Athens Meeting 19-20 June 2003, Contribution by CP of
Turkey
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From: SolidNet
http://www.tkp.org.tr , mailto:tkp@tkp.org.tr
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by Kemal Okuyan

QUESTIONS ON THE MOVEMENT AGAINST WAR

The communist tradition just from the beginning, has never
freed itself from the dilemma that arouse on the need to
form a wide mass movement and also to protect and
strengthen the political line which is in the final
analysis nothing but a programme for a socialist
revolution. We know that to form a wide mass movement is
not just a question of organizing around the core to build
up a day-by-day mobilization on the basis of the
ideological and political identity of the party. The long
lasting debates on political alliances, fronts, blocs or
coalitions are still on the agenda of the theoretical and
political work of the communist movement. It is not by
chance that, during crisis periods on national or
international scale, such debates even dense as the
political polarization takes forms that were not so easily
expected or foreseen.

This happened when the war threat in Iraq increased
starting from the beginning of this year. The imperialist
aggression was challenged by countless different reactions
or rather counter-positions which were an outcome of highly
different ideological and political reference points based
on several class orientations. The so-called coalition that
was led by US imperialism faced with objections, rivalry,
hesitation, hatred, opposition or confrontation from
different actors. When we include the spontaneous feelings
of great deal number of people against the war, it was not
surprising that a wide mobilization was practiced all over
the world. Although it is clear that there are real
questions on the effectiveness and even on the outcome of
the broad anti-war movement, no one can deny the political,
ideological and even ethical opportunities that the world
revolutionary process grasped during the struggle against
the war.
I don't want to be misunderstood and I don't want to be
treated as a "leftist" relying on clich�s, slogans or
narrow principles. So I assure that, I'm a representative
of a party, Communist Party of Turkey, who did her best to
stop the imperialist war, to widen the anti-war and
anti-imperialist movement and to focus on the polarization
that occurred during the war-time: People were positioning
simply on the either side. To support or to oppose the war.
TKP was not afraid of this oversimplification and tried to
move on this basis to strengthen anti-imperialism from
anti-American feelings and to combine anti-capitalism with
anti-imperialist struggle.

However, another phase of the war that has been continuing
since the collapse of the Soviet Union has ended and we are
afraid that there are new stages of this war in front of
us. So we should quickly discuss the real problems that we
exercised during the invasion of Iraq. It is not the time
to feel comfortable about the actual form and direction of
the anti-war movement.
We have to be courageous enough to ask and answer deadly
questions in order to increase our capability to resist and
even to defeat the international reactionary forces, the
forces of capital, the imperialism, which are trying to
conceal their identity with the term globalization that I
believe is becoming more and more alien to Marxist-Leninist
theory.

The first question is the following: Why and why the
communist movement is not giving importance to the
dangerous process of the atomization of the working classes
or the broad masses as long as the anti-war movement is
concerned. The increase or boom in the number of
organizations or groups involved in the movement is not
necessarily an evidence of its strength. It might be an
evidence of the process of "the breaking into pieces" of
the basic organizational structure of the working classes
and the political forces. This was the experience that we
have practiced in our country and we have seen in several
other countries. The solution is not avoiding or trying to
keep the NGO's or all those groups away. But we know that
there are tendencies in the left to get rid of the
revolutionary identity in order to encourage all those new
social movements. This does not work. This actually helps
the imperialist aggression.

We can go on with some other questions. Why do some sectors
of the world progressive movement help the wide miss-belief
on the role of the European Union in the political sphere?
The myth that European Union is a counter-balance or is a
favorable actor when compared to Unites States has
disastrous impacts on our struggle. The Kurds in Turkey
paid a big price when the politicians who claim to act in
favor of them simply based their strategy on this idea. I'm
afraid Cypriots are going to face the same trouble. If we
do not increase our work against the European Union and its
leading imperialist forces Germany and France, we will face
with new defeats, not only physical but also moral.
Sometimes to concentrate on one point works as a strategy,
but to exclude the European Union from the agenda of our
struggle is not a strategy, it is playing Pollyanna, it is
creating artificial optimism among the masses and the worst
it results in complete disappointment for millions of
people who were thinking that the war can be stopped by
inner-rivalry between imperialist powers.

One might wonder whether this illusion will continue when
EU is actively supporting aggression against Democratic
People's Republic of Korea, against socialist Cuba or
following US administration in the preparations for a
military operation against Iran?

Last year here, again thanks to the invitation of KKE, we'd
discussed the developments after the 11th of September. I
tried to explain why it was so dangerous among the ranks of
the communist movement to name the ongoing conflict between
democracy and dictatorship. One year passed and the
bourgeoisie has used all those terms in a very effective
way. It is a shame for us that, after so many tragic years
of class struggle, we are still unable to overcome the
tendencies to take the term democracy as granted. The
weakness of the anti-war movement is coming from its
ideological complexity and that is not surprising. What
really surprising is, the help coming from our ranks to
create a language common to the imperialist propaganda. The
imperialist threat towards Cuba is using this language;
they are insisting that the war is between democracy and
dictatorship. This is pure lie and we need urgent action to
get rid of all concepts, terms and influence of this
language inside our movement. In Turkey there are so-called
Marxists who started a campaign against the Cuban
leadership, claiming that Fidel is against the reality of
the new times. That is the same thing in essence when
anti-sovietism filtered the progressive forces during the
fall of the Berlin wall. They were very enthusiastic about
a new "democratic socialism" which was a code for the
counter-revolution.

The war goes on It does not help us to conceal the
character of this war. It does not help us to forget that
it is capitalism that produces the wars. It does not help
us to stop combining our revolutionary work with our
struggle for peace. It does not help us to sacrifice our
principles and programme. It is just the opposite. The
struggle against imperialism throughout the history has
never needed the communists so much. The initiative and
intervention of the communists will also have a positive
impact on other progressive and social forces that are
standing for peace.