The enemies of the people embrace!
Build solidarity between the working classes of Greece and Turkey!
Greece is in flames. The world economic crisis of the capitalist system has descended upon the country in extremely intensified form and left the economy face to face with bankruptcy.
Having presided over a system that, by its nature, creates crashes and depressions, the rulers of the capitalist European Union and the international capital’s agent of austerity for the masses, the IMF, have decided to wage a savage assault on all the gains and rights of the Greek working class. The Greek “socialist” Prime Minister George Papandreou acts as their hitman. After having been elected last November on a platform that promised exactly the opposite, he has now turned around and attacked the Greek working class and the labouring masses on behalf of the European ruling classes and the Greek bourgeoisie. Savage cuts in wages and pensions, demolition of what remains of welfare State, of Education and health services, privatizations of public good are on the agenda.
It is right in the middle of this ferocious assault of the Greek government that Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the prime minister of Turkey, is visiting Papandreou with a lot of ministers at his side and great fanfare. Nothing could be more fitting! Ever since he came to power at the end of 2002, Erdogan has been faithfully serving the class interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie and attacking the rights of the working class, however limited these are after three decades of the neoliberal offensive. Between 2007 and 2009 he violently repressed attempts to celebrate May Day on Taksim Square and he had the Tekel workers attacked with water cannon, teargas and clubs.
So Papadreou and Erdogan are comrades in arms! They are the enemies of the working people. It is totally appropriate for Erdogan to visit his class comrade in the midst of the fire that has set Greece ablaze. It is totally appropriate for him to have embraced the anti-working class politics of Papandreou
In return, it is incumbent on the working class and leftist movements of the two countries to reach out across the Aegean and create fraternity and solidarity between the struggles of their working classes. And struggle there surely is. These two countries, notorious for the hostility to each other created by bitter historical events and forever fanned by their respective bourgeoisies, have now been united by their working classes in their fight against the onslaught of capitalism.
With five General Strikes in five months, particularly with the General Strike of the 5th of May, the biggest mobilization in three decades, the Greek working class demonstrated its fighting capacity and its determination to defeat the barbaric IMF/EU measures. The coming General Strike of May 20th will be another crucial confrontation in this on-going struggle.
And Turkey has been rocked these last months by workers’ struggles as well. The Tekel workers waged a heroic battle for 78 days. One result was the impressive May Day demonstration on Taksim Square in Istanbul bringing together anywhere between 200 to 300 thousand workers and supporters. A general strike is scheduled for 26 May, though the machinations of the bureaucracy will probably reduce its importance.
Let the ruling classes fear the working classes of the two sides of the Aegean! A war has been declared by the international and Greek bourgeoisie on the Greek working class. The Greek proletariat has shown that it is resolved to respond in kind: It is the duty of proletarian internationalists to make sure that this struggle binds the workers of Turkey and Greece in their fight for a socialist world without capitalists, without generals, without bureaucrats..
For permanent revolution against the permanent war fuelled by imperialism!
Out with US, EU, and NATO imperialism and dismantlement of their military bases in Greece and Turkey!
Withdraw of all foreign troops (Turkish, Greek, British, United Nations) and dismantlement of the imperialist bases from Cyprus! No partition under an imperialist imposed settlement, for a united, independent, socialist Republic of Cyprus with equal rights of its Greek and Turkish citizens!
For a Balkan Socialist Federation of free and independent peoples! For the United Socialist States of Europe!
EEK and DIP are fighting to form a world party of the working class, to re-found the Fourth International, to march forward to this end. We appeal to the working class of the two countries to join hands against the common enemy, capitalism!
It is the capitalists who must pay for their own crisis!
Workers’ power with a socialist program to solve the crisis is the only solution!
May 12, 2010
