MLCP INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN No: 42
MLCP INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN No: 42 - 16.02.2006 13:18
1- The Kurdish Question and "Sub and Supra Identity" Discussions
2- The Counter-Guerrilla, Turkish State and NATO
3- Strike in European dockyards
MARXIST LENINIST COMMUNIST PARTY (TURKEY/NORTHERN
KURDISTAN)
MLCP INTERNATIONAL BULLETIN February 2006 / No: 42
To
view orijinal:  http://www.mlkp.org/english/bulletin/bulletin_42_print.pdf
1- The Kurdish Question and "Sub and Supra Identity" Discussions
2- The Counter-Guerrilla, Turkish State and NATO
3- Strike in European dockyards
The Kurdish Question and “Sub and Supra Identity”
Discussions
The colonialist regime has recently brought again into the agenda the discussions
of “Kurds are a sub-identity”. Yet the discussions on identity in
these frameworks are not a new discussion. In the face of Kurdish national liberation
struggle, the subject has been discussed many times under the concepts of the
“Kurdish reality”, “cultural richness”, “Kurdish identity”
and “Bask model”. However even these discussions have had been used
as a tool of propaganda for “change” or “progress”, at first
in pursuance of acceptance and later letting to be forgotten. In other words,
the Kurdish people were putted into such numerous expectations causing disappointment.
There is no doubt, the discussions on sub and supra identity show that the State
has reached from the wording of “Mountain Turks” to the wording of
“the Kurds do exist”, and it is a product of the Kurdish national
liberation struggle. But through this, in essence, they want the Kurdish nation
to forget its right of self-determination and its right to establish an independent
state.
The existence of Kurdish nation is an undeniable reality. It cannot be reduced
to the level of sub-identity. It is because the Kurds, with their country, language,
culture and thousands years of history, are a nation that has been divided into
four parts by Iraq, Iran, Syria and Turkey. In spite of the colonialist approaches
that have been concretised in the form of turning them into a Turk, Arab, Persian
or a people without identity, the Kurds have succeeded to continue to exist.
The fight for a free and independent Kurdistan is conducted in every part of
it even with unequal and tough conditions.
The last discussions on sub and supra identity is, in fact, a continuity of
the colonialist regime’s annihilation and denial policy in rarefied shape.
On one hand it aimed at the hiding of dark organisations and their dirty actions
such as State’s counter-guerrilla, Special War Branch, which were caught
red-handed in Semdinli (a town in Northern Kurdistan), and the extinguishment
of the Kurdish uprisings that begun to grow and deepen on the other.
Discussions on identity have intensified after the statements in Semdinli of
Prime Minister, T. Erdogan who went there in a great secrecy and hurry. There
he announced that the Kurds “are a sub-identity depending on the supra-identity
of the Republic of Turkey citizenship”. But, due to the pressure from the
generals and status quoits’ state clique, he was not late to make new statements
and show inconsistencies that disclaim his former statements. T. Erdogan did
not only said that the people of Semdinli cannot be listened as witnesses in
the court where the members of counter-guerrilla were tried, but he also repeated
that he is in favour of denying, chauvinist and racist official and traditional
policy in the form of “One flag, one nation and one state”.
In his New Year message, the President of Turkey, Ahmet Necdet Sezer has underlined
the status quos of the Turkish bourgeoisie and once more repeated the denial
of Kurds. “The Kurds cannot be a sub-identity” he said. Thus the regime
has again repeated that it cannot tolerate even to the discussions on “sub
and supra identity” that were thrown into the middle in order to hunt down
the Kurdish people. With his following words: “According to our constitution,
the Republic of Turkey has an indivisible unity with its land and nation and
it has got one single state-structure. There is only one founder state, one
country and one nation. We can't give up these facts and the ideal of one language
and one flag. Accepting everybody -who is a Turkish Republic citizen- as ‘Turk’
does not necessarily mean to alienate ethnic identities of the elements that
constitute the Turkish Nation”, Sezer has both replied Tayyip Erdogan and
his supporters, who tried to hunt down the Kurdish people with the wordings
of “sub-identity” and also shown the borders of colonialism to the
ones expecting a democratic solution from these discussions.
We can say that there are two points attracting attention: The first one is
the declarations of divided, contradictory and controversial will-powers on
the state level, including the prime minister who made statement on the Kurdish
identity. And the second one is the participation of the national reformist
PKK leaders by “optimistic statements” on these discussions which
every time put Kurdish people into engagement or new expectations.
In 1978 and latter years, the national revolutionary PKK (Workers Party of Kurdistan)
was writing followings in its brochure entitled “The Road of Kurdistan
Revolution”: “In the foreground, Kurdistan revolution targets the
Turkish colonialism. It is the Turkish colonialism that seizes the political
independence, continues to function as to complete annihilation on the Kurdish
language, history and culture, destroys and plunders the forces of production.
This colonialism is supported by imperialists in outside and the feudal-compradors
inside. These there powers, which are connected to each other with close economic
ties, form the targets of revolutionaries of Kurdistan…Tasks of the Kurdistan
Revolution predict the creation of an independent and democratic Kurdistan.”
Through “Imrali Defence”, the leader of PKK, A. Ocalan, who was handed
over to the Turkish bourgeoisie state on 15 February 1999 as a result of an
international imperialist conspiracy, has pointed out the need for PKK’s
strategic change and transformation. The PKK, which hereby entered into reformist
path with its 7th Extraordinary Congress organised in the beginning of 2000,
went for strategic changes in political, organisational and programmatic areas
under the name of developing a “peace project”. And in their 7th Extraordinary
Congress decisions, they declared: “Chairman Apo,… has putted in front
of everyone the key solution of impasse problems by making Imrali Defence. This
approach aims to find solution to the Kurdish question without touching the
borders and within the democratic republic. This solution, which corresponds
with the historical Turkish-Kurdish relations and the reality of Turkey, at
the same time, carries a characteristic of Kurds to live freely with their identities
and to develop their language and culture”.
“Our 7th Extraordinary Congress has approved the strategic changes in its
programme in order to deepen the peace process started by Chairman Apo through
his Imrali Defence and decided to put in practice an intense peace project for
the solution of Kurdish question on the basis of Turkey’s democratisation.(ibid)
As it can be seen, the PKK has also begun to search for a solution of Kurdish
question “within the democratic republic” since 1999.
Such that A. Ocalan has repeated his same thoughts during a meeting with his
solicitors on 30 November 2005, and he said that he is affirmative with the
ideas of the Turkish Prime Minister: “…I am in favour of a solution
in the frames of a unitary state-structure. If they want solution, why our way
is not cleared? I was the person who used before the concepts that are being
used by the Prime Minister now. These concepts belong to me…My style of
solution is the solution of 21st Century. I am noting down this to history.
I defend the Democratic Republic thesis. Here we are not discussing the constitution,
assembly and army of the Republic of Turkey. We accept the Republic of Turkey
Citizenship as the constitutional supra-identity.
In the same meeting, A. Ocalan said “My suggestion to our people is to
insist on democratic solution. All our people must be in mobilisation for their
entire cultural rights, at first the right of education in Kurdish language”
and predict a mobilisation for the educational-cultural rights in order to achieve
democratic solution.
However, in “The Road of Kurdistan Revolution” brochure, a solution
in such forms was evaluated in following words: “...The ways of solution
brought forward by both the ‘revolutionaries’ from oppressor nation
and the ‘revolutionaries’ of the oppressed nation -that are different
from the first ones only in nuances but play the same music- on the subject
of national question, in the form of ‘regional autonomy’, ‘federal
union’, ‘autonomy of language and culture’ are reactionary. And
it is contrary with the thesis of ‘independent state’, the only true
way of consideration of the nations’ right of self-determination in our
day.”
In his Imrali Defence, A. Ocalan puts forward the invalidity of the principle
of nations’ right of self-determination and claims it is a dead-end: “The
nations’ right of self-determination, which came into fashion in 70s’
and interpreted only as the formation of a separate state, in fact was a dead-end
with that interpretation. In the practice of Kurdistan, it was putting into
impasse the problem…However, when I saw in practice that even the understanding
of semi-state, federation, autonomy and etc. are backward and sometimes cause
dissolution in comparison with the richness of the style of democratic solution;
it become very important for me to concentrate on the democratic system.”
(Imrali Defence P. 17)
These attitudes are doubtlessly putting into difficulty the revolutionary-popular
solution of the Kurdish national question, and giving more time to the colonialist
regime’s impositions on dissolution.
MLCP considers the real settlement of the Kurdish question within the revolutionary
solution which would bring “the full equality of nations and languages”:
The power of the Union of Workers’-Toilers’ Soviet Republics.
This solution was tested and seen in the practice of socialist Soviet Union
(SU). The voluntary union of equal, free and independent republics had glorified
the people in common, made them brothers and sisters, but the privileges made
them enemies of each other. In the light of all these, MLCP has determined the
first clause of its programme of Anti-Imperialist Democratic Revolution as follows:
“Fascist dictatorship of collaborationist-monopolist bourgeoisie and big
landlords shall be overthrown through violent revolution and be replaced with
a Union of Workers’-Toilers’ Soviet Republics. But the right of separation
remains.” Moreover, in the Clause 12, it has been said: “The policy
of assimilation and colonialist fascist terror and the dirty war carried on
against Kurdish nation shall be brought to an end, and obstacles in the way
of Kurdish nation preventing it from exercising its right to establish its own
state and its freedoms to agitate, inseminate propaganda and organise with this
purpose, shall be lifted and the right of Unification of the Kurdish people
is recognised and will be defended.” And the Clause 13 is almost in the
characteristic of responding the current sup-supra discussions: “A full
equality of rights between Kurds and Turks shall be ensured, restriction on
all languages and cultures shall be abolished, a systematic struggle against
Turkish nationalism shall be carried out, efforts shall be made to get Kurdish
and Turkish peoples as well as Lazs, Gypsies, Abkhazs, Georgians, Circassians,
Arabs, Armenians, Greeks and other nationalities live together in the Union
of Workers’-Toilers’ Soviet Republics on the basis of full equality
of rights and completely of their own accord.”
This is the communists’ declaration of identity and solution plan! [
^ TOP ]
The Counter-Guerrilla, Turkish State and NATO
It is a known fact that there have been created gangs within the state and
the army under the control of the USA and the NATO, and that these gangs have
carried out numerous bombings, massacres and tortures within the state and on
behalf of the state following the acceptance of the Turkish State to the NATO
in 1952. The existence of these networks of massacre -whose name was “The
Board of Mobilisation Verification”, later changed into “Special War
Branch”, “Special Forces Commandership”, “JITEM and etc-
have been tried to be kept confidential. They were financed by the USA shortly
after their creation. The existence of such counter-guerrilla organisation has
had to be partially accepted when the CIA stopped its financial support after
the occupation of Cyprus by Turkey in 1974 and when the Turkish General Staff
of Army asked for a huge amount of money from the “hidden allocation”
to be paid by the then prime minister. However, in 1990, the Chief of Special
War Branch, Brigadier General Kemal Yilmaz confessed the existence of the counter-guerrilla
gang and since when it was activated by saying “the Special War Branch
founded on 27 September 1952 with the decision no. 17/c of the Supreme Board
of National Defence that was functioning as today’s National Security Council.”
The NATO and US, both are the centres of imperialist wars, occupations and massacres,
create and train such murderer gangs that do not recognise any rule, even violate
the state’s laws and judicial system in order to strangle the fight of
the working class, to kill communists, revolutionaries and progressives to prevent
oppositional developments in all countries as well as Turkey that they took
under their hegemony. This counter-guerrilla gang, known as GLADIO in some countries,
started to act just after its formation and killed dozens of Greeks and Armenians,
destroyed thousands of their workplaces, churches, cemeteries, hotels and factories
during the chauvinist attack on 6-7 September 1955. These gangs do have responsibilities
in the historical massacres of our country such as Maras, Corum, Sivas, in the
dirty war in Kurdistan, in thousands of disappearances and extra-judicial killings.
Although very little of these members of the gangs are taken into custody thanks
to the pressure created by the people and public opinion, they can freely walk
around because they are protected by the state. The fact, which was brought
to open by a traffic accident in Susurluk, showed that the state has sunk into
dark and dirty relations from top to bottom. The relations between the state-mafia-politic
were revealed when a car carrying a MP, a Police Chief and an officially fugitive
fascist murderer hit a truck in Susurluk. A murderer, Mehmet Agar, who said
that he carried out 1000 operations in Turkey and organised thousands of massacres,
is now serving in the parliament as a MP. Another killer Mehmet Ali Agca, who
killed journalist Abdi Ipekci in 1980 and carried out an assassination attempt
against Papa John Paul in Rome is freed from prison. Although he has been sent
back to prison again due to great reaction against his release, the Turkish
state’s awarding of counter-guerrilla elements is continuing by freeing
them from prisons. Tanju Cavus, who rained bombs and bullets on the people in
Semdinli, but caught red-handed and given to the state, has also been released
from prison in January. There were also founded Kalashnikovs, bombs, lists of
people to be killed; street plans and etc. in the car that belongs to the murderers
who were caught by the people in Semdinli.
All these show that the counter-guerrilla organisation created within the Turkish
State and Army under the observation and control of the NATO against the working
class and labourers are still active and continue to threaten our peoples. The
release of publicly known murderer members of the counter-guerrilla, Agca, Oral
Celik, Mehmet Agar, Mahmut Yildirim (with Yesil nick name) is an indication
of the state’s insistence to attack the working class, the Kurdish people
and the entire oppositional forces.
MLCP will continue to render to account the Fascist Turkish state and its counter-guerrilla
organisations until putting it as a whole into the dustbin of history and freeing
our working class and labourer people. [ ^ TOP ]
Strike in European dockyards
The dockyard workers in Europe have waged a united resistance against the neo-liberal
attacks on dockyards by the EU, the union of monopolies.
The draft named as “Dockyard Package II” and opens the door for privatisation
and outsourcing of dockyards, at the same time, carries the characteristics
of being an attack of disorganisation. The flexible work and outsourcing, the
placement of temporary work were also going to be a process of narrowing the
opportunities for workers to be unionised.
On 11 January, the European dockyard workers have responded this neo-liberal
attack of the EU, the union of monopolies, with continental strike. The strike,
which was echoed in Germany, Holland, Belgium and Finland, stopped the life
in European dockyards.
The police have attacked to the dockyard workers’ action organised in front
of the European Parliament in the Strasbourg city of France on 17 January, the
day when the draft was going to be considered in the European Parliament. But
the workers clashed with the police. The dockyards in Spain, Portugal, Belgium,
Holland, Greece, Germany, Switzerland and Denmark have also responded the draft
with resistance on the same date and time. In the face of workers’ resistance,
the EU imperialists have disapproved the draft by making back step.
The EU’s privatisation, outsourcing, disorganisation attacks on dockyards
has a historical background. Similar attacks had also come to the agenda in
2003, but the draft was refused due to again the dockyard workers’ resistances.
An element, which came to clear in the working class struggle during the OPEL
workers’ recent strike in 7 countries, has once more shown itself in the
European proletariat’s fight against the privatisation of dockyards.
With the development of the economical and political organization of the capital
on the international scale, the international resistance of the workers against
the international attacks of the trans-national monopolies and the capitalist
unions such as EU is an aspect which has the ability to develop and which has
to be developed in the class struggle.
The risk of being limited with dockyards is a weakness of the dockyard workers’
resistance. The European bourgeoisie is implementing neo-liberal attacks against
the workers working in various sectors of each country through governments and
of European wide through European Union. The major monopolies’, which have
got production units in many places of Europe and the world, attack of redundancy,
closure of factories and etc. in single or more than one countries now happen
frequently. The EU countries are bringing one after another into the agenda
the attacks on the social, political and economic rights of the working class.
In such conditions, the limitation of worker resistances with sectors or production
units drops the chance of success.
As it is shown by the actions of automobile sector and, recently, by the dockyard
workers, it is now an obligation for working class to get organised on regional
and international sphere on the basis of trade unionism or politically. In the
fight against the bourgeoisies’ attacks, the working class is face to face
with a task to overcome “national” borders and to struggle against
capital through its international organisation.
The workers’ actions continue in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan
In Adana, the TEKEL workers are following the footsteps of SEKA. Following their
unsuccessful privatisation attempt, the government have decided to close down
TEKEL. But the workers are saying “We will die but not withdraw”.
On 4 January, the Malatya TEKEL workers have organised an action of blocking
the roads in order to support Adana TEKEL workers, who locked themselves in
the factory, and to protest the closure of TEKEL (Tobacco and alcohol sector).
Against the decision of closure by the government, Adana TEKEL workers have
occupied the factory on the 2nd of January. Malatya TEKEL workers, facing the
same situation, have also occupied their factories on 19 January. The actions
of TEKEL workers responded with solidarity actions of other TEKEL workers in
Bursa, Istanbul and many other cities of Turkey and Kurdistan. ESP (Socialist
Platform of Oppressed) has also called on workers and labourers to support TEKEL
workers through its activities of enlightenment and visits of support.
Again the workers have responded with not leaving their factories when the TUPRAS
petroleum refineries decided to be sold to the Koc-Shell partnership. [
^ TOP ]
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