International Bulletin / Issue 201 / August 2019

The S-400 conflict between the U.S. and Turkish state has passed its first round as the first batch of the Russian S-400 missile defense systems delivered on July 25. The U.S. has responded this move by excluding Turkey from the industrial participation of the F-35 program.

As we recall, the negotiations over the S-400 between Turkey and Russia began in 2016, one year after Turkey shot down a Russian jet near its border to Syria in 2015, which stood as a bill to compensate the jet shoot down crisis. Going parallel with a remarkable rapprochement process between two states, which has developed especially over their conjecturally matching policies on Syria, the S-400 negotiations resulted in a 2.5 billions of dollars deal at the end of 2017, under which Russia agreed to supply Turkey, a NATO member state, with four S-400 batteries. Since then, despite the objection of NATO's big boss, including verbal ‘threats' pointing out various sanctions, Turkish state has mainly preserved its position and made some advance payments, as well as received loans from Russia. While the fascist chef Erdoğan has been marketing this process as a courageous step of Turkish nation challenging the imperialist system(!), the Russian Federation on the other hand enjoyed an important profit not only in an economic but also in a political sense by pulling a NATO country to its side.

So, what was the actual reason behind Turkey to head towards the S-400 system, rather than to NATO's Patriot missile defense system at the expense of deepening its conflict with the U.S.? Does the fascist dictator Erdoğan really intend to give a blow on the imperialist influence of U.S. on Turkey, as his lackeys keep on yelling night and day? Is he conducting an anti-imperialist fight against the U.S.?

Of course not. Just as how he was in his initial years in power, today's fascist chef Erdoğan keeps on working together with the U.S., IMF, World Bank and other sorts of imperialist states and monopolies for eliminating any kind of economic and political obstacles against Turkey to stay a financial-economic colony. The imperialist monopolies and their integrated collaborators, the monopolist bourgeoisie are still exploiting the labouring masses with the most brutal methods and there is no obstacle for them to let the profit flow outside the country. Neither the U.S. nor Erdoğan will allow their capitalist exploitation brotherhood to be ruined.

Then why Turkey turned its way to deepen its conflict with the U.S. by buying the Russian S-400 missile defense system? The answer is nothing other than the Kurdish liberation struggle, the Rojava revolution.

If we remember the initial years of the Syrian civil war, we see that Erdoğan was the most loyal partner of the U.S., because of his bloody appetite towards benefiting from the regional hegemony gap. However, the Kurdish liberation gave this show away. If the Rojava revolution did not erupted, then he would have already seized Syria together with the U.S. But after the Rojava revolution erupted and conducted a heroic war against the ISIS, the U.S. became obliged to build a tactical alliance with the YPG. This led Turkish state approach to Russia in order to destroy the gainings of the Kurds. The fascist chef Erdoğan is well aware of the fact that neither his regional hegemony, nor his own fascist existence could be preserved unless the Rojava revolution is liquidated. This existential fear of Turkish state from the Kurdish liberation struggle is the actual reason for buying the S-400 missile defense system.

One may say that the Kurds in Rojava have no missiles that would threaten Turkey. Yes, it is true. That's why the S-400 does not have a military meaning in this picture. It is the ransom for approaching Russia which Erdoğan uses this "political weapon" to move the U.S. away from the Kurds in Rojava, or at least, make them totally neutral against their fascist and colonialist hostility.

In this equation, the fascist chef and his team is getting more and more close to Russia in order to save their political future while Russia seizes every opportunity to pull Turkey to its side, as an imperialist power. However, economic relations and class interests may force the fascist chef to switch its way again.

Let's put it clearly once again: Turkey is a financial-economic colony of the world monopolies. The imperialist states and their local collaborator states are the representatives of the interests of the global financial oligarchy and their collaborator monopolistic bourgeoisies. The Turkish economy has been integrated with the world market which is dominated by the world monopolies, and Erdoğan has played a major role in this process. With any sort of bourgeois administration, Turkey cannot turn the tables on.

So, while Turkey has these economic relations totally integrated with the financial oligarchy, does it have the power to construct the political superstructure on the opposite way? Here, we do not defend that economic relations determine political superstructure as a copy. This would be nothing other than economic determinism. There is no doubt that contradictions among the dominant classes, struggle between the oppressors and the oppressed, the class struggle do all occur in the field of politics and create a room for different maneuvers.

However, economic relations are determinant in the final analysis and because of Turkey's dependency in terms of being a financial-economic colony, its room for maneuver lays up to some extent. This extend stops where political maneuvers threaten the interests of the financial oligarchy as a class. If the financial oligarchy faces with such a threat, then it will not hesitate to turn this financial-economic colonial dependency into a political blackmail against Erdoğan. Yet, some parts of the financial oligarchy have already started to bring forward other bourgeois political alternatives which materialize in the attempts of Erdoğan's former companions to found new parties, or in the ‘rise' of the bourgeois opposition, The Republican People's Party ( CHP ), with its new political figure İmamoğlu, the new elected mayor of Istanbul.

All in all, just as how it is seen in the S-400 crisis, the fascist chef Erdoğan seems to continue holding the "Russian weapon" to create himself a room for maneuvers against the U.S. hegemony which stands as a conjunctural obstacle for Turkish colonialism to start an immediate occupation on Rojava. So far, being excluded from the F-35 program does not seem to be enough for this "naughty" NATO member turn from its way. The "anti-imperialist" limits of Turkish state will show itself after a possible defeat in Rojava or other sanctions of the U.S. appear.