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“And then he would end up just like Morsi” Öcalan had said

This interview with Selahattin Demirtaş, co-chair of Peoples’ Democratic Party, was conducted by OSMAN OĞUZ and HABER MERKEZİ of YENİ ÖZGÜR POLİTİKA. This English language translation was taken from HDP’s English language blog.   Öcalan had warned Erdogan about this matter a lot. “Tell him, he does not get it, he is acting like an idiot” […]

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The Puzzling Fall of Bulgarian Liberal Leader Mestan

Note of the LeftEast editors: the articles is published in co-operation with the Serbo-Croatian web portal Bilten.Org. Bulgaria’s political scene is notorious for its volatility: parties come and go, sometimes sweeping to power months after being formed; cabinets seldom last a full term in office. Amid this flux, the liberal Movement for Rights and Freedoms […]

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Common Statement of the Revolutionary Marxists from Russia and Turkey

This statement was made by OpenLeft Collective-Russia and Sosyalist Demokrasi İçin Yeniyol-Turkey in December 2015. source: InternationalViewpoint.Org After the aircraft SU-24 Russian fighter was shot down by a Turkish Armed Forces missile on November 24, on account to the fact that it violated Turkey’s air space, it can be certainly said that the relations between the […]

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Turkey’s Tiananmen in Context

At 9:30 yesterday morning Turkish citizens opposed to their government’s war policies gathered at the Ankara Train Station for a demonstration organized by a broad alliance of organizations: the country’s two main oppositional labor unions (DISK and KESK), the national Chamber of Architects and Engineers (TMMOB), the Medical Association (Tabipler Birliği) and the June Movement […]

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#crossingnomore: “We don’t want to drown no more!”

Note from the LeftEast editors: this article has been written by Mathias Fiedler, currently in Istanbul, for BorderMonitoring.Eu. The article is reprinted here with the permission of the author. We also insert a video which the Marxist website Marksist.Org has published (below) with the voices of the Syrian refugees at the Edirne bus terminal. It has been in planning for some […]

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“You are all Armenians!”—The Place of Cizre in the Terror Wars

This past weekend a stroll through a middle-class section of Turkey’s capital revealed nothing out of the ordinary besides a somewhat unusually high number of flags in store windows. Beneath the crescent and star against a blood-red background there appeared occasionally messages of grief for fallen soldiers and condemnations of “terror.” Terror is a good […]

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Turkey: Academics Call for Peace and Justice

We, the undersigned academics, are deeply concerned about the escalating violence after the general elections held on June 7th in Turkey. After these elections, AKP, the previously ruling party, has lost its absolute majority status and yet appears to act as if its status has not changed, undermining the electoral votes. The transition government put […]

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Kurds, Labor, and the Left in Turkey. An Interview with Erdem Yörük

With Turkey’s parliamentary elections on Sunday fast approaching, all eyes are on the Peoples’ Democracy Party (HDP) contesting its first ever election as a party, rather than a coalition of nominally independent candidates: a momentous decision on the part of the party leadership, which stands to gain clout in parliament and solidify its position as […]

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A Discourse that Fuels Violence: AKP and the Culture of Permissiveness Toward Violence against Women in Turkey

Özgecan Aslan’s story was close to the heart. We have all been that girl trying to get home at night in the dark, alone. We are all too familiar with shorter breaths, raised heartbeats and sweaty palms, prompted by an instinct of being in danger. In this very instant, while everything else is tuned out, […]

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Sosyalist Feminist Kolektif: Fighting for Women’s Rights in Turkey. An interview with Selin Cagatay.

Note from the LeftEast editors: The attempted rape, murder, and burning of 20-year-old university student Özgecan Aslan on Feb. 11th touched a nerve in a society where male-on-female violence has been a chronic problem. Massive demonstrations throughout Turkey followed soon after, but what will it take to stem the surge in  femicide over the last […]