NATO is conducting a massive military exercise involving 12,000 troops until June 9th in the Balkans, centered around Alexandroupolis/Dedeağaç. Led by the USA, which relentlessly seeks to tighten its grip on the region, this operation is not about defense—it is a blatant act of aggression, just like all other NATO maneuvers. As always, the ones caught in the crosshairs are the working people.
This military exercise, flaunting heavy weaponry under the guise of “security,” once again reveals imperialist ambitions.
The escalation of rivalries between imperialists threatens the sovereign rights and very lives of peoples. Even within NATO’s predatory alliance, this threat is present. Warlords throughout the globe impose death, starvation, misery, and exile upon the working class.
The tensions between the bourgeois classes of Turkey and Greece arising from their competition for shares in natural resources, energy and trade routes and geostrategic strongholds in the region, also serve as a boogeyman for capitalist governments to conceal internal class struggles and suppress workers under the banner of “war threats.” This brazen provocation first and foremost endangers the safety of the working classes in both Turkey and Greece. It is shameful and anti-people that the ruling classes in these countries put their own peoples and national resources on the bargaining table. At the same time they are deepening their collaboration by discussing the terms of co-exploitation of the Aegean Sea.
NATO is not a security organization—it is a criminal apparatus serving the interests of international capital. Its mission is to perpetuate the capitalist system and protect capitalist interests. It exists to prevent working people from taking control of their own destiny and living together in peace. Until this organization is dismantled and the capitalist power it serves is overthrown, there can be no real peace or stability—neither regionally nor internationally.
Workers on both sides of the Aegean must strengthen their joint struggle against NATO and build internationalist solidarity to counter imperialist schemes.
We, the Communist Youth of Greece (KNE) and the Communist Youth of Turkey (TKG), drawing on the anti-imperialist legacy we have inherited and with steadfast working-class patriotism, will continue to stand shoulder-to-shoulder in the fight for the disengagement of our countries from NATO and any other imperialist alliance, for the expulsion of NATO and the closure of US bases in our region!
We are strengthening the struggle for our common future, for socialism! For a society in which our peoples will truly live in peace and brotherhood.
via tkp.org.tr
