From: jbm7-AT-tutor.open.ac.uk (Jim Monaghan) Date: Sat, 18 Apr 1998 17:42:29 +0100 Subject: M-I: Minorities in Turkey and Greece The problem of what to do with national minorities came up recently wrt to Turkey and the Kurdish problem. I would submit that the problem is broader than that. This area like my own has a number of unresolved national struggles. To pretend that they do not exist ore that they are distractions from the class struggle is in effect giving cover to all kinds of chauvinism and bigotry. In Turkey not only is there the question of the Kurds but also that of the Armenians and the rights of the orthodox community in Istanbul. It is all too easy for reactionaries and their fellow travellers to whip up the mobs against these minorities. It is a prerequisite of Socialists worth the name to support the Kurdish right to self determination. And furthermore to demand an end to petty harassment of the other national and religious minorities. Greece is in many ways a mirror image of Turkey in these matters in its treatment of the Turkish minority in Thrace (where the government actually appoints the religious leaders of the community),Its attitude to the Vlach (speakers of a Latin derived language), the unfortunate Albanians and the refusal to admit that Macedonia, both the state and province are mixtures of various national groups. In all these areas the Left has played a rather feeble role in many cases going along with prejudice for opportunist reasons, providing the rationale for bigotry. A classic case here is the Trotskyist renegade Michel Raptis (Pablo) who invented a joint Western/Turkish plot against the orthodox Christian nations , earning the plaudits of the Serbian chauvinists. Further North many minorities look to the Imperialist European Union for protection, this of course provides not a challenge to the chauvinist Left to redouble their efforts to defend these minorities but an excuse for not doing their duty. Lenin argued to turn the Imperialist war into a war against your own Bourgeoisie, a central plank of this is to place the protection and rights of national minorities on the top of the platform of any party worth the name revolutionary and socialist Jim Monaghan --- from list marxism-international-AT-lists.village.virginia.edu ---
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