On 5/1/07, Doug Henwood <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> wrote:
On May 1, 2007, at 5:42 PM, Yoshie Furuhashi wrote: > Surprisingly sensible for WSWS (if you can ignore typical WSWS > formulae at the end). -- Yoshie You mean this part? > The Kemalists represent the corrupt state bureaucracy, army and the > traditional big banks and corporations, while the Islamists represent > newer bourgeois layers who are no less ruthless, but keen to break up > the established structures in order make their own enrichment easier. > There is nothing progressive in either camp. The campaign of > nationalism and repression by the Kemalists under the battle cry of > secularism is in the final analysis directed against the democratic > rights of the working class. Sounds exactly right to me, but I'm no expert on Turkey.
I thought you were rooting for secular elitists rooting for the army -- given what you said on your mailing list -- glad to see you retreat from that. The merit of abstention depends on how important you think it is to defend democracy, under capitalism as it is, from the army. Already the army's intervention and civilian support for that led the constitutional court to make the decision that it did, successfully forcing early elections. But the AKP, being liberal bourgeois, won't inspire the kind of response from the masses that Chavez did when his government was briefly overthrown by a coup -- needless to say, it doesn't have the sort of following in the military itself that Chavez does -- and the left in Turkey being so small and weak, it wouldn't be able to make a difference anyway. Liberals in the Third World don't fare well at dangerous times. -- Yoshie
