Communist parties of Greece and Turkey issue statement on regional developments

The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) and the Communist Party of Greece (KKE) have released a joint statement, as a reflection of their common struggle, on the regional developments and deepening conflicts in the Aegean and Eastern Mediterranean.
Friday, 17 January 2020 20:36

A joint statement was issued by the communist parties of Greece and Turkey on Greek-Turkish developments, stating that the relationship between the two countries is defined by the interests of the capitalist classes and imperialist forces. The communists noted that the peoples of Turkey and Greece have nothing positive to expect about these developments.

The full statement is as follows:

The CP of Greece and the CP of Turkey with our common position seek to intervene in the dangerous and worrying developments taking place in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, in the Greek-Turkish relations, and caused by social, economic and political forces that want to draw the two peoples in bloody adventures for their own interests.

Greek-Turkish relations, defined today by both the plans of the prevailing bourgeois classes of the two countries and the interests of other bourgeois classes and powerful imperialist forces, have come to a head. This is because they are involved in a fierce fight over the sharing of the region's energy wealth, energy routes and commodities. The result of fierce competitions is the imperialist interventions and wars in our wider region, such as in Syria and Libya, the very dangerous developments in the Persian Gulf fueled by the US invasion of Iraq and the killing of Iranian and Iraqi officials.

In the vicious circle of competitions for the interests of the monopolies, participate various capitalist states, including Turkey and Greece, with the aim of promoting the interests of the bourgeois classes. Axes and anti-axes are being created, while the imperialist unions of NATO and the EU are seeking to have a separate and autonomous role.

Greek-Turkish relations are also a part of these developments. The peoples of Turkey and Greece have nothing positive to expect about the developments from their involvement with the US, NATO, the EU, other imperialist powers.

Our two parties are based on proletarian internationalism and internationalist solidarity, and with these principles we are facing the complex developments in our region, struggling for workers'-people's interests.

We highlight that both the cooperation and the competitions of the bourgeois classes of Turkey and Greece, e.g. about which country will become an "energy hub", they serve their own interests and have nothing to do with the interests of the people.

The peoples of Turkey and Greece have nothing to divide them. They have an interest in demanding to live in peace and struggle for their own future, against capitalist exploitation, capitalist profits, which lead to war and the destruction of the environment. For the abolition of exploitation of man by man and the satisfaction of contemporary popular needs, the eradication of those causes that lead the peoples to the "meat machine" of imperialist war.

In this direction, the CPs of Greece and Turkey:

-Are opposed in any case of a hot incident and war involvement.

-Express our opposition to border violations and to the challenge of international treaties that have defined the borders in the region.

-Support the position not to change the borders and the Treaties that define them.

-Denounce the efforts made by a position of military strength to create faits accomplis in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the enormous military expenditures of the two countries that create a background for warfare.

-Denounce that the plans for the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Aegean by the bourgeois classes of the two countries are aimed at giving foreign and local monopolies control of the energy sources in order to increase their profitability, creating conditions for greater complications and sharpening of the confrontation, risks to the environment. The working classes, the peoples of the two countries have nothing to gain from these plans.

-Are struggling for the disentanglement of the two countries from imperialist plans, for the military forces to return from NATO and other imperialist missions abroad.

-Are struggling for the disentanglement of our countries from the imperialist unions of NATO and the EU, in order to close the American and NATO bases in our countries.

The CPs of Greece and Turkey call on the working class and the other popular strata to strengthen their struggle against the plans of the bourgeois classes and the imperialist unions, against nationalism and racism, in order to convey the message that the neighboring peoples want and demand to live in peace!

Communist Party of Greece

Communist Party of Turkey