"IMF has bought Turkey and paid its price"

"Turkey will give us support, as its owner is the IMF. The IMF has bought Turkey and paid its price." This was said on April 1st 2002, by a commentator named Dick Morris, a former consultant of Clinton, on one of the national TV channels in the United States. Apparently he was referring to Dick Cheney’s recent visit to Turkey at which Ecevit and Cheney have agreed that Turkey will support the U.S. on a number of issues that are unknown to the Turkish public, in return for 228 million dollars of credit. The ruling class always had a tendency to sell their country, the biggest asset they have, they had done it several times in the past, but never with such a low price: Of this 228 million dollars credit, which will be paid with its interest back to the IMF, 200 million will be spent to purchase new arms from the U.S. 

On the same visit it seems Cheney has made it clear to Ecevit that Turkey should give full support to the Israeli aggressiveness in Palestine. Consequently, Turkey along with U.S., is one of the two countries in the world to give full support to the massacres done by Israel. The support is so great that Turkey has recently chosen IMI, an Israreli arms manufacturer to supply the Turkish army with M60 tanks, a bid amounting to $688 million. Ecevit said that the renovation of tanks had priority because Greece had recently bought new tanks from Germany. This was a big lie, because neither Greece is willing to use
these tanks against Turkey nor Turkey has in its short term plans an attack to Greece by land. Priority must be sought elsewhere. The $688 million coming from Turkey will instantly strengthen Israeli’s position in the war and the new tanks coming from Israel to Turkey will very soon be necessary to execute the bloody plans of U.S. in the Middle East. 

Bourgois support to Israel 

In the media Palestinian struggle is labelled as terrorist. Moreover the chauvenistic hostility against the Arabs arising from the Otoman period is skilfully being revived. Ecevit, the prime minister, is too old to find a good excuse for defending the Israeli aggressiveness. Quite naively, he claimed that Turkey has to support Israel because the Jewish lobby in the U.S. always backs Turkey.  MHP, the fascist party in the government, claims that the Palestinians’ suffering is stems from the fact that they took England’s side against the Ottoman Empire about a hundred years ago! All in all, the political standpoint of the Turkish
bourgeoisie towards the issue is reduced down to the crudest form of racism: "Vuile Arabs!" 

On the other hand, the so-called "opinion leaders", are lately doing nothing but translating from the major U.S. papers. Recently the most liberal and the most chauvenistic columnists have come to the consensus that the best solution in the region would be the U.S. intervention like in the Balkans and the settlement of NATO forces there to guarantee the peace. How creative! 

Reactions against Israeli aggressiveness 

Reactions against the Israeli aggressiveness in Palestine took on two different forms. On the one had, there are the Turkish fundamentalists. Now that they are not the ones in power, they are comfortably fiercely reacting against the Israeli aggressiveness, probably more than anywhere else in the world. They had to react so fiercely to disguise the fact that they were the ones who had to sign the "Strategic Partnership," a treaty which makes Turkey responsible for taking sides with Israel now, rather than its "moslim brothers." 

Reactions from the left, were rather unified and consistent this time. Even the Kurdish left who is looking forward to a U.S. solution in Iraq, joined the leftist protests that blamed the American imperialism for what’s been happening in Palestine. Thousands of people from the political parties, labor unions and associations have gathered in the streets of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Adana to condemn the Israeli aggressiveness. 

In each of these demonstrations, Communist Party of Turkey voiced its demands: 
-  Cancel all the Strategic Patnership agreements signed with Israel. 
-  Terminate all military, intelligence-related, and economic relations established with Israel. 
-  Seize all the foreign military bases in Turkey 
-  Fire all the foreign military staff from the country. 
-  Withdraw all the Turkish military staff based abroad. 
-  Leave all political, military, economical, and cultural organizations of the imperialism, NATO being on top of the list. 

It seems, the Turkish left has a great opportunity to urge the workers of Turkey against the U.S. plans in the Middle East. The big challenge now awaiting the Turkish left is to carry this mobility on to 1st of May demonstrations. With so many struggle items on the agenda, 1st of May should be the turnning point for socialism in Turkey. 

An article by Evren Madran, a journalist member of Communist Party of Turkey 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 

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