Turkey

Salih Musleem was formerly the co-president of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party, the political arm of the Kurdish Peoples Protection Units (YPG), in Syria.

He was invited to take part in a conference on the Middle East, but was arrested in a hotel in Prague by Czech security forces following a request from the Turkish Government.

He has now been released.

The Turkish government accused Musleem of being a terrorist.

Eleven members of the Turkish Medical Association (TMA) were arrested on 30 January following the publication of a statement by the TMA condemning Turkey′s military action in Afrin, Syria. The statement called for an end to all hostilities and warned that war posed a threat to public health. The Turkish government, along with Syrian rebels, launched an assault on Kurdish-controlled Afrin in Syria on 21 January.

Turkey’s incursion and bombing campaign in Kurdish controlled area of Afrin is a worrying escalation in a prolonged stand-off on the Syrian border.

Erdogan’s hostility to the expanding territory now under the control of Kurdish forces has been held back by the support of both Russia and the US for the Kurdish forces. But as relations have thawed between Turkey and Russia, the dynamic has changed.

Iraqi government forces and Shia militias have occupied Kirkuk for the first time since 2014, the year Daesh made their away across Iraq. Although Kirkuk is not part of Iraqi Kurdistan it has been under the control of Kurdish forces. In the September referendum it voted by a sizeable majority in favour of independence.

The Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) have scored remarkable victories over the last three years against Daesh in northern Syria.

This is the second in a three part series – read part one: From dictatorship to liberal capitalism

There were many large student demonstrations against the Democratic Party (DP) government in its last days of DP rule (after 1950). This was the background for the 27 May 1960 military coup in which ex-Prime Minister Menderes and two of his prominent ministers were summarily tried and hanged.

May I, as a non-expert on Turkish matters, add a few outsider’s comments to the excellent article by Marksist Tutum, From dictatorship to liberal capitalism, in Solidarity 443, 20 June 2017.

A bourgeois republic, led by Mustafa Kemal, was established in Turkey in 1923, and this was an historical turning point pertaining to the development of capitalism in Turkey. However the Turkish bourgeoisie did not totally abolish the old despotic, Asiatic state traditions of the Ottoman Empire.

A simmering conflict between the Gulf State of Qatar and its larger neighbour, Saudi Arabia, has abruptly flared into an open, serious stand-off.

Beginning on 5 June, a Saudi-led grouping of states including Egypt, Bahrain and UAE broke off diplomatic relations, and implemented travel and trade bans against Qatar. Qatar has said it will not retaliate.Saudi Arabia has closed Qatar’s only land border and ordered its citizens to leave Qatar.

Turkish socialists Marksist Tutum comment on the results of the Turkish referendum.

The big cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, Antalya, Denizli, Diyarbakir, Adana, Mersin and Eskişehir, where the working class is concentrated, said no to the one-man regime in the referendum held on 16 April.