On Friday 23 October Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the Central Committee of the KKE, visited the islands of Kastellorizo and Rhodes.
In Kastellorizo, he visited the Island Defense Command of Megisti, where he met with the officers and staff. He also visited the island’s primary school and medical centre, and met with the mayor.
In the afternoon, speaking at a KKE rally in Rhodes, he highlighted the dangerous developments in Greek-Turkish relations and the rivalries among the bourgeois classes and imperialist powers in the Eastern Mediterranean. He stated that the KKE opposes “the policy that transforms Greece into an energy and transportation hub and serves the interests of large monopolistic business groups, a policy that has nothing to do with the interests of the Greek people.”
He reiterated the KKE’s position on defending the country’s borders and sovereign rights, opposing any change to the borders and the treaties that define them, while also emphasizing the need to foster friendship and solidarity between the peoples of Greece and Turkey.
More specifically, he noted the following:
“Our Party defends the country’s borders, territorial integrity, and sovereign rights from the standpoint of the working class and the popular strata, as an important element related to the struggle to overthrow the power of capital. Under current conditions, these cannot be guaranteed by bourgeois governments and imperialist alliances, nor by their institutions.
It is from this perspective that we approach the debate and developments concerning maritime zones. We are aware that only through workers’ and people’s power, through the socialization of the means of production and central planning, can maritime wealth—in all its forms—be utilized for the benefit of the people and not for the profit of those who exploit them. For this reason, the KKE rejects agreements that grant rights to exploit the sea, the seabed, its subsoil, and the airspace above it for the purpose of enriching various capitalists plunderers.
Similarly, we consider Turkey’s threat of war in response to Greece extending its territorial waters beyond 6 nautical miles to be unacceptable. Every country has the right to extend its territorial waters to 12 miles, including Greece, and the KKE is fighting to ensure that these maritime zones and marine resources serve the interests of the people. However, we firmly believe that exercising this right, as well as safeguarding sovereign rights in general, cannot be achieved in the interests of working people while the country remains trapped in the “clutches” of NATO and the EU and is “plunged” into dangerous imperialist rivalries and wars for the benefit of monopolies.
We make it clear that preserving and defending territorial integrity and the rights that stem from it is the responsibility of the working class and the popular strata. This is dictated by their own interests and the perspective of their struggle to become the true masters of their own land. The popular forces cannot and must not cede their own rights to the bourgeoisie and its political representatives.
Just as in recent history of our country, the communists will be at the forefront of the struggle to defend the interests of the working class and the Greek people in the face of potential war plans and actions that threaten the country’s borders and sovereign rights.
However, we will not place any trust in the bourgeois government, the bourgeois institutions, and the parties that manage the power of capital and support NATO and the EU. We offer no support for the government’s war policy by voting against all war-mongering and reactionary laws. Resistance and disobedience against repressive measures, including any potential state of emergency, are needed.
War is the continuation of the policies that have led the people to ruin and trampled on workers’ and people’s rights. That is why there can be no labor peace with capital and the employers. Defending the people, their homes and their sovereign rights is incompatible with defending those who have crushed their rights and their very lives in the past.
The KKE is steadfastly committed to fostering friendship and internationalist solidarity among the working classes and peoples of Greece and Turkey, and it has built close ties with the Communist Party of Turkey. The goal is to strengthen the anti-imperialist struggle of the workers’ and people’s movements in both countries, against the bourgeoisie and the participation - involvement of Greece and Turkey in imperialist plans, for the inviolability of borders, and for their disengagement from imperialist organizations and alliances, such as NATO and the EU, which are a constant source of painful consequences for the peoples.
Of great significance is the position defended by the KKE and the Communist Party of Turkey—which they reaffirmed once again in a joint statement last month—calling for “not changing the borders or the treaties that define them.” This joint position of the communists of both countries serves as a sharp response to the nationalist forces on both sides, who stir up hatred between the two peoples while being at the beck and call of the major interests for which these rivalries are being provoked, and while remaining silent about NATO and the “powerful allies” who are “pushing” them toward painful compromises.
Τhis position forms part of the joint struggle against the bourgeoisie of both states, bourgeois parties and imperialist alliances, by concentrating forces for the final overthrow of dangerous and rotten capitalism and the construction of a new society—socialism. We firmly believe that only on this basis will it be possible for maritime zones to cease being a source of enrichment of monopolies, a source of controversies, crises, and armed conflicts, and instead become a source of satisfaction for people’s needs and the prosperity of neighboring peoples. This is the qualitative difference. The communists are fully aware of this great responsibility as they intensify their struggle.”
He also emphasized, among other things, that “The way out for the Greek and all other peoples lies in overthrowing this rotten system, which has now once again entered a phase of war and which buries in its mire young people’s desire to live a life with modern rights, creativity, values, and ideals.”
