Martial Law Extended in

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However, different strategies arose in the recent discussion in the Turkish ruling clique.

Some support tough measures, while others, such as the Environment Minister, himself a Kurd, propose a form of compromise with the Kurds by verbally recognising their rights and working for collaboration with their bourgeois leadership.

Victory to right

However, the decision to extend martial law marks a victory for the right wing parties.

Indeed the fascist NAP (National Action Party) has voted with the government for martial law.

They explained that "respect for the army" led them to vote for Ecevit's policy, while at the same time continuing to call for the overthrow of his government.

Right wing Justice Party leader Demirel was also in favour of the extension of martial law while being against the government.

This new move has caused some problems within Ecevit's Republican People's Party.

Three RPP MPs have resigned declaring that Ecevit has given excessive concessions to the six independent ministers.

There are also rumours that another five RPP MPs may aiso resign.

Ecevit has also been criticised in his party's national executive for his latest decisions.

Sharp criticism is also growing from leaders of DISK, the left wing union confederation, as a result of the decision of the government to ban the May Day demonstration in Istanbul.

DISK general secretary and 3 other leaders with a hundred of their supporters were arrested in their union headquarters because of their declaration that they will hold the demonstra. tion anyway.

DISK and other union buildings and headquarters have been raided by the police and army and material advertising the demonstration has been confiscated.

DISK leader Basturk blamed Ecevit as the chief person responsible for the repression and terror against the movement.

However, he too backed down on the May Day march, by saying 'We are not going to mobilise workers against soldiers".

Three other unions, dominated by the Turkish Communist Party, which were recently disciplined by DISK because they called CP slogans on last year's May Day màrch have decided to demonstrate in Izmir where martial law is not in operation.

The dangers facing Turkish workers and peasants are very grave.

Transitional

The present regime is a transitional regime preparing the way for a fascist coup when the Ecevit "alternative" is judged to have exhausted its strength against the masses.

In order to prepare against great historical defeat the working class must break from Ecovit. • A united front of the working class must be established at once and armed workers' militias to defend the workers' organisations, defeat the fascist thugs and fight for a workers' and peasants' government.

MiG jets to fly in splendour over Beirut, at a safe distance from the battles between the Israeli army and the Palestinian guerrillas.

The Zionists clearly launched their raids to give support to their fascist allies.

Haddad has already moved to consolidate his position by expanding the territory under his control. The secession has been welcomed by ex-President Chamoun, who called on the Palestinians to surrender.

A further step in this clearly co-ordinated campaign came from Pierre Gemayel, leader of the 'Christian Phalange' Party, who argued that Lebanon would be left in peace by Israel as soon as Palestinian 'provocations' stopped.

But the reality is that there can be no peace in the Middle East until the Palestinian people have won their legitimate struggle for the restoration of their homeland, and socialist revolution has ousted the array of vicious bourgeois dictatorships that currently squander the vast oil wealth of the region while oppressing the Arab masses.

Warmonger Beigin

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OCIALIST PRESS, Wednesday 2 May 1979.

TROTSKYISM- JOURNAL OF THE INSIDE: • Mandel's dance with Stalinism • The significance of the Transitional Programme • The U.S. SWP 40 years on.

DỤT! Trotskyism Today No. 4. Price 45p plus Still available, Trotskyism Today No. 2, price 20p p&p. (No. 3 sold out). Available from Dartmouth Park Hill, London NW5 1HR.

By Park While top Stalinist bureaucrats from Comecon signed contracts for the supply and construction of munist Party were themselves issuing a renewed plea for help against savage repression by the ruling Ba'athist regime.

The Communist Party's newspaper Tareq Al-Shaab has been closed down by the Ba'athists for one month for alleged "violations of the press law".

Leading Stalinists connected to the CP's Al Rouad publishing house-including CP Central Committee member Sulaiman Yousif Stephan-have remained under arrest since last November and Stalinist spokesmen are warning of the likelihood that these prisoners will share the fate of 31 CP members executed by the Ba'athists last year.

Opportunist

The Moscow bureaucrats of course have never hesitated in their opportunist relationships with anti-communist , regimes simply because CP members were being slaughtered: but a curious feature of the Iraq situation is that as part of this two faced policy two members of the Iraqi CP remain in the butcher government which is carrying out these attacks on their comrades and closing their party press!

Apart from the repression of the Stalinists themselves, the Ba'athists , have also staged a massive crackdown on peasants, teachers and students.

The Stalinists however, are not the only two-faced operators on the question of Iraq. Last week saw Newsline paper of the Workers Revolutionary arty, deny that any repression Is taking place in frao!

What then is the character and origin of this savagely anti-communist regime that chooses for its own reasons to include two token Stalinists in the diehard military Oil-rich Ba'athism has its roots in nationalist revolt against the iron grip of imperialism which for centuries oppressed the Iraqi people.

From 1534 to 1918 Iraq was part of the Ottoman (Turkish) empire. World War 1 eventually shattered the grip of this "sick man" , only to open the door for western imperialists, who moved in to carve up this oil-rich part of the Middle East.

Arab nationalism-at first anti-Turkish, but developing as strongly opposed to both British and French imperialism-began to grow in this period.

Though the tactics used by British and French oppressors were often different, Britain followed the French in ruling through the puppet King Faisal.

Though the British mandate ended in 1932 the regime Iraqi Ba'athist butcher Siddan Hussein depended heavily on British military support and the RAF continued to be stationed there Faisal's rule was feudal and oppressive in the extreme. In 1958 a mere 2,000 landowners in this fertile area owned. two thirds of the agricultural land!

It was against this feudal rule that a group of army officers staged a military coup in 1958 which established the rule of Quassem.

Seeing the need for some base of popular support, Quassem allied himself with the Iraqi Communist Party.

Bloody war

His government did not break Iraq from its ties with imperialism; but instead it began a bloody war against the Kurdish people who, denied their own homeland, find themselves divided between Iran, Iraq and Turkey.

in his savage, racist repression Quassem was in part acting out response •to • the reactionary Arab proverb:

"There are three plagues in the world: the rat, the locust and the Kurd".

The Kurdish question then as now, is a litmus paper to test the nature of "revolutionary" regimes and tendencies: no proletarian internationalist could support the repression of the Kurds.

Quassem's war against the Kurds was to be continuedafter a brief respite-when the Ba'athists came to power.

Coup

In 1961, following many earlier riots and attempts on Quassem's life, the Ba'athists merged with a group of army officers-the Joint Free Officers to form the National Council of Revolutionary Command.

On the 8 Feb 1963, by what was largely a military coup, Quassem was overthrown.

Ba'athist militias with armbands fought in the streets against the communists who had rallied to Quassem's defence.

The Ba'athists' first president was Aref, who, though not himself a member of the Ba'ath party, shared with them their panarabism and had been in the leadership of the earlier revolution with Quassem.

Aref was well known for his pro Nasser feelings and his belief in Arab unity.

President Aref's first government was under the prime ministership of Ahmad Hassan al Bakr.

The period of the coming to power of the Ba'athists was one of considerable bloodshed and barbarity by the Ba'athist national guard in which the communists suffered many losses.

Although this merely echoed the barbarity and violence of the communists under Quassem this does not exonerate the actions of the Ba'athists.

Ba'athism came to power then in a physical battle with the Stalinists. What was the basis of such a fight?

Attack on marxism

As Trotskyists, we are in favour of the sharpest of battles with Stalinism, which is a throughly counter-revolutionary force within the labour movement.

But we base our fight on the ways in which the Stalinists attack and seek to destroy revolutionary Marxism and betray the independent class interests and struggles of the working class.

But for the Ba'athists, the attack on the Stalinists is part and parcel of their attack on Marxism and their moves to repress the Iraqi masses.

Ba'athism in fact stands-as distinct from many other "left" brands of nationalism-as a conscious anti marxist philosophy.

The centre point, the heart Ba'athism, panarabism Kurdish freedom fighters the desire for Arab unity.

"The Arab socialist Ba'th Party regards all Arabs as being part of one nation both in the cultural and spiritual sense.

The different countries in which they live make up a politically and economically united fatherland. In the Party's documents, 'the Arab fatherland' means all the Arab countries"

Resurgence

The word "Ba'ath" can itself be translated as meaning revival " "resurgence" "renewal"' or "renaissance"

The Ba'ath party is therefore all about the resurgence of Arab nationalism.

As a current which opposes colonial oppression, Ba'athism also opposes Stalinist domination.

Instead it advocates "positive neutrality" as a means to create some kind of "third force" based on Arab unity.

The Bath party emerged firstly in Syria under Michel Aflaq and Salah al Din al Baytar in the 1940s.

It came to Iraq through the nfluence of Syrian teachers after the war. It formally came into existance in the summer of 1952 in Iraq.

Aflaq did play some role in events in Iraq after.1963-and his writings are the basic texts of Ba'athism.

In them he defines the Ba'ath as 'socialist'. • Indeed some of the measures carried out in Iraq indicate that this is the case.

Yet the writings show that this "socialism" is a specifically anti marxist conception.

He writes of socialism:

'What I aspire to in it is not the increase in the wealth of factories but the increase in the wealth of life. My concern is not that people should be equal in the distribution of food but that every individual should be allowed to realise his gifts and potential".

Metaphysical

The philosophy is extremely metaphysical and explicitly anti materialist. Aflaq takes issue with Marxism:

'Marxism is based on the denial and negation of any creed transcending nature and matter as well as perception' NOW 20p p&p. 50p plus WSL, 31;

He concedes that religion has historically buttressed exploitation, but then argues:

"Although we adopt a critical view of religion, and in spite of our knowledge of the reactionary use religion has been put to, making it a support for injustice, backwardness and enslavement, we trust that man can rebel against this way of using religion and against the false and distorted religiosity and at the same time give to true religion its due care and attention"

Ba'athism explicitly connected with islam and hostile to atheism:

"We do not approve of atheism and do not encourage it, We consider it a false attitude towards life".

The Ba'ath:

"sees in Islam a nationalist aspect of grave importance in the formation of the Arab history and nationality. The TODAY Ba'ath considers this aspect to have close connection with the spiritual heritage of the Arabs and the qualities of their genius"' Ba'athism explicitly rejects materialism as Shibi-L-Aysami in his offical history puts it:

"The Party opposed numerous tenets of Marxist philosophy, particularly its positions on nationalism and the theory of historical materialism".

It is this, nationalist, anti-marxist, anti-communist Party that has received the uncritical acclaim of the British so-called "Trotskyist" Workers Revolutionary Party.

We will shortly be carrying a further article examining the record of Ba'athism in government and the curious, contradictory relationship between the Iraqi Ba'athists and the Communist Party.

THEORETICAL

WORKERS SOCIALIST LEAGUE Na 4 A ianirer

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SULIALISI "KESS, Weanesday' 2 May 1Y14 Last week's Annual Delegate Meeting of the National Union of Journalists saw the leadership fail in its attempt to ban all discussion of Had they succeeded, this would have set a precedent for next year's conference, which is to be held at Portrush in Northern Ireland itself.

Only sustained pressure PHOTO: Mark Rusher, determination, for the withdrawal of British troops, for political status for republican prisoners of war, and a campaign by the NUJ Executive to end media censor-

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new oil installations in Iraq a fortnight ago, their "com- rades" in. the Iraqi Com-

thousands of oppositionists, including trade unionists.