(en) Rebellion in Turquie: "Create and multiply spaces of opposition and solidarity" A statement of the movement (fr, tr)

A statement produced by the participants in the movement and social struggles underway in 
Turkey. Our Commons ? Who, why? --- What we see --- Clouds gathering North and South. --- 
Public spaces, street corners, poor neighborhoods shouting out loud for true democracy. 
From Tahrir to Sintagma, crowds are urging us all to see: see the inequalities of a 
system in total crisis, of the dirty games of technocrats and parliamentaries, of insecure 
of dictators and false democrats. ---- They would have us without any alternative ? all we 
can do is play by the rules. Work more. Make do with less. And be content with what is 
left. The consequence of this 30 years-old lie is yet more inequality and more servitude. 
---- It is to this lie that the present revolts. This is where we begin our struggle.

The capitalist system can no longer hide the consequences of the crisis it is crippling 
into. Fast-paced ecological destruction and global economic crisis mean the same thing for 
all the poor and the oppressed throughout the world: disaster. Year after year, 
unemployment rates increase against all statistical manipulation; some are marginalized by 
being declared ?unemployable?, while the great majority of those who are able to find a 
job are condemned to precarious work. Young people and women are the first ones to live in 
poverty more than any other, no matter how hard they work. Basic social rights such as 
education, heath care and accomodation are being attacked one by one ? we can benefit from 
them just as long as we are able to buy. The consequences of the global economic 
inequality are forcing millions to migration either directly ? through hunger and 
deterritorialization ? or indirectly through conflicts and wars. Those who line up at the 
blind gates of the civilized world, victims of constant discrimination and racism, can 
ok,nly exist as cheap labor force easily spendable, and be drawn into even more miserable 
conditions life than the poor people of their new homeland.

And in response to this total crisis, current powers ask for even more. Corporations and 
governments are turned the crisis into an opportunity and attack what was hard won by 
hundreds of years of struggles. Thus the capital is trying to lay his hands on out urban 
spaces and our daily life we all produce in common; on the rural areas to which we owe our 
existence, their water supplies, and the very seeds they nurture; on the rights we have 
won through decades of social struggles; on the ideas and goods we produce in common; and 
even on our genes.
The present time can only mean disaster to us. Less work, more working hours; sacralized 
family institutions and suffocating homes; war calls everywhere and shamelessly spoken 
declarations of democracy; water streams preempted, endless projects for energy centrals, 
alienating urban transformation, entire neighborhoods forcely evacuated; education and 
healthcare services marketized; secondary schools bringing up the precarious work force 
out the next generation; higher education institutions where capitalist forces and games 
of power are displayed; public places watched by hundreds of cameras and security 
dispositions, disconnected cities, quarters without soul. In short: the loss of what is 
common. Dispossession, insecurity, loss of integrity. And this aggression has been 
constantly growing, down from the 12 September 1980 coup d?etat up to the national tyrants 
of the present times. Here is the happy Neverland stirring the dreams of the world?s powers.

What we hear

Not that we lever lacked objections to this wholesale attack, for sure. There has been 
opposition yesterday as there is today, and news of resistance reach our ears from the 
four corners of the country even when they are not voiced by vested media outlets. 
Discreetly, silently, objections are ferments. Irregular, broken tunes are being whistled. 
But we have not crossed the wall yet.

Now we know it well: despite all heart-driven efforts, struggles with one issue based on 
one locality do not supply continuity. Crowds who take action with certain demands on a 
certain region, facing the enormous power against them, have to retreat after a while. The 
experience of those who succeeded can not be transferred to next levels or elsewhere. We 
are reminded of our perennial powerlessness with the wholesale attacks of the capital. The 
end-account of the neo-liberal world for us is dismantling and disintegration.

For us, the urgent need of the present time is to create and multiply the spaces of 
opposition and solidarity to break off from this powerlessness and fragmentation. To make 
possible a series of articulations on several levels, ranging from the practical 
necessities of everyday life to more abstract political analyses. We know that we will be 
able to break the waves attacking us, to dispel the effect of disintegration* caused on us 
by neo-liberalism, to the extent that we are able to create and multiply these common spaces.

Where we begin

We are not looking for a new roof ? we are in search of a common ground. And we do not 
intend to form a unitary and therefore limited demand or discourse to hold together the 
network forming us, and neither do we put forward what was tried innumerable times under 
the label of ?novelty, total novelty.?

What we need to do is to pick up and expose the demands, the functioning, the methods and 
the means of a long-standing, sustainable struggle coming from below ? to describe a 
common space on which we can lay down the building of solidarity. Today?s and tomorrow?s 
solidarity.

In February 2013 we started to meet together ? neighbourhoods threatened with eviction, 
urban movements, ecologist, feminist and transsgender groups, anticapitalists, migrants? 
solidarity networks ? e propose to create a united ground of action. The mechanisms of 
power and oppression surrounding us are the same, so should be our struggle. The journey 
that started in Gezi nurtured our strength and courage with its tenacity, creativity, 
determination, and self-confidence. In no time, the resistance blossomed from Gezi park to 
Taksim Square, and from Taksim to all Istanbul and then the rest of the country. The 
struggle for Gezi park became the place where to voice all our rage against anything 
preventing us from deciding for our own way to live the city. After this display of rage 
and solidarity nothing will be the same again. No one of us will be the same. Because now 
we have seen something about ourselves we had never seen before. We did not just see it: 
we made it all together. In cities as in countrysides, in neighborhoods and campuses, with 
citizens and non-citizens, we propose to weave together a resistance of men and women who 
oppose to capitalism, to ecological destruction, to patriarchy, to heterosexism. We began 
where we are, but we are not going to stop there. We are moving with a patient haste. This 
is just the beginning, the struggle continues.

Starting with our commons, we reclaim what belongs to us!

http://mustereklerimiz.org/our-commons-who-why/