At a time when the French government has just extended the state of emergency to 2017, when an atmosphere of suspicion and fear is pressing hard on a population still feeling the shock of a series of terrorist attacks, a new and highly demagogic ‘debate’ is reinforcing the current anti-Islam campaign. It’s been in the national headlines and has had considerable international coverage. We’re referring to the ‘burkini ban’ on a number of beaches. This retrograde controversy has engaged the whole political class, from local mayors in coastal towns to the highest state authorities, all of them, right and left, plunging their hands into the whole ideological mess.
At the beginning of August, ‘L’Association Islamiste des Soeurs Marseillaises, Initiatrices de Loisirs et d’Entreaide’ (a whole programme!) “privately hired a swimming centre for Muslim women to come to on 10 September. The advertising called for burkinis to be worn”[1]. It was all the extreme right needed to display its customary paranoia and to denounce the “Muslim invasion of our country”. Following pressure from local councillors, who didn’t want to appear ‘lax’ in a region where populism and xenophobia are deeply implanted, the “Burkini Day” was quickly cancelled.
But on 12 August, the mayor of Cannes again blew on the embers by forbidding the wearing of the burkini on beaches, in the name of ensuring public order. Several mayors from the region, from Corsica and from Pas-de-Calais in the north, many of them products of the most right wing and demagogic of the right wing Republican party, also imposed the ban. By instrumentalising the wearing of the burkini, the French bourgeoisie is continuing its recurrent campaign on Islam[2], aimed at poisoning consciousness, dividing the population and accentuating nationalist propaganda.
In a context where there is a growing dislocation of the social body, and in which the working class is presently not able to defend a revolutionary perspective, all sorts of irrational and sectarian tendencies are being reinforced. This dynamic is feeding fear, misunderstanding, xenophobic and racist prejudices, blind and obsessive hatred, on the part of ‘natives’ towards ‘foreigners’, and vice versa.
It was in this context that a scuffle broke out on 14 August in an inlet in Sisco, Corsica, between three families of Muslims, who according to the authorities wanted to “privatise” the beach, and part of the local population. This altercation, whose details remain rather vague, resulted the next day in an excitable demonstration of 500 people shouting slogans like “this is our home!” This kind of event is unfortunately not new in Corsica : in 2015, in Ajaccio, there were several days of demonstrations which were openly xenophobic, with the public burning of books including the Koran, pillaging of Arab shops and other provocations.
This illustrates the danger of a pogrom mentality becoming commonplace at the very heart of capitalism. The present difficulties of the working class - even if it hasn’t entirely lost its capacity to resist, its capacity to revive its own revolutionary alternative - tend to undermine hope for a better world in the minds of many proletarians. In the absence of an understanding of the real nature of capitalist social relations and their inextricable contradictions, in the absence of any real perspective, the danger is that people look for scapegoats to blame for the miseries of this world. This reactionary approach, based on the chimerical quest to go back to the good old days when society was more harmonious, sees immigrants and those hardest hit by the crisis as troublemakers, as responsible for destroying the way things used to be.
Xenophobia is not something new in history, far from it. But what we are seeing in capitalism today is a tendency for the basest instincts to be unleashed, in words and actions. There is a real threat that looking for scapegoats can lead to the physical and mental destruction of sacrificial victims.
For the bourgeoisie, the rise of populism has shaken its electoral games and can go against its real political orientations (as with the rejection of the European Union and the single currency). At the same time it is seeking to manipulate the most disgusting retrograde ideologies in order to reaffirm its domination. This is the case with the polemic over the burkini. The state has not hesitated to fuel a false debate and stir up divisions through a hysterical media campaign. For or against the burkini ban, defenders of ‘women’s rights’ versus advocates of ‘Republican virtue’, arguments between the right and left of the political apparatus of the bourgeoisie – all this serves only to reinforce confusion in the minds of the workers. The dangerous strategy of those politicians and state agencies who seek to ride the tiger of populism can only strengthen it in the long term. But while fanning the flames of hatred, the state can at the same time present itself as the guarantor of democracy and national unity (as with the Supreme Court’s ruling that the burkini ban was illegal). The working class has nothing to gain by getting drawn onto this swampy ground, which is a nationalist trap on all sides.
The appearance of the burkini on the beaches is a very limited phenomenon[3], but it is also a tangible sign, like the spectacular rise of halal products and the wearing of the veil over the last few years, of the growing strength of religious obscurantism, which, far from giving meaning to life, is “at one and the same time, the expression of real suffering and a protest against real suffering. Religion is the sigh of the oppressed creature, the heart of a heartless world, and the soul of soulless conditions. It is the opium of the people”[4].
These garments are indeed straitjackets for women, who are often consenting victims to the bonds of dress but above all of ideology. But consenting to domination is by no means restricted to veiled women; it is a direct expression of the generalised, totalitarian alienation that pervades capitalist society and humanity as a whole. It is one form of the internalisation of the ruling social relations. At a time when science and technology have developed to unprecedented levels, the social relations of production incarcerate humanity in savagery and alienation. Both the burkini and the public humiliation, at the hands of armed police, of the women wearing it, who are treated like criminals violating the laws of democracy, provide us with a caricature of the sexual discrimination which the current ‘civilisation’ is incapable of abolishing. We can also see how the so-called ‘liberation’ of women from the 60s onwards has ended up insidiously reinforcing macho domination on a daily level. Wage labour transforms human beings into commodities, into sexual objects, into images for adverts, into anorexic manikins for luxury fashions – and all this is no less scandalous than the burkini. Obtaining rights and freedoms in capitalist society is a total illusion. The real principles of this society are terror, exploitation, and barbarism.
WH-EG, 30.8.16
[1] La Voix du Nord, 5.8.16
[2] When not talking about the burkini, the media are in a perpetual froth about the niqab, the burka, halal products and the building of mosques.
[3] At the time of writing, only about 30 women had actually worn the burkini on the beaches, most of them in response to the hyper-mediatisation of the ‘phenomenon’
[4] Marx, Introduction to the Critique of Hegel’s Philosophy of Right.
The internal response to the July 15/16 attempted coup was, according to Turkish President Erdogan, a “Gift from God”. He insisted that the “cleansing” would continue and the “virus would be eradicated” along with terrorists wherever they were. Sure enough, a Stalinist-like purge, with lists of names already drawn-up, was implemented with force and the war against the Kurds in south-east Turkey immediately stepped up.
Without any speculation as to the possible role or knowledge of outside agencies, it looks clear that the coup involved some of the senior levels of the Turkish military, called by the BBC as the coup unfolded, “the guarantors of Turkish secularism”.
This putsch to overthrow Erdogan and his AKP was in all probability wider and deeper than a “Gulenist” movement[1], although the alliances and links between the various shadowy factions and tendencies within the Turkish state are often truly Byzantine in their complexity. For example, the Gulenists have long been accused of being involved in the “deep state” conspiracy Ergenekon, which was supposedly set up around the 1990s as a guarantor of Turkey’s secular traditions, and traditionally, the main opponents of Erdogan’s “moderate” Islamist party, AKP are not the Gulenists but the Kemalist[2] factions within the military and society at large. But this was not just a new confrontation between the Islamist AKP and the secular Kemalists – indeed, in the wake of the coup the main Kemalist party, the CHP, rallied to the government in a grand display of national solidarity. And there are also complex religious rivalries involved: between Sunni and the heterodox Alevis, and between Erdogan’s version of Sunni Islam and the one promulgated by the Gulenists. But for now Erdogan and the AKP have now tightened their totalitarian grip on the Turkish state, with a three-month State of Emergency enabling them to rule by decree in an atmosphere of fear and heightened state surveillance.
To date (CNN, 9.8.16) 22,000 people have been detained and a further 16,000 arrested on specific charges, including thousands of military personnel, involving about a third of Turkey’s General and Admiral ranks. Hundreds of journalists have been arrested, detained, investigated or sacked along with many thousands of civil servants, and foreign travel has been stopped for many. Altogether 68,000 have been fired or suspended with 2000 institutions shut down. The State of Emergency has led to torture, beatings, and starvation of those detained
Some involved in Erdogan’s inner circle have been arrested and the Presidential Guard has been disbanded. Around 250 soldiers and civilians were killed in the coup on the government side as well as an unknown number of those, wittingly or unwittingly, on the side of the putsch. Dozens of fighter-bombers, dozens of helicopters, thousands of armoured vehicles and 3 ships were used in the coup attempt. From some reports Erdogan narrowly escaped with his life after warnings from Russian interceptions.
For some years Turkey has been held up as a stable, economically thriving island, and an example of moderate, democratic Islam, amid a sea of troubles in the Middle East. And indeed, as a state, Turkey does have a more solid historical implantation than many of its war-torn neighbours like Syria and Iraq. But it remains the case that Turkey has a lot in common with Syria and Iraq in terms of ethnic and sectarian divisions.
The strength of Erdogan’s AKP has been in its delivery on the economic level where the standard of living has risen for most of the countryside and the urban poor. Jobs have been created by borrowing huge sums for state investments and state projects. At the same time Erdogan has profited from the rise of Islam and has pursued a moderate form of fundamentalism in order to enhance the image of a “New Turkey”, demonstrating its power as a potential leader of the Sunni world. Behind the conflict between the Islamist AKP and the secular Kemalists of the army and wider layers of society, i.e. a confrontation between Islamism and secularist nationalism, lies a further religious element. The previous secular Kemalist system was seen as indirectly favouring the Shiite Aleviminority at the expense of the Sunni majority, since the Alevi form of Islam is seen as more adaptable to the modern world. At this level there is a certain resemblance between the previous Kemalist system in Turkey and the Assad regime, which rules over a Sunni majority while being largely composed of another Shiite sect, the Alawites[3]. The present war in Syria between Alawite and Sunni can only affect and accentuate the religious and cultural rivalries between comparable elements in Turkey. In the wake of the coup, for example, there were reports of pogromist attacks on Alevi homes and shops.
The Turkey of today is not the same country it was at the time of the previous military putsch in 1980, whose justification was the growing disorder sown by conflicts between right and left political factions, or even ten years ago when the AKP came to power. As a result of the economic boom, which now seems to be ending, both a modern proletariat and a new elite of specialists and intellectuals has emerged in the big cities. A large part of these elements are not at all comfortable with “Islamicisation”. A dangerous situation has thus emerged where the putsch of the old elite (to the extent that they took part in it) has provoked the hatred and thirst for revenge of the AKP supporters. On the other hand, Erdogan has to take seriously the warning that this attempted coup represents. If he goes too far in his “counter-coup” he can, at worst, provoke civil war or a running conflict in the form of armed revolts or new forms of terrorism – even if the resistance of these forces has been subdued for the moment.
At a time when the country has gone from “economic miracle” to one of Morgan Stanley’s “Fragile Five” most at risk, when its productivity and growth is low, while labour costs, inflation and borrowing are rising, the results of further economic instability could be dramatic – collapse of tourism, emigration of new generation of skilled workers, etc.
Additionally, the Turkish bourgeoisie has a long tradition of “exclusion” on which the foundations of modern Turkey were born: the genocide of the Armenians, the massacres of the Greeks and long-standing opposition to any possibility of a Kurdish state. The AKP’s view that all opponents are enemies who need to be repressed has a long history in Turkey.
Since the collapse of the Eastern Bloc in 1989, Turkey has been affected strongly by the centrifugal tendencies unleashed. The weakening of US imperialism and that of Russia has allowed Turkey to develop its own ambitions, posing as a regional leader of the Sunni regimes. The Erdogan regime has fallen out with Israel, strengthened ties with Hamas and called the al-Sisi government in Egypt which overthrew the Muslim Brotherhood “illegitimate”. Its relationship with Russia, which after the coup and Erdogan’s August 9 meeting with Putin in St. Petersburg appears to be warming, has been complicated and fluctuating. In its present situation Turkey can blackmail the west with its links to Russia, China (and Iran), and can play its own cards in the Middle East.
The biggest nightmare for the Turkish bourgeoisie would be the establishment of a Kurdish state. The west has a dilemma here: in their war against Isis they rely on the Kurds for cannon-fodder, providing them with arms, air-cover and “advisors”. Such developments can only strengthen Kurdish nationalism and its ambitions for an “independent” state, even if the Kurdish nationalists are themselves split up into a number of different factions. The clash of interests over the Kurds, with the US, Germany and Britain on one side and Turkey on the other, is stark. Erdogan was close to the Assad regime before the war and during it both have used Isis forces for their own perceived advantages. Assad has also used the Kurdish PKK for the same reasons. But after a five-year war and Russian (and other) intervention on behalf of Assad, there are signs that Ankara may consider leaving Assad in power while doing some sort of deal with him. Neither Assad nor Turkey has any interest in a Kurdish state or any type of Kurdish autonomous region along the border. Talks have been ongoing for about a year between Assad’s Alawite representatives in Damascus and representatives of Turkey’s Homeland Party[4] along with elements of Turkey’s military intelligence, with a view, amongst others, of stopping Turkish military support to Assad’s enemies. These Turkish “interlocutors” appear untouched in the post-coup atmosphere, suggesting that these talks will continue. If this is the case it will be at the expense of the west and their Kurdish “allies”[5].
We also need to consider the significance of the fact that Erdogan, the leader of a NATO country, has accused the governments of other NATO countries – in particular the USA- of having supported the putsch, while at the same time praising Russia for having warned it of the plans for a coupThere is also a question mark over the availability of the Incirlik military base for: up till now it has been considered a NATO base, but Erdogan has said that he would not oppose the Russians using it for operations against Isis. These developments, this game of bargaining and blackmail, are a further sign of the growing fragility of imperialist alliances in the region.
Sir Richard Dearlove, ex-boss of MI6, likened the EU deal with Turkey over refugees as similar “to storing gasoline next to the fire” (Belfast Telegraph, 15.5.16). Turkey will use these millions of “assets” as a further element of blackmail against the EU (which Erdogan has called “a Christian club”). He has already threatened to cancel the deal and the Europeans have been forced to try to placate him. The present purge and the hunt for opponents means that in addition to over 2 million Syrian and other refugees there may be more Turks themselves fleeing the country and adding to the general refugee crisis.
As a system in accelerating decay, the tendency towards instability and chaos must be the dominant one on a historical scale. But this does mean that the ruling class is helpless in the face of it and that there are no counter-tendencies. We have seen this, for example, in the UK following the disastrous result of the EU referendum: the ruling class has reacted very quickly to the danger of serious fractures in its own ranks, reorganising its governmental cards in a rather adroit manner in order to present a unified response to the Brexit crisis. And we can discern similar tendencies in Turkey. Although the Kemalists and Gulenists collaborated in the coup, the fact that the Gulenists were singled out is significant. In the wake of the coup, Erdogan has more and more been stressing the heritage of Ataturk and playing the card of Turkish nationalism rather than Islamism. This could signify a serious attempt to win over the Kemalists, as well as the Alevisand other bourgeois factions, behind the option of an autocratic leader pressing the claims of the Turkish nation (somewhat on the model of Putin in Russia).
The current adulation of Erdogan in the widely publicised street demonstrations could be part of this strategy to build a new unity within the Turkish ruling class. On the other hand, the official pictures showing massive support for Erdogan and the AKP are not to be taken at face value. He’s the winner for the moment having beaten off rival cliques but there are limits to Erdogan’s authoritarian project.. One strength of Erdogan and his party has been a strong economy but as we have said this phase of growth is coming to an end He has never been as popular as the propaganda suggests; anti-government demonstrations in important areas in 2013, sparked off by the protests at Taksim Gezi Park[6], showed the existence of a widespread rejection of his policies among urban, educated youth in particular. And there remains deep resentment in the military directed against Erdogan and his party. Just a year ago AKP ministers faced public abuse and ridicule from senior military figures at funerals for soldiers killed in operations against the Kurdish PKK. The Erdogan government responded to this public humiliation – at what should be show-case events of state propaganda – by requesting the media stopped its coverage of the funerals (Times, 31.8.15). The military publicly objected to the slain soldiers being called “martyrs” and expressed the view that the military surge against the PKK was part of the strengthening of the AKP’s electoral position against the pro-Kurdish People’s Democratic Party (HDP).
At the moment the Erdogan clique has strengthened its position as it has grabbed control back from the putschists but its social control remains uncertain with consequences both inside and outside Turkey.
Boxer, 15.8.16 (This article was contributed by a sympathiser of the ICC)
[1] Fethullah Gulen, an ex-ally of Erdogan, now in exile in the US, runs something of an empire there with control over many institutions and assets reportedly worth some $50 billion. The Gulenist/Hizmet movement has 80 million followers world-wide and has openly supported the Clintons and the Democratic Party. Its Islamism appears to be more fundamentalist than the AKP’s. The anti-Kemalist Gulenists were able to penetrate elements of the Turkish state because of their alliance with Erdogan and the AKP from 2002 to 2011. However, their sect-like structure was increasingly seen by Erdogan as a threat to his rule.
[2] Kemalists – secular nationalists who claim to be in the tradition of Kemal Ataturk, founder of the modern Turkish state in the 1920s.
[3] The Alevis and Alawites are not the same sect, although both their names signify their reverence for Ali, the son-in-law of Mohammed and a key figure in the Shiite branch of Islam. There are also ethnic differences in the majority of their adherents.
[4] Homeland Party (YP), a small right-wing conservative party founded in 2002.
[5] On 29 August, the USA strongly condemned renewed fighting between the Turkish military and Kurdish fighters in northern Syria. As in the past, Turkey has used an offensive against Isis (which dislodged Isis from the town of Jarablus) as a means of escalating its war against the Kurds, and this conflict has now openly spilled over into the Syrian theatre of operations.
[6] On these protests see https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201306/8371/turkey-cure-state-... [4]
Links
[1] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/french_police_burkini.jpg
[2] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/france
[3] https://en.internationalism.org/files/en/images/21_world_turkey_2016-07-16_573.jpg
[4] https://en.internationalism.org/icconline/201306/8371/turkey-cure-state-terror-isnt-democracy
[5] https://en.internationalism.org/tag/geographical/turkey