Turkey

Big cities voted against the Erdogan regime

Turkish socialists Marksist Tutum comment on the results of the Turkish referendum. The big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Denizli, Diyarbakir, Adana, Mersin and Eskişehir, where the working class is concentrated, said no to the one-man regime in the referendum held on 16 April. Half of the population did not want the one man regime, despite the fact that all the state’s resources were mobilised to win the referendum and democracy was suppressed. Democratic rights were suspended, all opposition groups were suppressed, and their voices were reduced. In the cities where the...

Erdogan tries to reinforce his power

On Sunday 16 April, Turkey’s voters will cast ballots in a referendum. They will decide on proposals from the ruling Islamists, the Justice and Development (AK) party, led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. The main thrust of the 18 constitutional amendments that will be voted on as a package is to highly centralise power in the hands of the President. If Erdoğan wins he will also be able to run in Presidential elections in 2019 and 2024, meaning he could be in power until 2029. Erdoğan is an unpleasant, thin-skinned Islamist authoritarian who has used a coup attempt last summer to persecute all...

Turkey shifts fast to the right

“The country is drifting step by step, under the ‘presidential system’, using the state of emergency, to one-man administration”, says Turkey’s Union for Democracy in a recent statement. “However, Turkey needs, not a one-man administration, but a participatory pluralist secular parliamentary democracy and peace” The statement describes the widespread sackings of officials, shutting-down of TV and radio channels and newspapers and magazines, and the tens of thousands of people jailed. The state of emergency declared after the defeat of the coup attempt in July against President Erdogan’s AKP...

Nottingham protest against crackdown in Turkey

Hundreds marched through the centre of Nottingham on Friday 4 November to protest against the arrest of at least 12 MPs from the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP). The protestors marched to local BBC offices to try to get Kurds voice heard as political freedoms in Turkey are drastically curtailed including the crackdown on the press and social media. The editors and staff of Cumhuriyet, the main opposition newspaper in the country, were also recently arrested. HDP arrests came after a car bombing killed nine people in Turkey’s mainly Kurdish south east — this has been used as an...

Syria: risk of aid stopping

The ceasefire in Syria had already appeared to be on the verge of collapse following a US-led attack on Syrian troops, who, so Russia has said, were fighting Daesh. Then came an air attack on UN aid convoys near Aleppo. Russia and Syria have both denied responsibility, but are suspected of being involved. The US has said the ceasefire is not dead. The US said its attack on Deir al-Zour was aimed at Daesh, and it was unaware Syrian government troops were present. The Russians declared it was a “display of heavy handedness” by the US. Russia has called on the US to coordinate airstrikes...

Big-power jockeying over Syria

Chemical weapons have been used by both Daesh and (on a much bigger scale) the Assad government in the Syrian civil war. The verdict is from a final report by the Joint Investigative Mechanism (JIM) of the United Nations and the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons. The Syrian government promised in 2013 to give up its chemical weapons under a deal negotiated by the Russian government, but has continued to use them. The committee recorded four uses of VX nerve gas, 13 uses of sarin, 12 of mustard gas, 41 of chlorine and 61 of other chemical agents, and named Daesh as having...

Turkish military coup fails

The attempt by a section of the Turkish army to take power has failed. On the night of Friday 15 July troops grabbed bridges, airports and television stations, as well as Military Headquarters. Parliament was bombed. The plotters declared that they were acting, “to restore the constitutional order, human rights and freedoms, the rule of law, and public order.” However the coup had insufficient support inside the armed forces and almost all the top leadership sided with the state against the rebellion, calling for troops to return to barracks. President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power since 2002...

Pro-Kurdish activist arrested

British academic and socialist activist Chris Stephenson was arrested on 15 March after attending a hearing for activists who had signed a Academics for Peace statement calling on Turkey to end its attacks on the rights of Kurds. After being searched at the court and been found to have in his possession leaflets advertising Kurdish new year and produced by the Kurdish HDP, he was charged with making “propaganda for a terrorist organisation.” He was acquitted and released on 23 June. During his trial he was firm in stating that calling for peace could not be viewed as terrorism and called for...

Turkey: reaction grows

Last November, the Turkish Islamist Justice and Development (AK) party won a victory at the polls. Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s thin-skinned Islamist president, and an increasingly intolerant persecutor of his many critics, had refused to accept losing the AK majority in the June general election. He ramped up the war on the Kurds in the Turkish south east and then ran on a platform of defending the security that he himself had undermined. Recently, in May, Can Dündar and Erdem Gül of the daily newspaper Cumhuriyet got five year prison sentences for writing about the Turkish security service...

Refugees not safe in Turkey

On Monday 4 April Greece began deporting migrants. After making a perilous journey across the Aegean sea, they are being sent back to Turkey. Under a deal with and within the EU, and with the agreement of the Syriza government, all migrants who arrived in Greece prior to 30 March and deemed not in need of international protection are to be deported. The first 500 deportees were mainly from Pakistan, Bangladesh and Afghanistan. But the deal is, of course, aimed at stemming the flow of Syrian refugees into Europe. Turkey is already a mass refugee camp for 2.7 million Syrians. But with a promise...

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