In The World Transformed (TWT) event in Liverpool, held alongside the Labour Party conference, the honorary president of Turkey’s Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), Ertuğrul Kürkçü, addressed a packed meeting entitled “A World for the Many.” alongside Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn.
Dear comrades and companions,
I bring you the greetings and solidarity of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), of our jailed former leaders and deputies alongside thousands of party activists, and our exiles in Europe and elsewhere, one of whom -former deputy İbrahim Ayhan- we recently lost after a heart attack in Hewler, Kurdistan where he could not receive timely adequate medical care.
Yet, in spite of all the losses, difficulties, setbacks and of unfolding tyranny in Turkey I am proud to inform you that the one-man rule has failed in subjugating social and democratic forces of the country. After three years of emergency-rule the HDP has managed to protect its popular support in Kurdistan and extend its power bases to in Turkey’s industrial and commercial hubs including Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Adana, Mersin and Antalya to gain 11,4 percent of the vote. And we we are keeping up the fight and continuing resistance and restructuring for further struggles. We are here as a solid example of the viability of a joint social and political movement of diverse trends of Kurdish and Turkish peoples to comprise a major political base for democracy and social change and we are expecting to extend solidarity with your struggles and learn from your particular experiences of fighting organized evil -our common adversary.
I am honored by the organizers’ invitation to share the same floor with Jeremy Corbyn, whose resolute and outspoken leadership has been guiding the Labour reclaim its genuine meaning and content and help resurrect hope among workers, youth and intellectuals in Britain that “A world for many, not the few” is possible. We are witnessing that optimism and courage is on the rise among the working classes; hope is haunting the suburbs, the sweatshops, the dockyards, the streets of Britain after all those years of negligence, despair and cynicism under corrupt and arrogant leadership of the right: Labour’s call is received by “many”.
And I am also honored of sharing the floor with working class leaders and activists for social justice -Bonnie, Naomi and Jackie. You have been relentlessly striving for making this possibility a reality from within the “capitalist castle”: Britain, North America and Canada. Your efforts are felt, your call is heard, and your message is received and echoed on the other parts of the world: In Turkey, in Kurdistan, in Palestine, in Latin America, and throughout the global South; and responded with increased resistance against neo-liberal austerity programs and imperialist domination: Now we can confidently repeat the Liverpudlians’ motto from this floor “You will never walk alone!”
I would like to take this opportunity of gathering around the theme “A world for many, not the few” in order o raise the need to launch a new initiative for a deliberate and organized international cooperation of the left and democratic forces against capitalist world order.
As extensively explained in Jeremy Corbin’s address to the UN, the major impasse of the global capitalist development is evident in the unequal distribution of wealth and power; in global ecological meltdown -in other words “the climate change”-; in the exodus from global south -in other words “the refugee crisis”- and in wars caused by “the use of unilateral military action and intervention, rather than diplomacy and negotiation, to resolve disputes and change governments.
These phenomena altogether bring about a “planetary crisis” as an existential consequence of the capitalist system. Therefore it cannot be resolved from within the system and by the governments who represent the corporate interests and are responsible for the outcome, thus leading a total “crisis of humanity”.
On the other hand, the law of “uneven and combined development”, merges the elements of advanced capitalism with outdated economic and social relations in every particular economy, in every country as well as in the world economy. That is, in the 21st century working classes are once again subjected to working and living conditions of slavery and serfdom under hi-tech housing or mining facilities while riot police and armies are equipped with robotic weaponry in order to suppress workers’ protests and occupy overseas lands.
Two stark examples: It was on the news yesterday that two oil giants Exxon and Shell as far back as 1980’s were already aware that if oil consumption continued with the same pace CO2 levels would double the preindustrial level by 2060– and that this would push the planet’s average temperatures up by about 2°C over then-current levels. Shell predicted this would happen even earlier by 2030. They predicted an increase in “runoff, destructive floods, and inundation of low-lying farmland.” “The changes may be the greatest in recorded history.” they said. Yet, in spite that their predictions are now established facts they still continue oil extraction in order to supply capitalist economy, and US President Donald Trump declares US’s withdrawal from the Paris Climate Accord while Turkish government echoes Trump that “they will not ratify the accord” because they could not pollute air as much as the others have done. In Turkey, or in Britain the motto of the capitalist class and capitalist state remains as it is, since birth: “Après moi, le déluge!” (After me the flood)
The second example is the parallelism between the Grenfell Tower Fire in London in 2017, and Soma Mine Disaster in Turkey in 2014. Grenfell Tower Fire caused the lives of 72 and 70 others were injured. In the Soma Coal Mine in Western Turkey 301 miners lost their lives after the mine collapsed following a fire.
In Grenfell the the residents, despite all exterior appearance and smart systems in place, were heaped in a tower in full neglection of necessary security precautions, and in Soma in spite of most up to date conveyor systems for transferring coal from the mine to the the workers were forced to work without any break for hours -as it was in the 18th century mines- and without any security precautions for early fire alarm . In Grenfell, the system treated its working class inhabitants with the same neglection Ankara treated its workers in the Soma coal-mine. Workers were forced to suffocate to death in their homes or workplaces. The reasoning was the same: To lower the production/housing costs in order to beat the law of falling profits. Soma is in London; London is in Soma.
As we are passing through the fiftieth year of the 1968 uprising -the last upsurge of the the global revolutionary movement- we have many reasons to expect a second knock by the postman on our doors: Unless changed now by combined efforts of the all countries on earth there may remain no world and no humanity to change it. Rosa Luxembourg had warned at the dawn of the 20th century: “Socialism or Barbarism”! All the themes we are elaborating here were already raised by the surge of human imagination, revolutionary determination, and hope and anger as millions rose up against capitalism after the call of the 1968 movement. It is high time to reconsider the merits and failures of the 60’s revolutionary practices.
I am delighted to see that Labour under the leadership of Jeremy Corbyn refutes all illusions and fetishisms imposed by the corporate media, the school, and the capitalist establishment and encourages popular debate in the quest of a viable way out of capitalist exploitation for all the world. A genuine Liberpudlian, John Lennon, had in the 1970’s, criticizing the impact of mass culture on the working classes had observed that
“a working class hero is something to be”. Since the ebb of the 1968 revolutionary tide, both the working class and its heroism has undergone constant change and today “a working class hero” could be anybody who dares standing up against capitalism for any particular form of alienation and exploitation. The anti-capitalist movement of the 21st century comprises of the oppressed of the earth: Working classes, farmers, women, precarious workers, house workers, oppressed peoples, oppressed identities, permanently unemployed surplus population…
We comprise a particular part, a phase, a moment in the combined history of humanity raised on the shoulders of the working classes and all our particular stories, as depicted in the poetry of Nazim Hikmet boil to a common dream: “To live like a tree on your own and free, and like a forest in fraternity, this is what we’re longing for.”
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