Skip to main content
Turkey

Context of a failed coup

"This analytical framework is then used to examine the outcomes in four countries where modernizing, nationalist projects took shape under the direction of secular elites: Turkey, Iran, Egypt and Tunisia. By the closing decades of the twentieth century, all four had reached an impasse. The Egyptian and Tunisian regimes had largely discarded their nationalist trappings and become Western client states, in thrall to the Washington Consensus—especially Tunisia, which was, in Tuğal’s words, ‘the most orthodox neoliberal regime in the Arab world’ and something of a poster-child for the IMF."

See book review here

Note: It is likely that the failed coup in Turkey going to strengthen the AKP project: Islamism, 'neoliberalism' and more authoritarian rule.

Reactions:

"Portraying Erdoğan and the fascist AKP dictatorship as if they were democratic after this coup attempt is an approach even more dangerous than the coup attempt itself. Portraying the fight for power among authoritarian, despotic and anti-democratic forces as a fight between the supporters and enemies of democracy will only serve to legitimise the existing fascist and despotic government."
Fascist maybe is an exaggeration, but I see what they mean.

Dilar Dirlik,
" AKP supporters have lynched a coupist soldier in Istanbul and beheaded him! How quickly these "national heroes" who murder the Kurds have become traitors and enemies - within an hour!
I cannot believe I was born in this country. The disgusting ISIS mentality combined with the fascist nation state ideology has turned the people into brutal maniacs. Erdogan already announced increased authoritarianism and darker times will come.
Nobody should be happy about attempted coups because military coups have a long history in Turkey and have brought nothing but extrajudicial killings, torture in prisons, massacres and censorship. Similarly, nobody should expect anybody to be "on Erdogan's side" for this period. This fatalistic dogmatic dualistic thinking has left the entire world in a state of hopelessness: Trump or Hilary, Sisi or Morsi, Assad or ISIS! These are no choices. They are all murderers. And people who want radical change cannot wait for fascist moments such as coups to overthrow a government because these sorts of moments do not happen on our premises. We cannot surrender our schedule and action plans according to the clock of fascists and geopolitics that are not in our hand. But what we must do is create selfsufficient and self reliant politics, create our own self defense and lead a principled struggle. This is what we do in Rojava, this is what we will do in Bakur (Turkish occupied Kurdistan), no matter what, freedom will win. In this sense, as usual, resistance goes on!"

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

The Qarmatians (Al-Qaramita)

By Nadeem Mahjoub Documentary film-makers G. Troeller and M. C. Defarge once asked a cabinet minister in South Yemen, why socialistic ideas were so readily acceptable in that part of the Arab world. He replied: “Because we have been communists for a thousand years! My mother was Qarmatian.” Official Muslim scholars and clerics, and many so-called moderates (whether individuals or groups) oppose sedition ( fitna ). Tensions and contradictions in society should be solved peacefully and even if the ruler was unjust and impious, it is generally accepted he should still be obeyed, for any kind of order is better than anarchy and sedition. “The tyranny of a sultan for a hundred years causes less damage than one year’s tyranny exercised by the subjects against one another.” Revolt was justified only against a ruler who clearly went against the command of God and His prophet.” 1 Here we look at not what happened in the minds of people who call for calm, oppose dissent and preach the re...
"A second position argues against transition, which is transitology itself. It is well known—especially among economists—as the sudden mobilization of a considerable mass of experts who are generally foreigners,generally Western, who come to preach the good word and to propose ready-made models of democracy. The science of the transition has become a financial windfall, a market. And the word transition has of course become a reflex of language, a term of reference, a call for tenders ( appel d’offres ) to which the whole society was supposed to respond.  Consequently, the reticence that one can express is the following: our history is framed, transition is a heteronomy. Every democratic revolution is henceforth supposed to take a unique, imposed path, which is, at the same time, indistinctly democratic and liberal (or neoliberal). A more or less non-“negotiable” package.  It is necessary to highlight the imposed character (and imposed from the outside) of this coming to t...

UK

"We are all in it together" A letter from a doctor to Boris Johnson published a few months ago: ' Johnson has contributed to thousands of deaths ' Related 'The greatest global science failure for a generation' 'Herd immunity' or lockdown

Finance

"The hegemony of finance—the most fetishized form of wealth—is only maintained by the public authorities’ unconditional support. Left to itself, fictitious capital would collapse; and yet would pull down the whole of our economies in its wake. In truth, finance is a master blackmailer. Financial hegemony dresses up in the liberal trappings of the market, yet captures the old sovereignty of the state all the better to squeeze the body of society to feed its own profits. " (my emphasis) —Cédric Durand, Ficticious Capital , 2017, p. 155 

Against Authoritarianism and Neoliberalism in Venezuela

“The current confrontation in Venezuela today is not between left and right.” “We are witnessing the transition from a government with authoritarian tendencies to a dictatorial regime.” “This is not a government ‘backed’ by the military, but, as Maduro himself has said, the government is led by a ‘civilian-military-police alliance’. “Those who continue to support Maduro, including parties and movements of the Sao Paulo Forum or the spokespersons of Podemos in Spain, are causing severe damage to the left in the region and the world. They are damaging anti-capitalist struggles in the broadest sense.” The US embargo is ‘in violation of international law’. This is a useless statement repeated a million times, and it has come back again during the ongoing Israel’s genocidal war. “[A]fter the failure of the current, self-defined “socialist” governments, Venezuelan society tends to associate any reference to socialism or the left with the corruption and authoritarianism of the Maduro governme...