A Fatal Mistake: Collaboration with Islamists

Denizhan Eren

While continuing a massacre in Palestine, Israel makes every effort to start a regional war throughout the entire Middle East. So how should socialists organize a struggle to stand in solidarity with Palestine, to oppose the imperialist war and occupation spreading throughout the Middle East? This subject was shaped in flesh and bone this May, during the anniversary of Nakba, with the debate of whether an alliance with Islamists was right. SEP withdrew from the protest rejecting the inclusion of Islamist jihadists at the protests organized by socialists in solidarity with Palestine. 

Almost two months after this discussion, an article triggered this discussion once again. In the article, three main criticisms are brought to socialists who refuse to ally with Islamists: obsession with secularism, lack of action/politics, and putting organizational representation before practical benefits. 

We can consider this article an opportunity to clarify some points: 

1. Throughout the article, the writer is amazed by, angry at, and tries to find fault with those who refuse to form a common front with Jihadist organizations. There may be no need to emphasize this but let us remind those who still want to play three monkeys: Islamists spilled the blood of the working people, youth, women, LGBTI, and all minorities throughout the entire Muslim countries from Indonesia to Nigeria. In Turkey, what AKP and all sorts of Islamic congregations made the people go through is also obvious. That being the case, an alliance with this or that fraction of Islamists is out of the question for consistent socialists. Consistent socialists do not ally with any right-wing force, let alone with Islamists. Moreover, socialists would cause great disappointment and suspicion of broad masses in the case of an alliance with Islamists. 

2. The case of Palestinian solidarity protests in Muslim countries lagging far behind those in the West is saddening, but not surprising. There is a great backlash towards Islamists in the Muslim countries. Hamas’ leading of the Palestine national resistance, Iran’s playmaking, Erdoğan’s sham siding with Palestine, etc. are all damaging factors for solidarity with Palestine throughout the Muslim world. Tis situation is also widely observed in Turkey. It is necessary to overcome this attitude of withdrawal among the broad masses, but this cannot be achieved by linking arms with Islamists, but only through an independent class attitude. We can only convince the masses with our own flags, our own slogans, and our own goals. 

3. As for secularism. A secular front above classes is wrong, just as an “anti-imperialism” beyond classes is wrong. That’s to say, a secular front with right, left, liberal and bourgeois elements must be opposed. Both the conservative-secular polarization and identity/culture/lifestyle politics must be opposed. A struggle of working people’s solidarity must be given, regardless of culture and lifestyle. From the very start, our party has been emphasizing this point. This is where we differ from the Kemalist left we’ve been polemicizing for years. On the other hand, while trying to put the entirety of the anti-Islamist left in the bag of Kemalism is slander. We have been giving a fight of an ideological struggle against Kemalism’s influences and understanding of a secular front for years. But we keep in mind that secularism which is a universal value of the left, is indispensable. Marxism has transcended the Enlightenment and did not remain stuck in the phase of Enlightenment, but they don’t give in to the post-modernist reactionism that rejects it (either. Let us also not forget that if one wing of the ruling class is secular, the other is Islamist and conservative in Turkey. For us, the way to achieve real secularism is to organize the urban poor, to break the influence of already conglomerated Islamic congregations, and to raise the class struggle in conservative working-class regions. In other words, class struggle is the key. 

4. "...you cannot impose a single representation of the anti-imperialist struggle, especially if you are a camp whose actual power is not sufficient to represent it.” What a surrender to the forces of reaction! Imperialism is the highest stage of capitalism. So, one cannot be anti-imperialist without being anti-capitalist. This is why Islamists are not anti-imperialists. They clash with the US due to the specific conjuncture, and when the conjuncture changes, they cooperate with the US. While the Palestinian cause was under the leadership of the left for years, the Islamists did not care about Palestine. Just as they don’t care about the suffering of Kurds today. On the other hand, if mere opposition to Israel is sufficient for anti-imperialism, then according to the author, ISIS, which fights against powers such as the US and Russia, can very well be seen as an anti-imperialist “ally”. Besides, there are many examples of cooperation with imperialism in the history of Islamism. There is no need to go very far in the past. Let’s look at Syria. Didn't the US-Israel-Turkey front use Islamists as soldiers when they intervened for a regime change in Syria? Wouldn't the Islamist gangs backed by imperialism have committed genocide against Nusayrites (the Alawi Arab minority), wouldn't the Christian minority have been subjected to ethnic cleansing? Now, some are imposing cooperation with jihadists on socialists! 

5. We should remember the bait of an anti-imperialist alliance with Islamists from the Iranian history. In the struggle against the Shah in Iran, socialists evaluated Khomeini as an anti-imperialist progressive with the suggestions coming from the USSR. And we know the tragic result of this mistake: The mullahs have slaughtered tens of thousands of leftists, and they continue to do so. Leftists, the secular, women, youth, oppressed peoples cannot even breathe today. The theft of the Iranian revolution by Islamists was such a defeat that the Iranian people continue to suffer the most terrible pain from it. 

6. The author criticizes socialists for inactivsm. But the problem is not thr inactivism but “movementism”. Movementists who are tossed around in pursuit of any “movement”, without caring about the class perspective, experience great depression when they cannot be part of a popular movement, just like a substance addict experiences deprivation. For this reason, they keep looking for any kind of trends to follow, and naturally, principles and programme are easily sacrificed. The desire to create a joint movement with jihadists is one of the most extreme forms of this deviation. The fact that movementist leftist organizations are ideologically weak is actually a choice made in favor of movementism, because theory is a hindrance for them. 

7. As for the criticism of not being able to affect Palestinian struggle and remaining in a representative level at activism; socialist left did not need Islamists to conduct effective campaigns. Indeed, important alliances formed in this direction had produced meaningful work until they entered an ideological crisis regarding cooperation with Islamists. Hopefully, this joint effort will recover itself. Socialist organizations should put forward their own campaign energetically with their own slogans and flags. In addition, the criticism that “they are concerned with increasing their own representation” misses a truth: whether they likes it or not, whether it suits them or not, it is certain that socialism is the sole alternative to the imperialist capitalist system. Therefore, it is of historical importance for socialists to establish their own hegemony and strengthen their own representation. There is no point in opposing what he calls representation politics with practical effect. Those who cannot see a future outside the current balance of power because of their blinkers, that can reshape their political principles accordingly like dough are, ultimately, denying society’s effort of revolutionary transformation in practice. 

8. It is also necessary to clarify a constantly highlighted issue. Because of the very devastating national issue that reaches to genocidal massacres, Palestinian leftists and organizations like Hamas are working together. To take this extremely particular situation and present this unity as a model for all countries is nothing but oriental cunning. So, we should leave all laws of class struggle, all historical experiences and Turkey’s recent history aside and go after you? Now, should we also give examples of what Islamists have done to socialists, leftists, democrats, secular intellectuals, feminists, LGBTI in the Muslim countries? 

9. The author goes so off to wall as to accuse of representing the state because of our refusal to cooperate with Islamist organizations. Must be a really nice mood. Shouldn’t it be the other way round? Our friend here presents opposing Islamists as representation of the state, at AKP’s Turkey in which security forces such as the police, intelligence and the overall state apparatus is filled with Islamists. Anyone with common sense knows and speaks of the state’s particular hostility towards socialists and its tolerance towards Islamists, which surpasses even the AKP. 

10. Political Islam’s anti-communism and hostility towards the left should not be forgotten and we should combat it ideologically. But the sects of the leftists who work with jihadist networks are so broad that they defend even the Islamists’ sharia symbols such as the green flag as if they were very ordinary representations. The left-liberal circles that once glorified AKP as democrats and portrayed political Islamists as pretty allies served Erdoğan as useful tools. These groups, who have been glossing over political Islamists implicitly or explicitly, have not ceased to exist today. This time, they are coming to the agenda with the Palestinian issue. At a historical moment when political Islam has run out of steam as a “cause,” any movement that attributes respect to them again is damaging the class struggle. To butter the bread of Islamists, to cooperate with Islamist organizations would only add legitimacy and prestige to Islamists who have been experiencing moral collapse for many years and who no longer have any ideals, even just deceptions. For this reason, an independent class perspective is as precious as air and water.