ECM 2012, Contribution of the Communist Party of Turkey [En.]

Dear comrades,

I would like to dwell on the following point made by Comrade Papariga in her introductory speech to this meeting. Comrade Papariga said, “any peculiarities in the manifestation, the intensity or the duration of the crisis from country to country do not determine the character of the crisis neither should they influence the strategy and the tactics of the communist party.”

This point shall be highlighted, as clearly stated by Comrade Papariga, for the entire communist movement. Yet, it shall be highlighted for the case of Turkey in particular as the peculiarities in the manifestations of the crisis are quite different than those in Europe. Nevertheless, the strategy and the tactics of the communist movement in countries such as Turkey do not and shall not differ in its essence.

What are those manifestations?

As regards the economic situation in Turkey, if we take the statistics at face-value, we cannot talk about an ongoing economic crisis. Representatives of the bourgeois government constantly brag about the economic performance of the Turkish economy, which grew around 8.5 percent last year and 3.5 percent in the first half of this year on a year-to-year basis. The official unemployment rate has declined to 8.9 percent as of June 2012 and the serious current account deficit seems to be falling as economic growth decelerates.

Yet, these are very crude data indicating only superficially that the Turkish economy is doing relatively well. If you go to further detail on each and every indicator showing the performance of the Turkish economy, you see deep vulnerabilities; a country that is walking on a knife edge.

For instance, thesharp decline in the rate of growth points to a hard landing. One may say 3.5 percent growth is still okayconsidering the situation in the world economy. However, when you look a little bit further, you see that the sustainability of these growth rates is strictly dependent on capital inflows from abroad. As net capital inflows to Turkish economy declined around 31 per cent with respect to the first half of last year, the growth rate had shrunk almost 60 percent. In other words, the growth performance of Turkish economy relies widely on the decisions taken by the European Central Bank and the Federal Reserve. Yes, there are attempts to attract more capital from the sheikhdoms of the Gulf, but the Turkish economy is large enough that would not allow it to keep its macroeconomic balances intact solely by the help of the money channeled through Islamic finance institutions.

The current account deficit, that had been more than 10 percent of the GDP since the latest trough in 2009, seems to be recovered. However, the declining volume of imports is nothing but a manifestation of the falling domestic demand and growth. On the other hand, around 20 percent of the rising volume of exports is “fictitious” gold exports to Iran, which reached to 1.7 billion in the first half of this year. If you deduct this fictitious amount from the volume of exports, you get the real rate of growth further decelerated to 2.6 percent, and a still ongoing problem of large current account deficit even though the economy is slowing down.

And finally, the rates of unemployment… At this juncture, we have the well-known tricks to hide the real level of unemployment and misery. But if you look further into the data, you see that Turkey has the highest level of urban unemploymentand one of the highest youth unemployment ratesin Europe. Furthermore, if Turkey had a “labor participation rate” equal to that of Spain, it would have an official unemployment rate of 24.2 percent, which is only slightly below Spain’s 25.1.

Enough for the outlook of Turkish economy…

In short, even though the current situation does not manifest an economic crisis in Turkey, each and every data shows that the Turkish economy is on a knife edge;and its prospects are very much dependent on what is going on in imperialist centers.But the economic situation in Turkey, the deepening immiseration and exploitation of toiling masses are not perceived as the major manifestations of crisis. The crisis is perceived rather very deeply at the political sphere, in the form of social resistance and resentment from the ruling the party’s policies and the new regime it had established.

Comrades,

Communist Party of Turkey has been emphasizing that there has been a procedure of regime change in Turkey, which started in 2002 and pretty much completed with the general elections of June 2011. The main pillars of the First Republic established in 1923 had been destroyed in order to build the Second Republic based on pro-market, pro-imperialist, expansionist and Islamic foundations.

This is not to say that the First Republic excluded these characteristics entirely, but the new regime has reinforced the anti-popular elements of the bourgeois republic while eradicating any progressive element in it. The regime change in Turkey, akin and precedent to those happening in the Middle East and North Africa, enabled Turkish capitalism to assume more active roles for the sake of imperialist interests in the region, and to this end, this new type of articulation with imperialism has been supported drastically by the United States.

Yet, as our party has been emphasizing for a long time, the regime change in Turkey does not and cannot render this country politically stable. Indeed, the very roles embraced by the Second Republic of Turkey in the region have proved to be sources of dire instabilities.

The aggressive role pursued by Justice and Development Party (AKP) in the imperialist “proxy war” in Syria, for instance, led to severe disturbances especially among the Arabs and the Alawites in Turkey. As the border town of Hatay, which is widely populated by Arabic Alawis, has been resisting to the installation of Syrian Islamist groups and all sorts of foreign intelligence services operating in the region, the AKP government’s search for legitimizing its actions against Syria has taken a major blow. Such resistance and repulsion have not only remained local, but also become widespread among especially the Alawite population.

The quest of the new regime of Turkey in the region has also made the Kurdish issue even worse. Despite all the talk of the AKP government on a new, so-called “Kurdish opening”, hundreds die every month in the Kurdish war. On the other hand, the pretext of the government for the deteriorating situation on an alleged Syria-Iran-PKK alliance hold no water since it is the AKP government itself that has riddled the borders for the mercenaries. As the Kurdish war has grown worse, the talks on the so-called “Kurdish opening” have lost its credibility not only among the Kurdish people but for the Turkish people as well.

As the new regime of Turkey has been up a blind alley with its Neo-Ottoman fantasies, it pushed forward even further Islamization and oppression inside the country. The new system of education imposed by the government foresees children at the age of 9 to be enrolled in religious schools. Many ordinary public schools have been transformed into religious vocational schools, and hours of new religious courses have been imposed in the curricula of all primary and secondary schools. Such agenda is defended militantly by the Prime Minister himself as a prerequisite for “raising religious generations”.

Sunni Muslim indoctrination in public schools goes hand in hand with increasing pressure exerted on secular social behaviors and conducts, with opening huge religious complexes in metropolitan areas etc. There is, as well, a resistance especially among the urban population against such reactionary policies and oppression.

Furthermore, as the new regime imposes greater Islamization and authoritarianism, and show further aggression against neighboring countries in the region, many people have been disillusioned from the political trials that are actually designed to purge the leading cadres of the old regime. For a huge section of the population, these trials are nothing but a sham that are staged for the sake of building a new, Islamist regime. On the other hand, many people start to realize that the purged elements of the old power bloc are defeated, powerless and incompetent vis-à-vis the attacks of the Second Republic.

Dear comrades,

In a nutshell, this is how the crisis manifests itself in Turkey. There has been a regime change, which does not and cannot render Turkish capitalism stable and safe. A huge section of the population; the workers, the youth, poor peasants, the Kurdish people, the Alawite poor etc. resent from the Second Republic and resist the Islamist transformation it imposes.

The social democracy and the opportunist, liberal sections of the “left”, serve several crucial functions for legitimizing the deeds of the new bourgeois regime. First of all, they serve to isolate the resisting social elements from each other. They isolate the Alawite poor from the Kurdish people, the workers from the families who resist the Islamic indoctrination in public schools etc. The liberals that present themselves as the “left” still try to legitimize the acts of the AKP government and its new regime under the banner of “democratization” and claim “Islamization” and “populism” as one and the same.

So what would the communists do under these circumstances; how would we interfere?

The crucial point is to indicate the class character of opposition to the new bourgeois republic, to underline that its anti-peoples stance is a whole and it can be defeated only as a whole. We have to clarify the class interests common to all resisting elements in Turkey, we need to unify these elements under the agenda of building a Third Republic, the Socialist Republic of Turkey.

We need to politicize the social resistance against expansionist and reactionary policies, and make it clear for the toiling people that deepening capitalist exploitation and immiseration of the working class constitute the objective ground for all these. We have to debunk the myths created by the opportunists, the liberals, who claim that Islamist Turkey is more democratic. We have to challenge the social democracy which divides and alienates the resisting elements to the logic of the new regime.

In short, the communists must unify the various elements of resistance, which have been consolidated as the crisis deepens, under the banner of socialism by pointing to the working class interests. This is the way how the communist movement will achieve a mass character. This is the way how the struggles will achieve a well-aimed political orientation.