Istanbul: People’s Rights Forum (8-10 June 2007)

[fsg_gallery id=”391″]To read about Abahlali in Turkish click on the links below:

http://www.sendika.org/yazi.php?yazi_no=11446
http://www.sendika.org/yazi.php?yazi_no=4233

APPEAL FOR THE PEOPLE’S RIGHTS FORUM IN ISTANBUL

Today, our country is passing through a very critical process which will have strong infuences for our near future. Such developments as the presidential elections, general and local elections, the war in the Middle East and the developments in the Kurdish question will have impacts from the social life to the restructuring of the political regime in Turkey. The power conflict between the present AKP (Justice and Development Party) government and the traditional institutions of the Turkish state gains strength in the eve of the presentential elections and the general elections through their mutual attempts. These conflicting fractions of the Turkish ruling classes try to divide the society according to their own political interests and try to present these divisions as the real agenda of the society. Yet, the real agenda of the people is alltogether different.

The internal political conflicts of the ruling classes, on the one hand, result in the formation of a political sphere where the poor people do not have any channells of political participation. On the other hand, every kind of political reactionism, principally racist-nationalism and political Islam is being widely organised from above among the ranks of the society.

The imperialist war ongoing in the Middle East and the new threads of war and widespread politics of collobarationism with imperialism bring destruction to the all Middle Eastern peoples. Together with the neoliberal policies, the sovereignity rights of peoples are totaly violated and the basis of new dependency relations on the military, economic and political spheres are enforced. With the rapid commercialization of the basic public services because of neoliberal policies the people experience a real destruction in the daily life. A country is created where ongoing commertialization and privitization policies from the sphere of education to health, social security, municipal services, agriculture, mining, housing and transportation violates the basic and crucial needs of the people and the people are deprived from living in humanly conditions. Neoliberal programs in the field of labour relations make precarious working conditions the basic form of employement. Neoliberal programs, imperialist war policies and the dependency relations together with the dead-end policies in the Kurdish question lock Turkey’s future and in this atmosphere all demands and needs of the people are made invisible. Turkish people is marginalized from politics; from the right to determine its own life and the future of the country in a degree unforseen until today. This atmosphere prevaling in the country prevents the people to use its most basic democratic rights and freedoms and destroys the channels of political participation.

As the People’s Houses, together with the Social Policy Research and Practice Center of Ankara University Political Sciences Faculty, we launch a process in order to give visibility to the real agenda of the people; in order to produce solutions to the problems of locked Turkey and in order to conscientize the “Rights of the People”. This process will be concretized in the People’s Rights Forum together with the social rights struggles of the various sections of the population in Turkey.

People’s Rights Forum

The basic aim of this process and forum is as the following:
– We will bring together the principal victims of the problems from the sphere of education, health, housing to transportation, political freedoms, war and racism-nationalism policies and the main academic and political circles;
– And we will try to lay a common struggle ground around “People’s Rights” by grasping the common experiences in terms of opinions and/or practices. We hope to contribute to the formation of a common struggle program and increase the common struggle opportunities of the various opposition dynamics around this common struggle program.

People’s Rights Forum will be organised together with many fellow associations, professional’s organisations and trade unions which already have their own studies over the content of the forum. On the other hand, recently appearing local resistance centers against the above mentioned neoliberal transformations (for example, unsecured-contracted teachers, students and parents of the students opposing to the commercialization of education; labourers struggling against the commercialization of health; local neighbourhood initiatives around housing right in various big cities against the so-called urban transformation projects; farmers organisations formed in the rural areas against the neoliberal destruction of agriculture; new resistance groupings appearing in various sectors of the economy) will participate in the forum process as very significant values of struggle.

Scientist and activists participating in the new social-political opposition movements by their ideas and struggles from the Middle East and from various countries which live similar processes and social tensions are also invited to the Forum: Profesors James Petras and Henry Veltmeyer from US; Ahmad Dirki from Lebanese Communist Party; Rocio Luna Acevedo (teacher) from the APPO-Popular Assembly of Peoples of Oaxaca, a delegate from the South Africa-Durban Abahlali BaseMjondolo (Durban Shantdwellers Movement) and a representative from Venezuela will participate in various sessions and workshops of the forum.

Sessions of the “People’s Rights Forum” will be on 8-9-10 June 2007. 8th June 2007/ Saturday, the first day of the forum will be organised by the women members of the People’s Houses together with the participation of various women organisations and groups in order to discuss the items of the forum from the perspective of women. Women’s Forum will be done in Ankara Haci Bekta? Veli Culture Center.

People’s Rights Principal Forum on 9-10 2007/ Saturday-Sunday will be organised in the conference rooms and classrooms of Ankara University Political Sciences Faculty and will be hosted by the Social Policy Research and Practice Center of the Faculty. During these two days there will be four main sessions and thirteen parallel workshops.

Before the forum on 8-9-10th June 2007, there will be preliminary meetings and workshops in various cities and the whole results of the process wil be declared to the public opinion with a “People’s Rights Decleration” within the framework of the discussions and presentations.

Below is the draft program of the forum and the possisle participants.

With the hope of walking together with you in this process…With our best regards

Study Group of People’s Rights Forum

Çi?dem Çidaml? (forum coordinator)

e-mail address: cigdem@sendika.org
Tell: 00 90 537 572 14 44 (cell)

PEOPLE’S RIGHTS FORUM
PROGRAM

8 JUNE 2007/FRIDAY WOMEN’S FORUM
10.30-11.00 OPENING SPEECH: Ilknur BIROL (Vice President of People’s Houses)
11.00-14.00 NEO-LIBERALISM AND PATRIARCHY
PUBLIC RIGHTS OF WOMEN AND OUR DEMANDS
– Women’s testimonies about private and public life under neo-liberalism
How women experience social rights violations in the fields of education, health, housing, child care, employment and organization, how they struggle and what they demand?
Friends of the market in the homes and streets: Patriarchy; domestic violence, honor murders, sex trade, sexual violence and rape.
Social and political rights for democratic participation of women in politics: What kind of a social life and democracy we demand?
14.00-15.00 LUNCH BREAK
15.00-16.00 BEING SISTERS IN ANATOLIA:
Session on Turkish and Kurdish women on sisterhood and Kurdish question in Turkey (discussions and testimonies)
16.00-18.00 WAR and WOMEN IN THE MIDDLE EAST
Documentary presentation: War crimes against women in the Middle East
Testimonies of two Lebanese women journalists: Cilia MROUEH and Katerin DAHER
(all decisions taken in the women’s forum will be declared in a special manifesto in the final session of the forum on 10Th June Sunday and will be transferred to the workshops)

9 JUNE 2007/SATURDAY PEOPLE’S RIGHTS MAIN FORUM
09.30 Opening Speech: People’s Houses President Abdullah AYDIN

Solidarity Speech: Yadira GONZALES (Secretary of Cuban Science and Technology Ministry) and Gisela ALONSO (Secretary of Cuban Environment Agency)

10.00 – 13.00 Ist SESS?ON:
“NEO-LIBERALISM, TRANSFORMATION OF THE STATE AND THE SOCIETY AND THE STRUGGLE FOR SOCIAL RIGHTS”

Moderator: Metin ÖZU?URLU

Participants:
Korkut BORATAV (Precarity and it’s evolution during the last decades)
Henry VELTMEYER (World Bank social policies and ngo’isation of the social opposition
Yasemin ÖZDEK (The political meaning of today’s social rights struggles)
Rocio LUNA ACEVEDO (Mexico-Oaxaca representative from Teachers Union)
Fuat ERCAN (Peoples and Rights under Capitalism))

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 18.30 SOCIAL RIGHTS WORKSHOPS (SAME HOURS)
1- Right to Education workshop (With participation of Luna Acevedo)
2- Right to Health workshop (With participation of Zikode)
3- Right to Housing workshop (With participation of Zikode)
4- Right to Energy workshop
5- Right to Transportation workshop
6- Right to Environment workshop
7- Rihgt to Water workshop
8- Right to Food Sovereignty and Agriculture workshop
9- Right to Employment workshop
10- Political rights and freedoms
11- Right to Culture and arts
12- Right to Media and communication With participation of Luna Acevedo, Cilia Mroueh and Katerin Daher)
13- Rights of the Retarded people

(decisions taken in the workshops will be declared in the final session of the forum)

16.30-19.30 IInd SESS?ON:
“IMPERIALIST POLICIES AND RIGHT TO PEACE IN THE MIDDLE EAST AND CAUCUS”

Moderator: Umar KARATEPE

Participants:

James PETRAS (US policies in the Middle East)
Ahmad Dirki (Lebanon)
Cilia MROUEH (Lebanon)

10 JUNE 2007/SUNDAY

09.30-13.00 IIIrd SESSION:
KURDISH QUESTION AND CREATING THE COUNTRY OF BROTHERHOOD

Moderator: Metin BAKKALCI

Participants:

Orhan DOGAN (Democratic Labour Party ex deputy)
Yavuz ONEN (General President of Turkish Foundation of Human Rights)
Sezgin TANRIKULU (President of Diyarbakir Bar)
Ferda KOC (sendika.org writer)
S’BU ZIKODE (Neo-liberal apartheid in South Africa)

13.00 – 14.00 Lunch break
14.00 – 17.30 IVth SESSION :
“POLITICAL POLARIZATION IN THE PROCESS OF ELECTIONS AND LEFT POLITICS
Moderator: Arzu CERKEZOGLU
Participants:
Fikret BASKAYA
KAYA GÜVENC
ALPER TAS
ILKNUR BIROL

17.30 – 18.30 Vth SESSION
Moderator: Çigdem ÇIDAMLI

“People’s Democracy in Defending the Rights of People and Suggestions of the People’s Forum” Declarations of Women’s Forum, Social Rights Workshops and Sessions
Declaration of People’s Rights Manifesto

eople’s Rights Forum Final Declaration

The people of Turkey has the historical accumulation, ability and possibility to determine her own faith. The history of this land will be written by the labouring sons and daughters of this land coming from different linguistic and national origins.

The basic motto which integrates the will of this land with the universal values of humanity is: “Independence, equality and people’s democracy”.

Peoples, who are not engaged in struggle will have no rights!

The rights of the people is a program of struggle. The historical experience is clear: Today all those rights which are lost one by one, are not achieved as a result of the charities of the rulers, but as a result of the struggles of the peoples of the world.

The program of the rights of the people, is not a list of demands to be asked from the current owners of power; it is a charter of the people; none of its elements can be subjected to any kind of bargaining.

The struggle which is given for the rights of the people is a praxis, both of a resistance and of a founding construction; within the framework of the struggle for the rights of the people, resistance and construction are intertwined.

?çinde ya?ad???m?z dünyada emperyalizm art?k d???m?zdaki bir olgu olmaktan ç?km??; içselle?mi? bir olgu niteli?i gittikçe daha da belirginlik kazanm??t?r. Dünyan?n ezilen kutbu bak?m?ndan, emperyalizme kar?? mücadele ile kapitalizme kar?? mücadele aras?ndaki aç? fark? kapanm??t?r. Anti-emperyalist mücadelenin anti-kapitalist içeri?i, ideolojik bir tercih konusu de?il, nesnel bir durumdur. Bu durum, kendisini en aç?k ?ekilde, kamusal varl?klar ve sosyal haklar etraf?nda cereyan eden s?n?flar mücadelesinde göstermektedir.

In the world in which we live, imperialism is not any more an external factor; its character as an internal factor came much more apparent. In terms of the oppressed pole of the world, the angle and gap between the struggle against imperialism and the struggle between capitalism does not exist anymore. The anti-capitalist content of the anti-imperialist struggle is not a subject of an ideological choice, but is an objective situation. This situation shows itself, most clearly, in the context of the class struggles which occur around and over the public assets and social rights.

To what extent the proram of the people’s rights can be realized depends on, to what extent the neo-liberal colonialist wars waged by imperialism together with various means will be defeated. Neo-liberalism is the current neo-colonialist strategy of imperalism, which under the American hegemony has a collective charecter to a certain degree. This strategy had integrated state with capital and the country with imperialism; the bureaucratic and political elite and all fractions of the local bourgouise had united their faiths with the international monopoly capital.

The policies of commodification, marketization, precaurization of neoliberalism seize the rights of the people to education, to health, to housing, to transportation and to communication which should be organized with a social orientation; destroy the environment, natural resources and land in an irreversable manner and transform productive activity, which actually can be the most emancipating activity of humanity into most destructive forms of slavery. To defend the basic rights of the people; the common riches of humanity and all of the natural resources of the earth against neo-liberal aggresion is the most basic legitimate right of the people. Because, peoples will open a humanly life space to themselves as far as they can repulse the attacts of the neo-liberal capital.

The struggle for the rights of the people has a great importance in terms of determining the future of the struggles which occur over the faith of the land which is called the Greater Middle East. The struggle for the rights of the people, while in the Middle East directly opposes the occupation, invasion, war and neo-colonialism policies of US and its colloborationists; in Latin America, Africa and Asia, is an indispendisble part of the anti-imperialist popular labour resistances. The Middle East peoples, like all peoples of the world, will have their independendent right to talk and decide over their own faith, as far as the regional stratagies, occoputations and wars of imperialism can be defeated. The right of the oppressed peoples to determine their own faith in a free and independent manner, free from imperialist impositions, is a basic factor of the socialism of the 21st century. A social order where the labourers produce freely and share the social values equally can only be constructed as a multi-national and egalitarian order, which accepts the cultural and original differences as its own richness and which depends on the sovereignty of the peoples over the land where they are living.

The land of Anatolia has a common heritage that enables the peoples with different national origins which live on it to have a common, peaceful and a brotherly/sisterly life together. Turkish and Kurdish peoples, who had lived together as brothers and sisters for more than thousands years must together struggle against the seeds of hostility which are sown in a political environment determined by nationalism, racism, war and imperialist policies. The bright future of the Turkish and Kurdish peoples depend on the defeat of the neoliberal colonialization programs and fascism, as a result of the common struggle and unity of faith of these two peoples.

The social and political basis and assurances of the rights of the people program are the right to social ownership and the right to a direct people’s democracy. The struggle for the rights of the people defends a world where the labourers have the ultimate right to talk, to decide and to mandate; defends a world which is ruled by the producers and it aims to enhance the practices of direct democracy from today. For the colective rights of the people to produce emancipating results, the right to resist against all kinds of pressures should be guaranteed and the legal existance of private property as a right should be ended. The struggle for the rights of the people is against recognisiton of private property as a right and defends the right to colective property.

We call all participants, constituents of the People’s Rights Forum and all labourers to rise common struggles over these principles.

People’s Rights Forum