[Xmca-l] Re: Communist Party of Turkey: 'There is no legitimacy of political power anymore'

Tue Apr 18 13:14:52 PDT 2017

Yes, it was 1982-83, well after the revolution. Boumediane had invested a
lot of the oil and gas money from Sonatrach in a huge steel complex just
south of Annaba called Al Hajar. At the time we thought it was the biggest
in the world; Wikipedia says it was only the biggest in Africa. I can tell
you: it was bigger than South Works in Chicago.

Boumediane drank himself to death, and there were two men ready to replace
him: Yahoui and Benjedid. Yahoui was supported by the Part de l'avant garde
socialiste (which everybody, including "pagsistes" called the "pags"). The
pags was technically illegal (like our teacher's union in Korea today) but
it was the fuel that fired the Sonatrach union and the steel union.

So when I arrived in Algeria, Yahoui had just been done away with by Chadli
Benjedid. Chadli made the pags illegal for real, and that's how we ended up
in restaurants run by the hashish sellers (called, inconguiously,
"comistas", for the Sicilian greeting, "como ista?") I was a little
faint-hearted for all this (I had just done a stint in prison in Syria and
it was pretty awful), so most of the time I lived next door in Tunis. In
Tunis the CP was legal, and I had a job with the Soviet Cultural Centre.

Sometimes I would come and spend time with friends in the Cite Patrice
Lumumba in Annaba, bringing the Tunisian paper, Attariq Al-jedid with me.
They didn't like it very much. I think I only taught one class to the
steelworkers, and I really doubt if they learned very much. I remember
thinking that Capital would be too hard, so I prepared a lecture on "Wage,
Price, and Profit", and my Arabic was terrible, so I spoke in French. At
the end of the lesson, one of the workers, who had a copy of Camus in his
lunchbox, asked me if I thought Marx believed that existence preceded
essence.

I've been shy of philosophy ever since.

David Kellogg
Macquarie University

On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 9:17 AM, Helena Worthen <helenaworthen@gmail.com>
wrote:

> Hi, guys -- I was actually interested in the history Ulvi was telling. No
> one else around here is going to share that.
>
> And it's interesting, David,  that you taught steelworkers in Algeria --
> when was that? Post-revolution, I assume. We're about the same age.
>
>
> H
>
> Helena Worthen
> helenaworthen@gmail.com
> Vietnam blog: helenaworthen.wordpress.com
>
> On Apr 17, 2017, at 2:29 PM, David Kellogg wrote:
>
> > You didn't answer any of my four questions, Ulvi. They had nothing to do
> > with TKP history, Syriza, George Soros, Abdullah Ocalan or any
> connection,
> > real or imaginary, between them. I don't care who owns the restaurants
> > where Kurdish leaders meet. (When I taught about use value and exchange
> > value to steelworkers in Algeria, we met in restaurants owned by street
> > gangs and drug pushers.)
> >
> > My questions were about the statement which the TKP released which you
> > circulated on this list. I think it's an important moment, and it's worth
> > circulating a statement. But I also think that it's worth asking some
> > questions about it, and getting some answers. So let's stay on topic
> (YOUR
> > topic) as best we can.
> >
> > David Kellogg
> > Macquarie University
> >
> > On Tue, Apr 18, 2017 at 2:39 AM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com> wrote:
> >
> >> David,
> >> We founded our first legal party in 1992 with the name Party for
> Socialist
> >> Turkey because we believe that seizure of the political power is at the
> >> center of Marxism and Leninism, a central point I believe today and in
> the
> >> last 100 years after October, tens of communist parties could not
> >> understand due to a very poor understanding of leninism, that "develop
> >> democracy first, then socialist revolution" nonsense. I look at today's
> >> communist parties for being able to see who is for a socialist
> revolution,
> >> in the October sense, led by urban proletariat supported by rural
> >> proletariat. I can not see such a leninist party, except our party,
> greek
> >> communist party, to a certain extent venezuelan, russian communist
> workers'
> >> party but unfortunately none in Latin America, nor in Asia and Africa,
> >> nowhere in the South.
> >> Our first party wrote it in its program that autodetermination of
> Kurdish
> >> people was an absolute right and it was forbidden in 1993, we foresaw
> it.
> >> But we wrote it. Then we founded Party for Socialist Power in 1993.
> Then we
> >> took the actual name. In all three programs, it is stated that Kurdish
> >> people and Turkish people are the equal founder peoples of Socialist
> >> Turkey.  I draw your attention to this point: equal founder peoples a a
> >> future socialist Turkey.
> >>
> >> David, this programatic stance is well beyond that of the current
> Kurdish
> >> social democratic movement. We see ourselves as the communist party of
> both
> >> kurdish as well as turkish proletariat, urban and rural.
> >>
> >> Kurdish dynamics is immensely valuable. For what? For a socialist
> >> revolution. We always attached great value to it and we imagined that
> >> Kurdish people's struggle is very important for such a revolution as
> long
> >> as...it is a movement for poor peasants, workers.
> >> (Now in the midst of an immensely barbaric capitalist exploitation, this
> >> movement does absolutely nothing for Kurdish workers in cities like
> >> Istanbul where millions of Kurdish people work).
> >>
> >> Then, Kurdish movement especially since 1995 preferred another path, it
> got
> >> closer to islamists and exploiting Kurdish bougeoisie  and to
> imperialist
> >> European Union and United States.
> >>
> >> Currently, Kurdish capital Diyarbakir, is less important to this
> movement
> >> than Brussels and Washington.
> >>
> >> And why Demirtas now in jail does not make its party's press
> conferences in
> >> its own buildings but in businessmen's restaurants related with Mr.
> Soros,
> >> without having any shame to say that the votes received by its party
> >> represent a victory for the toiled masses.
> >>
> >> The name of this businessman is osman kavala. He headed Soros' Open
> Society
> >> Foundation in Turkey for some years and together with Demirtas they
> labeled
> >> June 2013 movement in Turkey as an attempt of coup d'etat to Erdogan.
> >>
> >> Kurdish movement, Demirtas and Ocalan stated more than once that they
> saved
> >> Erdogan and this is public information.
> >>
> >> Everyone knows that any time Erdogan will call them they will approach
> him
> >> selling the people's cause. They are nit anti imperialist, they are
> >> praising islamic figures together with Erdogan, they do nit defend
> laicism
> >> and leftist values anymore.
> >>
> >> Minutes of meetings between state and Ocalan are published and it is
> also a
> >> public information that since long time Ocalan and the state work
> together
> >> on a project. A project to liquidate communist
> >> movement via adherence to this heroic epic Kurdish people's struggle.
> >>
> >> In fact, there is no more left in Turkey, except our party. It adhered
> to
> >> Kurdish movement who makes negotiations, bargains with AKP and with EU
> and
> >> USA.
> >>
> >> If, in the name of respecting this epic struggle, we are expected to
> forget
> >> our primary task, that of preparing a socialist revolution in Turkey, we
> >> will not do that. Never. We are not stupid. And we have our own lessons
> >> from these 100 years, of the capability of inperialism how to manage
> >> leftist movements, national liberation movements etc as in the case of
> >> Syriza, Spain and Portugal that I mentioned before even as in USSR.
> >>
> >> Kurdish movement can rely on our support as long as they are jailed, as
> >> soon as they struggle for Kurdish masses.
> >>
> >> But if while they are giving their right hand to Graham Fuller from CIA
> and
> >> expect us to take their left hand.
> >>
> >> No. We are now clever enough after so many hard lessons.
> >>
> >> I would be glad to know more revolutionary movements, communist parties,
> >> their existence if any, which, like us, concentrate their efforts only
> and
> >> only, immediately on the seizure of the political power by the
> proletariat.
> >> Not for "struggling" for "advanced democracy stupidities.
> >>
> >>
> >>
> >> 17 Nis 2017 00:36 tarihinde "David Kellogg" <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
> yazdı:
> >>
> >>> Ulvi:
> >>>
> >>> I wonder how many parents have been taught to play piano by their
> >> children.
> >>> Makes you think that the Suzuki way really is a "Mommy Method"!
> >>>
> >>> When I was a kid growing up in France, we learned a parodistic version
> of
> >>> the Internationale before we learned the real one, and the last verse
> >>> always ended with:
> >>>
> >>> "L'internationale sera le genre humain (The Internationale will be the
> >>> human race)."
> >>>
> >>> And we would add:
> >>>
> >>> "Et le boudin! (And sausage too!)"
> >>>
> >>> Since we were not yet in middle school, we thought the last line, which
> >> we
> >>> delivered with a kind of pianistic flourish, was really part of the
> song.
> >>> As Lang Lang shows--we were right. (Thanks, Helena!)
> >>>
> >>> The "huanwei" ending of the Yellow River Concerto (originally a
> Cantata)
> >>> was Xian Xinghai's way of trying to convert a nationalist struggle into
> >> an
> >>> internationalist one. You can see that the struggle of the Kurds
> against
> >>> Erdogan has that potential. You can see that Erdogan's struggle against
> >> the
> >>> Kurds does not. From Xian Xinghai's perspective, the TKP position that
> >> both
> >>> struggles are somehow equivalent makes no sense at all: it is like
> saying
> >>> that the Chinese struggle against Japan is the same as Japan's struggle
> >>> against China.
> >>>
> >>> And by the way....
> >>>
> >>> a) In English, if you say that there is no legitimacy any more, that
> >> means
> >>> that there was legitimacy before. Was there?
> >>> b) The TKP admits that the countryside still votes Erdogan, but says
> >> there
> >>> is "no chance" that his legitimacy will be accepted in the cities. How
> >>> about winning over peasants?
> >>> c) The statement says that AKP has lost its "capability" to rule.
> >> Whistling
> >>> in the graveyard!
> >>> d) Nothing--nothing whatsoever--about Kurdistan.
> >>>
> >>> David Kellogg
> >>> Macquarie University
> >>>
> >>> On Mon, Apr 17, 2017 at 6:49 AM, Ulvi İçil <ulvi.icil@gmail.com>
> wrote:
> >>>
> >>>> http://news.sol.org.tr/communist-party-turkey-there-
> >>>> no-legitimacy-political-power-anymore-172017
> >>>>
> >>>
> >>
>
>
>