Joint statement on the riots in Turkey - Kara Kizil Istanbul and Servet Dusmani

Turkish regime has completely lost its legitimacy. Supporters of AKP government support it as their own government; they are conscious of governments sole purpose is to operate as an instrument of violence not only against the working class but also against the otter opposing bourgeois factions. The regime receives a passive electoral support from certain segment of the workers. However, the sole reason why the workers support the government is that till now Erdogan employed a very effective economic and political blackmail strategy against the Turkish and Kurdish workers. The government is threatening workers with economic crisis and the resumption of civil war with PKK (Kurdish National Army with which the government is playing a secret diplomatic negotiation game). It is claimed that if AKP leaves the government this will end the prosperity that Turkey witnessed in the recent years.

However, Gezi revolt was very symbolic in showing that this prosperity has reached its limits since it basically relied on huge non-productive construction and gentrification investments that international speculators with short term easy money funded. These investments relied on the privatization of public assets, which happened in incredibly corrupt ways. The recent leaked telephone records showed the depth of corrupt relations formed around government, business, and media and Erdogan's family. Now that easy money is retreating from MINT countries, the government's 10 years long corrupt economic bonanza program is rapidly approaching to an open crisis.

Turkey stands in a junction today. Since all the traditional republican ideals that at least minimally (however unequally) formed a basic "social contract" binding the fragmented (ethnic, religious, political) social groups, the country can fall into a spiral of sectarian violence. In the last few days there were pogroms against Kurds in various small western towns. Many believe that behind these sudden rise of fascist pogroms after years of ceasefire is provoked by the government. However, surely Turks in many heavily right wing towns are already open to such provocations. The other alternative is the working class alternative, which can unite Turks and Kurds, as it already happened in Gezi Revolt. However leftists in Turkey are solely defending various programs of democratisms and a positive future perspective, communism is not on the horizon.

Just as the rest of the region around it, Turkey is also approaching to a moment of severe state collapse or crisis: it is either going to resemble Ukraine, Syria, or Iraq - a slow or rapid sectarian disintegration of society- or, Bosnia - an internationalist united working class alternative. Working class will decide which will be the course.

Correction: Comrades from Red and Black Istanbul are fighting on the streets, so the statement above is not collectively signed by them yet. However, I am sure their actions on the street is a signature itself.

I will update, whenever I receive any further info...

Anarchists in Istanbul/Kadikoy forcing the police to retreat:

Anger spontaneously burst out all day long. This little kid from Diyarbekir a major town in Kurdistan/South East Turkey is shouting: "Murderer, Robber AKP!"

https://vine.co/v/Mql9YDnY27P/embed

Entdinglichung

@mikail firtinaci: will the protests "merge" with the Newroz celebrations?

Entdinglichung;

I think no new major riot will ensue in the following few days till the elections. The riots of the last two days were a gesture against the government, an obstinate desire to show that the spirit of revolt is still alive, and a collective mourning, fulfillment of a duty towards a young brother.

Government, with its usual right-wing paranoia feared these revolts as if they actually threatened the state, and reacted with an insane brutal police violence -well, nobody expected anything less from Erdogan. I think, as the legitimacy of government continues to evaporate it will turn more and more violent. What is strange is all those social and political crises don't seem to affect the voting patterns. Instead the existing sectarian (ethnic, religious, political) antagonisms are becoming sharper, and in some cases surfacing in the form of proto-pogroms against Kurds in provincial Western towns, etc.

I don't know what to think about the future. I think Newroz is too culturally and politically "Kurdish" for a vast majority of the people who participated in Gezi. It seems no ethnic-religious-cultural sign can be powerful enough to affect Gezi spirit. And maybe that is not such a bad think. Communalistic tent camp in Gezi had some sort of sub-conscious allusions to a primitive communist collective memory - or at least I like to think that way. There was no money, nobody asked who you were or what was your politics, everybody embraced each others as equals, and most interestingly women were literally at the forefront -in a surprising way for a heavily patriarchal country like Turkey. I feel that was something "innocent" and "pure" that people could feel attached to. In the last two days' revolts there was the same feeling. Some workers from stores over the route of the funeral mass spontaneously went to strike. I saw pictures of conservative people praying for Berkin. Same things happened a few years ago with TEKEL struggle, when the workers set up a tent camp occupation in the center of Ankara...

The strange thing about this feeling of communality is that it is silently communistic without actually forcing people to give up their established sectarian mentalities. It is almost like a magical truce in which people to let themselves enjoy an egalitarian solidarity and community, a temporary halt in cultural antagonisms. I think, a genuine proletarian struggle can achieve the same and even more, but Newroz can't.

I am sorry Ocelot. I could not find time yet to write longer or edit.