MIM NOTES 195	October 1, 1999

Earthquake in Turkey Unnatural disaster of imperialist proportions

by MC45

The 7.4 magnitude earthquake that shook Turkey's population and 
industrial center for 45 seconds on August 17 has renewed 
discussion of what causes disasters to strike in the age of high 
technology and advanced engineering. MIM mourns the tragic and 
unnecessary deaths of tens of thousands of Turkish citizens at the 
hands of the u.$. and NATO-backed regime. We extend our solidarity 
to the earthquake survivors who must pick up their lives, and 
alongside whom we will struggle to break imperialism's grip on 
their nation.

By the end of August, the u.$. Agency for International 
Development (USAID) was estimating costs "to reconstruct 
industrial facilities, homes, public services, and other 
infrastructure" at more than $25 billion.(1) With stakes so high, 
foreign lending agencies and governments are itching to plunge 
their capital into redeveloping Turkey. By the rules of so-called 
international aid this will mean dictating the course of 
reconstruction and cashing the interest payments for decades to 
come.

People living and organizing in the imperialist countries have an 
internationalist duty to oppose imperialist lending institutions 
saddling oppressed nations peoples with more debt. To this end, 
MIM is organizing a campaign to Break the Imperialist Deathgrip of 
Debt to bring attention to and agitate against the exploitative 
relations of international debt.(2) This campaign is part of our 
consistent work to oppose imperialist military and economic 
intervention in the Third World -- to use our position of 
organizing within imperialist borders to mount public opinion in 
opposition to the international hegemony of capitalism. It is also 
our responsibility to recognize and build support for the most 
advanced revolutionary pole within the oppressed nations. In 
Turkey, this is the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist Leninist 
(TKP/ML), the vanguard for Turkey and Turkish Kurdistan. The 
TKP/ML "leads a worker-peasant alliance in a New Democratic 
people's war against compradors, landlords, loan sharks, 
imperialists and the fascist Turkish regime."(3) MIM supports the 
TKP/ML in its struggle for New Democracy and an end to 
imperialism, fascism and feudalism in Turkey.

It's corruption! It's poverty! It's ... the highest stage of 
capitalism!

For years, MIM has argued that there is no such thing as a natural 
disaster. Wealthy entertainment executives build lavish houses on 
coastal California hillsides and collect insurance money and 
government aid when their homes slide to pieces in the inevitable 
mudslides. In Alaska, settlers defy city planners to build in the 
stark beauty of avalanche country -- begging to be buried under 
tons of snow and ice. Beach-front and hurricane-front properties 
all along the southern coastal u.$. are sought-after by Amerikans 
with too much money and leisure time on their hands.

In MIM Notes 55 we wrote that imperialists do not like to talk 
about "the role of social organization in [Third World countries], 
and their relations with foreign powers. This willful omission 
serves to make people believe that by bad luck alone some people 
are stuck in unstable and dangerous areas of the earth while 
others can thank fate for their wealth."(4) The liberal bourgeois 
press has begun to catch on to this idea that an earthquake's 
effect is determined by humyn activity: building codes, practices 
and enforcement. In the central area of the north-Anatolian 
earthquake where tens of thousands of homes were destroyed, only 1 
in every 10 was insured and many were built far below the legal 
standard.(5)

Well-traveled liberals have noticed that western Turkish cities 
are quite European in infrastructure. Those who have done their 
homework have also publicized the fact that building codes in 
Ankara, Istanbul, Izmit and other cities on or near the north-
Anatolian fault are as strict as those in San Francisco -- 
Amerika's most treacherous earthquake zone. For this reason, 
corruption among builders and government inspectors has become the 
headline story as the cause of so much death.

But corruption cannot be the root of any problem, how could it? 
"Corruption" is a failure of the system. For capitalists -- the 
true mystics of the twentieth century -- it is good enough to say 
"the system isn't working," when everything does not go their way. 
To the capitalists, if we could only create a perfect market in a 
bubble, with just the right balance of law and trade, life would 
be perfect. To Maoists, this system makes a festering stench, and 
only revolution will clear the air decisively.

The TKP/ML wrote in August that more than 20,000 people had 
already died in the earthquake.(6) According to USAID, quoting the 
Turkish Minister for Reconstruction, more than 600,000 people are 
homeless and the expectation is that 35,000 homes will need to be 
completely demolished because they are not repairable (as of the 
most recent survey, 27,000 were certain to be demolished).(1) A 
United Nations report read: "In Derince, a district of Izmit, the 
estimated number of inhabitants is between 60,000-70,000, down 
from the pre-earthquake population of 155,000."(7) How can we look 
in the faces of a people who have suffered such startling loss in 
two short weeks without saying that we will do all we can to 
replace the system that breeds such tragedy with one that has been 
proven to better the lives of the oppressed?

Marxists are devoted to the task of systemic change, because it is 
unconscionable to perpetuate any social and economic system 
without taking responsibility for its failures as well as its 
success. A century and-a-half ago Marx made a thorough critique of 
capitalism, explaining in detail why the system of private 
ownership of the means of production cannot meet social needs as 
public ownership of the means of production can. This critique has 
been proven in the successes of socialist societies at housing 
their people. The imperialist-mystics like to talk about the 
industrialization of northwestern Turkey, and the great rewards of 
International Monetary Fund loans. But they will not talk about 
why so many thousands of Turkish people lived in homes that 
crumbled in an earthquake and killed them. You cannot have it both 
ways: either production for profit is a good thing and the price 
of contractors doing shoddy work to increase their profits is 
acceptable. Or as we Maoists say, production for profit breeds 
disaster as it offers no incentive to provide safe, affordable 
housing for the masses. When MIM talks about communist morality, 
this is what we mean: it is immoral to defend a system that 
results in unnecessary death and environmental destruction. 
Communism is the only moral answer to what the bourgeoisie calls 
corruption.

Renewed lending fervor for Turkey

The Communist Party of the Philippines (CPP) has written of the 
earthquake aftermath: "The U.S. and European imperialists and 
Turkish reactionaries are conniving to impose new onerous loans on 
Turkey in the name of reconstruction even as they intend to 
continue the policy of austerity at the expense of the working 
people. Thus, the main beneficiaries of new loans will again be 
the imperialists themselves and their local cohorts."(12)

The Turkish government is fully willing to take on more 
imperialist loans and support in exchange for the position of 
privilege it holds over the oppressed masses of Turkey and Turkish 
Kurdistan. Turkey has sided with the imperialists in repeated 
military conflicts with other Third World states -- allowing the 
Amerikan military use of Turkish air bases to bomb Libya in 1986 
and Iraq in 1991.(13)

IMF Managing Director Michael Camdessus expressed sympathy for the 
Turks: "The IMF will do all it can to help the Turkish government 
deal with this disaster ... The government has already made 
considerable progress in implementing reforms which were discussed 
with us in June, in the areas of privatization and social security 
reform."(14) World Bank President James Wolfensohn added: "Within 
36 hours of the earthquake, we reallocated around $100 million out 
of existing loans and have already identified another $120 million 
in new loans to be available for reconstruction needs."(15)

Economic devastation in the industrial center

Imperialists have trumpeted the Turkish economy, which grew "7-8% 
most years" in the 1990s.(5) But this same economy suffered from 
inflation more than 90% most years of the 1990s, knocking the 
Turkish Lira from 11,000 to 213,000 to the u.$. dollar between 
1993 and 1998.(8) Turkey had agreed to the goal of reducing 
inflation to 50% by the end of last year, and to First World 
levels by 2000. This goal was based on a plan of IMF quarterly 
reviews of the economy, increased privatization and general 
tethering to the imperialist lending institutions.(9) This 
situation has created the conditions by which so many people were 
killed in the August earthquake.

With clear support from its imperialist masters in the united 
$nakes, the Turkish government has begun a hunt for the 
contractors who built the now-collapsed apartment buildings along 
the north-Anatolian fault. The government's plan is to try these 
contractors for the crime of mass murder.(10) Blaming the Turkish 
bourgeoisie is a convenient means of denying responsibility for 
the conditions that fill their apartment buildings with poor 
people. Migrations into Turkey's urban-industrial center are 
filled with Turks in search of work.(10) The TKP/ML has already 
condemned the Turkish lackey government for total unconcern for 
the safety of the proletariat. Attracting more workers to 
exploitative jobs with western corporations is the government's 
higher priority.

Turkey's State Minister for privatization and the Privatization 
Board Chairman have assured the imperialists that privatization 
will plow forward as a priority for the economy.(11) This event 
and government response reveals the shallow character of economic 
advances for the Third World under imperialism. The Goodyear tire 
factory in Izmit is an example. The factory is nearly unscathed, 
but many of its workers are now homeless. The workers are afraid 
to spend long hours inside a building they fear will collapse 
around them, and intensely preoccupied with thoughts of rebuilding 
their lives. The surrounding economy has crumbled. Smaller and 
Turkish-owned manufacture buildings are destroyed, environmental 
byproducts of the earthquake (like an oil fire) are a danger to 
crops and humyns, and local entertainment businesses have shut 
down.(5)

Privatization will do nothing to solve the people's problems; it 
will only improve the conditions for imperialist investment. Such 
investment has already demonstrated its bankruptcy when it comes 
to improving the conditions of the masses of Turkey and Turkish 
Kurdistan. An advanced imperialist stranglehold on Turkey can only 
worsen the lives of the people. MIM Notes calls on our readers in 
the imperialist countries to express genuine sympathy and 
solidarity with the people of Turkey: investigate and expose the 
imperialists' agenda in Turkey, work with MIM to build public 
opinion in favor of the just struggles of the oppressed! 

Notes:
1. Turkey Earthquake Fact Sheet no. 22, USAID
http://www.info.usaid.gov/hum_response/ofda/turkeq_fs22.html
2. http://www.prisoncensorship.info/archive/etext/debt/
3. MIM Theory 13 "Culture in Revolution" p. 159 (available from 
MIM for $8).
4. MIM Notes 55 August 1991 (available from MIM for $1).
5. Los Angeles Times 27 August 1999.
6. "This Many Casualties Is Out of the Common: The State 
Responsible For It," TKP/ML International Relations Bureau 20 
August, 1999.
7. http://wwwnotes.reliefweb.int/ "Earthquake in Izmit: UNDP 
Situation Report 16," 31 August 1999.
8. www.odci.gov/ CIA World Factbook 1998.
9. World Bank country file on Turkey Aug, 1998.
10. Los Angeles Times 20 August 1999.
11. Turkish Daily News 1 September 1999.
12. http://www.geocities.com/~cpp-ndf/ "Message of Sympathy to the 
People of Turkey," the CPP and NDFP 21 Aug 1999.
13. MIM Notes 44, 1 September 1990.
14. "Camdessus Expresses Deepest Sympathy With Turkey Following 
Earthquake," IMF News Brief No. 99/48 August 17, 1999 www.imf.org
15. Turkey Earthquake: World Bank Pledges Millions, 18 August 1999
www.worldbank.org