[The repression of the oppressed Kurdish minority in…]

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The repression of the oppressed Kurdish minority in Turkey has been stepped up.

Meanwhile the desperate economic plight of the peasantry and petty bourgeoisie has driven them increasingly to turn their backs on the empty promises and lies of bourgeois parliamentarians and seek a bold alternative course.

They find no such perspective from the working class. Instead the Turkish Commun ist Party, the Turkish Labour Party and the leadership of the left wing union confederation DISK continue to give uncritical support to Ecevit and his bourgeois RPP as the "defenders of democracy".

Yet it is precisely Ecevit, in alliance with the IMF and top army generals who is leading the attacks on the working class, and whose "austerity" policies are bankrupting the petty bourgeoisie!

As a result, growing layers of the oppressed masses see the working class not as a source of strength but as a mere appendage of Ecevit: for a solution to their problems they turn instead to the fascist gangs.

But rather than respond to this growing danger by mobilising the organised working class through workers' defence squads in united class action to crush the fascists and point the way for a socialist solution to the crisis, the TCP, TLP and union leaders cling on to the coat tails of Ecevit even as the right wing mobilise in Parliament to discredit and bring down the RPP government.

The stark lesson of Chile, in which the CP continued to support Allende's Popular Front government (complete with generals) right up to the day of Pinochet's coup stands before all workers. Turkey must not become another Chile.

Defeat is not inevitable.

The danger is great: but it is not too late to mount the necessary struggle.

The demand must be addressed to the Communist Party and other workers' parties as well as to the mass trade unions: break from the 'democracy' of Ecevit and the generals which has opened the gates to fascism, and join together in fighting detachments of the armed workers' militia against the fascists.

Only when the oppressed masses see the proletariat prepared to fight for victory, will they join in struggle under its The fascist monster must be crushed and the way opened, through the militant united front of the workers, for the establishment of a workers and poor peasants government which will end the rotten capitalist system that produces the crisis and fascism, once and for We therefore call on the British Communist Party and its membership throughout the labour movement to lend its practica support and its voice to an international campaign to force such a turn in Turkey, based on the following policies.

*Workers and youth internationally, fight in your organisations for concrete solidarity and warn of the fascist dangers *Down with fascist-military repression in Turkey.

*For a workers' militia in *Arms and aid. to the Turkish workers organisationsblack all military supplies to the Turkish bourgeoisie.

*Down with Ecevit, Ba'athist and Khomeini oppres. sion of the Kurdish nation-for self-determination and an independent Kurdish state.

*Break from Ecevit and his generals.

*For a workers and peasants government in Turkey.

Where does the British CP stand? Will it act now to help avert a catastrophe in Turkey? Or will it stand back passively and watch its brothers and sisters in the Turkish CP suffer the savage penalties of their party's lethal Popular Frontist policy?

Yours fraternally, John Lister for the Executive Committee Dinnahst