06.03.2022
Let's stop the robbery! For the rights of citizens, against the profit of the oligarchs!
From the editor. We present a translation of an article published on the website of the Communist Party of Turkey .
In recent months we have become poorer. All basic products and services have risen in price: from bread to water, from electricity to transport.
The government, formed by the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi ( AKP ) - approx. ed. ), speaks without a twinge of conscience about saving, reducing the diet, and also urges not to go outside without the need and, if possible, spend the whole winter at home.
In December alone, the workers' confederation announced a 25% increase in the prices of basic foodstuffs . So food was down by a quarter in December, despite supposedly a "record increase" in the minimum wage and an 18 percent rise in the Turkish lira against the US dollar overnight.
And on the first day of 2022, the news reported another price increase. The new year began with news of an average increase of 75% in electricity prices for households. To this, the government formed by the AKP party once again began to tell us that this was not a promotion, but a great sacrifice made by the government for the sake of the people. The price of electricity was much higher, they said, but the government allocated significant funds from the state budget to ensure that this increase did not affect private companies involved in the distribution of electricity. The electricity distribution companies kept their profits, but we workers survived the electricity price increase by "only" 75% .
The AKP-formed government we are talking about is a government that has sold off far more state property and the country's wealth to local and foreign capitalists than ever before in the last 20 years. It was this government that placed the fundamental rights of citizens, such as the rights to electricity, water, heating and transport, into the hands of the oligarchs as a source of income. It was the government that introduced the right to plunder, telling the owners of the companies: "The country and everything that you can plunder in it belongs to you," and the workers: "If you have no money, you have no right to live."
Sabancı , Cengiz , Limak , Kolin and other major capitalist holding companies that have taken over the electricity distribution companies and made huge profits once again express their deep satisfaction with the actions of the government formed by the AKP party. At the same time, we, the workers, have already begun to figure out how we can survive the cold by reducing the consumption of heat and electricity in January.
This must not continue! The production and distribution of electricity should be carried out by the state, and the use of electricity should be declared a fundamental right of every citizen.
This must not continue! The looting of the wealth and resources of the country must stop.
This must not continue! Access to electricity should be a fundamental right of citizens, not a source of profit for oligarchs.
Enterprises for the production and distribution of electricity must be nationalized!
The right to light, heat and water are fundamental human rights and cannot be sold!
Communist Party of Turkey
From the editor. Previously, we translated an article by the Communist Party of Turkey about mass protests in Istanbul. Back then, people opposed rising prices and the cost of living. The adventurous policy of the right-wing Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey's active participation in conflicts in Syria and Libya lead to the fall of the Turkish lira against the US dollar.
Let us also add that the nationalization of large-scale industry in a bourgeois state is not a panacea. The fabulous salaries of managers, nepotism, kickbacks and other characteristic features of capitalism are firmly guarding the interests of the richest people in the country, the main exploiters, as well as their relatives and friends.
Only the socialization of private property, as a logical consequence of the socialist revolution, can cure these cancers on the body of the state economy.
https://www.rotfront.su/predpriyatiya-p ... -i-raspre/
*****************************
The Kurdish question is a question of equality
01/06/2022
Capitalism divides workers, but not entrepreneurs
From the editor. The “Kurdish question” is an acute social conflict that erupted in the mid-1980s in Turkey and the Middle East as a whole. The classic sides of the confrontation are the government of Turkey and the armed formations of the Kurdistan Workers' Party - a people of 40 million people who have been fighting for more than a century for the creation of an independent Kurdish state. Our comrades from the Turkish Communist Party (TKP) have decided to tell about what is happening in detail in their policy article; First of all, communists draw readers' attention to the class nature of the conflict.
Kurdistan on the map of the Middle East
A small part of Turkey's population enjoys enormous wealth, while millions of people struggle with poverty and unemployment.
Those who are "fortunate" to be in the minority are the political elite, top management, large landowners and the rich, who parasitize on rent. As wage earners and the poor work, this segment gets even richer, accumulating more and more profits.
There are millions of Kurdish citizens among the poor that this unfair system of exploitation in Turkey has created. Kurds are mostly poor - however, like citizens of other nationalities.
The interests of the Kurdish exploiters and the interests of other exploiters coincide. They want to keep an unfair order, they seek new profits and use every opportunity to become even richer.But there are also Kurds in this country who exploit others. Kurdish factory bosses, large landowners, loan sharks, contractors are part of that "lucky" minority of Turkish citizens.
And the interests of the exploited, poor and unemployed Kurds coincide with those of the other poor and unemployed: this order, which is the source and cause of inequality, must change.
The Kurdish question can only be properly discussed in the light of this fact, and only in this way can the way to its solution be found.
The main problem in Turkey is the existence of "bosses" on the one hand and workers on the other; the capitalist class on one side of the barricades, the workers on the other; the rich one by one, the poor by another.
Dispersal of the May Day demonstration in Turkey
This is also the central problem throughout the world. The root cause of all kinds of tyranny, injustice, coups, wars, corruption and environmental destruction is capital, which sees nothing but more and more profit.
The Kurdish question is a question of equality.The Kurdish question must be analyzed from a class point of view. The claim that exploiter Kurds and exploited Kurds have common interests is a big lie. There are common interests among the workers, the unemployed and the poor of all backgrounds.
The Kurdish question is also a question of freedom. A concept that ignores their own language, identity and even the existence of the Kurds or imposes on them their disappearance, dissolution and subjugation to another identity cannot be recognized as legitimate.
The thesis that any nation or people is superior to others and deserves certain privileges is a lie that is constantly cultivated in order to mask and maintain inequality in the world, to make the poor hate and even stifle each other for the benefit of the capitalists.
Nationalism, which played a progressive and liberating role in past periods of human history, for a long time became a weapon in the hands of all exploiters without exception.
One cannot prefer Kurdish or Turkish nationalism to another. There is not a single region left in the world where it would be possible to liberate the nation as a whole without making a distinction between the exploiter and the exploited. This is true whether we are talking about Catalonia, Palestine, Corsica, Ireland or Turkey.
Nationalism breeds more nationalism. Thus, for example, Greek nationalism and Turkish nationalism feed off each other. The same is fully applicable to Turkish and Kurdish nationalism.
Although they speak different languages and have different origins, the interests of all the oppressed are common. Thus, when a poor Palestinian and a Jewish factory worker in Israel join forces, the dominance of imperialism, Zionism, and hypocritical Palestinian rulers who benefit from the "Palestinian problem" begins to lose ground.
The Kurdish issue cannot be resolved when exploiting Kurds are on the same side with other exploiters or are negotiating to increase their share.
The ruling elite of Turkey needs the existence of problems dividing the population in order to prevent the workers from uniting for a common struggle. Playing the oppressed against each other in the name of preserving the existing order has, unfortunately, always worked so far. The discrimination that Kurds face because of differences in language, identity, and resources not only divides workers, but also ensures that Kurds facing oppression remain a cheaper labor force.
Similar processes are taking place with respect to labor migrants. The hostile attitude towards them primarily benefits employers who hire immigrant workers who are afraid to assert their rights and are practically enslaved.
The fact that the Kurdish issue was placed within the identity debate was also of the greatest benefit to the bosses, and moreover, the very posing of the Kurdish issue in this context has become an excellent opportunity for the exploiters of Kurdish origin.
The Kurdish bosses managed to get rich a lot on the “Kurdish issue”. However, for millions of Kurds, life today means nothing more than poverty and unemployment.
This cannot continue.
There is no freedom without bread.
A side in the discussion of the Kurdish issue should be represented by all the workers living in Turkey, the whole society. There is no problem that our working people - regardless of origin - are not able to solve with a common will, fighting in a single ranks.
The assertion that the Kurdish issue can be resolved by sitting at the same table with the masters of the exploitative system has no basis. Nothing can be given to the Kurdish people by those who are hostile towards labour, science, art, women, the Republic and the environment.
The border does not lie between Turks and Kurds, but between the exploiters and the exploited.
This is the basis on which people can unite. The common enemy is imperialism, international monopolies, "internal" monopolies and "bosses", that is, the political elite.
The enforced way of thinking that ignores the Kurdish people, oppresses them and makes them deny their own existence, has largely determined that some Kurds in this country have come to rely on powerful world powers. We should all be ashamed that we have not been able to strongly oppose this way of thinking and the unjust order in general.
The way to remedy this disgrace is to stand together against the exploiters in defense of our common interests.
We are not in the same boat.
Imperialism is on the opposite side. The capital class is on the opposite side. The religious elite and reactionaries of all sorts are on the opposite side.
Turkey will gain brotherhood, unity, equality and freedom by defeating the other side.
Communist Party of TurkeyIn socialist Turkey there will be no "Kurdish question", Kurdish workers and workers of all backgrounds - with their creative energy - will all together establish a social order in which no one exploits anyone.
Central Committee
https://www.rotfront.su/kurdskij-vopros ... -ravenstv/
All above Google Translator