The Syrianization of Turkey

Written on October 24th, 2015 in politics Comments Off

Published on The Bullet, Socialist Project’s E-Bulletin No. 1175, by Sungur Savran, Oct 19, 2015.

The immense catastrophe that struck Turkey in the streets of Ankara, the capital city, on 10 October, when two bombs exploded in the midst of a thronging crowd of what would possibly turn out to be hundreds of thousands of people, leading to the death of an indefinite number of people, in any case exceeding one hundred, and the wounding of hundreds, some still under the risk of death, is a sharp reminder, if any were needed, that this is a country undergoing a severe political crisis … //

… The AKP Government Responsible: … //
… The Most Savage Attack on the Working Class Movement: … //
… The Reshuffling of Cards in Syria: … //
… Home-Grown Sunni-Sectarian Militia: … //

… Fraternity Between Peoples or Barbarism:

The Middle East and North Africa is rapidly moving toward a situation of civil war within the Islamic world between the Sunni and the Shia (the latter in alliance with the Alevis). Saudi Arabia and Qatar are the main instigators of the Sunni camp while Iran, of course, is the leading force of the Shia camp. Erdoğan’s dream is (or should one perhaps say “was”) to lead the Sunni populations in this kind of struggle for supremacy within the Islamic world. This is a dream that is rooted in the glory of the Ottoman past. This immediately implies the reconstitution of the umma, the Islamic community at large, under the guidance of the Caliphate, which was abolished by the young republic in 1924. This abolition the Islamists in Turkey have never been able to digest.

This kind of sectarian war within Islam will be a re-edition of the religious wars of Western Europe with redoubled violence. It is to be avoided at all costs. The Erdoğan camp, as well as Saudi Arabia, Qatar and Iran are playing with fire. This extreme threat in the Middle East and North Africa has to be countered by those forces that have no stake in the ground rent generated by oil and natural gas and in the so-called Sharia-compliant finance of the Arab world.

Viewed from the regional angle, the Syrian civil war is precisely a proxy war between these two camps. Erdoğan is the frontline leader of the Sunni-sectarian camp. To even start to command the allegiance of the rest of the Sunni world, Erdoğan has to win his war for survival inside Turkey. In this he has thrown his lot with the takfiri, Sunni-sectarian forces inside and outside the country. This is leading Turkey to the precipice of Syrianization.

Turkey is, on the other hand, a country full of ebullition. Revolts of different kind have succeeded on each other’s heels within the last two years. One year after the waning of the Gezi popular revolt, so powerful in the western cities of the country but not in Turkish Kurdistan, a serhildan, i.e. a popular uprising of the Kurdish population broke out for a week in support of Kobane fighting ISIL. In neither of these momentous events was the working-class present as a class. However, in the month of May this year a struggle that brought tens of thousands of metalworkers erupted, spreading from its original hometown in Bursa, an industrial hub near Istanbul, to many other industrial centres. After a long period of dormancy, the working-class is now back in action. So this is a society that is also full of promises. It is only by overcoming the divisions between the three forces that are represented by these three waves of struggle that the progressive forces can win. And here two things are crucial: fraternity between the Turk and the Kurd and the entry of the working-class onto the political scene. Should these two conditions come together, Turkey will not only see the domestic balance of forces shift decisively in favour of a progressive solution to its political crisis, but can also act as the triggering factor for a forward-looking solution, in a process of permanent revolution, to the problems that the whole Middle East faces.

Which tendency will eventually win will be decided by the living forces of history. It is to be seen whether the socialist left will live up to its historic responsibilities.

(full long text).

(Sungur Savran is based in Istanbul and is one of the editors of the newspaper Gercek (Truth) and the theoretical journal Devrimci Marksizm (Revolutionary Marxism), both published in Turkish, and of the web site RedMed; /about RedMed); (See also: on tr.wikipedia: Sungur Savran;  and on en.wikipedia: Revolutionary Workers’ Party (Turkey).

Refugee related Links: This autumn’s EU border closures for refugees, on Google Images-search – some exemples:

on Muzaffa Ruddin Oct 17 to 21:

on other websites:

Other Links:

India: Without PAN, PF withdrawal is taxed at maximum marginal rate, on live mint, by Parizad Sirwalla, Oct 14, 2015;

Gen Y, stop complaining and start working – V. Vivegavalen, on The Malaysian Insider, Oct 13, 2015;

Comment l’ultra-keynésianisme est en train de détruire l’économie française, dans atlantico.fr, par Jean-Jacques Nette, le 13 oct 2015;

Echec réussi, dans El Watan, par Chawki Amari, le 13 oct 2015: D’abord, le revenu de base pour les sans-emploi n’existe pas en Algérie, alors qu’il est versé en Inde, en Alaska, au Brésil et en Namibie.

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