Suat Bozkuş
“Capitalism’s unequal laws of development have brought humanity to the brink of the abyss. All praise of capitalism melts like sun-drenched snow in the sight of refugees drowning in the seas and rivers and dying of hunger and cold on the borders. The economic and social gaps between people worldwide and in each country have widened to such an extent that unrest, poverty and hunger have gripped all of humanity,” writes Suat Bozkuş for Yeni Özgür Politika.
National and religious discrimination added to this inevitably result in conflicts and waves of migration. The problem of immigration and asylum seeking, which has shown a dramatic increase in recent years, has become the biggest problem between states.
Throughout history, people have resorted to mass migration with the hope of a better life for reasons that have become too much to bear, such as war, pandemic, natural disasters, national and religious discrimination and the threat of genocidal attacks.
These mobilisations/migrations have never been banned, as the freedom of movement has been deemed as a natural right. Any efforts to curb it have only caused much suffering, and they have never been able to stop the waves of migration.
The 1951 Geneva Refugee Convention and Protocol defined the rights of refugees in an international legal framework. While this convention was originally designed to promote migration from the Warsaw camp to the NATO camp, and in particular to promote brain drain, it eventually also formed the legal basis for immigration from the colonies and semi-colonies to the metropolises of capitalism.
Despite this agreement, which is still in effect today, no one adheres to the rights declared in this convention any more and the “refugee crisis”, as they call it, is deepening swiftly. NATO countries that signed this convention are trying to stop the asylum seekers by any means possible.
To this end, states build walls and erect fences and dig trenches on the borders. Those who set off to cross the borders despite all such obstacles are raked with bullets or left to die drowning in the seas.
Later, the guest worker/migrant worker needs of capitalism were met by the natural flow of the unemployed and the hungry to the Western countries. This was encouraged for many years. But as the crisis of capitalism has deepened, the need for foreign skilled labour has decreased, but migration to the capitalist metropolises has not.
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For example, (Turkish president) Erdoğan’s dictatorship, chanting the mottos of Turkish-Islamic synthesis and new Ottomanism, sought to become more active in Syria, to invade Rojava and South Kurdistan by collaborating with ISIS gangs as part of its same-old policy based on hostility against the Kurds.
But when he failed, millions of Syrians fled to Turkey. Now he is exploiting them in every way, including using them as a threat against Europe.
When Erdoğan tried to continue this occupation/invasion policy with the use of chemical warfare, a new wave of immigration broke out, from South Kurdistan to Europe.
It is known that not only the people of Kurdistan, but also all the peoples of the Middle East, the Afghans and people from numerous different countries of the world have participated in these migrations.
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Turkish Airlines and Russia’s Aeroflot have also been much discussed with regard to their roles in running flights carrying thousands of migrants to Minsk. Various media companies such as Bloomberg and Politico have reported that the EU plans to impose sanctions on Turkish Airlines and Aeroflot due to the accusations against these airline companies.
Regardless of the details; the right to immigration and to seek asylum, the right to live and work wherever one wishes is one of the most fundamental rights of every human being. No force can stop that.
This problem cannot be solved by shooting at people, leaving them to die of starvation and freezing cold or by drowning in the seas, not to mention stain on humanity that is the building of border walls.
Instead of killing each other, humanity must find a joint, collective, humane solution that complies with basic human rights and human dignity. Otherwise, it will not be only the poor people who die on the borders and routes of migration, but all of humanity.
This is not a refugee crisis, but a humanitarian crisis.
