Following the publication of Muhammad cartoons in Denmark and Norway, the "clash of civilisations" scenario which was developed in 1990s' by Samuel Huntington, one of the main ideologists of the US imperialism, has gained a new dimension by explosion of Muslim peoples' anger.

According to the US-made theory of "clash of civilisations", there were, on one side, the superior values of advanced, democratic and developed Western civilisation and, on the other side, the primitive, undeveloped, backward Eastern societies. The West, therefore, had the right to apply all kinds of "civilised" instruments in order to protect its superior civilisation and, moreover, to take its civilisation, democracy and freedom to the backward civilisations, that is to colonise and plunder them. After the September 11, the US has started to use more and more depleted uranium, cluster bombs, media wars, rape and torture. While September 11 represented a turning point for US to implement its imperialist strategies, it also resulted in rising of racist theses on the basis of the "clash of civilisations" that drew the ideological reasons of these strategies. Then the bombing of Afghanistan was followed by the occupation of Iraq under the pretext of bringing "democracy and freedom" to the backward societies. By the Iraqi people's resistance against the imperialist occupation, it has been exposed that the superior values of the superior Western civilisations means the colonial, plunderer capitalist system that is built upon barbarity seen in Guantánamo, Abu Ghraib. Through the incitement of Sunni-Shiite conflict in Iraq, the "backward civilisations" are being tried to confront with each other. This racist theory of Huntington fans racism and fascism by covering up the labour-capital contradiction in parallel to the neo- liberal attacks in the Western imperialist cities and nationalism and fundamentalism in the Arab and Muslim countries. In any case, this theory tries to cover up the class contradictions.

The cartoon crisis has become the last up-to-date version of the "clash of civilisations" scenario. As well as considering the cartoon crisis as a result of cartoons jauntily drawn by a few racists, the consideration of the reaction shown afterwards by Muslims as a religious-reactionary reaction will take us to incorrect end in reading today's tabloid.

The oppressed and exploited are not sitting back when their honours are being humiliated with rapes and tortures in Iraq. In their consciousness and feelings, they are accumulating so much of anger against the imperialist aggression. In the ghettos of Europe, the migrant labourers had already accumulated anger on discriminating attitudes they suffer from. There also developed a rebellion against the Zionist occupation in Palestine that carried out by the support of US, the giant technological war-machinery and the most "civilised" state on earth. The Muslim people had accumulated anger against humiliation of their system of belief and symbols under the pretext of development and civilisation.

The actions developed on the cartoons are not momentary but have got some roots in the past. They are the accumulated anger of Muslim peoples exploded in the form of blind-violence against the imperialist occupation, colonialism, policies of social destruction and the pictures of torture and rape spilled over from Guantánamo and Abu Ghraib to the streets of Iraq. From Asia to Africa, Middle East to the centres of imperialist cities, the symbols of imperialism, consulate buildings of capitalist centres which considered as the "Western civilisations" and have no other meaning than plunder and exploitation for the Muslim and oppressed peoples, have become the target of this anger.

However, the anger which came to the open by numerous forms, including the violence of the oppressed, and mainly targets the imperialist centres and symbols, -but sometimes make contributions to the racist and imperialist scenario of the "clash of civilisations" through blind reactions- points out burningly the need for an intervention by communists.

It is the intervention of the revolutionary and communist forces that can reverse this scenario and lead the working classes' and oppressed peoples' anger against the imperialist exploitation and colonialism in order to destroy the imperialist system with the objective of socialism.

ESP (Socialist Platform of the Oppressed): It is not a clash of civilisations but racist imperialist aggression

As a reply to the need mentioned above, the progressive, revolutionary, socialist forces are continuing to point out to the third alternative within the tabloid of confrontations. While ESP made a press statement regarding the issue on February 8, 2006, the No to Occupation in Iraq Coordination, of which ESP is one of the components, said "Imperialists must apologise from the peoples" in its press conference. By expressing that the killing of a priest in the city of Trabzon shows that the conflicts are wanted to be spread also in Turkey, ESP said: "All these incidents show that the imperialist centres would not hesitate in any manipulation and aggression in order to secure their profits. And the role downs to the people of our region and the world is to put in frustration all these attacks through peoples' brotherhood and united struggle."