Jingoism, War, and Strikes (Turkey)
Oct 22 2007 12:10
Well the war has started, and the flags are out in the windows of every apartment block. I saw a fascist demonstration shouting about martyrs when I was walking home from work. On a positive note there are big strikes. This is the front page of the new Gece Notlar (EKS monthly):
Gece Notları wrote:
The Strike At Türk Telekom
The Real Political Issue in Turkey Today
The current strike of 26.000 telecommunication workers at Türk Telecom demonstrates clearly what the real political issues are in Turkey for the working class today. While the Government tries to raise interest in the referendum, and its continual wars in the South East, the working class has posed the question very clearly. For us the real issue in Turkey today is workers’ salaries.
The representatives of the bourgeoisie are very clear on this point. If anybody has missed it, Paul Doany, CEO of Türk Telekom spells it out ‘No employee can expect an increase above inflation’. What they mean by this is that they would like every employee to receive an increase below inflation, and this means that every employee receives a pay cut.
The real issue today is whether workers organised together can try to stop the continual attacks on living conditions that have taken place over the last ten years. For the communists, and for all workers this is the most important issue today.
Slanders Against Workers From All Sides
Of course everyone expects that the capitalist papers will attack the workers. There will continue to be stories in the press like the one about the sad death of Aysel Tosun . One of the things that we do find strange though is how political commentators can get so upset about one death when enthusiastically supporting the preparations for war in the South East.
What many will not be expecting is the language coming from ‘their’ union leaders. Ali Akçan, President of Haber-İs was quick to join the owners in condemnation of workers’ acts of sabotage “This is slander. Our union has nothing to do with any of these incidents. Let them find those responsible, and we will punish them together”. The strike is but a few days old, and already the unions are offering to act alongside the police in attacking militant workers. For us the issue is clear, we support the struggles of the working class to defend its living conditions, and if that means cutting a few telephone cables that means cutting a few telephone cables. Those who run to join the management in condemning workers are showing whose side they are on.
Whose side are the unions on?
The question is whether we should find ourselves surprised by the position of ‘our’ leaders. After all of the militant talk last year, the only action for coming from KESK was one day of ‘not working’. The unions see their role as one of promoting social peace, and submission to the bosses. At the end of the THY strike Salih Kılıç said that “I am honored to put my signature under this contract“. Oğuz Satıcı, chairman of Turkish Exporters Assembly expressed the position of the capitalists perfectly “Wisdom and conscious won, Turkey got the best”. We say that after a decade of defeat it is time for workers in this country to stop putting Turkey first, and to start to put their own living conditions first. When the bosses say that “Turkey got the best”, they mean that the Turkish bourgeoisie got the best. And that means that the workers got screwed. Anyone who is ‘honoured’ to sign the documents confirming this is a class enemy.
The Way Forward
If workers can’t trust their ‘own’ trade unions who can they trust. The answer is similar to that old nationalist proverb. The only friend of the worker is another worker. Workers at Telecom must form committees to control their own strike, and not leave it in the hands of the unions, who will be ‘honoured’ to sell them to the bosses. Many workers across Turkey want to struggle. The willingness of THY, and Public employees to fight was shown earlier this year. Today Telekom workers stand proudly at the head of the Turkish working class. It is up not only to them but also to all workers to make sure that they don’t stand alone. We say to support Telekom strikers, all workers must fight against wage cuts in real terms at their own workplaces.1. A woman who allegedly died because of the strike
2. The Main Telecommunication Workers Union
3. The Leftist Public Workers Union
4. Turkish Airlines
Oct 23 2007 05:37
#2
An interesting article in the western Media today, with the headline 'Diplomacy staves off Turkish incursion' started like this:
The Guardian wrote:
The threat of an imminent invasion of northern Iraq by the Turkish army receded yesterday as Ankara's foreign minister vowed to put diplomacy before war, and Iraq's president, Jalal Talabani, predicted that the PKK guerillas holed up in the mountains on the border with Turkey were about to announce a new ceasefire.
and ended like this:
Quote:
The PKK spokesman told the Guardian that the group expected to make a significant announcement within the next three days, but would not confirm the subject. The spokesman pointed out however that the PKK had announced a series of unilateral ceasefires during the past 10 years, and "they have all been ignored by the Turkish state".
So how on Earth has this 'staved off war'?
Devrim
Oct 23 2007 06:33
#3
Quote:
Well the war has started, and the flags are out in the windows of every apartment block
FFS, lived through this one not too long ago, much sympathy sent your way.
What are your and some libcommies thoughts on the "US and friends" reaction to such a deed? My first thought is US aggression (economic or otherwise) towards Turkey for fucking up one of the few "stable" areas in the occupation.
Oct 23 2007 07:40
#4
Quote:
FFS, lived through this one not too long ago, much sympathy sent your way.
Yes, I am not sure how they compare. I don't really know America. I have heard Americans at other times describe Turkey in nationalist fervour as how they imagine 1930' Germany to have been. This is worse than previous outbursts too.
Quote:
What are your and some libcommies thoughts on the "US and friends" reaction to such a deed?
I think the US want a stop to it. I think in one way it is a vary loud, and violent Turkish call for US action against the PKK.
One interesting point is if there is confrontation with the US (something that I don't think is likely, but certain sections of our mass media fantasies about) what will the 'anti-imperialists' in the west do, line up with our fascists? Actually, there are some interesting arguments that come from certain leftists here that Turkey is an oppressed nation, so we have to support 'national independence'/Turkish imperialism (you can guess what term they use.
Devrim
Oct 23 2007 13:14
#5
Quote:
One interesting point is if there is confrontation with the US (something that I don't think is likely, but certain sections of our mass media fantasies about) what will the 'anti-imperialists' in the west do, line up with our fascists? Actually, there are some interesting arguments that come from certain leftists here that Turkey is an oppressed nation, so we have to support 'national independence'/Turkish imperialism (you can guess what term they use.
Will be very interesting to see what new justifications are invented for this. By the way, 'national independence' is the perspective, perhaps not in those exact words, of some of the Japanese left, another country that once held imperial territory and is shifting stances in the imperialist competition.
Oct 23 2007 13:33
#6
The Swedish Socialist Party (affliated with the POUM in Spain, ILP in Britain, and Lovestone in the U.S.), supported Germany in World War Two, so it is all possible!!
Oct 23 2007 15:08
#7
Devrim wrote:
Yes, I am not sure how they compare. I don't really know America.
And likewise, I don't really know Turkey. 
Anyway, the run up to Iraq War #3 in Montana included nationalists demonstrating (on the sidewalk) and so many flags you'd think we were celebrating "Flag Day" everyday... Most every mainstream local and national T.V. media alot promptly added a waving flag graphic to the news ticker and so forth. Being a public high school student at the time ment that saying the "Pledge of Allegience" became a much more enthused event. Going over it now, it doesn't seem quite as intense as your brief mention of whats happenin' in Turkey atm.
Any further news on the strike btw?
Oct 23 2007 15:25
#8
bozemananarchy wrote:
Any further news on the strike btw?
The strike is still going on. News about it seems to be drowned out by war news.
Devrim
Oct 23 2007 19:58
#9
Just for Devrim and others.... Support the Kurds. Death to the Turkish Infidel!
It sounds brutal guys. 
Our thoughts are with you and the working class victims of this insanity.
Oct 24 2007 05:22
#10
I heard a lot of gunshots as I was going to bed last night. I don't think that it was football (Fener didn't win, and it was too late), or a wedding (Too late in both the night, and the year). They didn't have a celebratory rhythm to them either.
No, idea what it was though.
Devrim
Oct 24 2007 05:39
#11
Devrim wrote:
I heard a lot of gunshots as I was going to bed last night. I don't think that it was football (Fener didn't win, and it was too late), or a wedding (Too late in both the night, and the year). They didn't have a celebratory rhythm to them either.
No, idea what it was though.
Devrim
like i said on MATB, maybe someone got their 'brown wings'.
Oct 24 2007 06:21
#12
revol68 wrote:
like i said on MATB, maybe someone got their 'brown wings'.
I don't understand that.
Devrim
Oct 24 2007 06:45
#13
The battle lines become clearer. It seems that Turkey is winnig the US around to support of some action:
The Guardian wrote:
Hoshyar Zebari, Iraq's Kurdish foreign minister, said after talks in Baghdad with his Turkish counterpart, Ali Babacan, that Iraq's government and the Kurdistan regional government in the north were committed to reining in the PKK."We will actively help Turkey to overcome this menace," Mr Zebari said. He added that Iraq would send a security and political delegation to Turkey for further talks and promised full cooperation "to solve the border problems and the terrorism that Turkey is facing ...".
Article continues
But he fell short of committing Iraqi troops, or the peshmerga fighters of the Kurdistan regional government, to oust the PKK fighters as Turkey has been demanding.Massoud Barzani, president of the Kurdish region, has said his forces would stay out of any fighting between the Turks and the PKK. Iraq has said its army is too busy fighting elsewhere in the country. Any military offensive by Iraq would need US troops, who have been reluctant to attack the PKK.
But they are now reported to be considering an attack in coordination with the Turkish military.
"If there is an attack, it will be a joint Turkish-US affair, with rockets or from the air, and the Iraqis won't be consulted," said a senior political source in Baghdad last night.
Devrim
Oct 24 2007 14:25
#14
Devrim wrote:
revol68 wrote:
like i said on MATB, maybe someone got their 'brown wings'.I don't understand that.
Devrim
Oct 24 2007 15:46
#15
Man that sucks. I hope everything works out for you Devrim.
Oct 24 2007 15:50
#16
One wonders how the recent American decision to recognise the Armenian Genocide, fits into Turkey's taking a more aggressive stance ...
Oct 24 2007 17:09
#17
"you call us genocidal one more time and we're soo gonna wipe out the kurds!111"
Oct 24 2007 18:40
#18
It really pissed the Turks off and it seems something of a coincidence that then suddenly they decided to stick two fingers up to the US. A Turkish violation of Iraqi sovereignty only reinforces the weakness of the Iraqi puppet regime in the eyes of the world, and the failure of the US to adequately "protect" their protoges.
Of course, if the US does line up behind the Turks it may help to limit some of the wider regional damage (a hostile Turkey would be devastating to US interests in the region) but the fact that the Turks have provoked this goes to show just how weakened the US has become.
Oct 24 2007 19:08
#19
http://www.news.com.au/heraldsun/story/0,21985,22636940-663,00.html
Quote:
THE Bush Administration is considering air strikes, including cruise missiles, against the Kurdish rebel group PKK in northern Iraq.The move would be an attempt to stave off a Turkish invasion of that country to fight the rebels.
President George Bush spoke with Turkish President Abdullah Gul by phone yesterday in an effort to ease the crisis.
...
According to an official familiar with the conversation, Mr Bush assured the Turkish President that the US was seriously looking into options beyond diplomacy to stop the attacks coming from Kurdish-controlled northern Iraq.
"It's not 'Kumbaya' time any more - just talking about trilateral talks is not going to be enough," the official said.
"Something has to be done."
While the use of US soldiers on the ground to root out the PKK would be the last resort, the US would be willing to launch air strikes on PKK targets, the official said, and has discussed the use of cruise missiles.
Oct 24 2007 20:56
#20
How linked are the PKK and the Iraqi Kurds? Because they're doing alright for themselves in Iraq and they might not want the boat rocked. Also they might want to bring in turkish kurds to help them pack out the demographics etc and get a bigger share of IRaq.
Oct 25 2007 12:00
#21
A few notes from the home front:
Yesterday only two nationalist demonstrations came past my house. I suppose that is an improvement...There was an attack on a Kurdish area of Ankara by fascists on Monday. I haven't seen anything about this in the media. I heard it from somebody who lives there. God knows what is happening in İstanbul... Nationalists demonstrated at ODTÜ, the so-called 'castle of communism' on Tuesday. It is the first time their has ever been a nationalist demonstration there. Our organisation has a couple of members there, and they produced a leaflet, which went down very well...The left seems in disarray... the TKP are going on about not letting the imperialists divide our country, a little short of coming all out in favour of the war, but only just...I was accosted on the way to work by a flag seller. He asked me if I had a flag, and when I replied that I didn't, he demanded to know why not. I told he what to do with his flag...then I realised that it was probably a very dangerous thing to have done...He was one of seven flag sellers I saw while walking to work this morning. 26,000 workers still on strike at Türk Telekom...Novamed also still on strike too...on a personal note yesterday after an argument with a particularly nationalistic shop keeper, I decided that I wasn't going to shop in places flying the national flag any more. Unfortunately the only shop I have seen since without a national flag was one selling artificial limbs. The need for bread overtook a stupid abstract idea coming from annoyance...
Devrim
Oct 25 2007 12:10
#22
Dev in boycot politics shocker 
thank fuck for material interests bringing him back to the True Path of Communism 
Oct 25 2007 16:23
#23
http://www.nytimes.com/2007/10/26/world/europe/26turkey.html?hp
Quote:
ISTANBUL, Oct. 25 — Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, urged the United States today to take action along with Turkey in the struggle against the separatist Kurdistan Worker’s Party rebels who take refuge in northern Iraq, noting that the United States had taken action against Iraq with less immediate provocation.“One would question why America has come to Iraq from thousands of miles away,” Mr. Erdogan said at a news conference during an official visit to Romania. “We have a disturbance. What kind of disturbance did the United States have with Iraq? Right now, the United States, as our strategic ally, is in a position to act along with us. We acted along with them in Afghanistan.”
Oct 25 2007 16:34
#24
Quote:
noting that the United States had taken action against Iraq with less immediate provocation.
I just note that Turkey's arguments for action are very similar to Israel's justification for the most recent incursion to Lebanon. There are eight kidnapped soldiers at risk! It was only two IDF soldiers captured. So this is like four times as bad!
Oct 25 2007 16:53
#25
Hy Devrim,
keep getting us informed about the situation, I recommend.
Your descriptions of reality remind me immediately what wrote John Reed 90 years ago about the begin of WWI into his excellent book " The War into Eastern Europe - 1915".
I think a short report of it will be warmly welcome on our next issue of Battaglia Comunista.
Red Greets
Oct 26 2007 06:56
#26
Last night the Army General Command thanked the public for demonstrating against terrorism…The news is full of these sort of demonstrations. Every city, or small town has them…It is difficult to say how much the army have been directly involved in organising them…Some comrades tell me about discussions with workers on a Telekom picket line. The workers there were condemning the acts of sabotage, which have taken place, and saying that they were patriots, and wouldn’t do anything against the country…Everybody is caught up within it…Leftists still very confused. I speak to the comrades from ODTÜ again. The leftists there are deciding whether to attack the fascists. They have been talking about this for four days now. I am slightly shocked when I learn that there are only actually six fascists there…Anarchists are arguing that we should burn Turkish flags. Are they crazy? The result would be pogrom. There was a flag burning incident a couple of years ago, and the whole country was whipped into hysteria. I can’t imagine what it would cause in Today’s atmosphere…I speak to a girl at work, her voice drops to a whisper when she mentions to me that she is Kurdish. Twenty percent of the country are Kurds, and how many are even afraid to whisper it now…“The US secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice is to visit Turkey early next month to try to reduce tensions between Ankara and Iraq.” There is a war going on today, and she is coming early next month. Whatever they are saying, is this a signal from the States giving a green light to the generals?…The Chief of the General Staff, General Yaşar Büyükanıt, calls for demonstrators to ‘be restrained’. He says it is the PKK who want to spark ethnic conflict. This makes me feel much more relaxed about the nationalist mobs roaming the streets. It is the PKK who want to spark ethnic conflict not them…I count the number of Flags flying from my apartment block. There are only seven. Why on Earth am I thinking ‘only‘.
Devrim
Oct 26 2007 11:39
#27
i'll try to be more optimistic.
my optimism does not come from the strikes. probably all of them will lose. the telekom strike is broken in the kurdish regions. it is not surprising considering the statements of the head of the union. he said that he will be the one to break the strike if it will be necessary for the national security. in general the whole strike wave in the last months was nothing other than confirming the de facto defeat of the working class. one by one from the public to the private all sectoral negotiations went into conflict and in all of them the dominant classes were able to impose their demands. they initiated it, they dominated it, they won it.
one friend commented on the the demonstrations that the people were so numerous that he would not call them fascists, they were a movement. and this is partially true: turkey had never a mass fascist movement, but a strong defensive nationalism due the memories of the demise of the big ottoman empire in a very short time period and schizophrenic official nationalism which passes this mind shape of the ruling classes to the whole population.
(it tries to be ethnic and civic at the same time and feels no incoherence at all. as an example there was a story in one of the biggest newspapers -hürriyet, freedom- arguing that the etruscs were in fact turks who migrated from anatolia at 1000 bc. the genetic tests have proven that the etruscs are more similar the "turks" in west anatolia than to the italians. wait a moment, turks in anatolia at 1000 bc? didnt "we" come at 1000 ad? what the story actually proves is that the west anatolians inherited the genetic pool since 3000 years and the migrant from center asia through iran encauntered with them rather than an empty space. so it proves that the "turks" are not turks. the other side of the story is that iran get a proper state a few centuries later and this migration gates is more or less closed, while turks migrating from the other gate (south russia) eventually christianized.)
even my friends or family members participate and can participate to these demonstrations and thats the biggest problem. in the first demonstrations I saw mainly young man making the hand symbols of the fascist right, but the popular schizophrenia blows by the media makes it an irrefutable discourse. the state used this tactic in istanbul technical university (itü): a march against pkk attacks can be easily organized and transformed to an attack against the secessionists i.e. kurds, leftists, liberals or anyone else. so they were able to erase the left in itü. after the demo in metu, ankara, recently there was a 100-150 people strong demo in boğaziçi university (a stronghold of left-liberalism one can say).
lets begin with the optimistic part: the last move of the pkk seems to me the best thing they have done in the last 3 or 4 years. after the never-ending demos came to an end everyone had to remember that pkk has 8 POWs. and the state should resolve this. the whole hate is directed to barzani, but i believe that it is a break with the past attitudes. when they say that we should direct the barrels towards him, they also say that he should be interlocutor of the deals. this is the general consensus among the newspapers. the commission of iraqi foreign ministry had members from puk and kdp and ankara had to accept it. so ankara began to deal with iraqi kurdish parties directly and officially and probably indirectly with pkk (the head of the dtp proposed to negotiate for the release of the turkish soldiers). as i repeated before an intervention to northern iraq would be a total waste and disaster for turkey and therefore it wont happen. about 1200 pkk guerillas are in turkey, only 500-600 in kandil mountains and 3 000 in the whole iraqi kurdistan. no regular army can defeat a 500-strong guerrilla army in a region like kandil mountains in a small time period and even if it did, what about he majority of pkk?
there are also some other questions for which i have some answers, but not sufficient ones:
- why is iran consistently opposed turkish intervention? is it related to a iran-usa war?
- how is the conflict between islamist akp and kurdish dtp going on in the northern kurdistan?
- some leftists claim that turkey is experiencing a historical crisis just like weimar germany. is a reconciliation between the elitist nationalism of kemalism and an islamic neoliberal state based on parliamentary one-man-rule with plebiscites really possible?
Oct 26 2007 19:12
#28
Six months ago the Internationalist Communist Left in Turkey was discussing the possibility of war in Northern Iraq. At the time the very suggestion that this was possible was being mocked by people such as miasnikov_perm as absurd. Today Turkish troops are continuously crossing over the border to attack PKK positions, Turkish artillery is being fired across the border, and Turkish warplanes are bombing Iraq… And still these people are claiming that there won’t be a war!
It is unclear to us what would prove to them that a war is possible. What would they need to accept this? Would Turkish troops on the streets of Mosul convince them? Their whole argument is based around a fallacy. This is that Turkey won’t intervene in Northern Iraq because it would be a disaster. It ignores the whole dynamic which is creating the descent into chaos, and barbarism across the entire Middle East. It is not that the bourgeoisie wants war, it is that the dynamic of imperialist rivalries is dragging them towards it. Whether they want it, or not.
Miasnaikov’s analysis of the strikes in Turkey today is something that we also disagree with. It seems to us that he is completely writing off the current wave of workers struggles. He see everything as doomed to fail already. At a point where the Telekom workers are twelve days into their strike, and the potential for strike in the public still exists, for Miasnaikov it merely ‘confirms the de facto defeat of the working class’.
Of course others are free to disagree with the analysis of our organisation. We, ourselves except the possibility that on certain issues we may be wrong. The Turkish army may pull back from the brink. This years strikes may be defeated.
Nevertheless, we insist on the general framework. Capitalism has a tendency towards war. The only force that can oppose this is that of the working class. National liberation movements divide the working class, and pit worker against worker in the service of different anti-working class factions.
For us it is not surprising that Miasnaikov’s analysis leads him to adopt these political positions; the working class is defeated, and the actions of the PKK are the only things to be optimistic about.
Positions that those standing for internationalism, and workers struggle completely reject.
Enternasyonalist Komünist Sol
Oct 26 2007 22:04
#29
1. i didnt mock anyone's comments. that is something i also discuss in my organisation and i have taken this position always seriously. please judge me with truthful claims.
2. about the optimism part: i did not claim that the actions of pkk, or kdp, or akp, or any other party will create a democratic stage for the working class revolution. i was not very precise about what i find good in it: i think that the claims about the coming of fascism in the next winter are exaggerated and behind the last conflict i see possibilities of reconciliation rather than an endless war and pkk's last action did in fact strengthened this possibility. do you see it as some kind of a support for pkk?
3. i keep my position on the recent struggles. turkish trade unions are the main cause of these struggles and they are also the main cause for the defeat of them. i should probably remind that i am currently doing solidarity work with those workers, because it is more beneficial to be with the workers whether the strikes will be defeated or not.
i didnt understand why you made an organisational comment about my comment. i didnt call mikail's or leo's comments in the previous discusions absurd, but this organisational statement is really absurd.
Oct 27 2007 14:02
#30
High court lifts government ban on ‘negative’ media…There is general bourgeoisie media approval of the fact that we don’t have censorship in Turkey…What this means is that you censor yourself. After all if you write anything at all against the national interest you can be tried under the all covering Article 301, insulting ‘Turkishness’...Or end up dead like Hrant Dink, Ahmet Taner Kışlalı, Uğur Mumcu, Ümit Kaftancioğlu, Abdi Ipekçı…I decide not to go to the football tomorrow. At Sivaspor on Monday there were 15,000 people, all with Turkish flags. The Chief of Staff praised them. I think it will be the same everywhere this weekend.. Generally, I don’t stand for the national anthem. I can’t imagine what not doing that would cause tomorrow…Rice warns Turkey against interfering in Iraq…I had an hour discussion with a group of railway workers about the war while I was at work today. Most of them are arguing the standard nationalist line. Some of the things that are said are frightening: “We will clean the Kurds”. One of them argues things that are close to us. It makes me feel a bit more optimistic…I mention it to a comrade later, and it turns out that the rail worker is an anarchist, and the comrade knows him. That is how small the group of people arguing against the war is…Yaşar Büyükanıt Says that a cross boarder operation is not imminent. It sounds like it will start after the 5th of November meeting.
Devrim
I just heard another demonstration going past my house. That is the fourt one I have heard/seen today. I met some people in town earlier and heard reports of other demonstrations in different parts of the city.
Devrim