Do Not Yield to Religious Fundamentalism, Imperialism and Military Coups

…Communist Party, Turkey (KP), a number of politicians, trade union leaders, intellectuals including Kemal Okuyan, the First Secretary of the Central Committee of KP, have signed a call to make a mass demonstration again in Istanbul, on September 4, 2016 under the title, ‘Do Not Yield to Religious Fundamentalism, Imperialism and Coups’.

With International Bulletins, the International Relations Bureau of the Communist Party, Turkey, shall continue to provide information on the latest developments in Turkey as well as the news about the demonstration on September, 4th.

Below you may find the manifesto of the call for September 4th.

Do Not Yield to Religious Fundamentalism, Imperialism and Military Coups 

In the aftermath of the July 15, the US-backed military coup attempt of the reactionary forces, we who shall meet in the demonstration on September 4, 2016 shout out loud that we will not yield to religious fundamentalism, imperialism and coup plotting. The current developments that drag our country to the threshold of destruction are directly related with the conscious policy of the imperialist and capital forces to bury Turkey into obscurantism. In this perspective:

1) Behind both the strengthening of the coup plotters,the religious sect of the Gulenists,  and the long hegemony of the obscurant power that consciously created the base that supported the above strengthening, lies the assaultive project of imperialism, the so-called moderate Islam. This project which has no other aim than hypnotizing and suppressing the peoples of the world has to be questioned in total and the ones who are responsible should be exposed and purged.

2) The public officials who use religion and religious principles or link somehow their actions to religion when in duty, are conducting a constitutional crime. Whatever their position, minister or mukhtar (neighbourhood representative), they should be punished; the individuals who use the excuse of ‘behaving according to religion’ should be dismissed from their duties and put on trial.

3) Turkey as a secular country does not need an institution that gives fetwas. The Directorate of Religious Affairs should be closed.

4) As a result of an insidious operation the religious Imam Hatip Schools are put in the centre of our educational system. This is a part of the project to create an Islamic State and actually with the latest developments, this project has hit a wall once more. Turkey has more Imams than needed, the redundant Imam Hatip Schools should be closed and the educational system should be planned on scientific and secular bases.

5) The religious sects and cults that strive to root out secularism are dark organizations nesting within the State and insidiously getting spread just like a dusty spider web. Not only the Gulen movement but all the religious sects and cults should be damned, prosecuted and purged.

6) The political and military networks of imperialism in the pass of the years are responsible for insidiously dragging our country to the threshold of disaster and, as in all coups, have played role in the coup of July 15. Turkey should leave NATO and the European Union membership process should be ended.

7) All the US and NATO bases should be seized. All nuclear weapons in Turkey and primarily in Incirlik base, one of the biggest nuclear weapon stores in the world which is designed as an explosive mine ready to erase our country from the map, should be disarmed.

8) All government officials who supported the armed jihadist forces in our neighbour country Syria, intervened in the internal affairs of this country and played major role in bringing the country in the threshold of destruction, have to be adjudicated.

9) Making available the benefits of the public sources to some individuals, arbitrarily distributing the public sources as part of incentive policies, openly plundering the facilities, institutions and foundations that in the past were in the use of the public benefit are the most significant stations in the route that dragged our country into the bog. Plunder and injustice does not only refer to the wealth of the ascertained companies and administrators of the Gulenist movement. All the domestic and foreign connections in the unjust enrichment of the enemies of the people, the plunder and theft should be inquired; the ones that backed each other while plundering the country should be called to account. The plundering network in which until the very near future there was collaboration for common political interests but in which now a politician can blame the administrator of the capital city of the country for being responsible for the plundering of half of the parcels of Ankara, has to be crumbled.

10) The statement that declares that the Fethullah movement was constituted with the decision of CIA by the hand of MIT (National Intelligence Organization) at the house of one of the richest capitalist families in Turkey, has to be inquired.

11) The abolishment of death penalty is one of the most significant and irrevocable historical gains in the history of Turkey, regarding both its political and humanistic dimensions. Using the coup attempt as an excuse to bring back the death penalty is unacceptable.

12) The oppression in the public services should be ended, unnecessary dismissals should be invalidated. Flouting the principle of judicial independence, the political practice of arbitrarily setting up pro-government cadres in public services, should be ceased.

13) The coup plotters that made the decision of a slaughter and gave instructions in this order should be uncovered with its proofs.

14) The reactionary gangs that spread terror in the streets giving the image of suppressing the coup, the ones that armed them, encouraged them and used torture should be ascertained and punished. It is very clear that these masses are not gathered together instantaneously for the sake of democracy but are so organized that they can make their own coup.

15)  Openly using the excuse of the coup in the wind of ‘national consensus’, the anti-popular and pro-capitalist regulations are coming one after the other. The legislative decrees and bag laws that impose the privatization programs and the looting individual pension system, should be annulled.

16)  The AKP government cannot pay the account with a mere apology for dragging the country into this condition in 14 years. Starting long years before, the Gulenist movement has undertaken dirty missions in several decades, while in the AKP rule had become a partner of the government, clearly, in an anti-constitutional way. Inquiring these years in total and specifically inquiring the actions of the AKP governments during these years and eliminating the results of the anti-popular practices are prerequisites of a real confrontation. Expecting us to believe that a religious sect is responsible for all the mess and its purge shall detoxify the state and the society, allowing the government to reinforce its power this time relying on some other religious sects, means accepting the truth of a new reactionary coup.

Quotes from: http://www.kp.org.tr/en/international-bulletin-no10-en-es