Turkey, Casualties Mount as Corporate Media Blackout Continues

Turkey, Casualties Mount as Corporate Media Blackout Continues

By Steven Argue

On Saturday night, June 2nd, the Turkish police continued their brutal repression. People in the streets of Turkey have reported to this author that last night the police killed five people in Antayla and many more were murdered in Adana and Istanbul. This is on top of 27-30 people murdered by the Turkish police Friday night. I have seen photographic evidence of some of these murders. Here is video the Turkish police driving into a crowd in a police truck called a “troma” and murdering people:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h_0AoL72Evw

Despite 5 million people taking to the streets on Friday and murderous police violence against the people, on Saturday the headline in Sabah, one of Turkey’s main capitalist newspapers was on Prime Minister Erdogan’s campaign to get people to quit smoking.

The New York Times, instead of reporting the facts, reports police violence as perception or criticism. For instance, in their article this morning (Sunday) without mentioning a single death they say:

“The departure of the police, who had been widely criticized for violent tactics on Friday, set off scenes of jubilation and destruction, as some drank and partied while others destroyed police vehicles and bulldozers.”

This is typical of the imperialist corporate media where the destruction of police vehicles and bulldozers gets priority over the lives of human beings.

Likewise, the corporate media has remained silent for decades as the Turkish government has violated every basic human right of the Kurdish people and, in a war against Kurdish communities, slaughtered 30,000 people.

There is a reason for the silence of the international capitalist media on the crimes of the Turkish state. It is the fact that the government of Turkey is one that prioritizes capitalist profit over human needs. This allows the capitalists who run the powerful imperialist countries of Europe and the United States to profit from its resources and labor unhindered in any meaningful way by the demands of the Turkish people for the rights of labor and the environment. Those who do make such demands face the cruelty of the Turkish national police. In addition, the international capitalist press stays silent on the crimes of the Turkish state also because the Turkish government, for the most part, plays along with the geo-strategic interests of U.S. and European imperialism.

So when the New York Times promises “all of the news that’s fit to print”, it should be clear that they are talking about censoring the most troublesome information for their system.

My friends in Turkey don’t want more people to die. Around the world we should do what we can for them by spreading information blacked out in the corporate media, because sometimes if the oppressors in power know they're being watched, it helps. Ultimately though, it will take a proletarian revolution to stop the brutality of this evil system, both in Turkey and in the imperialist centers of the United States and Europe.

The uprising in Turkey has some of the ingredients needed for proletarian revolution. Brave and rebellious people have taken to the street and have even driven the cops out of certain areas. And that rebellion has even driven cracks into the capitalist state itself, shown by the fact that there have been soldiers of the Turkish military who are siding with the protesters against the police. This has included soldiers handing out gas masks to protesters to use in their battles with the police.

A key question, however, is always the question of leadership. A revolutionary proletarian party is always needed to drive any revolutionary uprising forward to the seizure of proletarian power. Where such a leadership is lacking, the repressive capitalist state remains and there is no actual revolution, despite great sacrifice, as was the case in Egypt. If any organization in Turkey today fits the bill of what is needed, or if a new organization needs to be built, such a discussion would go beyond the scope of this article which needs to be distributed immediately. I will say, however, that every protester in the streets of Turkey should be taking this question seriously. For the awake, leadership should never just be left to someone else. Everyone in the streets should be developing their own abilities and knowledge to cultivate themselves as leaders, whether or not they decide to use those abilities to build existing organizations or in building something new. Revolution is built on an awakening of consciousness that sees the only road to liberation flowing from smashing the capitalist state, overthrowing the capitalist system of exploitation, ending nationalist oppression and standing up for all of the most oppressed, and establishing a system of workers democracy. Whatever the immediate outcome of the current uprising, the organization and building a revolutionary proletarian party that fights to carry out these objectives will be critical.

-Steven Argue of the Revolutionary Tendency

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Also from Steven Argue read:

Despite Brutal Crackdown, Uprising in Turkey Continues (June 1st)
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/06/01/18737756.php

End U.S. Imperialist Attacks on Liberated Syrian Kurdistan! (This article actually goes into detail about the Kurdish question in Turkey, Syria, Iraq, Iran, and the USSR and former USSR)
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/03/03/18733059.php

U.S. Backed Genocide of Christians, Alawites, and other Minorities in Syria (The Turkish government is a key player in backing the genocidal Islamist war in Syria, and demands of ending Turkish aid to the Islamic extremists of the FSA have been a component of the current uprising.)
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2013/05/30/18737666.php

Why The Russian Revolution is Still Important
http://www.indybay.org/newsitems/2012/03/03/18708611.php

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