Contribution of the Labour Party, [EMEP], Turkey

Many important developments have taken place during the last decade. Especially two of these important events along with their results have steered the major imperialist forces of Europe to redeploy themselves. The first of these was the occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq by the imperialist-reactionary forces led by the US. The second important factor was the world capitalism’s economic crisis of 2007-2008, the second largest crisis of the past century.

The big imperialist forces deemed these two major and important developments as evidence demonstrating that the “world is entering a new phase” and hence swung into action in order to redetermine their positions within the “power relations”.

The competition between the international monopolies and the imperialist forces have taken sharper forms. The expansion of the borders of the EU and NATO towards the East has provided the major Western powers and their international corporates with new fields and possibilities for exploitation. As an imperialist “union”, the EU has enlarged its market in order to serve the interests of the major powers and monopolies and it has been the labourers of the “union” countries, beginning with the working class, to be forced to pay the ‘bill’ for this process.

Thus once again it has been clarified that the bourgeois discourse on “peace” and “democracy” continuously kept on the agenda by the spokespeople of the EU bears no other meaning than harnessing other countries and transforming them into fields for exploitation. The scope of the aggressions have been broadened with the EU member countries organising their economies in accordance with the need for increasing the return on capital and competitiveness and by means of privatisations and flexibilisation together with the labourer hostile “restructuring” policies in the social domain beginning with health and education.

The change indicated by the power relations and the capitalist rearrangement of political-military strategy is not limited to causing a differentiation in the relations between the imperialist major states and monopolies that are locked in a cut-throat competition with one another. Harshening the economic-social policies to the detriment of the working class and labourers while taking into consideration the interests of the large monopolies, the further cutting back of the labourers’ political-social and economical rights becomes evident as some of the most important results. The developments of the last ten-eleven years suggest that this is the orientation of the policies of large capital and bourgeois states. Political pressure and miltary-police ‘measures’ have been increased, social and economic onslaughts have been intensified, social gains have been cut back and while policies such as keeping the wages and salaries low, aggravating and destabilising the working day and workplace conditions in order to increase capitalist profit are carried out against the workers and labourers, resources amounting to trillions have been put to the service of banks and the large monopolist enterprises.

Not only US imperialism but also the major powers of the EU deem it “vital” for their own capitalist interests to have the say in controlling the energy resources, particularly oil and natural gas, as well as the transfer channels of these resources to the Western markets by direct or indirect intervention in the regions they consider as being “strategic spheres of interest” from the Balkans to the Middle East and Central Asia. Germany acted as one of the most important ‘command centres’ in the occupation of Iraq by US and British imperialism. (Turkey was another country that acted as headquarters for the transportation of 70% of the force-equipment-supplies necessary for the occupation by the hand of the AKP government and under the administration of the Erdogan-Gul twosome whom the US administration had no qualms about identifying as “reliable men”.) All together they participated to the occupation of Afghanistan under the guise of “NATO Allies”. While the USA was declaring that the 21st century would the “American century” based on the claim that it was the “unrivalled leader” of capitalist imperialism, the crux of the others’ “objection” was what their shares were going to be and how it was going to be determined. Sharpening the competition, the crisis further dislocated and tensed these relations. Unified in terms of putting the burden of the crisis on the working class and the labourers, the bourgeois states and major imperialist powers counted coming out of the crisis in a strengthened way as being one of the conditions for leaving their competitors behind and hence entered into a reactionary race with one another in pursuing more aggressive policies.


Proclaiming that “the new period begins” and “it can’t go on as it was”, the intention of hiding the aggressive policy via the rhetoric of “freedom and democracy” and “taking the sovereignty of people into consideration” shows the severity of the threat. This tactic for misleading the peoples has once more become distinctive observing the policy about the peoples’ riots in the Middle East and the North Africa countries. While the premier representatives of the collaborator governors in Tunisia and Egypt were kicked out by the revolutionary uprisings of the peoples, the imperialists not venturing to side against the millions try to retain the movement at the lowest level, to save the system and its corporations and to bring the new collaborators instead of the overturned ones, if possible. However, the direct military intervention policy is being carried out in Libya. The motive that guides the imperialists who claim to “liberate” Libya by bombing is the goal of having more from the loot. The necessity of the imperialists to hide their goals of aggression and intervention, which so far protected the bourgeois monarchist dictators and the despotic governors of the Middle East and the North Africa countries and looted the resources via them is because they see that it’s getting more probable that the rage of the peoples can turn towards themselves.

The action of the working class, the labourers and their organisations and the communist policy to follow

The intensification of the international attacks of the capital and its direct relation to the rivalry between the big imperialist forces were opposed by the struggle of the working class and the urban workers and their young generations, who are on target of these attacks. Hundreds of thousands of workers had demonstrated in the invader imperialist countries and almost all countries of Europe against the invasion and war policies. There had been big demonstrations in UK, France, Germany, Spain and Italy against the war and invasion. They shouted that the aggression to be stopped, the invasion troops to be withdrawn, self-determination right of the peoples and the nations to be respected and that the annexation policies were unacceptable, carrying on these demonstrations in some countries for months. This struggle against the governments’ policies which had resulted in increasing unemployment rates, poverty and lack of the social rights intermittently continued in the following years, sometimes getting weakened and sometimes strengthened.
Wide and massive protests, demonstrations and mass strikes and general strikes again took place against the policies of having the workers and labourers pay for the bill of the crisis. Greece witnessed the struggles after which it can be described as “the country of general strikes”. There had been a lot of strikes, general strikes and insurgencies in France. In the countries like Greece, Portugal, Spain, where the crisis and the consolidation policies of the big forces had brought to the verge of “smash” and “bankrupt”, labourers headed for the struggle in order to break the poverty-misery-unemployment noose aimed at their necks. Lately, five hundred thousand workers and labourers demonstrated in England against the social and economic destruction policies of the government.

However, this struggle of the workers and labourers in Europe couldn’t reach a strength, organisation and wideness so that it could be possible to repel the economic and social aggressive policies and to invalidate the imperialistic military ones. The development level and the international struggle experience of the European working class show that it has – excluding the secondary ones – two main factors. These are: a) Despite the synchronous or asynchronous important massive insurgencies, strikes and protests in many countries, the movement couldn’t reach a level to pass beyond the state of defeat and regression in the last 50-60 years and couldn’t get more or less stabilised. b) The characteristics of the unionist-vocational and political organisation of the working class, policy of the working class parties or lack of party of the class.

These two factors directly related with each other and the importance of the second for the first can not be irrefutable. In last decades, those monopolist bourgeoisie and international capitals applied “re-regulation” of the work which complicates the organisation of the workers, the effects of the compromised trade unions, reformism and revisionism barricaded the working class struggle against the capitalism.

If we consider the organisation level which forms strong communist parties in France, Germany, Italy, Spain and Greece and trade unions with millions of members, the fateful role of the revisonism and reformism could be understand better. Every withdrawal or deviation from the strong minded defence of the demands of the working class and the labourers had beaten the labourer movement and served to pull it to the traps of capitalist system by social democracy, reformism and collaborator unionism.

The strong effect of the bourgeois parlamentarist traditon in European countries, lied behind the strenghtening social democracy and reformist policies among the working class and its organisations, and this effect is still going on.
The destruction of compromised trade unionism that weakens the independent organisation of the working class against the capitalism combines with the European Left and serves to hold the movement in the channels of the system and pull back.
Parlamentarist compromised policies of European Left that gilds the capitalism and the imperialist European Union, are good examples for this. Fearless attacks of bourgeoisie and governments are also related with the consciousness of this accursed role.
Uniting the workers and labourers for their demands against these compromised policies and practices is more important today. Revolutinoray policy with the mission to bring together the labourers in strugglist trade unions and mass organisations is an urgent necessity of strenghtening the labourers' struggle line against the insists of the monopolies and imperialist forces.

We can achive this only by defending and protescting the economical, social and political demands of workers and labourers and by mobilizing them for these demands. We can go forward to the target by a clear and strong minded revolutionary rising against the dictates of European Uniond and Brussel Commisions; wars, occupations, plundering and exploitation; refusing the chauvenism and racism and by a revolutionary practice among the masses which serves to transform this revolutionary policy and strategy to a well-organised force among the working class and the oppressed people.





Mehmet Ozer
Member of the Central Committee
of the Labour Party (EMEP), Turkey



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