Declaration of the Revolutionary Workers’ Party

No temporizing, no liquidation! Solve the Kurdish question!

The disclosure of the fact that the MIT [1] Undersecretary Hakan Fidan has been carrying out talks with Öcalan, as well as the visit to Öcalan by Ahmet Türk, Co-chair of the Democratic Society Congress (DTK), and Ayla Akat Ata, MP for the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) [2], have generated the hope in the country that the bloodletting can be stopped this time around and that the Kurdish question can be resolved. However, if one were to lend an ear to the spokespeople of the AKP government, all that is envisaged would turn out to be the “disarming of the PKK”. If we are told that this kind of language is utilised so as to appease the reaction coming from the so-called nationalists, then the question to be asked becomes how the next step will be taken. One cannot solve the Kurdish question by deceiving a section of the population! On the other hand, the proposals of the Kurdish side are clear. The protocols of Ocalan have been in the hands of the government since August 2009. Yet not one single proposal by the government to the Kurds has been disclosed. And not only have the government’s proposals not been disclosed to the public, neither have they been to the Kurdish side, as the leaders of the Kurdish movement themselves have made clear.

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Araz Bağban (*)

The new constitution submitted to referendum by Mohammed Morsi, the president of Egypt elected with the support of the Freedom and Justice party, i.e. the political wing of the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, in addition to its properties of attacking working class achievements as well as women’s and minorities’ rights, is preparing the legal ground for the Brotherhood to seize the whole political power in the country. The powers proposed for the president in the constitution, not subject to any supervision, are leading Egypt towards dictatorship. This picture in Egypt is perhaps not precisely the same with what happened in Iran after the 1979 revolution, but by looking at Iran we can clearly see how the restoration of a dictatorship took place. The only important difference might be that the people of Egypt have detected the prospect of such a restoration and are trying to defend the achievements of the revolution without any hesitation. Although the continuous protests of religious minorities and women (despite all the attempts of the supporters of president Morsi such as sexual harassment and physical assaults) as well as those of political organizations forced the president to make concessions on the content of the constitutional declaration related to the powers granted to the president, Morsi and the Muslim Brotherhood have gone on to complete the constitutional referendum, denying any delay requested by protesters and opposition.

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The aggression by the Zionist Israeli state on Gaza that lasted for ten days has, for the moment, been stopped as a result of a cease-fire. However, underlying problem have not gone away and pose threats for the future. The peoples of Turkey and of the Arab countries should grasp the essence of the problem, adopt a more active stand against Zionist Israel and reject the hypocrisy of their own governments.

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Ahmet Devrim

The Chinese Communist Party (CCP) is holding a new congress, the 18th, due to start on November 8. The CCP is at the helm of the single-party system of the People’s Republic. The nine-member Politbureau Standing Committee (PSC) acts as the supreme body that rules over this vast country with a population of 1.3 billion souls. The secretary general of the party, ranking number one in the PSC, automatically becomes the president of the country and the number-three member the premier. As is commonly known, under Mao Zedong, the country was ruled not only by a single party but simply by one single man. After the death of Mao in 1976, there was no question of one-man rule, although the rule of the single party was sustained. A tradition was developed whereby the PSC elected in one congress is authorised to rule the country for two consecutive terms. Given that the CCP convenes a congress approximately every five years, this implies that each president and premier serves for a decade. The vice-president and the deputy premier are also members of the PSC. These people are largely expected to take over the posts of president and premier in the future. In short, the elections to the PSC determine who will rule China over the next decade. That is why serious conflicts (and occasionally purges) occur in the period leading up to a congress within the party bureaucracy.

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The following is the text of a leaflet that the Revolutionary Workers’ Party (DIP) distributed at the Middle East Conference held on the weekend of 20-21 October 2012 in Istanbul, where a host of Arab and Kurdish left-wing organisations from the Middle East and North Africa were invited to speak. Among those present were Hezbollah and the Communist Party from Lebanon, the Tunisian Communist Workers’ Party, the People’s Democratic Front of Palestine, the Communist Party of Syria, the Democratic Unity Party (PYD) of the newly autonomous Western Kurdistan (Rojava) and representatives from countries such as Egypt, Morocco, Jordan, Iraq, Iran etc. The conference was organised by the People’s Democratic Congress (HDK), an alliance of the Kurdish movement in Turkey and a host of socialist parties of Turkey, an alliance that is in the process of converting itself into a political party. The DIP has always been in solidarity with the Kurdish movement fighting for the rights of the oppressed Kurdish people. This is an English translation of the original Turkish text.

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The Wednesday protest in Tehran last week on September 3 was the result of the recent currency crisis in Iran. This so-called foreign currency crisis started last year when the Iranian rial was losing value abnormally. And the difference in the rate of exchange between foreign currencies and rial is rising every second in these days. The rial has fallen by 25% in one week (last week) and has lost more than 80% of its value since the end of 2011. In other words, the rial faces a real free-fall. As a result of this fall, exchange bureaus were unable to do business since the rate was changing every second.

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First General Strike against the newly elected Samaras government

EEK marssii 16.9.2012 (vieo)

The working class and popular masses of all the over-indebted capitalist countries, arrogantly named as “PIGS” by the global finance capital and the imperialist chancelleries, are now in an uncontrollable rebellion.  A tsunami of popular anger against the EU and the IMF imposed measures of social cannibalism is engulfing the entire Southern Europe. The last few days, hundreds of thousands of workers are flooding the streets and the squares, from Lisbon, Madrid, Barcelona, to Athens, and then Rome.

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Polarization and impasse: rise of the Left, Pyrrhic victory for the Right

The right wing New Democracy won in the Greek elections on June 17 a pyrrhic victory, with a very narrow lead from the second party, the reformist SYRIZA: the Right got around 30 per cent( not permitting to form a majority government by itself alone) and the reformist Left around 27 per cent ( from 17 per cent on May 6). This extremely limited and non inspiring “success” of the Right came despite a gigantic international and national campaign of intimidation of the Greek people and in favor of New Democracy, waged by all international and national bourgeois media as well as by the IMF and Lagarde, Merkel’s and Shäuble’s Germany, Baroso, Oli Ren and the EU Commision, Junker, the chairman of the Eurogroup, even by Obama himself and his Administration. Although the pro-Memorandum parties (New Democracy, PASOK, the liberal Democratic Left) can form a coalition government supported by a parliamentary majority (thanks also of the anti-democratic electoral law giving to the first party as a bonus 50 seats), the majority of the voters themselves have voted anti-Memorandum parties.

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As only less than two weeks separate us from the new critical parliamentary elections in Greece, on June 17, polarization, fears and hopes dominate the political climate. The clashing forces are mainly polarized on the question of who- and if- Samaras, the Right led by Samaras or the left reformist SYRIZA led by Tsipras   will prevail and be able to form a new government to face the bankruptcy of the country.

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