Final statement of the Istanbul anti-NATO meeting / Istanbul, 2-3 February 2013
After attending the meeting “Struggle against NATO barbarism in the Middle East and North Africa” on February 2-3 2013 in Istanbul, the communist and workers’ parties make the following joint statement and call on all progressive forces that struggle for peace and justice to undersign and share it.
Imperialists used to tell the impudent lie that NATO existed for defense against the so-called threat of the Soviet Union. However, following the dissolution of the Socialist Bloc, NATO’s notorious mission has not come to an end. On the contrary, this war machine of imperialism has expanded its membership and area of operation, promotes an arms race and ever greater military spending and invests in new weapons and in their worldwide network of military bases. Involved in numerous military operations over a vast geography from Afghanistan to Libya, NATO is now even a bigger threat to peace all over the world. As communist and workers’ parties struggling in NATO-member countries, we declare that under these conditions, a resolute and militant struggle against NATO and is not only essential but urgently needed everywhere more than it has ever been.
The USA is today playing the leading role as the strongest power both in the framework of NATO as well as in the framework of the global imperialist system. However the command of NATO is formed on the basis of the strength (political-military and economic) that the bourgeois class of each member state of NATO has. The only sovereignty in NATO is the sovereignty of capital overseen by the imperialist forces of USA and Europe. We declare that the struggle for social, economic, democratic and national rights and emancipation of the peoples and against NATO is inseparable from the struggle against capitalism.
Since its foundation, NATO has been carrying out covert operations against revolutionary movements, working class organizations and progressive sectors of societies. The clandestine NATO organization, informally known as Operation Gladio, was behind countless covert actions including bombings, political assassinations and subversion techniques, etc. In addition to these covert operations, NATO engages in overt propaganda for the imperialist interests through media manipulation, funding the NGOs activities and research programs at universities, etc. We condemn all attempts of NATO, either covert operations or overt public relations activities since in whatever form they are constituted, all are driven by deep antagonism toward the working class and the people and their progressive organizations and by fierce anti-communism.
The USA-NATO and EU, three “outposts of capitalism and imperialism,” work in coordination to ensure capital’s power in different ways and by different instruments. The variance in methods and instruments does not change the fact that they all ultimately serve the interests of the same system, imperialism, which is in complete contradiction with the interests of the people. The military structure of EU is articulated with NATO. We declare that a true struggle against NATO entails resolute rejection of all other imperialist organizations and alliances as well.
NATO has expanded its area of intervention starting from the early 1990s. In the Summit in Rome in 1992 and in Washington in 1999, NATO agreed on a new doctrine enabling NATO to engage in armed interventions around the whole world. Pretexts such as combating terrorism or establishing democracy have been used to legitimize the expansion of NATO aggression into new geographies. The barbaric war against Yugoslavia and the bloody invasion in Afghanistan have been early examples of the practical consequences of this new doctrine. In the same context, NATO developed new programs in such as the Partnership for Peace in order to gain new partner countries. We declare that we are determined to struggle against all forms of NATO expansionism intervention and aggression for the dissolution of NATO and for the sovereign right of each people to decide the disengagement and the withdrawal from NATO and the imperialist alliances.
In an international context marked by a deepening of the structural crisis of capitalism, an intensification of the exploitation of workers and peoples, by growing anti-democratic threats and attacks on sovereignty, life shows that war and aggression continue to be instruments of the imperialist strategy of economic and geostrategic domination.
But the escalation of the imperialism face the resistance of the peoples who, through the most diversified forms of struggle, courageously confront the aggressions, invasions and wars which imperialism imposes upon them.
Struggle of the peoples for Peace, which has been dealt so many blows by the ruling classes of the big imperialist powers, who seek to overcome, by force and violence, the profound contradictions and crisis which their system has engendered.
Expressing our solidarity with the peoples that resist imperialist occupation, aggression and interference, namely in the Middle East and Africa, We reaffirm our commitment for the strengthening and enlargement of the peace and anti-NATO movement, for the development of the anti-imperialist front, against imperialist aggressiveness and wars, against the so-called anti-missile shield, the foreign military bases, against the participation of the military forces of our countries in the imperialist aggressions against other countries and peoples.
Recently NATO has become the imperialist tool to overthrow governments in the Middle East and North Africa and replace them with those that serve the interests of imperialism best. The barbaric bloodshed in Libya, which resulted in the lynching of Muammar Gaddafi and the opening of the Libya to imperialist plunder, has now taken its place as a despicable black page in the history of humanity. France's current military intervention in Mali, with the participation and approval of several other NATO member states, is in continuity with NATO's war of aggression against Libya.
NATO has been striving to set the same bloody scenario in action in Syria. The imperialists and their client states in the region have armed, financed and supported the armed opposition from the start of the crisis. NATO is prepared to directly intervene in the conflict since the NATO mercenaries, has now been proven incapable of defeating the regime of Syria. The deployment of Patriot missiles on the Turkish-Syrian border poses a real threat to peace and sovereignty of all the people in the region. Turkey through this action has been a direct threat not to Syria but Iran, which is constantly intimidated by imperialists. In this regard, we condemn all forms of NATO actions against Syria and Iran. We declare that it is only the people of Syria who have the right to determine Syria's future. In complete solidarity with the people of Syria, we also declare that we will continue to fight against all imperialist plans in the region.
Workers’ Party of Belgium
Communist Party of Greece
Hungarian Communist Workers Party
Portuguese Communist Party
Communist Party of Peoples of Spain
Communist Party of Turkey
