Re: Political Prisoners - Phillipines/Turkey

[Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx <xxxxxxxx@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Dear Julio, source that the red-rebel friend forwarded to the list did not seem
to include any torture of Islamists by the Turkish government. If I remember
correctly, whatever the source indicated was predominantly, at least implicitly,
about revolutionaries, militant leftists and women (who were raped in Turkish
prisons, including those, I assume, who were subject to virginity tests in
schools by the politicians of the Welfare party elected to municipalities ).

Given the political circumstances in Turkey for the last 20 years, the civil war
against the Kurds in the South, these militants subject to government torture
include PKK's militants as well. In the south, at that time, Turkish Hezbollah
was conspiring with the government to fight against the Kurds so that they could
protect their own popularity in the region. When the Kurdish threat is finally
over with the sentencing of Apdullah Ocalan last year, thanks to US imperialism
and its geo-strategic aid, the Turkish government is now witch hunting Hezbollah
militants one by one, now, this time, to offset the Islamic threat.

I don't know enough about the Moro population and the religious forms of
resistance to cultural imperialism there. What I can definitely say is that the
political ideology of the Welfare Party is quite different.  It is a neo-liberal
Islamist (conservative) party briefly defined. Most of its members have served
in the neo-liberal cabinet of Ozal's ANAVATAN party in the 80s, who were then
arguing introducing liberal political economic reforms to Islam, while still
emphasizing the necessity of protecting Islamic culture-- capitalism in an
Islamic framework, in other words. So WP is mainly a mainstream party on the
liberal right. The ironic part of the story is that the new Islamists found the
opportunity to express their objectives *at a time* when the left
opportunistically became more liberal, anti-nationalist, and turned against
Kemalist nationalism, ridiculing the necessity of forming popular/nationalist
alliances against capitalism and imperialism. Accordingly,  new leftists
paradoxically allied with Islamists in their struggle against Kemalism, statism
and nationalism. They have all become anti-kemalist. Kemalism is no perfect
either, but, in my view, they unjustly created a fetish out of him. I would
definetly call Kemalism some form of a nationalist project in the third world,
but I would hundred percent hesitate to call it fascist because of the history
of semi-imperialism. By historical analogy, current WP islamists and pop
leftists are speaking to the interests of the US, just as the same type of
western backed alliances who were bitching about Nasser's revolution while ago..

What I find  disturbing about the source is that there is no mentioning of
imperialism and the US role in government's torture. Obviously, the folks are
addressing their demands to western media, western liberal regimes, the icons of
democracy, so to speak, who are supposed to help tortured people there. OK, I
can not say anything about European human rights organizations. However, should
the US assume to responsibility in this torture when it supplies the Turkish
military with guns in the suppression of Turkish population? Should it assume no
responsibility when the turkish government/male chauvinists fuck Turkish/Kurdish
women? Accordingly, imperialism dimension should have been emphasized *more
stringently* in the report. If not, it is another liberal hypocrisy..

comradely,

Xxxx













Julio Pino wrote:

> STATEMENT OF POLITICAL PRISONERS IN THE PHILIPPINES
> >ON THE BRUTAL ATTACKS AGAINST POLITICAL PRISONERS IN TURKEY
>
> Both of these governments aim to destroy/imprison/kill those who fight for
> the Islamic way---the(former)Welfare Party in Turkey and the Moro
> population of the southern Philippines, who have never accepted the
> Catholicism of the Spanish Conquistadores and their modern-day descendants,
> the Filipino comprador bourgeosie. I'm happy to see the two stuggles joined
> together and will do what I can to spread this message. Thank you, red-Rebel
> Julio Cesar
> >
> >

--

Xxxx Xxxxx Xxxxxx
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222



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