Turkish general

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renewed and strengthened its threats of a military coup.

As troops and tanks rolled in to crush the factory occupation and partial rising in Izmir, the army chief-of-staff warned prime minister Demirel that his government must act harder and faster to defeat the working class General Evren declared:

"At present, we are striving to restrain our impaticace and to await the resolution of the problem within the framework of the parliamentary regime ne this broads hint. came after Evten had already announced that Turkey was "paying the price for years of tolérance and mistakes" and that the armed "coull put an end to our enemies inside the country within a month, but we prefer not to provoke a bloodbath amongst the population".

Demirel Demirel's reactionary government has now extended martial law to, virtually' the whole of lurkey, including' izmir along with all the other major cities already under the control of the army.

While the army is given a free hand to smash the organised working class (dubbed as terrorists' and 'anarchists'), Demirel has found the imperialists shaken by events in Iran and Afghanistan at last apparently willing to reschedule the Turkish debt to the IMF and to provide massive new loans.

The Social Democrats of West Germany have been the key agents of imperialism in these deals, and their action has been implicitly endorsed by Ecevit, leader of the bourgeois RPP.

But Ecevit's own party is now being scrutinised by Demirel's government to reveal its links with the Second-Soalled- Socialist' to which the German Social Democrats (and the British Labour Party) also belong!

The logical purpose of this investigation would be to proscribe the RPP-the largest party in Turkey-since such international affiliations are banned by Turkish law.

But increasingly it looks as if Demirel will be unable to put this or any of his other plans into action before the generals carry out their threats and seize power. spra

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SOCIALIST PRESS, Hednesday 27 Februar: 1980 Soviet forces in Kabul (Insert, Carrington) and the flays of restrand the son on bania guestions of Marxis The Summer School will be attended by delegations fr organisations affiliated to the Trotskyist Internațional Committee, and is open to WSL members and supporters.

WSL, BM Box 5277, V 'The oasis of detente has not dried up, but political Times Financial Times tourism to the spot has fallen off seriously.

Not a fertile image for Marxists to cultivate, but it was with this suitably commercial metaphor that West German Chancellor Schmidt summed up his assessment of the relationship between the imperialist powers and the ruling Stalinist bureaucracies in the wake of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.

Solidarity

• Schmidt made his speech as Cyrus Vance was touring Europe to ensure maximum solidarity from the imperialists of the Common Market states behind the new aggressive stance of US imperialism towards the Kremlin bureaucracy.

And it revealed the concern felt, (particularly among the capitalists of France and West Germany) at the rapid tempo of 'cold war' escalation which Carter is trying to secure from his dependant allies.

Schmidt himself has equivocated on the US campaign to boycott the Moscow Olympics which the Fretch government has refused pointblank to And both governments have expressed their misgivings on economic boycotts of the Soviet Union.

These differences are of course tactical, but the difference in emphasis is based partly The 50 spies and other assorted agents of US imperialism are not the only ones to be hostages of the American embassy occupation in Tehran.

While the international commission of enquiry cools its heels in the plush diplomatic lounge of Geneva airport, both Iranian and US leaders are still bound up in the coils of this crisis.

The commission itself was Istuck in limbo at the last minute when the UN bureaucrats, US imperialists and Iranian leaders 'suddenly realised that they were not talking about the same proposals-specifically on the fate of the hostages.

While UN general secretary Waldheim and the Carter administration apparently believed that the hostages would be released with the opening of the enquiry, the Iranian regime has presented a variety of shifting positions.

The Khomeini/Bani-Sadr government has been chained far more tightly by the occupation than the Carter administratiọn.

Carter has found himself restricted in the manoeuvies of negotiations largely because of earlier belligerent statements. But the Iranian regime has to contend with far more complex problems.

Bani-Sadr's determination to end the occupation has always had to encounter the obstacle of the "Islamic students, loyal to the anti-imperialist line of Islam".

But his rivals in the most reactionary sections of the Islamic clergy have also seized •..and now the vote on the French case against au Olymple boycott-Arst, style and presentation....

on the particular importance which trade with the Soviet Union and its allies holds for the capitalist economies of France and West Germany (now and more importantly in their visions of the future road to recovery from crisis).

It also partly reflects a reluctance to succumb to pressure fro- IS in merialism which wou • even further its po... economic dominance over thi regimes.

Behind these factors lies the Bani-Sadr on the issue, in a bid to discredit the new president.

It is these conflicts, and the incessant jockeying for place among the Iranian leaders, which account for the discrepancies between the statements of Khomeini, Bani-Sadı and foreign minister Gotzbadeh. Despite minor setbacks, it is still Bani-Sadr who firmly holds the upper hand.

Reinforced

Khomeini reinforced the president's authority by conferring on him the post of Supreme Commander of the Armed Froces-a position Khomeini had previously retained for himself.

And before the doctors succeeded in isolating him from visitors, the Ayatollah made a further contribution (it seems quite likely to be his last before his death) towards stabilising the government's power. absence in both states of a major reactionary, chauvinist, anti-Soviet movement of the type successfully whipped up in the US by the imperialists and their agents in the labour Both Schmidt and Vance were of course at great pains to present a united imperialist face by stressing the total agreement existing between their governments.

But it was in these delicate conditions that the British Tories proposed their diplomatic initiative the Common Market.

Vanguard

The Thatcher government has of course been in the vanguard of the political attacks on the Soviet Union, eagerly combining this anti-Soviet campaign with witch-hunting propaganda against militants and socialists within the labour movement in Britain.

Just like Australian prime minister Malcolm Fraser, who has announced a massive increase in military spending, or the government of neutral' Norway, with its unconcealed lurch towards NATO, the Tories have not spared their efforts to rival Carter's new-found belligerence.

It was from this standpoint that they argued their apparently "soft' resolution to the conference of EEC foreign ministers last week.

Playing with UN Resolutions For it was almost certainly Khomeini who secured a pledge from the Islamic students' that the fatelof the hostages would be settled by the parliament, once it had been elected.

This formula should provide the basis for an agreement between all the major political forces vying for their particular scenario to be adopted by the government of the Islamic Republic'.

Bani-Sadr himself has continued the solid organisation of his campaign for the assembly elections, now to be held on March 14.

The forces backing his positions have been grouped together in the 'Unity Congress' or "Islamic Revolution Congress' and are expected to win a heavy majority of seats.

Defuse

But before those elections come, the president has still to defuse the mass mobilisations within the armed forces-calling for elected councils as against the officer hierarchy which the government seeks to impose.

The occupation of Tehran University mosque by air force technicians, junior officers and cadets has prompted Bani-Sadr to make his position clear on forms of direct action used by any elements in conflict with the government's stratogy.

Those who want to exert pressure by strikes or occupations in support of their demands will run up against opposition from me and from the nation."

Over the coming months, Bani-Sadr will not run short of targets for his opposition. and reasserting the demand for Soviet troops to withdraw from Afghanistan, the resolution expressed a belief that the present crisis could be resolved by an international agreement to respect the "neutrality" of Afghanistan and place it above the competition of world powers. This formula was successfully designed to win a unanimous vote of the foreign ministers, and will now be taken up internationally.

But it is not of course designed as an olive branch to the Soviet bureaucracy; on the contrary, Carrington's proposal seeks to broaden the base of From b will be brazenly rigged: ballot boxes are to be flown to Britain for counting, where suitable result will no doubt be arranged.

Should outrage at such manipulation threaten a renewed outbreak of fighting, the "security" forces will have their job of repression made easier by the agreement by Nkomo and Mugabe to instruct their forces to remain in the assembly points until after the election.

This will expose them to the danger of aerial massacre if they stay put, or force them to fight their way through massed "security" forces if they attempt to leave.

And there remains the threat of direct South African intervention should matters get completely out of hand.

But the imperialist moves are far from universally accepted., So brazen is the electoral fraud that .30 Commonwealth High Commissioners last week felt obliged to More details available from: attacks on the Soviet Union.

Couched in moderate terms to attract liberals, social democrats and 'non-aligned' forces, the resolution is put forward in the full expectation that the Soviet bureaucracy will reject it completely:

Withdrawal For the Kiemlin Stalinists to concede such a status, to Afghanistan-involving the withdrawal of Soviet forces, the dissolution of Karmal's government and new elections for a government chosen by the Afghan people-would be to accept a substantial defeat at ack page complain at Soames' discrimination against Mugabe.

The Zambian government's official newspaper has declared the entire exercise a "charade", and that "we know the elections will be rigged". And . the Nigerian government has stated its support for a resumption of the war if Mugabe is excluded from the government.

Meanwhile, as the likelihood of renewed violence in the next period increases day by day, Soames and the Tory leaders must ponder the best means of either withdrawing the 1,300 strong "monitoring force" before it gets caught up in the rotle or winat co it to play a prolonged and unwinnable war.

Whatever their decision, the black masses of Zimbabwe face a period of struggle in which only a revolutionary Marxist leadership can chart a course independent of imperialism and Stalinism on the one hand, and Mugabe's 'left'-talking treachery on the other. OLD the hands of imperialism, and one that they will not be prepared to accept at this stage.

Carter has supported Carrington's: proposal with diplomatic tact, careful not to jeopardise its future as a gambit among the 'non-aligned' states.

Its success will depend crucially on the attitude, of Indira Gandhi. After several false starts, the Indian government has finally decided on a course, of condemning the Soviet invasion while stil maintaining: close economic and military ties with the Kremlin Stalinists-and also attacking the US imperialists for exploiting the situation by the increase of military support to Pakistan.

The Soviet leaders will no doubt respond that they have proved themselves the best defenders of the sovereign independence of Afghanistan by answering the call for assistance from Amin's regime, and repeat that they will withdraw troops when the "tribal rebellion' is ended, along with US, Pakistani, Egyptian, Zionist and Chinese support to the rebels.

Welcomed

This was the line taken by Brezhnev last Friday in a speech significantly welcomed by Chancellor Schmidt, although it seems not to offer the slightest change from previous Kremlin statements.

The 'neutrality' proposal is simply a ploy of the imperialists and one chosen because of their inability to intervene with direct military force in Afghanistan, and their consequent need to isolate the Soviet bureaucracy diplomatically.

Neutrality' would offer no road forward to the workers and peasants of Afghanistan-it would simply guarantee their continued exploitation and oppression.

Com the Liaison

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