At the weekend there were panels held in the German towns of Alt-Oberhausen and Münster on developments in Turkey and the Middle East, the electoral process and the situation of the Alevis. Panellists were Prof. Haluk Gerger, Researcher and writer Faik Bulut, journalist Hüseyin Narlı, journalist Halil Dalkılıç, Bir-Kar representative Sinan Zengin and researcher and writer Kazım Cihan.

Prof. Haluk Gerger said in his presentation at the Münster Alevi community centre that: “The old Turkey has collapsed and will not revive.” Gerger added that the AKP had been brought to power to manage the regional policies of the global capitalist crisis, but had been crushed by the crisis. He said: “The old Turkish system built by social engineering has collapsed. The system based on policies imposed from above with the Kemalist state mentality, coercing the peasantry into a proletariat, is crumbling. The old Turkey was used as a hit-man against class revolutions, oppressed peoples and liberation movements.  The system which has perpetrated the rule of the neo-Ottoman Turkish-Islamic synthesis has the potential to become a dictatorship like that of  Hitler or Mussolini. The old Turkish bourgeoisie represented by TÜSİAD has been defeated by the Anatolian bourgeoisie represented by MÜSİAD. The Kurdish question has an organic integrity in the region. Regional powers sustain each other as regards the lack of status of the Kurds, but a fracture in one affects the others. Rojava is important in this respect. The situation in Rojava directly affects Turkey, hence its intervention.”

The AKP attack on the Alevis is ideological

Prof. Gerger added that three significant dynamics in Turkey had the capability to democratise the system, adding that the Kurdish-led democracy struggle, the anti-fascist front and the workers’ struggle should unite. He compared the situation of the Alevis in Turkey to that of the Jews in Nazi Germany, adding that the AKP’s attack on the Alevi community was ideologically based, opposed as it was to the egalitarian philosophy of the Alevis.