Turkey: Danger of worsened repression after coup attempt

Left Unity comment on the attempted coup in Turkey

No socialist or democrat could support the attempted coup in Turkey launched by sections of the army on the evening of 15 July – despite the ultra-reactionary and repressive nature of the Recep Erdogan’s  government the plotters wanted to overthrow

We support the call of HDP leaders Selahattin Demirtas and Figen Yuksekdag who said that nobody should try to usurp the people’s will, and that embracing democracy is the only way forward.

We remember that thousands of people, especially from the working class and the left, were tortured and killed after the last full coup in Turkey in 1980. While Erdogan did not win the last election fairly, due to intimidation of voters, especially in the Kurdish areas, this coup promises to move Turkey even further away from any sort of democratic rule and civil rights. Erdogan restarted the war on the Kurdish people, and imposed neo-liberal poverty and discipline on much of the working class, and on the Gezi protesters in 2013, but we cannot expect a military coup to solve any of these questions in favour of the oppressed, likely the opposite.

There has already been fighting between army units and police in Istanbul, and Erdogan is mobilising his supporters through the mosques. Given the largely reactionary nature of his support, the weight of such a mobilisation will almost certainly be felt not just by the coup plotters but also very negatively by secular working people, Kurds, minority identities, women and so on. The civil war in Turkey may deepen and take on new dimensions.

The plotters share the AKP’s strident nationalism and opposition to the left and Kurdish national rights. But early on Saturday morning, it seems likely that the coup has failed. Either way, it is bad news for the left, the Kurdish movement and the women’s movement – all the progressive and democratic forces in Turkey and Kurdistan.

If  Erdogan and the AKP have faced down the coup, it will probably to be followed by a massive wave of repression.

Socialists will need to offer all possible solidarity to Turkish and Kurdish people in the coming period, and will need to press their own governments to call for the restoration of democracy and full civil rights.

Erdogan will use this victory to step up repression, especially against the left-wing HDP (People’s Democratic Party) and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers Party). Already most of the HDP’s 57 deputies have had their parliamentary immunity removed, the precursor of arrests and trials aimed at crushing the democratic movement.

In Britain and internationally now is the time for stepped up opposition by to the ultra-repressive Erdogan regime, and sustained solidarity with the Turkish and Kurdish left wing and democratic movements

16/07/2016

Read the recently published Left Unity pamphlet, Dictatorship and Resistance in Turkey and Kurdestan, by Sarah Parker and Phil Hearse, £3, From Left Unity, 5 Caledonian Rd, N1 9DX.

 

 



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