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

[Helena Worthen]

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
>>>> 
>>> 
>>