Markin comment:
In 2007-2008 I, in vain,
attempted to put some energy into analyzing the blossoming American presidential
campaign since it was to be, as advertised at least, a watershed election, for
women, blacks, old white anglos, latinos, youth, etc. In the event I had to
abandon the efforts in about May of 2008 when it became obvious, in my face
obvious, that the election would be a watershed only for those who really
believed that it would be a watershed election. The four years of the Obama
presidency, the 2012 American presidential election campaign, and world
politics have only confirmed in my eyes that that abandonment was essentially
the right decision at the right time. In short, let the well- paid bourgeois
commentators go on and on with their twitter. I, we, had (have) better things
to do like fighting against the permanent wars, the permanent war economies,
the struggle for more and better jobs, and for a workers party that fights for
a workers government . More than enough to do, right? Still a look back at some
of the stuff I wrote then does not a bad feel to it. Read on if you like
************
Defend the Kurdish Workers
Party (PKK)
Commentary
Defend the right to national
self-determination for the Turkish Kurds.
The minute one enters into
the murky waters of Middle East politics one is immediately confronted with
words like, insolvable, daunting, and hopeless. If there is one area of the
world that cries out for a multi-nationally derived socialist solution it is
this benighted area of the world. Practically speaking, however, that prospect
is music for the future. Nevertheless some programmatic points can be put forth
today that will cut across the racial, ethnic and religious divides that lead
one to use the above-mentioned words of despair. One such point is not even a
socialist point per se- the question of a nation’s right to self determination.
Yes, that question is off the table for those nations that have already
established their right to it by force of arms, or otherwise. However, in the
case of the interpenetrated peoples of the Middle East some real nations have
been left on the sidelines. In no case is this clearer than with the Kurds, the
largest coherent population without a state of their own.
Recent headlines have
highlighted this question point blank as Turkey, one of the four nations along
with Syria, Iraq and Iran in the region that has significant Kurdish
populations, has attempted to solve its Kurdish ‘problem’, as in the past, by
militarily annihilating various guerilla operations wherever they crop up- here
across the border in neighboring Iraq. I make no pretense to solve all the
questions of this area in regard to the Kurdish situation, for example,
militants do not today raise the right of national self-determination for Iraqi
Kurds who have consciously subordinated themselves to American imperialism but
the beginning of wisdom to defend those guerilla forces, mainly the Kurdish
Workers Party, in their fight against their national oppressor-Turkey. More,
much more on this situation as it unfolds but for now the prospective slogan is
–For the right to national self-determination for the Turkish Kurds. For the
future- A United Kurdistan.
