During the past few years, the world is shaked due to the uprisings, both in the cities as well as in the suburbs. These uprisings are a result of the structural crisis of a system of over-accumulation of capital which is being re-distributed for the benefit of the dominant elites. This inhuman system has reached its limits.
The structural adjustment measures being implemented in Turkey, after the suggestion and with the supervision of the International Monetary Fund, the World Bank and other institutions of global capitalism, are moving towards the same direction. With the memorandums, austerity measures and other extreme policies whose impacts against the people and the workers are well-known and implemented both in Europe and worldwide. These policies are succeding in the deterioration of the lower and oppressed social classes.
Social Conservatism, Economic Neoliberalism and State Oppression
In Turkey, like elsewhere, these policies are supported and implemented under three different axis:
Social Conservatism, even though an introvert process, is the most important ally of neoliberalism. In Turkey, social conservatism has been expressed during recent years through political Islam, and it moves between urban pseudo-democratization and religious fundamentalism. The main characteristic of this socio-political current with its deeply conservative policies, is the the prioritization of a religous ethic over personal, social and political freedoms and rights. This is expressed through policies which restrict and prohibit the use of alchohol and tobacco, policies that prohibit the use of contraceptive methods and abortions, but also a moral reward of patriarchy.
For the establishment of the free market and the domination of the doctrine of economic neliberalism, a series of policies against workers are being promoted, policies which are in fact renouncing social and political freedoms, as well as labour rights. In the case of Turkey, such measures include the prosecution of leftist organisations, anarchists groups and workers unions, but also the privatisation of the public wealth in favour of the capital, as in the current situation, with an effort to transform a public parc in Taksim square into another shopping mall.
For the establishment and the domination of the conservative ideologies at a societal level and the enforcement of economic neoliberalization policies at an institutional level, the repressive mechanisms of the state are shamelessly used. Ignoring all concepts of freedom and justice, they turn against the working class, against the political dissidents and the oppressed social minorities. This is of course not a particularity of the Turkish state, but a common mean used by all insitutional mechanisms and the states to preserve the interests of the capitalist system and the authorative elite.
Taksim square is just another example in an era where we see a dramatic reduction of social and political freedoms and of raw suppressions against every attempt of social opposition to the systemic options.
Public spaces as benchmarks of an uprising radical social movement, have become a target to be eradicated by the powerful. With the excuse of restoring or developing, public and green areas are being privatized and are becoming lest and less. Keeping in mind what is happening in our own city, we stand with absolute solidarity with the rebels of Taksim square and we will do whatever we can to bring the flame of rebellion in our own place.
For a society of self-organization, equality and freedom.
DEVELOPMENT KILLS
OPPRESSORS, PIGS, MURDERES
Syspeirosi Atakton ★
translation department of Syspirosi Atakton 