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

[Ulvi İçil]

David,

a) I do not know if this is an error in English but we surely do not think
that Erdogan had legitimacy
before.
I think that in such a declaration there is no harm to focus on and to
emphasize the current illegitimate situation and no one in Turkey will
criticize TKP (CPT) for, with such a statement, legitimizing earlier
situation because we are well known with our anti bourgois parliamentarist
path and rhetoric and criticized  rather for this latter. I can say that
this statement relies on this accumulated perception of our party in this
direction. We are comfortable about it. Our aim is a focus, an emphasis.
b) We think that countryside will follow the big cities in Turkey and that
this latter are determining the course in Turkey. There are tens of cities
in Turkey, with traditionally reactionary ideologies but we think that
primary are the big cities and not only the biggest three , but some
biggest 10 or 15. Rural proletarit, we
believe will follow urban proletariat ideologically or let's say forced to
follow.

For c) David, it is apparent that Turkey can not be governed in this
manner, impossible. In fact, Erdogan currently does not govern. What
lengthens Erdogan's political life is solely that imperialism too in a
deeper crisis and they do not want to get rid of it at this stage. But in
cities kie Antalya in south, a foreign minister went for a meeting before
referendum and only some 200 people gathered where the result on Sunday was
% 50 - 50. Turkey is not a banana republic, governable in Erdogan's manner.
They demolished 1923 republic, try to establish a new one, and you see, can
a second republic be built on the foundation of such a fraud?
d) About Kurdistan, I preferred  to present our general understanding.
Currently, due to serious mistakes of Kurdish movement about confrontations
with state forces, there is a complete disaster in the Kurdish cities. Due
to this mistaken policies of Kurdish movement, Kurdish people and cities
are in a very bad situation.

Since years, in Turkey, especially on the left movement, there is an
understanding that the most urgent problem is Kurdish problem and that
firstly, Kurdish problem must be solved first. We always stood against such
an approach together with solidarising with Kurdish people. Because we
believe that Kurdish problem is not the most urgent question in Turkey (and
in Kurdistan), that the most urgent one is the capitalist
exploitation of both Kurdish and Turkish working masses. We disagree with
Kurdish movement in that dependency on imperialism, capitalist exploitation
problem are problems to be postponed to after the solution of Kurdish
problem.

Conceiving Kurdish problem solely as a national problem divides the
working-class in Turkey. We conceive Kurdish problem as a labour problem.

Specifically, in this statement we did not mention Kurdistan. Why to
mention it specifically in a statement which covers the whole country? I do
not see it necessary to make any reference to Kurdistan in such a
statement. And this does not make us non internationalist.

We do not have misconceptions of any kind of Turkish nationalism in our
movement nor any reserve about Kurdish people.

P.S. Owner of the restaurant is important in this case. It is not a random
example. He is well-known as a Soros guy. Why  to reject it as a concrete
fact? Why to reject the connections of Kurdish politics with such people?
Not only in restaurants, but also in popular uprisings  like the one in
June 2013. When events broke, Kurdish MPs came together with him to Taksim
square, to take the lead of the movement and to prevent it from becoming
one against Erdogan. They struggled for preventing the slogans requesting
Erdogan's dismissal. Why to conceal the fact that Kurdish movement is a
collaborator of imperialism, of USA, of European Union. Everybody knows
this, it is public information. They themselves do not reject this
fact.That Kurdish leader Demirtas  was promoted on
bourgeois mass media during the election campaign in 2015, everyone knows
this. That Kurdish movement deliberately preferred to include in its body
islamist and reactionary figures as MPs is also a public information.



---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: David Kellogg <dkellogg60@gmail.com>
Date: 18 April 2017 at 00:29
Subject: [Xmca-l] Re: Communist Party of Turkey: 'There is no legitimacy of
political power anymore'
To: "eXtended Mind, Culture, Activity" <xmca-l@mailman.ucsd.edu>


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
> > >
> >
>