Appeal by Revolutionary Workers Party (DIP) of Turkey: To the revolutionary people of Egypt!

The President of Egypt, Mohammad Morsi, is set to attend the party congress of the AKP, the party of prime minister Tayyip Erdogan of Turkey. The symbolism of this invitation extended by the government party of Turkey to the supposed representative of the new Egypt is glaring. The Egyptian people is the foremost representative of the Arab revolution of 2011. This invitation implies that Erdogan’s party and the Turkish state at large are trying to bring the new regimes born of the Arab revolution, and in particular the new Egyptian regime, under its hegemony. That Mohammad Morsi should accept to oblige Erdogan and his party is of no less significance: it shows that the new rulers of Egypt, the Muslim Brotherhood, are preparing to take Erdogan’s road in his subservience to capitalist imperialism.

 

The Revolutionary Workers Party of Turkey (DIP) calls on the revolutionary people of Egypt and its organisations to create channels through which we can communicate, cooperate, conduct joint activity, and condemn this new initiative to bring the two countries together under conservative and collaborationist governments. Yes, Egypt and Turkey should no doubt join hands in fraternity. But what for? Not to serve the interests of the capitalist classes of the two countries or side with imperialism against oppressed nations or reconcile with Zionism. No, the interest of the working classes and the poor of the two countries requires that they cooperate with a view to establishing a new revolutionary order in the Middle East.

 

Make no mistake: despite the image that has been created for purposes of marketing him, Erdogan is no hero of the toilers and the downtrodden of the Middle East. In international politics, the very essence of his stance is reconciliation of Turkish Islamism with imperialism. Even his skirmishes with the representatives of the Zionist state are more instrumental in trying to raise his prestige domestically and in the Arab Middle East than a real conflict that challenges Israeli ambitions in the region. In domestic politics, he is squarely waging a fight for the interests of the capitalist class of Turkey against the workers and the poor. And this demagogue who pretends to be sensitive to the plight of Palestinians does not hesitate for a moment when ordering the children of the Kurdish people to be killed, as in Uludere (Roboskî) last December, when 34 unarmed Kurdish petty smugglers, mostly young teenagers, were massacred knowingly by the Turkish air force. Not a single person has yet been brought to account for that outrageous murder.

 

Erdogan is no friend of the Arab revolution or the Arab people! In December 2010 and January 2011, throughout the month-long uprising of the Tunisian working class youth, he did not utter a single word to criticise the Ben Ali regime. In January and February 2011, while the Egyptian masses filled Tahrir Square and were heroically fighting the henchmen of the old regime, Erdogan was advising Mobarak on how he could weather the revolution. Between March and August 2011, while Beshar al Assad was massacring the insurgent people of Syria, Erdogan sent his foreign minister and his intelligence chief to Damascus over and over again to advise Assad on how to extricate himself from the trouble. And since August 2011 he has been organising and hosting the forces that serve US imperialism in Syria.

 

He is now being used, by US imperialism with the purpose of bringing the Arab revolution under control. For a very long while, the US had considered the Muslim Brotherhood as its enemy. But now that the Arab revolution has toppled the old guard of American henchmen, the likes of Mobarak, Ben Ali, Ali Saleh Abdullah etc., the US is engaged in damage management. It is trying to domesticate the moderate Islamic movements such as Ennahda in Tunisia and the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt and elsewhere. In this, none other than Erdogan can be put up as an example of subservience to the so-called “international community”. The AKP is the party par excellence of the latter day integration of Islamism into the imperialist system.

 

This is precisely the meaning of the invitation extended to Morsi. On his part, Morsi, by accepting this invitation, has shown that he is willing to cooperate. This is not what the Egyptian revolution was made for. The working class, the poor of the city and the countryside, and the youth of Egypt were fighting for another kind of society, where today’s unrestrained domination of capitalists would be replaced by a just order, and for another kind of world, where all oppressed nations would finally be emancipated.

 

So let us join hands, the working class and youth of the two countries, against the representatives of the ruling class of our respective countries so that together we can give a new impetus to revolution in the Mediterranean basin, already kept alive by our brothers and sisters in Greece and Spain.