National resistance

I think that there are two interesting points that arise from this comment. One is about groups that are 'big nation nationalists', and the second is about the ideology of 'Platformism' today.

There is a 'left' organisation in Turkey today, which is undoubtedly what you would call 'big nation nationalist'. The İsçi Partisi (Workers' Party) today takes this line to the point that it is collaborating with the fascist 'MHP'. They write that today in Turkey there is no left, or right, but only patriots. The interesting thing about this party is that they arrived at this position from a pro national liberation position. They used to be pro Kurdish national liberation, and then they decided that Turkey is an oppressed nation, and there they are working with the fascists. Although I can't imagine anybody in the US taking up this position, I think that it is quite easy for it to emerge in many smaller countries. Remember that this Turkey that we are talking about is a country of seventy million, a member of Nato, and has regularly used its troops to intervene in Northern Iraq.

I am sure that Kdog isn't familiar with our work (understandable as most of it is in Turkish), but if he were he would see that there is far more condemnation of the Turkish state than the PKK, and there certainly is no 'big nation nationalism' there. The people who have taken this pro nationalist position have come to it from exactly the same theoretical basis as those who support the PKK.
the idea

On the point about Platformism, I think that we are being accused of being pro-imperialist here (maybe I am mistaken). This is a common accusation. If you do not explicitly support national liberation struggles, you are accused of supporting the imperialists. I think that the main problem with the ideology of 'Platformism' is that it sees things in terms of binaries. On every issue, there has to be a choice between the two sides. They take the most 'progressive' side, seeing that you can not stand aside from struggle, and that you have to be inside it arguing for your positions.

We take a different position. We believe that some struggles are not on the terrain of the working class, and that workers have no interest in taking sides on these issues. This of course leads to accusations of us standing aside on 'big' political issues. However, I am sure that NEFAC takes the same position with some 'big' political issues. Certainly, I believe I am correct when I say that NEFAC does not enter into the electoral arena, nor does it endorse particular political parties within the context of bourgeois elections. The question then is not one of whether there are times when we shouldn't be involved in 'struggles', but one of which struggles we should be involved in.

The left communists say that today there are no progressive factions of the bourgeoisie, and that the working class should not ally itself with any faction of the bourgeoisie. The 'Platformists' take a position of aligning themselves with 'progressive forces'. Both of these tendencies are consistent by their own internal logic. However, I think that the logical tendency within 'Platformism' will see it moving further to the 'right' in an attempt to 'insert itself into struggles'. An example of this emerging is not only the support for candidates in the elections for the post og General Secretary of Trade unions, but also the fact that even the principle of abstentionism in bourgeois elections is beginning to be questioned in some quarters of NEFAC. We feel here that this willingness to 'insert' the organisation into popular struggles will result in the gradual abandonment of what we see as the hard won positions of the communist movement.

As people have talked of how they would react against coups on this thread, I intend to use the issue of coups and the present political situation in Turkey to illustrate my argument.

Turkey has had four coups since 1960, and many people expect there to be a fifth in the near future. These coups, however, do not all have the same nature. The coup in 1980 unleashed a massive repression against working class militants. The last coup though had an entirely different nature. It unleashed no repression against the working class, and was merely a faction fight between two different sections of the bourgeoisie. The working class were passive bystanders in the affair. For me personally, it had no effect upon my life, and I went to work as normal. Yes, we discussed it at work, as workers discuss other political events, but for the communists I think that there was no way to intervene in this struggle, and it was a time when all we could do was comment. My point here is that it is important to look always at the class basis of a given situation. Certainly in our oppinion for the communists to have supported the 'popularly elected government' would have been a mistake.

In our opinion, the situation today which is moving us towards a coup is one in which the working class should take neither side. The crisis started with the current President coming to the end of his period of office, and the possibility of a member of the current ruling party being elected in his place. Mass demonstrations against this have taken place in four cities in Turkey, Ankara, İstanbül, İzmir, and Samsun. The demonstration in İzmir being about 1,500,000 strong. These demonstrations, although ostensibly in defence of secularism, were certainly supported by the military, and other right wing elements. Watching the demonstrations on T.V. all one could see was a sea of red flags. And here I mean national flags, not communist ones. A cartoon in the popular press after the first demonstration in Ankara summed it up well in my opinion. Below a picture of somebody talking on a mobile phone from the demonstration at the Anitkabir was the caption "What do you mean you can't come to the demonstration? Are you a traitor to the country?". Which side, in your opinion, should communists take in this situation? Should they support the army, the defence of secularism, and ultimately a coup? Or should they take the other position, and support the 'legally elected government'? We maintain that it is not possible for us to support either side here. If that leaves us open to charges of standing on the side lines, so be it. The working class has no interest in which bourgeois factions comes out on top in this struggle.

There are struggles that are on a class terrain, and struggles which are not. I think that the same thing applies to national liberation movements. Do we support a 'left', or 'progressive' faction of the bourgeoisie, or do we struggle to work around class positions.

Due to the length of this post I will move on to the situation in Lebanon, and a response to Kdog's question in a following post.

Devrim

It is difficult to say, Oliver. Even the older people in our organisation were too young to have been involved in politics at the time at the time. It is difficult to know what the balance of class forces was, and to have a feeling for what would have been possible, and what action communists could have been involved in by reading history books. We have people from the older generation who are sympathetic to us in Europe. I will write to a couple of them and ask. I think that there is no denying the anti-working class nature of this coup though. There was mass repression in Turkey in the aftermath aimed primarily against the left, workers, and intelectuals.

This is in marked contrast to the 1997 coup.

Devrim

It would be untrue to suggest that the Kurdish nationalist insurgency was triggered by GAP. The PKK's war started in 1984, and the modern South East Anatolia project was begun in 1989.

That said it had an effect on the conflict, and could be said to have provided a 'material basis' for the conflicts development.

To a certain extent the PKK became a tool of Syria in its political struggle with Turkey. This is illustrated by the logistic, and material support that the PKK received from Syria, and also by how quickly Apo ended up in a Turkish prison cell after the Syrians withdrew their support. This shouldn't surprise us. There is a tendency for national liberation movements to become mere tools in the struggle between rival powers.

It is also true that the creation of the dams in the project did include the removal of peasants from their land. I would not doubt that this fuelled the insurgency.

Devrim

I said 'is beginning to be questioned in some quarters of NEFAC'. I think that the above quote proves my point.

Devrim

It is difficult in times of war to uphold internationalist positions. Certainly those Marxists, and anarchists who oppossed the First World War at first found themselves in a minority compared to the mass socialist, and anarchist organisations who betrayed, the SPD, and the CGT for example. Those who stood for internationalist positions in the Second War were even more isolated.

I think though that we have to first ask what this 'short-term defensive orientation' means. A good starting point would be to ask what it is that the working class has to defend. Certainly, it is not the nation. The bourgeoisie on the other hand do have a material interest in the defence of the nation, and their capital, and also an interest in getting the working class, and the peasantry to die on their behalf. There are times when class action is virtually impossible. I would say that the last war in Lebanon was one of those times. Of course, it is difficult for communists to organise any activity in these periods. I certainly don't think though that a correct response to this is to advocate joining with those who are bent on perusing a strategy of national defence. On the contrary, I would argue that the interests of workers were best served by them refusing to be enlisted into the nations war machine, and either to desert from the nationalist militias, or to flee the combat zone, as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese did. Of course there are those who will accuse us of cowardice, but this has always been the case when the bourgeoisie are attempting to get the working class to die on its behalf.

To summarise, I don't believe that a 'short-term defensive orientation' is in the interest of the working class at all. The fact that workers don't always act in their own interests doesn't mean that the communists should abandon what we see as the interests of the working class.

Kdog again accuses us of big nation nationalism:

But that is misinterpreting what we say. Very few people make a choice to actually die. Those, however, who join in with the defence of the nation certainly accept that they have more chance of dying than those who fled the combat zone as hundreds of thousands of Lebanese workers did. The fact that those who fought were encouraged to do it by nationalists as well as leftists of all hues is an indisputable fact. The communist left, on the other hand, advocates a refusal to fight, and die for the national interest. It is not themselves that you are suggesting these people defend. It is national interests.

Kdog then goes on to talk about the situation in the "South East of Turkey":

Again, Kdog completely ignores the real balance of class forces. Does he imagine that an independent class movement of the peasantry could have emerged , which asserted itself against both the army, and the PKK. Because, we should make no mistake about this, although the vast majority of these villages were destroyed by the Turkish army, the PKK also destroyed villages. In fact the villagers of the region were caught between the devil, and the deep blue sea. Both sides forced them to collaborate with them, and then attacked villages that collaborated with the other side:

The PKK also forced villagers to co-operate, and I am sure that there is no need for me to provide evidence of the Turkish army attacking villages for supporting the PKK.

When you add this to the fact that certainly in its early years the PKK took a distinctly hostile attitude to non Sunni Kurdish groups, and when you consider the ethnic make up of the "South East of Turkey" (see below), it comes as no surprise that the whole war began to take the charecter of a struggle between two ethnic murder gangs.

So what were these villagers to do? In fact the majority of those displaced fled to the big cities Diyarbakır, Istanbul... To suggest that any independent class movement could have sprung up in the middle of the war is to live in a fantasy land. In fact those who accuse the communist left of being merely sloganeers standing on the side lines do more than there fair amount of sloganeering themselves, slogans which have no relation to reality.

Any movement that emerged in these areas during the war could not avoid being dragged into the struggle on one side, or the other. It is impossible to build class militias in the absence of a wider class movement. There are some anarchists who have similar fantasies about Lebanon, which run along the lines of...'in the absence of an anarchist militia'. It completely ignores the balance of class forces, and the fact that any 'anarchist militia' would be dragged onto the terrain of national defence. Kdog recognises this, unfortunately he doesn't see a problem with it:

As I argued before:

The point is that in an absence of a wider class movement "workers", or "anarchist" militias could not avoid ending up supporting one nationalist faction, …or being immediately crushed.

The 'Platformist's' position of ignoring the balance of class forces, and empty sloganeering about the possibility of a 'workers' defence' leads people into supporting national defence. Underneath all of the left wing rhetoric it comes across to me as basically a call for the defence of the nation.

To be continued...

Devrim

As I pointed out before, I don't think that it was dishonest quoting, and the question was a direct attempt to assess if you held the position I said that you held. Let's look at the dialogue again:

Now to me that reads like I implied that you supported Hezbullah, but a careful reading of my post would reveal that what I said was that I thought that you supprted armed resistance to an Israeli invasion. To be fair I accept that you may have misread my comments, and thought that I was suggesting you supported Hezbullah. The uncharitable view would be that you were deliberately misquoting to make it seem like I had. I will let you speak on your opinion of people who misquote:

I then, quite honestly, and openly asked you if you did:

As everyone can see the only difference between my original statement, and this question are my misuse of an article, and misspelling of Israeli in the earlier post. Of course people can also see that I had just apologised for attributing a position to somebody that they didn't hold, and I would also be prepared to apologise to you for the same thing, if it turns out that this is not a position you hold.

So, I ask again: Do you support armed resistance to an Israeli invasion of Lebanon?

If the answer is Yes, I apologise for my presumption. If the answer is no then it seems that you misread my original post, or had just launched into, another accusation of dishonesty, which has been your main tactic in this argument, and were then embarrassed about the fact that in fact you did actually hold the position that I thought you did.

One more point on this:

Of course it is Joe’s prerogative to imply that I am a bit thick. The personal insults do seem to be increasing in frequency though. However, I think that Joe is completely aware of what I meant by ‘binary oppositions’. Even if the phrase is badly coined, I think the context makes it clear. To clarify though. What I mean by a binary opposition is when two choices are presented such as a choice between the British Labour, and Conservative parties. Here it is possible to say ‘no, there is another choice’ This doesn’t apply to yes no questions where the answer is clearly yes, or no. Whatever, either Joe didn’t read the thread, or it is merely more cheap rhetorical posture.

Joe, they are internationally accepted geographical definitions. You call it North West Kurdistan if you want to.

First Joe, I think that this is the second time I have mentioned it. 'Keeps' implies more repetition than that. Second, the only reason that I have mentioned it is because I feel that we are being accused of some ‘unconscious nationalist feelings‘. I have explained that this is unlikely to be the case as the vast majority of our members are not 'White Turks'.

As for the 'some of my best friends...' line. I would just like to point out that, yes, they are, but also that I, myself, am not an ethnic Turk.

Devrim

I don't think so. The question was very clear. We have consistantly argued that we are not only against support for Hezbullah, but also for any form of national defence.

As we both know, these are not the circumstances today. So, lets pose the question in specific circumstances, Did you support armed resistance to the last Israeli invasion of Lebanon?

Devrim

Again as I said before it was because I felt we were being attacked for having some latent 'big nation nationalism'. I appreciate that you stated that your comments weren't aimed at us, but others have aimed those comments at us. Of course it adds nothing to the discusion, but I feel that we are being accused of siding with the Turkish nationalists against the PKK by not supporting them. As you said before you don't consider us to be nationalists, but others have certainly implied that our position has a nationalist basis. If they consider our position to be pro-Turkish nationalist, they should come out and say it, not suggest things like:

or:

Devrim