The latest information, regarding the developments in Turkey and the coup attempt, refer to a sharpening of the internal, intra-bourgeois contradictions, of the differences between the various centers of power in the country, which are interconnected with the more general international antagonisms in the wider region of Syria, of Middle East and Eastern Mediterranean, through the direct intervention of and confrontation between powerful capitalist states.

 Turkey has participated- and participates- In these antagonisms, with the aim of protecting the interests of the Turkish bourgeois class and strengthening itself as a regional power. The active involvement of Turkey in the Syrian developments, the military operations it conducted in its northern part of it which is inhabited by populations of Kurdish origin and its relations with the Islamic State brought it into a confrontation with its traditional allies, e.g. USA, NATO and others.

Further investigation of the incidents and elements which led to the coup attempt and the final predominance of Erdogan is certainly needed. What must mainly be examined is which forces supported the coup, domestic and foreign , what were their aims, the role of the so-called Kemalists and secular forces or the forces of imam Gülen, which the Erdogan regime “points” to as being the culprits, “expelling” thousands from the state mechanism; the role of the USA and NATO, the real situation in the Turkish army and sections of it, possible compromises and trade-offs that took place and impacted the outcome of the attempted coup .

A further investigation is needed on the stance of the US and other NATO forces, which at the beginning of the coup attempt talked about the “need for a continuation in the state” and then later, when the balance of forces had tilted in favor of Erdogan's forces, supported the “democratically elected government of Turkey”.  Moreover, the recent moves of the Turkish government towards the normalization of relations with Russia and Israel must be taken into account.

The organised action of significant sections of the army, the assassination attempt against Erdogan, the number of deaths, injured and arrested people, among them numerous army generals, the protracted bombardments in Ankara, the street fights in other cities do not justify the position that says it was a “staged” coup or a coup "operetta". Time will clarify many of these, such as who finally benefits or will benefit from this situation.

In any case, the intra-bourgeois and the inter-imperialist contradictions and antagonisms do not, by definition, foretell anything good for the people of the region and especially for the Turkish people who during all the previous period faced the continuous anti-people policies of the AKP governments, of Erdogan's party. The Turkish economy's high rates of growth in the previous years and the improvement of the situation of some intermediate strata did not, in any case, eliminate poverty, unemployment, repression, the savage exploitation of the working class and the popular strata in Turkey.

This political line does not cease to remain in force due to the fact that Erdogan finally managed to control the situation. Neither, of course, can the answer to the anti-people policy  be the coups which express different sections of the bourgeois-class, or to justify the  arguments about “democracy's restoration” in Turkey or the illusions- cultivated by some people- that the Erdogan regime may “understand the message” that more social rights and political liberties are needed. Such expectations are already being demolished by what has been happening in the first days after the coup attempt, which demonstrates that the attack will not be restricted to the “instigators” of the coup and their footholds in the state sector, but will escalate against the people, against their civil rights but even more so against their labour, popular and trade union freedoms. At the same time, the aggressive positions of Turkey's bourgeoisie and the Turkish state are known and clearly expressed concerning the Aegean, the disputing of Greece's sovereign rights as well as concerning the Cyprus Issue which remains an open affair.

The events in Turkey showed once again that the situation in the region “smells of gunpowder” and is marked by the sharp contradictions and antagonisms between powerful imperialist centers with unpredictable consequences. The SYRIZA-ANEL government bears huge responsibilities, because it actively participates in the imperialist plans on behalf of Greek capital; it supported the recent dangerous decisions of the NATO Summit which mark an escalation in the antagonisms, especially between NATO and Russia, while it cultivates false hopes that Greece can be an “islet” of stability in a turbulent region.

Today, more than ever, the peoples' militant readiness is needed against the imperialist war and interventions, against the participation of our country in such wars and interventions. What is also required is that each people must not be entrapped in the one or the other hostile- for their interests- scenario, in the intra-bourgeois contradictions. On the contrary, they have every interest in developing their own independent, mass action, to prepare and struggle at every point and moment for their solution, having as a criterion their own needs and having as their aim the overthrow of the capital's power, the disengagement from the various imperialist alliances.

The KKE expresses its solidarity with the working class and the people of Turkey, with the fraternal Communist Party in Turkey which in the circumstances of an extremely negative correlation of forces conducts this difficult but uniquely hopeful struggle.

ATHENS 19/7/2016, PRESS OFFICE OF THE CC OF THE KKE