An article by Doğu Perinçek, Chairman of the Workers’ Party (Turkey). This article was was published in TEORİ, April 2000.
Eurasia viewed from the geographical aspect
Seen from the geographical aspect, Europe is a peninsula of the Asian Continent. Asia is called Eurasia with this peninsula. In other words, Eurasia consists of Asia and Europe continents as a whole.
However, in politics and strategy, the concept of Eurasia is encriched by a special content. Especially, in the procedure of rivalry and competition after the collapse of the Soviet Union, we see that this enriched content comes to the foreground. The reason of this fact is that the question concerning the sovereignty of this geographic area which was under the control and influence of the Soviet Union until then, has become a burning question of the agenda. One can say that the most important events of the world politics during the last decade originated from the differences of opinions concerning the answers given to this question. Behind such major developments as the partitioning of Iraq, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia and Russia, and the formation of a block by China, Russia and India and other developments lie the contradictions based on the Eurasia ground.
The concept of Eurasia gains importance as an implement in the strategy of the opposing forces.
The focus of rivalry: The Eurasian rectangle
In his book “The Uncontrollable Word” Brzezinski, one of the well-known mentors of Washington, called this area “The Eurasian Rectangle” and described as “pregnant with violence and problematic”. This rectangle stretches from the Adriatic Sea in West to the Sinkiang-Uyghur region of China in East. Its southern border covers the Mediterranean Coast, Suez; the Persian Gulf, and passing through the Indian Ocean includes a part of the Middle East, Persia (Iran), Pakistan and Afghanistan. (1) And in the north, it covers the whole Central Asia and the region until the Russian-Ukrainian frontier.
The present focus of the rivalry on world scale is the Eurasian Rectangle. The rivalry between the super powers before 1990 has shifted today to the Eurasian Rectangle.
From the Geography of Chaos to the Geography of Revolution
As a matter of the fact, the Workers’ Party (Turkey) describes Eurasia as the geography where the determining forces of the world revolution are situated. Stretching from Eastern Europe to the Pacific Ocean, this geography covers the whole Asia as Eastern Europe and Northern. In the beginning of the 1990s we have called this area “the Geography of Chaos”. The USA and Europe have provoked ethnical and religious contradictions and have abused them. They have called this area openly as the “crisis areas”. The Balkans, the Caucasus, the Middle East and the Central Asia are mentioned as the primarily four crisis areas firstly in the US official documents and afterwards in the government programmes and statements of Turkey. Every crisis and chaos geography is also a geography of revolution. Revolution is the solution brought by the workers and the peoples to the crisis of the system. That is why, Eurasia objectively has become a geography of revolution.
Eurasia is a geography of revolution not only because of the crisis created by the practices of partitioning and colonization of imperialism, but also because all the great forces of Socialism and the Oppressed World are in this area.
Certainly Africa and Latin America are also a part of the Oppressed World. Nevertheless Eurasia is the continent which embraces the main forces of the potential of resistance against imperialism together with Russia, China, India, Arabian and Turkish world.
The alignment of forces: The partitioning ones and the ones who resist being partitioned
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union the struggle for sharing in this area has determined the objective basis for the alignment of forces in Eurasia. There is no doubt that the peoples and states which are the real owners of Eurasia, took part in this struggle beside the great imperialist powers which wanted to take this area under their own control.
The process of the alignment of forces in Eurasia can be analyzed on two closely interrelated plane One of them is the oppressors, i.e. the plane of sharing struggle in the Richs Club, also called the “North”. The USA had got hold of the initiative with the claim to become the sole master of the world and is in a special position. Europe and Japan also take part in this sharing struggle, but unlike the USA they are doing this not with their military forces but with their economical power. Although Europe and Japan are already super powers regarding the economic aspects, they are still under the shadow of the USA in the military field. That is the reason why they are deprived of the means of expansion through armed forces. And that is also the reason why they are both relying militarily on and facing pressures by the USA. Being in need of the USA and the mortgages caused by this dependency gave rise to the basic weakness of Europe’s and Japan’s great power policies. The European Union is now inclined to develop a military force independent of the USA to get over this weakness.
The second plane of the alignment of forces is determined by the contradiction between imperialism and the Oppressed World. In this alignment the People’s Republic of China is within the Oppressed World. That is why the USA has declared the People’s Republic of China as her main enemy. Socialist China has stated clearly that the main threat directed towards her is caused by the USA.
The critical country of the alignment in Eurasia is Russia. Despite the great troubles in her economy Russia is still one of the two mightiest military forces of the world. As a result of this fact, she is the greatest rival of the USA in the military field, and she is the major force in harnessing the USA.
In spite of the weakness of her economy, Russia is an imperialist-capitalist state. At the end of the process of restoration of capitalism which began before 1960, there emerged a mafia-controlled capitalist system. As this mafia-controlled capitalist economy is ruled by a small minority it is quite natural that it has expansionist tendencies. On the other hand she has lost her control over the areas where she was ruling, and moreover, she is the inheritor of a state which was partitioned twice. Furthermore, she ascertains that the threat by the West is getting more and more intensified.
Under these circumstances, if the economic weakness of Russia is taken into consideration, she has no more the ability to expand to the lands which she formerly controlled, in fact, she is in a position of defending herself and her place in the world. These are the reasons why Russia has to take up the same positions with the Oppressed World although she is an imperialist-capitalist state.
This analysis indicates that the alignment of forces in Eurasia is taking place on the basis of the partitioning and the partitioned. Russia is in the position of a partitioned country. As for the People’s Republic of China, although, she was not partitioned in the recent time, she is resisting the separatism in Tibet and in the autonomous regions of Sinkiang-Uyghur provoked by the imperialism, On the other hand, having freed Hong Kong and Macao, the People’s Republic of China is facing the problem of the securing the integrity of the Motherland by freeing Taiwan. That is why China is dealing both with imperialist intervention and expansionism.
If we should consider the alignment of forces in a concrete and an objective way, we can see that, on one side there are the USA, Europe and Japan who are involved in a sharing struggle, and on the other side, beside the working classes and the oppressed peoples, there are national states, mainly the People’s Republic of China, Russia, India, Turkey, Yugoslavia. Arabic countries, Iran and Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Vietnam and Cuba, which are struggling for keeping the independency and the integrity of their countries. Doubtless, this objective alignment is not being reflected spontaneously to the political plane Today some states take part in the camp opposing their interests, due to the pressure of the great imperialistic states on them. Nevertheless, the developments are making the pieces to fall to their proper place. For instance, while it was prognosticated that Russia of Gorbachev and Yeltsin which was turned into a satellite of the USA in the beginning of the 1990s was going to find hersel
f in the same camp with USA, we can see today that Russia is now took her objective place. Thus the analysis put forward by the Workers’ Party in the beginning of 1990s, concerning the alignment of forces has been proven to be true. Just because the Workers’ Party based its policy on basic dynamics, it has estimated the position of Russia, on beforehand, although there were events which indicated the opposite.
The position of Turkey
Furthermore, the Workers’ Party has estimated that Turkey would have to take her place in the Asian pole in the alignment of forces in Eurasia. Actually the developments which took place in recent time have proven this fact. The attitude of Putin’s Russia, becoming stabilized in the resistance process against the West and the development of the cooperation between China, Russia and India have enlarged the maneuver space of Turkey and also caused the destruction of the initiative of the “Little America” power in Turkey. It has opened the path for the forces of the Republican Revolution. Even the operations to capture the Hizbullah militants were undertaken under these circumstances. Turkey was on one hand entering into secret security treaties with the USA and trying to become a candidate member of the European Union, on the other hand she was building a resistance line against the West in North Iraq, Cyprus and Aegean fronts. Taking shape with the process of 28 February, the center of power of the Republican
Revolution considers the religious reaction as the essential threat and it has undertaken operations for liquidating it by using military force when necessary. The struggle against religious reaction is nothing more than the inner-country extension of the resistance front against the West. If we consider that the separatism has taken the role of an derivative of the Western Imperialism after the Gulf War, we see that the national state of Turkey has been confronted with the Western threat, both in North Iraq, Aegean and Cyprus in the exterior front and with the religious reaction and separatism in the interior front. Because of this objective situation there is also a division within the propertied class of Turkey. While some pro-American and pro-European sectors, extensions of the Western imperialists are getting more expressly so, some national sectors are developing their relations with Eurasia. As the objective benefits of all the social classes of the nation depend on this, it can be estimated that in Turkey a strong tendency in favor of Eurasia will soon be developed. Thus, the USA has also noticed this fact and it seems that she is nowadays more careful in her policy concerning Turkey.
Two contradictory programs: Globalization and the national state
In the Eurasian geography two programs are confronted with each other. One of them is the “globalisation” program, called the “New World Order” by imperialism. The other one is the independency and the democracy program of national state. It is a well-known fact that the final aim of imperialism is the total colonialisation of the world and demolishing the national states. The 20th century has been the scene of the struggle between these two programs. With the 1917 October Revolution and the Turkish Revolution in 1920s, two forms of independent states were born. Even the socialist countries, although they were multi-national, have actually developed on the model of the national state. The socialist revolutions in Asia, including the October Revolution in Russia, Chinese Revolution and Vietnamese Revolution, were realized as the continuation of the democratic revolutions and fulfilled their duties of democratic revolutions. That is why the national state is the program and the fortress of the revolution in our Age.
The national state: The frame of democracy
The national state is not only a program of the foreign policy; first of all it is a social system National state came into being with the collapse of feudalism, setting free the peasants and the development of the national market. That is why the national state is the product of the democratic revolutions and it is also the organizational form of the democratic state. Democracy can only exist and develop itself in a national state. Because of this fact there is an inseparable connection between the bourgeois democratic freedom and the national state. Globalization, on the other hand, destructs the democratic achievements of any country together with the national state. The New World Order, as being a system of the international monopolies, has the intention of destructing the national state together with democracy The concepts as “human rights’ and “democracy” are used by the USA and Europe as means of the strategy of destroying the national states. The independency and the sovereignty of the states are being gradually devastated by these concepts. Thus, a status of over-sovereignty of the imperialist states is being built. In this way, the dependency of the state is put in such a position that it would be ruined by a last stroke.
The system which was created by imperialism with the purpose of destroying the national state, is not a democracy, but a mafia-gladio-sect regime. The system is devastating all the attainments of the bright period of capitalism, even endangering the industrial bourgeoisie and trade bourgeoisie. It is placing a mafia-sect group in the most important centres which has nothing to do with the organization of production process. The production and the trade of narcotics and arms are taking their place on the summit of the system. Thus, the system gains a character which is against the human life and its leaving the economical activities which are defined as activities meeting the human needs.
The second means of the globalization is the local governments and the non-governmental organizations (NGO). Local governments are used by imperialism in the Oppressed World as means of ethnical, religious and sectarian partitioning. The NGOs also carried out the same task. Multi-culturalism is the ideological slogan of the process of destroying the national state
Eurasia keeps resisting in the position of national democratic revolution
If we consider the total situation as a whole, we see that the fortress of humanity, Eurasia, keeps resisting in her position of the national democratic revolution.
• The integrity and the sovereignty of Iraq,
• The integrity and the independency of Yugoslavia
• Turkey’s independence and her refusal of being the gendarme of the region,
• The national rights and independence of Palestine and other Arabic Countries,
• The integrity and the independency of China, Russia and the People’s Democratic
Republic of Korea,
The democratic institutions and the public economy of India etc. are all positions gained in different fronts of the national democratic revolutions.
With the recession of socialism which followed the first great leap forward in the 20th century, today the world revolution, generally speaking, is in a position of national democratic revolution.
The decade old struggle by the people of Turkey continued to protect the Public Economic Enterprises, the Social Security System, to support the agricultural funds and the national character of the trade in the national market is the reflection of the revolutionary stage in Turkey.
Under present conditions, socialist countries like China have already built up a resistance line against imperialism in most important sectors to protect public property. Even Cuba has decided 5 years ago to make concessions in various fields except education and health. Ascertaining that socialism was just in the starting-point, the People’s Republic of China has already receded to the position of developing the gains of the revolution and to protect the basis of the socialist economy against attacks of globalization.
Yet Russia, with the process of uniting with the Western imperialism after the restoration of capitalism has started to get involved in the public economy for the reconstruction of the national economy.
The hegemony plan of the USA has collapsed
In 1990’s, when balance of power on the world scale was in its favor forced the globalization on the economical level, and dismemberment of the national state on the political level The Gulf War, the partitioning of Iraq, Yugoslavia and Russia, engulfment of German Democratic Republic by Great Germany, lastly the attack on Yugoslavia and the invasion of Kosowa by NATO have been accepted as certain successes, primarily of the US imperialism, and secondarily of the European initiative. However, the USA has not been successful and was not able to win an indisputable victory. Even in these attacks she could not hit the target. All these experiences have made clear that, the plan of hegemony of the USA over the world is not realistic.
In the evaluations of the specialists of strategy of the USA, Europe, Japan and the Turkish Armed Forces, it has been stated that the USA is not a hegemonic power.(2) The famous Japanese specialist for international relations indicates even after the Gulf War, on 9th May 1991 that “the USA has no power and capability to become the gendarme of the world It would be better for her to accept this reality modestly”.(3) Die Welt, the German newspaper, which reflects the opinion of the prominent circles of Germany, refers to the USA as “the adventurous ally”.(4) The ideologists of the USA, like Huntington, proclaim that the USA should be realistic and she should give up to insist to take over the world hegemony This point of view is gaining more and more supporters in the public opinion. The failure of the one-poled world plan of the USA was determined not by the incapability of the armed forces, but the decrease in her own economy. The share of the world product of the USA has been 50 % but today it has sunk to 20 %. According to the calculations estimated by Brzezinski it would sink even to 10-15 %.(5) The Peoples’ Republic of China is about to become the greatest economy of the world.
The undertaking of the USA concerning the hegemony plans over the world is based on the circulation of the dollar in economy. The deficit of the foreign trade of the USA has reached up to the great sum of 300 billion dollars. This deficit is tried to be covered by printing new banknotes. However the estimations concerning the Euro of Europe are optimistic It is expected, that in 10-20 years, the share of Euro in the foreign exchange reserves and bank accounts, all over the world will increase up to 40 %, The Chinese money unit Renminbi Yuan’s position in the international money system is becoming more stable.(6) Thus the factors, which limit the effectiveness of the dollar in the world are getting strong. All these developments indicate the weakening of the economical bases for the imperialism of the USA and that it will go on further like this.
Eurasia centred revolution is on the way
Thus the power relations, necessary for the great revolutionary attack of Eurasia are coming into existence. Putin became the President of Russia and turned his front to the USA. Under these circumstances, China is following a bold policy, concerning the uniting of Taiwan with the motherland, by military force if necessary.
The embargo over Iraq is getting weaker under these circumstances. India is now able to develop its national economy due to the present situation and is making progress in her friendship with China.
The progress of the Republic Revolution, which started with 28 February action, is now enduring the pains caused by the resistance against the new Sevre threat of the West to become independent.
Under these circumstances Japan refused to be dictated by the USA and decided to develop diplomatic relations with the People’s Democratic Republic of Korea.
Under these circumstances the mass resistance movement in Seattle was realized by the People of the USA.
European Union is also trying to develop a separate initiative apart from the USA and is trying to protect her benefit against the Atlantic more resolutely due to these conditions.
The states demand independence, nations require liberation people require revolution
New generations don’t know that the Three World Theory of Mao was determinant in drawing the line of difference in the ideological discussions of the period after 1974. Mao Zedung, the last great master of the Scientific Socialism, had already determined the revolutionary strategy by applying creatively, on the World of 1970’s, Lenin’s theory of the imperialism and the polarization of the Oppressor-Oppressed, which was based on this theory The struggle for revolution was seen on 3 main courses: The struggle for independence of the states, the struggle for the liberation of the nations and the struggle for the revolution of People.
Some groups, who stuck at the alphabet of Marxism, would not accept the independence struggle of the states. As a matter of the fact the national state was founded as a result of the struggle against imperialism, there was a national market, which was a supported by the national state. There was also a working class, peasantry, small bourgeois and national bourgeois. Even if the states of the Oppressed World were governed by social classes, which collaborate with imperialism, these collaborators were different than the agency, i.e. the compradors. Every national state was an obstacle, which limited the exploitation of imperialism in one way or other. As the imperialism has a tendency for a limitless exploitation, it would like to destroy the national state. A colony and a national state were never regarded as being the same.
The Workers’ Party summarizes this basic reality of our Age as, “National state resists, national army resists.” We call this statement “the iron law” of our Age. Even countries such as Iraq and Yugoslavia, which have very limited resisting potential, have already proved this iron law by resisting collective attacks of the great imperialistic states. The World Revolution is today in the front of the resistance of the national state The first important attacks, which took place after 1990, have been realized in these fronts and greater actions of resistance are already on the agenda of the first decade of the 21st Century.
Not the gendarme but revolutionist Turkey
Turkey is seen in this picture, as one of the countries in the key position, no matter from which front, she is observed; she keeps her key-position also for Peoples’ and states of Eurasia.
If we should analyze the future procedure correctly, we see that Turkey will play a role in closing the gate of Eurasia against the West.
Turkey, which keeps on resisting along the liquidation line against the reactionists, will not allow the USA and Europe to pass through. There is no doubt about that, Turkey will save her national state from the threat of partitioning of globalization. The attainments are sufficient for this. The international conditions and the balances for the success of this resistance have already been realized.
This resistance of Turkey is very important from the aspect of the restraining of the USA and the maintenance of the World peace. The World should prepare itself to see a new miracle of Turkey.
The historical relations of Turkey with the Central Asia Turkic Republics will not serve for the strategy of the Central Asia of the United States, as Washington has planned but they would serve for resistance strategy of Eurasia. The indications for this can be seen already clearly. The Turkic Republics are developing their economical, social, cultural and political relations with the People’s Republic of China and Russia and they do not accept to be the dagger of the USA in Asia. The coup d’états of the USA in order to force this dagger role were ended in fiasco. The Shangai Five has already been the nightmare of the USA In this case the Turkic Republics are functioning as a bridge, which strengthens the relations between Turkey, China and Russia.
The Turks have taken over the responsibility of a uniting role, concerning Asia, not a dividing one.
It seems that, by rejecting to become the intervention force in crisis regions, Turkey will enter the course of completing the Kemalist Revolution. The independence desire of the Turkish State will be fulfilled by the desire for the liberation of the nation and the people’s wish for the revolution.
Turkey will play the role of setting the fire for the Eurasian Revolution, not the suppressing role in spite of the pressure of the USA.
In Turkey’s horizon the final victory of the revolution, which has started with Ataturkjs to be seen, but not becoming the gendarme of the USA.
Footnotes:
1) Brzezinski, The Uncontrollable World. (Kontrolden Çıkmış Dünya. Turkish tr, Ankara, Turkiye is Bankasi Yayinlan,1995,sl84.)
2) Brzezinski op cit. Pp. 109 and Harp Akademileri Komutanligi, Kuzey Irak-2010 (Muhtemel Gelismeler.
Istanbul, Nisan 1996 p.41.
3) Digest Forum (Japan) in : Harp Akademiler Komutanligi loc-cit.
4) Die Welt. Dec. 22nd. 1999.
5) Beijing Rundschau, Jg. 37. Nr. 2.11 Januar 2000, p. 13
6) Ibid