“While the dictator Erdoğan suggests bringing a stop to the Ukraine war before there are more lives lost, he boasts of having killed around 4,000 people in his own war of occupation,” writes Ziya Ulusoy for Yeni Özgür Politika.
The important thing is to bring your own wars of occupation to an end, this is the litmus test of who is a supporter of peace and who is not.
For the moment leaving aside writing about the imperialist and occupationist nature of Russia, and the US and NATO and the like, it is more relevant to Newroz to deal with Erdoğan’s preaching of peace in Ukraine.
The dictator Erdoğan was preaching peace, saying, “Russia’s campaign is unacceptable”, and “the problem should be solved through dialogue within the framework of the Minsk agreements”.
To be fair, he tried to curry favour with the US and NATO by saying, “Despite Russia, we did for Ukraine what the NATO member countries did not”. The purveyor of militarist industry certainly had interests in the matter, such as the sale of drones. Perhaps he took this into account when he had Çavuşoğlu say that he was not going to join in the US and European imperialists’ economic sanctions, to soften Russia’s likely ire.
After zigzagging between the two opposing sides in the Ukraine war he disrobed himself as a mediator. And when this did not come off he offered himself as a host. In this way he had the opportunity to curry favour with both sides and it is understood that he will try to take advantage of this opportunity in many ways, even to extend his own war of occupation.
Having seized the moment, the dictator cries the word ‘peace’ still louder, and invites Putin and Zelensky to enjoy his hospitality at the show.
He demonstrates his bourgeois duplicity to a ridiculous degree in relation to the war. By acting as a champion for peace and collecting brownie points, to use against his lack of success when it comes to others’ occupations and wars, he is accelerating the propagation of his own war of occupation as much as he can.
Prior to the first partition war of imperialist Germany, which had been late to the colonialism party, Lenin took the praise of its opponents (the imperialists Great Britain and France) for the national freedom struggles in their colonies, as an example of this duplicity, stressing that they were doing this in order to weaken their opponents, with the aim of repartitioning the colonies in their own interests.
The fascist chief Erdoğan displays a duplicity in his war of occupation that is similar to imperialist colonialist duplicity. He thinks that while he is preaching peace in the Ukraine war he can make people forget that he overturned the negotiating table at home and intensified his genocidal war against the Kurds and his annexation war against Rojava (West Kurdistan) and northern Syria.
While he opposes Russia’s annexation of Crimea he is himself occupying and effectively annexing from Afrin to Ras al-Ayn and from Idlib to Jarabulus by means of war. He is trying to extend his occupation towards the south. He attacks the Medya Defence Zones (zones in Kurdistan defended by guerrillas) with highly technological air and land weapons, including chemical weapons. He has set up innumerable military bases and subjected residential areas to bombardment, including Sinjar (Şengal) in northern Iraq.
While the dictator Erdoğan suggests bringing a stop to the Ukraine war before there are more lives lost, he boasts of having killed around 4,000 people in his own war of occupation.
On top of that, in the expansionism emerging from his ‘New Ottoman’ argument, he boasts of setting up military bases from Qatar to Africa, of raising the slogan, “our security begins in Africa, in Libya” and of taking part in the Azerbaijani-Armenian war.
The bourgeois opposition is also a partner in this occupationist and warmongering duplicity of the dictator Erdoğan. The bourgeois opposition parties preaching peace in the Ukraine war do not hesitate to cast ‘yes’ votes for almost all of Erdoğan’s war communications. They involve themselves in the war to the extent of writing their names on bombs to be dropped on the Kurdish people.
By embracing the war against the Kurds in terms of recollections of the neo-nationalists’ slogan, “peace at home, peace in the world” and proposals of peace in the Ukraine war, they become partners in Erdoğan’s duplicity.
However, opposing the unjust wars of occupation and partition of others is the easy thing to do. This is how the bourgeois tries to cover up their own war of occupation. The important thing is to bring your own wars of occupation to an end, this is the litmus test of who is a supporter of peace and who is not.
Mobilisating the struggle against Erdoğan’s fascist, expansionist dirty wars of occupation against the Kurdish people and against the home of the Rojava revolution, is the first duty in the anti-war struggle for all anti-war forces, the working class and the oppressed when celebrating the Newroz festival this year. This is the first priority of the main components in the struggle against fascism and also illuminates who is against war and occupation.
