August 4—Turkish President Erdogan threatened to invade northeast Syria. He wants to take over areas controlled by the Kurdish militias backed by the US.
This is only one of a series of sharpening contradictions between the US and Turkey.
On July 15, the European Union imposed sanctions on Turkey for sending natural gas drilling ships and warships to Cypriot waters in the eastern Mediterranean. The Turkish bosses want to control these resources and keep them from Cyprus, Israel, and the US.
And on July 31, the deadline the United States had set for Turkey to abandon its deal with Russia for the S-400 missile system expired. The US government is still considering imposing punitive sanctions.
The decline of US imperialist influence in the Middle East has given Erdogan an opportunity. He and the Turkish capitalists he represents dream of regaining the power and prestige, as well as some of the territory, of the old Ottoman Empire. They hope Russia and China can help.
Capitalism Invented Nations and Nationalism
For over 600 years Turkey was the center of the Ottoman Empire but it did not exist as a nation.
With its defeat in World War I, the Ottoman Empire was divided among the British and French imperialists. They allowed the Greeks to occupy most of Anatolia. This became the modern Turkish Republic when in 1922 Mustafa Kemal (Ataturk), led a national liberation movement and expelled the Greek army and all other imperialists.
Nationalism: A Fatal Weakness of the International Communist Movement
World War I gave birth to the Russian Revolution, which inspired workers all over the world. In 1920, ethnic Turkish communists founded the Turkish Communist Party (TCP) in Baku, Azerbaijan, then part of the new Soviet Union.
Fifteen leaders of the TCP left Baku in 1921, and entered Turkey openly, thinking Ataturk was a friend in arms. He had them arrested and immediately executed.
The international communist movement, led by Soviet Russia, supported the national liberation of oppressed nations as part of the worldwide struggle against capitalism and imperialism. In spite of the murder of their Turkish comrades, they supported Ataturk politically, economically and militarily.
Unlike the communists, the Turkish rulers understood that communist internationalism and nationalism were enemies to the death. They wrote then: “When a soldier realizes that there does not have to be a fatherland, he will not have to go out to defend it. Hearing that there does not have to be hatred of nations, he will not go out and fight the Greeks.”
The old communist movement, however, continues to support national liberation movements even today. We have learned from their mistakes.
Bosses need nationalism to win workers to war
The struggle among rival imperialists for world domination is driving capitalism worldwide to fascism, wider wars and eventually world war.
The rulers push nationalism and racism to win us to see other workers as our enemies and to fight and die for their blood-soaked profits and empires.
We are one international working class. Our interest is to turn these rulers’ wars into revolutionary wars for communism. When we destroy all capitalist-imperialist exploiters we can build a world without money, racism, sexism, xenophobia, borders, nations and wars for profits.
Thus, the ideological struggle between communism and nationalism/racism within our ranks is crucial. The outcome of this struggle will determine whether the working class successfully mobilizes the masses for communist revolution, or whether our class enemy mobilizes us to help perpetuate exploitation and wage slavery.
Workers in Turkey and World Wide Need Communism
Erdogan won re-election in 2018 based on his nationalist rhetoric and military adventures in Syria. Too many in Turkey harbor the dangerous illusion that their lives will improve by supporting Erdogan’s fight for a new Turkish empire. Many hope to gain by allying with Russian or Chinese imperialists, whose goal is to replace the US as the world’s dominant exploiter and murderer.
Facing galloping inflation, workers have struck at airports, and construction and metal industries. Kurdish workers continue fighting against the racist oppression and repression they face. These angry masses must see the need for mobilizing the masses for communism.
The fight to mobilize the working class internationally for communism is the key fight of our time. Collectives of workers everywhere will plan what to produce, produce it and distribute it according to the masses’ needs. Freed of nationalism, the only war we will fight is the war to end the rule of the capitalist war makers and build the communist world we deserve.
