah Gulen who has close relationships with the Turkish governors as well as the US government, preached Turkey to follow policies over “the credit inherited from the Ottoman Empire”. There was an emphasis of “mighty Turkey” on the General Basbug’s speech in Mardin (A Kurdish city in Turkey). Previous statements exemplifying Turkey as a powerful and “modal” country of the region has also been made by the governors of the USA and NATO. As it was stated that Turkey has become “the pivot country”, USA Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, recapitulated that Turkey is “the strong country of the region.”, when she was in Turkey.

These statements that emphasize the “power” of Turkey in accordance with its future role in the region are supported by diplomatic, military, politic and some economic approaches. “Negotiation traffic” with countries in the region has become frequent in recent years. A number of deliberation with Iraq, Iraqi Kurdistan, Iran, Syria, Palestine, Azerbaijan, Georgia has been done in short periods. Despite the tension related to “Karabakh Problem” and ” the genocide”, first steps has been taken for improving relations with Armenia and for opening borders. The policy of keeping Azerbaijan on “little brother” chair continues. “Patronage” to Geoargia has been held in cooperation with the USA. Relations with Iraq and Iraqi Kurdistan Federal Government have been amended in consideration of “eliminating” Kurdish resistance in Turkey, capitalizing energy resources, and getting a share of the cake as being transportation route towards Western markets. Agreements have been signed. A role has been taken in “the reconstruction of Iraq and Kurdish region.” The Foreign Minister declared that “they work like a government” and that their goal is “complete integration.” Visa practises in Syria border have been abrogated. “Bilateral friendly relations” between Russia and Iran and negotiations regarding the extention of the scope of trade agreements are being pursued, etc.

Continue reading