Scribd Logo
Upload

Welcome to Scribd!

  • 16 views

    The Turkish Coup: A Warning To The International Working Class

    Uploaded by

    Robert Miller
    Response to the crisis in Europe by rulers

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    The Turkish Coup: A Warning To The International Working Class

    Uploaded by

    Robert Miller
    16 views2 pages
    Response to the crisis in Europe by rulers

    Original Title

    pers-j18

    Copyright

    © © All Rights Reserved

    Available Formats

    PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd

    Did you find this document useful?

    Is this content inappropriate?

    Response to the crisis in Europe by rulers

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    16 views2 pages

    The Turkish Coup: A Warning To The International Working Class

    Uploaded by

    Robert Miller
    Response to the crisis in Europe by rulers

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    of 2

    World Socialist Web Site

    wsws.org

    The Turkish coup: A warning to the


    international working class
    18 July 2016
    While Turkeys abortive military coup of July 15 appears to
    have been crushed, after the deaths of nearly 300 people, the
    country remains in a state of extreme political instability,
    overshadowed by the threats of fresh violence and repression.
    A World Socialist Web Site correspondent reported from
    Turkey late Sunday that cell phone messages were again sent to
    the population urging people to return to the streets and take
    control of public squares, an apparent admission that the danger
    is not over and the army could renew its intervention at any
    moment.
    The government of President Recep Tayyip Erdo?an has
    responded to the coup attempt with a dictatorial crackdown,
    arresting some 6,000 people in addition to detaining thousands
    of officers and soldiers. The scale of the roundup is indicated
    by the use of a sports stadium to hold some of the prisoners, a
    disturbing echo of the bloody events in Chile in 1973.
    Arrest orders have been issued against thousands of judges
    and prosecutors, who are now branded as participants in an
    armed terrorist movement. In addition to its vow to
    cleanse the state institutions of all possible opponents, the
    Erdo?an government has indicated that it will push for the
    restoration of the death penalty to use against them.
    The government has unleashed onto the streets Islamist mobs
    that have wreaked violent revenge against Turkish soldiers, in
    many cases teenage conscripts. There have been reported
    beatings and lynchings. A video circulated on social media
    purports to show the beheading of a soldier on Istanbuls
    Bosphorus Bridge.
    It is difficult to see, under the circumstances now unfolding,
    how Turkey can maintain even a semblance of democratic
    forms of rule or return to any meaningful state of political
    stability.
    The implications are far-reaching for the entire capitalist
    world. Turkey is by no means a political or economic
    backwater. A country of 75 million at the crossroads of Europe
    and Asia, it is a key member of the US-led NATO imperialist
    alliance, boasting its second-largest military after the US itself.
    It constitutes the sixth-largest economy in Europe. While not a
    member of the European Union, Turkey is closely integrated
    into the EUs economic and political structures.
    Turkish history is replete with coups and coup attempts, but
    there had not been such an event in the country in two decades.

    In 1960, 1971 and 1980, the military seized power in Turkey,


    as it did throughout much of Latin America and in Greece,
    Indonesia and elsewhere during the same period, with the close
    backing of the Pentagon and the CIA.
    If large sections of the military can once again attempt to
    seize power in a country like Turkey, the inescapable
    conclusion is that the age of military coups has returned, not
    just in Turkey, but on a world scale. The extreme violence,
    instability and crisis fueled by twenty-five years of US-led
    wars in the Middle East, the Balkans and elsewhere are now
    spreading inexorably to the major capitalist centers of Europe
    and throughout the entire planet, amid unprecedented levels of
    social inequality and the sharpening of geopolitical and military
    tensions.
    That these tensions were at the root of the bloody events in
    Istanbul and Ankara over the weekend is manifested in the
    reactions in the US and Europeas well as Turkey itselfto the
    coup attempt and its aftermath.
    Suleyman Soylu, Turkeys labor minister, went so far as to
    charge that The United States is behind the coup. Erdo?an
    himself has attributed the entire affair to followers of his
    former ally and current enemy, the pro-American Islamic cleric
    Fethullah Glen, who lives in exile in Pennsylvania and
    apparently enjoys protection from within the US state. When
    Erdo?an denounces Glen, it is safe to say that he is really
    talking about Obama.
    Washingtons initial reaction to the reported coup was at best
    equivocal, with US Secretary of State John Kerry voicing only
    US hopes for stability and peace and continuity within
    Turkey. Only after it became apparent that the coup was
    failing did the White House issue a statement indicating
    support for the democratically elected government of
    Turkey.
    The German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel
    similarly took its time in condemning the coup. Since the
    official statement, the German media and many politicians
    have centered their fire on Erdo?an, warning him against
    extra-constitutional measures while saying next to nothing
    about the implications of a coup inside a NATO country.
    Suspicion of US involvement is hardly unwarranted. Just
    three years ago, the Obama administration lent its all but open
    support to the military coup led by General Abdel Fattah

    World Socialist Web Site

    el-Sisi, refusing to call the overthrow of Egypts elected


    president, Mohamed Morsi, a coup. Washington continued to
    pour in military aid as the Sisi regime massacred, imprisoned
    and tortured its opponents. Then, in 2014, together with
    Germany, it engineered the fascist-spearheaded coup to oust
    the government of Ukraine.
    Whether or not the attempted coup in Turkey was explicitly
    sanctioned by the United States and Germany, one cannot
    escape the impression that its success would not have been
    unwelcome to Obama and Merkel.
    Tensions between Washington and Ankara have intensified in
    relation to the five-year-old civil war in Syria, in which the
    Erdo?an government has until now functioned as a key
    supporter of the Islamist militias serving as proxy forces in the
    US-orchestrated war for regime change. Ankara has viewed
    with increasing anger Washingtons close reliance on Syrian
    Kurdish forces. It fears that the Kurds military successes in
    Syria will strengthen demands for Kurdish autonomy within
    Turkey itself.
    With the war next door exacting ever-greater political and
    economic costs upon Turkey, Erdo?an last month issued an
    apology to Russia over Turkeys November 2015 ambush and
    downing of a Russian warplane. The attempted rapprochement
    with Russia reportedly involves discussions on a political
    settlement in Syria outside the control of the US government.
    There have even been reports that Erdo?an has threatened to
    give Russian warplanes, instead of those of the US, access to
    the strategic Incirlik airbase, where the US keeps its largest
    stockpile of nuclear weapons in Europe. The bases Turkish
    commander was reportedly a leader of the coup and is now
    under arrest.
    The British Telegraph newspaper elaborated on the growth of
    tensions between Washington and Ankara in the weeks before
    the coup attempt:
    Mr. Erdo?an suddenly launched a dramatic diplomatic
    revolution in the month before the coup. In rapid succession,
    his government repaired its relations with Russia, Egypt and
    Israel. Overnight Mr. Erdo?ans descriptions of Putin, Sisi and
    Netanyahu as murderers were forgotten. Then, on the eve of the
    coup, Turkeys new prime minister even talked of reviving
    relations with Syria.
    At the same time, relations with the United States have
    taken a nosedive. The Pentagon was taken by surprise when the
    Turkish government included US planes and drones operating
    out of their Incirlik airbase against Isil in Syria in the no?fly
    zone imposed over Turkey following the coup. Worse still,
    electricity was cut off to the base. Then the Turkish base
    commander was arrested, which sparked a flurry of rumours in
    Turkey that he was the link-man between the putschists and
    the Pentagon. That may be dismissed out of hand abroad, but it
    is a symptom of how alienated Mr. Erdo?ans support base is
    from its American ally.
    Whatever the precise tensions and conspiracies that have

    given rise to these events, the question is clearly posed: is


    Turkey the only NATO member where the threat of a military
    coup is on the political horizon? Recent developments suggest
    that the chain may have broken first at its weakest link, but it is
    the chain that is severed and the threat is universal.
    What of Britain, where Brexit has thrown both major parties
    into profound crisis while threatening the breakup of the UK
    and the disintegration of the European Union as a whole? Only
    recently, military commanders threatened a mutiny in the
    event that Jeremy Corbyn, leader of the Labour Party, became
    prime minister. Corbyns rivals for the leadership of the party,
    who are heading up an internal party coup to remove him, have
    pledged their willingness to use nuclear weapons in a bid to
    win the militarys support.
    In France, President Franois Hollande warned in the wake of
    the Nice terrorist attack that prolonging the countrys state of
    emergency would endanger the countrys status as a republic
    based upon laws. In short order, however, he extended the
    extraordinary powers for another three months, while calling
    the military onto the streets.
    And in the US itself, the capitalist two-party system is in a
    state of terminal crisis, with the prospect of an electoral victory
    by the fascistic Republican candidate Donald Trump. Unending
    war abroad is inevitably accompanied by repression at home,
    with the increasing integration of the police and the military,
    carried out in the name of fighting terrorism, but directed
    against growing opposition and radicalization within the
    working class.
    The Turkish events are a harbinger of what may come in
    countries around the world, where democratic forms of
    capitalist rule are becoming untenable under the weight of a
    global economic crisis, the relentless growth of militarism and
    war and, above all, the intensification of the class struggle.
    Bill Van Auken

    World Socialist Web Site

    To contact the WSWS and the


    Socialist Equality Party visit:
    http://www.wsws.org

    You might also like