Re: [Marxism] Demons of Separatism

["Paul Flewers" <rfls12802@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

A Turkish left communist told me that a considerable proportion of Turkey's
Kurds are living in the big cities of Turkey. He has always held the idea
that the development of the Kurdish national question into actual separation
or autonomy would divide the working class of Turkey and do it no good at
all. Whilst he would on principle reject the Leninist view of
self-determination, I do think that an automatic endorsement by left-wingers
for the call for autonomy or separation is wrong, if the consequence is a
split of the working class upon national lines. The main thing to my mind is
to oppose national oppression by the dominant nation's bourgeoisie, and to
emphasise the common interests of, in this case, Turkish and Kurdish
workers.

I'm wondering if the Turkish military is currently playing up the threat of
the PKK in order to raise the bogey of the secession from Turkey of the
Kurdish area. The Turkish military has always been extremely concerned about
the de facto if not de jure existence of a Kurdish state in Iraq, seeing it
as a threat to Turkish territorial integrity, on the basis that a Kurdish
state could in turn be set up in eastern Turkey. I thought that the PKK was
a very reduced organisation compared to what it was 10 or 20 years back, so
this particular threat to Turkish integrity is pretty small. Unfortunately,
it appears that the 'Kurdish threat' has sparked off a not inconsiderable
wave of Turkish chauvinism (this was on the BBC news the other day).

It seems to me that the Turkish ruling class and especially its strong
military faction is intent upon making the country a regional strong-man. It
exercised its will by refusing to allow US forces to invade Iraq from its
territory in 2003. It is openly threatening the Iraqi Kurdish government,
which is a puppet of the USA. It is taking advantage of the power vacuums
and instability in the region.

I can't see anything progressive about the Turkish military flexing its
muscles in this way. Although it is likely to annoy the US ruling class, and
socialists can't be upset over that, this is whipping up anti-Kurd
sentiments in Turkey, and I certainly don't like the sight of big
demonstrations backing the military's line over Kurdistan. And Turkey's
rulers' desires to become a regional power is no different to, say,
Ba'athist Iraq trying to do the same.

Finally, I read a piece at
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article18648.htm which reckons that
the PKK is effectively a US asset. Is there anything accurate in this
allegation?

Paul F







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