Our article published in the December 2024 issue of Scottish Socialist Voice, the newspaper of the Scottish Socialist Party
Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people has been continuing for more than a year, and the imperialist rulers and their collaborator regimes expand their war in the Middle East. At the heart of these ever-growing wars, in which the Middle East is one front with Ukraine and East Asia, lies capitalist-imperialist aggression and capital’s nature to create wars. Anyone who says no to war and wants to understand the current conditions must begin approaching the issue from this class basis.
That capital necessitates war is principally based on its need for endless expansion, but this essential element also needs explanation at the political and state level. At this level, states should be considered as legitimized-legalized mechanisms of force based on the current relations of production and class rule. In contemporary monopoly capitalism, states are means and expressions of monopoly power and hegemony. The relations between states on the “political” level (including war) are expressions of monopolistic competition central to capitalism; a competition that brings crises that turn into wars, and concerns everything from control over markets, cheap labor, trade routes, resources to ideological and cultural conflict.
The current trajectory of such international war is increasingly marked by a “Western” camp of imperialists uniting behind the US. While the other main imperialist powers—UK, Germany, France and Japan—sought to increase their own influence after the fall of the Soviet Union, the US endeavored to maintain its dominance. Ukraine became the breaking point for European powers, especially Germany, to surrender their will to US hegemony once again. The US was able to convince its European allies to supply weapons to Ukraine and green-light strikes within Russian territory. The so-called labor, green, or social-democrat governments of Europe take off their masks and show themselves as agents of NATO war machinery, at the helm of which the US sits. While their own people suffer poverty and starvation, European nations race to increase their arms spending and arm Ukraine.
In the imperialist plans to partition our region, the Republic of Turkey (TR) state holds an important role. TR serves as a joint colony of US and European powers. Politically, it’s primarily tied to the US, and economically to Europe. The TR state was organized from the very beginning as (1) a colonial country, (2) a kind of joint outpost of the imperialist world against the USSR as an anti-communist state organization and (3) a prison of peoples.
As a NATO member, TR state’s militaristic role in the region follows the calculations of the US, and accordingly, US influence rules mainstream politics. The latest imperialist attack in Syria organized by the US, UK and Israel that led to the fall of the Assad regime showed how TR state’s occupation in Syria, its exposed relations with ISIS and continued association with gangs in the region were cultivated as tools of the US in the region. Erdoğan had declared himself before to be the co-president of the US’ Greater Middle East Project, and the Turkish state fed the HTS and SNA gangs for many years, just like it did to their many different previous forms since the beginning of the Syrian war. While attacks against Assad were led by former ISIS members and leaders who merely changed their organizational names and now wear suits, Western media offers them to us again as democratic heroes. They are heroes of the kind of democracy imperialism has to offer, the rule of butchers who only bring massacres and wars, just like they did in Afghanistan, Libya and Iraq before Syria. Thanks to these gangs, Israel accomplished what it could not for decades and occupied Golan Heights and beyond in Syria without facing any resistance.
Like all the peoples in the region, peoples in Anatolia, Turkey, have stood up for Palestine in the face of Israel’s genocidal war, and demanded that trade, diplomatic relations, economic ties etc. with Israel be cut. However, exports to Israel from Turkey multiplied since last December, and Turkey remains one of the most significant suppliers of Israel not only in energy and steel but also food, clothing, and other commodities.
Upon the reaction against the continuing and increasing trade with Israel, TR state had announced in April that the trade was being limited, and Erdoğan himself claimed in May that the trade had been stopped. However, since then, it has been reported in June not only that trade continues via third-country channeling, such as recording trade as going to Greece; it has also emerged that Turkey continues to supply Israel with the cloak of trade with Palestine. Trade to Palestine from Turkey increased over 1113%, and steel trade increased to $68 million from $156 thousand compared to last year; an increase of 30930%. Trade to Palestinian territories passes through Israeli customs, and this increase is nothing but Turkey’s continued trade with Israel whilst claiming to support Palestine. Furthermore, Azerbaijan, which supplies 40% of Israel’s oil needs, does so freely through channels in Turkey. Against this, TR does nothing but raid the homes and arrest protestors who demand an end to the energy supply to Israel.
The speeches by Erdoğan and other representatives of the Palace Regime of Turkey serve to hide Turkey’s role in Israel’s genocide and NATO’s partition and war plans in the region. Facing a population overwhelmingly pro-Palestinian, such an illusion is the best and only viable strategy for imperialism’s collaborators, as employed also in the Arab states that just a year ago were lining up to enter into normalization processes with Israel.
In our region and others, workers, students, women, peoples must unite behind socialism and bring an end to the rule of imperialist masters massacring, exploiting, and dominating us everywhere. Zionist occupation and imperialism are the causes of the war in our region. Since its emergence, there has not been a year where capitalism-imperialism has not produced war and violence. This cycle of destruction and domination that is already bringing an end to peoples through genocide, is also carrying the whole of humanity to catastrophe whether by nuclear confrontation or increased climate disasters.
Nothing but socialism, the creation of a world without class exploitation and domination, can stop this. If today the so-called bourgeois democracies continue supplying Israel’s genocide against the Palestinian people despite their own populations marching in the streets in their millions and with the majority demanding arms embargos and ceasefires, it’s because these governments and states are not governments and states of the people but of monopolies. Workers in the UK and other imperialist centers have a key role to play in the continuing struggle and the growing international front against capitalism. Workers in the West have shown important examples of struggle, not only in mass marches for Palestine but also in arms shipment blockages to Israel in docks, as we have seen in Spain and more recently Greece. This struggle must be expanded and all workers in the imperialist centers must overcome the ideological cancers of exceptionalism, nationalism, and bourgeois-democracy and instead, join forces with workers and people across the world to bring down monopolies that expand across borders despite imposing borders and war on peoples everywhere!
1. https://bianet.org/haber/turkiyeli-sirketler-israil-le-ticaret-yasagini-yunanistan-uzerinden-deldi-296687
2. https://haber.sol.org.tr/haber/filistine-ihracatta-yine-rekor-kirildi-israille-ticaret-gercekten-kesildi-mi-395344
https://artigercek.com/guncel/soru-oneresi-verildi-israile-celik-tedarigi-devam-mi-ediyor-319624h
3. https://haber.sol.org.tr/haber/israil-saldirganliginin-arkasindaki-gizli-guc-socar-395328
