The capitalists divide the world … and they divide it “in proportion to capital”, “in proportion to strength” … But strength varies with the degree of economic and political development. (Lenin, Imperialism, 1916, Ch. 5)
A great concurrence emerges to plunder the energy resources of the Eastern Mediterranean Sea. This rivalry can lead to a war in the Eastern Mediterranean Sea and the Middle East. Israel starts to exploit the gas fields off Palestine, which opposes it to Lebanon. Turkey, which found itself stuck in Syria and in Libya facing Russia, is turning towards the Aegean Sea for new energy resources. The capitalist system in the imperialist stage generates economic crises, militarism, wars. That is why one cannot reduce tensions between Turkey, Greece, the Republic of Cyprus and France to a simple diplomatic crisis. The present military manoeuvres are in fact the warning signal of a war that comes. The probability of military confrontation of Turkey facing France and Greece increases, while the three States are members of NATO, historically established under American hegemony.
Imperialist wars are absolutely inevitable … as long as private property in the means of production exists. (Lenin, Imperialism, preface of 1920)
Turkish and French war ships challenge each other along the Libyan coast. Erdoğan sends the Turkish navy to protect ships for the oil and gas exploration in Greek territorial waters, but close to the Turkish shoreline, while Macron sends the French navy to manoeuvre with that of Mitsotákis, the Greek Prime Minister, in the same zone.
This rivalry is not that of the workers of Turkey, Cyprus, Greece or France. For workers have no interest in a war. It concerns fractions of the world bourgeois class.
The Greek working class found itself doomed to unemployment and impoverishment during ten years of a deep economic depression. The Turkish working class, on the other hand, can hardly breathe under the effects of an economic crisis that has lasted for two years, and a heavy repression by the State. With war, the State repression would make itself everywhere ever harder, and workers of both countries would be sent to kill and get killed in order to protect the interests of “their” bourgeoisie. The war of the bourgeoisie to capture energy resources would, for workers of both countries, be tantamount to poverty, misery, death and destruction. By means of nationalism and chauvinism, the peoples of Turkey and Greece are declared enemies of each other.
The main enemy of the working classes of Turkey, Greece and France is their own bourgeoisie. It condemns them to exploitation, poverty, war and destructions. The only force able to change that destiny is the working class of these three countries. For that, the working classes of Turkey, Greece and France must organise themselves on an international scale on the axis “class war against war.”
- No to war between peoples and peace between classes!
- Class war against war! Your main enemy is your own bourgeois State, turn your anger and your weapons against this one!
- Long live the red flag of internationalism against nationalism (with the crescent or the cross) and social-patriotism!
- Greece and Turkey out of NATO! All occupation forces (Turkey, Greece, NATO), out of Cyprus! Long live a united Cyprus!
- Replace the hypertrophied armies by the armament of the people! Workers’ government in Athens, Ankara and Paris! Socialist federation of the Mediterranean Sea!
Patronsuz Dünya/Turkey