June 2013

Correspondent of the Movement of Internationalist Workers Volunteers from Taksim Square - Monday, June 10, 2013

Revolutionary fighting on Taksim Square is a twin of the struggle of the Syrian masses against murderous Al-Assad.
That Turkey’s sparks light back the fires on Greece! 
The combat cry of hundreds of thousands of exploited who have won the streets and squares of Turkey must go real:

Tayyip Erdoğan, RESIGN!

To achieve this:

Let’s already set up at Taksim a National Congress of the working class and all the exploited, to coordinate the fights, setting up a Committee of self-defense, and impose the revolutionary general strike with massive actions in the streets until the murderous Government of Erdoğan and the Turkish military regime go down!

Taksim Square and the Gezi Park where the fighting began are still the epicenter of this new wave of struggle against Erdogan's Government. This has been the scene of a brutal crackdown on Friday, May 31, due to an eviction in the Turkish police-style against the occupants of the park who were seeking to prevent the Government officials from filling their pockets in connivance with the construction business fat cats, developing redundant shopping malls and giant mausoleums; the protesters were peacefully defending the place as a public square.
This brutal repression was the trigger for the latest marches. There were more than 700 mobilizations in at least 70 cities throughout Turkey, and figures continue to rise every day, as protests continue to develop. There are more than 2500 detainees who have been brutally tortured, 3500 wounded and at least 2 dead, killed by the murderous police and the repressive Government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. One of them was hit by a car that lashed out at the March and the barricades that were formed, and the other was in Atankya (Hatay), city close to the border with Syria, where lately the police tightened their attitude and in the middle of the repression a policeman pulled out a handgun and shot a 22-year-old in the head. In the latter city, the police then began to shoot rubber bullets also inside houses forcing windows to shoot in.
There is much anger accumulated against Erdoğan’s Government, because of its repression of the exploited and hardening against the demands of the exploited who are beginning to feel that the global economic crisis is also hitting Turkey (while all the bourgeois economists branded it as 'miracle') suffering the high cost of living, lack of employment, lack of democratic freedoms, etc.
An example of this was the repression to the mass marches of May Day of all labor organizations. They were also repressed demonstrations to the Libyan Embassy of the wounded who were in treatment here and wanted to show their solidarity with the post Qadafy fight.
State workers, grouped into one of the trade union federations (KESK), have begun fighting 3 months ago for better wages, against unemployment, and for quality public health and education, and the Government’s response to them was imprisoning loads of activists.
Weeks ago the Government had been also issuing dictatorial laws such as the ban on the sale of alcohol after 10 pm, the regulation of the number of children allowed a family to have (not less than 3 and not more than 5), the prohibition of demonstration of affection in public places (a couple was imprisoned for kissing each other), the reduction of the legal term to perform abortions (previously it was up to a month of pregnancy, now it is only two weeks), etc.
It is neither "Democratic" nor "miraculous" a Government, nor a "prosperous servant of the people". It is a Government that represses and makes the exploited to starve, while serving the bourgeoisie and imperialism from NATO.
The Turkish masses begin huge revolutionary days

Outrage at Erdogan’s dictatorial rule was long simmering among the exploited, and this appeared in its entire force after the repression in Taksim, where thanks to the huge and massive response that police found, it could not evict the defenders of Gezi Park. This place today is taken up and works, in fact, as a grouping place for the fights. Anyone who was involved in or wants to enter the fight has that square as a meeting point. In one day there can come more than 100,000 people gathered by graffiti, gathering food, discussing, camping, singing, dancing, waving slogans against the Government, etc.

The civil servants, gathered in KESK Trade Union Federation, comprising 240,000 state workers went on a general strike for two days and marched and settled in Taksim Square. Another Trade Union Confederation that joined was the DISK, comprising 300,000 workers, and marched with 10,000 workers to the square shouting "open way, revolutionaries coming!" Yet the main union federations, led by the Erdoganista bureaucracy, have not entered into scene.
There all parties have turned up: the CP, Maoism, anarchism, the bourgeois opposition, Social Democracy, the Ataturkists, and the Renegades of Trotskyism. Amidst dances, chants, speeches and pamphlets, all of them carry out their propaganda and reports on the situation in Turkey, but no one raises a proposal on how to organize the movement or what steps to take.

Here it is present the TKP, i.e. Stalinism, which supports Al-Assad, the butcher against the Syrian masses and is for the crushing of the revolution, as it had done in Greece before with sticks attacking the workers and exploited that sought to take the Parliament. They are always prompt to enforce the subordination of the vanguard to the institutions of the regime, taking the fight of the masses to the polls -with the complicity of the Renegades to Trotskyism, who from Syriza and Antarsya preached the way of bourgeois elections to meet the demands of a working class which today suffers unprecedented conditions equal to or worse than their class sisters and brothers in China, India or South Africa.
It's Stalinism that from the Kurdish CP, along with the bourgeoisie of the oppressed nation, carries its own business with Erdogan and the Turkish bourgeoisie at the expense of the subjugation of its own people. They are who support Al-Assad from Syrian Kurdistan and in Turkey act as a real force to prevent the unity between the ranks of the workers and the masses in struggle to overthrow Erdogan's Government.
The true aim of these leaderships, seeking influence over the masses that have revolted, is to prevent that square from turning into an organized point of centralization and coordination of all those who are struggling. That is why they spend their time calling for rallies and chants to fill the square, and passing their flyers, making cultural activities, saying that there is no need for organization and that everything is free. They learned very well from the anarchists in the trade union centre of Thessaloniki in Greece on how to prevent a grouping of masses in struggle and replace it with a "cultural space".


It is incredible how all these organizations refuse to call there to at least an Assembly of all those who are fighting.
The place is fully taken up, with barricades blocking all the streets that lead to it. All sectors are in the Park. All conditions are given to form a democratic body of all the exploited fighting herein.
All organizations make a parallel with the square Tahrir in Cairo, Egypt, but no one recalls the appeal the textile workers made from that square to form a Labor Congress and of the fighting exploited, with rank and file delegates with mandate, elected 1 each 100 people.
Moreover, members of the DIP, a party that claims to be a Trotskyist revolutionary worker party, told us that there is still a more concentrated working-class that hasn’t yet gone out to the streets, trampled as it is by the trade unions’ Erdoganist bureaucracy,. But those from the DIP, meanwhile, in order to organize the working class, call to make opposition groupings within the trade unions up to the moment every one of those unions are recouped from the hands of the bureaucracy. Yet, the unions do not gather more than a tiny minority of the working class - as it could not be otherwise under the repressive Government of Erdoğan and the military-civilian regime. So due to their trade unionism and their propaganda of "Let's make a Tahrir Square" or "let’s go to a general strike", without proposing ways to achieve those objectives, the DIP members  position themselves as part of the mechanism of containment and diversion of the struggle of the masses.
It is necessary to struggle to throw down the murderous Government of Erdoğan by setting up the true power of the fighting exploited
All the conditions are given for sectors in struggle to organize in the Square itself, standing up factory committees, committees of the youth, the unemployed, which send mandated delegates 1 every 100 workers to coordinate and centralize in Taksim Square all sectors in struggle, putting up self-defense committees and calling the rank-and-file soldiers to organize and send their delegates. So a real body of power of the exploited would stand up with enough authority as to call the revolutionary general strike to overthrow Erdoğan’s Government, and, moving one step further, opening the Turkish revolution to conquer even the slightest of the demands of the working class and the masses of this country.

The representatives of the Syrian refugees who stay by hundreds of thousands in the South of the country cannot fail to be in that square. Erdoğan, whose army is part of NATO, is an agent of Obama at the same level as Al-Assad. The latter is responsible for massacring militarily the Syrian masses with the help of the Iranian Republican Guard, while Erdoğan supports the generals of the Free Syrian Army and Jabath al Nusra who terrorize and disarm the resistance fighters from their own trenches. Erdoğan with his NATO army cares for the borders to Al-Assad! It is with the Syrian refugees, fighting for the fall of Erdoğan and opening the revolution in Turkey that can be broken the siege imposed on the Syrian resistance by the treacherous leaderships of the WSF in all its wings to quell the Syrian revolution. It is from this square that already begins to be launched the call to Greek and European working class to take up the fight against the attack of the imperialist bourgeoisie: "Greece are you with us?” pray the graffiti in the streets of Istanbul and Ankara. This is the way for the spark that today turns on in Turkey to set Greece and the entire imperialist Europe on fire. This is the way to hit the table and raise the working class of imperialist Germany, country in which Turkish workers are the first minority; i.e. the most exploited sector of the working class. The plan of the bourgeoisie is to wear this process out to divert it with calls for dialogue and channel the deep dissatisfaction of the exploited to the coming election next year; while suppressing the more militant elements that come to marches every day in different cities, mainly in Ankara, the capital; or even calling sectors of the affluent new middle class to counter-revolutionary actions in the streets -as for example the mobilization summoned by Erdoğan to the airport - to confront the vanguard that has taken to the streets spontaneously.

The Government continues to repress with its brutal police in cities around the country where there are rallies in the streets, while it has up its sleeve some sectors willing to disperse the takes-over and concentrations of the exploited, and won’t hesitate to send them to evict Taksim as yesterday Mubarak sent his fascist guards to evict Tahrir. This is why it has become the order of the day to organize the combat today carried out by the vanguard from the barricades and the squares, through self-defense committees to defend themselves from the attack by the shock forces of murderous Erdoğan.

Under the direct surveillance of the imperialist powers - especially Germany that gives daily instructions to the Turkish Government - Erdoğan does not yield even the slightest demands. He has centralized his forces back, says the protests must end, and presents battle.
The exploited aren’t either giving up in their struggle, despite their leaderships. Every day more and more sectors are added to the revolt. But they enter completely uncoordinated, without bodies that could centralize them.
Taksim Square is already a center of regrouping. Urgently, let’s put up here a general Assembly of all the exploited in fight, that works with direct democracy, where all the exploited in struggle are allowed speak, vote and decide how to move forward and be coordinated among all sectors.  This Assembly should vote as a first step to do this as in the 1968 French May and go get the workers in the factories and establishments, so they organize themselves there.
 This Assembly or congress would also have full authority to assume, by overthrowing the bourgeois Government, as a Government of the workers and impoverished petty bourgeois of the countryside and the city, which would be the only truly democratic Government that can provide a solution to all the demands of the exploited; the demands that have been raised in these great days of revolutionary mass struggle which broke the stability of the relationship between the classes that the military-civilian regime had imposed through the oppression and suffering of the masses.
Fighters of the Taksim Square, brothers and sisters of the Syrian revolutionaries
The Turkish exploited enter combat against the exploiters as a breath of fresh air for the revolutionary struggles. It is a great help for the Syrian revolution that all leaderships of the world had left isolated to be massacred by Al Assad on account of imperialism.
Assad and Erdogan (the latter sponsors and supports the Syrian National Coalition) say they are competing against each other. But when it comes to suppressing the masses and defeat their revolution, both show to be on the same side: against the oppressed, defending their mutual interests, which are those of the oppressors.
The Syrian masses, with their heroic resistance, conquered the necessary time for the world working class to curb the imperialist counter-offensive. Today, exploited Turks are joining the fight. These revolutionary struggles are beloved sisters, not enemies, in spite of the propaganda that Erdoğan, the Ataturkists, Stalinism and Bashar al – Assad spread. We ought not to let them be isolated from each other! Let's open the borders between Turkey and Syria, marching from both countries to break the control that the Turkish State and the Free Syrian Army have on them! All borders and mountain passes, checkpoints, etc., must be open and in the hands of the exploited! The struggle started by the exploited of Turkey is an anti-imperialist fight that pits one of the bastions that the imperialist transnationals have to control the region. Long live the struggle of the exploited in Turkey!
The savage repression of the Erdoğan Government shows that nothing distinguishes it from murderous Al Assad whom it cares very well his borders.
The struggle of the exploited in Turkey is not only a sister of the Syrian revolution, but also of the combat of the workers in Europe and the U.S., who confronted the imperialist bosses and their Governments and were put at the feet of the bourgeoisie by the betrayal of their leaderships. The revolutionary struggle of Greece was betrayed by the WSF; the American labor movement and those who were struggling to occupy Wall Street were carried to the feet of Obama. The workers were bound hand and foot, and the imperialist corporations downloaded all the weight of the crisis on their backs. The fighting in Turkey today comes to their aid! The European working class should get back up on their feet, returning to the path marked by the mine workers from Asturias, the Greek revolutionary strikes and the revolts of young people from Tottenham, the strikes in France with occupation of factories and hostage-taking of managers, etc.! All across Europe a cry should ROAR: "spark in Turkey, fire in Greece, it’s the revolution coming!”
Imperialist Governments argue daily with the Turkish Government how to deal with this wave of struggle of the exploited. If they centralize it against our fighting, we have to concentrate our forces against them, in a struggle against the NATO leaders.
To conquer bread, jobs and put an end to the murderous Turkish regime and Erdoğan’s Government
Let's put up a National Congress of delegates from factories, high schools, colleges, unemployed and soldiers with self-defence committees, to coordinate and centralize the fight!
For a Revolutionary General strike!
Down with Erdoğan’s Government and the military civilian autocratic regime, the lackey of NATO’s imperialist powers!
Everybody go to Taksim Square to organize the true power of the exploited!
Turkey and Syria, a single class, a single revolutionary struggle against Erdoğan, Al-Assad and all agents of Obama and NATO in the region! From Taksim let’s break the siege the treacherous leaderships have imposed on the Syrian masses so they are massacred by the Jackal Al-Assad!
 Turkey, Athens and Paris, a single class, a single fight, a single revolution!