Kurdish PKK withdraws its forces from Turkey

Barış Demir & Ulaş Sevinç

The Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) announced Sunday, October 26, that it had decided to take “new practical steps” to remove “all its forces in Turkey” to move to the second stage of negotiations with the government of President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.

The statement said, “the laws necessary for freedom and democratic integration to participate in democratic politics must be enacted without delay.”

Following the statement, Sabri Ok, a member of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council, answered questions from the press and listed their demands as follows: 1) “Special laws specific to the PKK or the process” should be enacted. 2) “Leader Apo [imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan] ... must be granted physical freedom as soon as possible.” 3) “The Parliamentary Commission must go to Leader Apo immediately and listen to him.”

Sabri Ok, a member of the Kurdistan Communities Union (KCK) Executive Council, announced on October 26 the PKK's decision to withdraw its forces from Turkey [Photo: X / @78_KSAM]

Kurdish nationalist Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) co-chairs Tülay Hatimoğulları and Tuncer Bakırhan described the decision as “historic” in a statement, saying: “At this point, the first phase of the process has been completed. With the completion of the withdrawal, a new page has been turned... It is time to move on to the second phase, which is a much more critical and vital phase. That is, it is time to transition to social peace through legal and political steps.”

The DEM Party listed its expectations from the government as the creation of “free working conditions” for Öcalan, a preference for “inclusive journalism instead of divisive journalism” in the media, and the “implementation of transitional and democratic integration laws.”

The DEM Party İmralı Delegation, which last met with Öcalan on October 3, held talks with President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and National Intelligence Organization (MİT) Director İbrahim Kalın on Thursday evening as part of the negotiation process.

A statement released by the DEM Party explained, “During the meeting, we conducted comprehensive assessments on the stage reached in the Peace and Democratic Society Process and what needs to be done going forward. We are pleased to note that we are in mutual understanding and agreement on taking steps to ensure the process progresses more quickly and healthily.”

The negotiations have nothing to do with the pursuit of “peace and democracy.” This is evidenced by Thursday’s statement by Selahattin Demirtaş, the imprisoned former leader of the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), predecessor of the DEM Party.

Demirtaş, who supported the negotiations, expressed his disappointment at the failure of his expectations as follows: “So it wasn’t enough; the operations targeting the opposition, and especially the CHP, have further deepened the division. Political prisoners who have served their 30-year sentences, even sick prisoners, have not been released from prison. Not a single municipality under trustee has been returned to the people. Without strengthening Kurdish-Turkish brotherhood, Turkish-Turkish division has been added on top of it.”

Turkey’s ruling elites have approached the negotiations from the outset as a security issue within the framework of the “terror-free Turkey” discourse. In a speech made one day before the PKK’s statement, Erdoğan said, “Have we saved our country from the scourge of terrorism? Will we continue to work together, hand in hand, to save 86 million people from the swamp of terrorism? At this point, we are patient, sincere, and calmly moving towards our goal... First, we will achieve a terror-free Turkey, and then a terror-free region as our most lasting achievement.”

While Ankara acts in line with US imperialist plans in the Middle East, it is trying to strengthen Turkey’s hand in its growing competition with Israel. Erdoğan sought to cement his “friendship” with US President Donald Trump by giving his full support to Trump’s “deal” on Gaza. At the same time, Ankara is trying to turn the PKK-led Kurdish movement from an enemy into an ally with the critical help of Öcalan.

When negotiations first came up last year, Erdoğan said, “While the maps are being redrawn in blood, while the war that Israel has waged from Gaza to Lebanon is approaching our borders, we are trying to strengthen our internal front. We want 85 million of us to come together under the common denominator of Turkey.”

Referring to the PKK’s disarmament ceremony on July 11, Erdoğan said, “Today, a new page in history has been opened. The doors to a great, strong Turkey have been thrown wide open,” and put forward the perspective of a “Turkish-Kurdish-Arab alliance.”

Co-chair of the KCK Executive Council Cemil Bayık attributes the motive for initiating negotiations to the same geopolitical basis. Speaking to Fırat News Agency on October 28, Bayık stated: “The Abraham Accords between Israel and the Arabs meant a weakening of this fundamental power based on Turkey’s geopolitical position... Add to this the fact that the energy route [India-Middle East-Europe Economic Corridor] determined at the summit in India bypasses Turkey, and a real survival problem has emerged for Turkey.”

Bayık added: “While it [Turkey] had previously turned the crushing of Kurdish Freedom Movement [PKK] into a tool for survival, it now finds itself facing a real survival problem. When Israel neutralized Hamas and Hezbollah and increased its influence in the Middle East, it became fearful that the price of their war against the Kurds would be heavy.”

Under conditions where Israel is increasing its influence in Syria and declaring Syrian Kurds as “natural allies,” Ankara is demanding that the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), the sister organization of the PKK, also lay down their arms and submit to the Al-Qaeda-rooted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) regime in Damascus. Otherwise, Ankara threatens to launch military operations against the SDF. According to press reports, an agreement has been reached between HTS and the SDF on integration. Under this agreement, the SDF will be integrated into the Syrian army, receiving three divisions, three brigades, and a 30 percent share under the general staff command.

The US, which still has armed forces and bases controlled by the SDF in northeastern Syria, supports negotiations between Ankara and the PKK and advocates for the SDF to reach an agreement with Damascus. The policy of Washington, which invaded Iraq in 2003, provoked the regime change war in Syria in 2011, and has been the main force behind the genocide in Gaza since October 2023, is driven by the urge to bring the Middle East under its full imperialist domination. This means uniting its allies in the region against Iran, which is in the crosshairs, and eliminating the influence of Russia and China in the Middle East. The fact that Turkey and Israel, two critical allies of US imperialism in the region, are on a collision course that could lead to war could upsets all of Washington’s plans and interests.

The role played by the growing conflict of interests between Turkey and Israel in the initiation of the Ankara-PKK negotiations is clear. However, just like Israel, the policies of the Turkish and Kurdish elites, who serve US imperialism and pursue their own reactionary interests, have no progressive role. They are inherently incapable of and opposed to realizing the aspirations of the Turkish, Kurdish, and other peoples for peace, democracy, and social equality. Far from consistently opposing imperialism and Zionism, they collaborate with them.

Milei’s mid-term election win in Argentina exposes bankruptcy of Peronism and pseudo-leftist FIT-U

Fátima Ferrante

Argentina's President Javier Milei and US President Donald Trump at February 2025 CPAC conference. [Photo: ar.usembassy.gov]

Argentina’s fascistic President Javier Milei scored a surprise victory in the country’s October 26 mid-term elections, held amid deepening social, economic and political crises at home and escalating US imperialist aggression across Latin America.

Milei’s party, La Libertad Avanza (LLA), gained seats and obtained over 40 percent of the vote nationally across both houses, while the nominal “opposition,” the Peronist coalition Fuerza Patria, and its allies, secured around 30 percent of the vote. LLA won in most provinces, including Buenos Aires Province, which historically has been a Peronist stronghold.

The elections renewed 127 seats in the Chamber of Deputies (about half of the lower house) and 24 in the Senate (a third of the upper house). LLA increased its hold from six to 19 senators and from 37 to 93 deputies, thus securing a one-third blocking minority in the Chamber of Deputies (86 seats needed out of 257). This would allow Milei to sustain his presidential vetoes against opposition legislation, which cannot be overruled without a two-thirds majority in Congress.

The Fuerza Patria coalition saw a slight reduction in its representation in the Chamber of Deputies, reducing its number of seats from 98 to 96 deputies, and a more significant decrease in the Senate, from 30 seats to 22 seats.

While the outcome is being touted in the media as an endorsement of Milei’s economic agenda of harsh austerity—symbolized by his wielding a chainsaw—the mid-terms saw the lowest turnout (67 percent) since the fall of the dictatorship in 1983. In other words, one-third of the electorate did not go to the polls, which is a legal obligation in Argentina. In the contests for the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, approximately 59.3 percent and 57.8 percent of the vote, respectively, went to parties other than the LLA.

Prior polling had indicated a tight race between the LLA and Fuerza Patria. Although Milei had won the presidential election in 2023 with a 56 percent majority, his popularity since then has dropped to an all-time low of around 40 percent. Despite monthly inflation stabilization, in his first year of office, the price of public transportation rose 206 percent, housing and utilities soared 276 percent, healthcare increased 184 percent, and education 180 percent. Unemployment rose to 7.9 percent in the first quarter of this year, the highest level in four years, and after Milei took office, the poverty rate rose to its highest level in two decades.

Moreover, LLA is mired in corruption scandals: from a crypto scam involving Milei himself, to allegations of a pay-to-play regime run by Karina Milei, his sister and Secretary-General of the Presidency, to drug allegations against José Luis Espert, a leading legislative candidate for LLA in Buenos Aires Province, who had to suspend his campaign in the first week of October.

Just days before the mid-term elections, Minister of Foreign Affairs Gerardo Werthein and Minister of Justice Mariano Cúneo Libarona resigned, highlighting internal political instability and disputes.

After LLA suffered a loss of about 13 to 14 percentage points to Fuerza Patria in the provincial elections held on September 7 in Buenos Aires, the most populous province of Argentina, concentrating 40 percent of the national electorate and over 30 percent of the country’s GDP, markets panicked, and the value of the peso plummeted. Argentina’s Central Bank was forced to spend $1.1 billion of its foreign currency reserves in just three days to prop up the peso and prevent a collapse, and the United States intervened with a massive $40 billion financial bailout package that includes a $20 billion currency swap and an additional $20 billion in financing from sovereign wealth funds and private banks.

Less than 48 hours before the legislative elections, Jamie Dimon, the chairman and CEO of JPMorgan Chase and former economic adviser to both Barack Obama and Trump, arrived in Argentina amidst ongoing discussions about the broader financial assistance package meant to back the Milei government. JPMorgan Chase was evaluating participation in this credit line of $20 billion. Aside from Milei, ministers and local businessmen, in attendance at the events hosted by Dimon were also war criminals Tony Blair, current head of JPMorgan’s international council, and Condoleezza Rice, a partner of the financial group.

Significantly, Milei’s minister and vice minister of economy and the president and vice-president of Argentina’s Central Bank all made their fortunes working for JPMorgan in New York in the 1990s and early 2000s, helping wring profits out of the immiseration of the working class in Argentina and across the region.

The US aid package constituted more than election interference; it amounted to blackmail. Only 12 days before the vote, US President Donald Trump shamelessly conditioned the bailout on Milei’s victory. “If he loses, we are not going to be generous with Argentina,” Trump declared, amid predictions of the worst economic crisis since 2001. In reality, the bailout will flow directly into the coffers of the major banks and hedge funds, including some of Trump’s closest supporters, while Argentine workers are forced to pay the price.

The Argentine events must be viewed within the context of the Trump regime’s drive to revive the Monroe Doctrine and reclaim Latin America as the “backyard” of US imperialism. This has been expressed most clearly in the extrajudicial murders off the coasts of Venezuela and Colombia under the false pretext of combating drug trafficking, together with Trump’s authorization of CIA operations in Venezuela to overthrow the Maduro government and the imposition of sanctions against Colombian president Gustavo Petro for criticizing US aggression.

There are also plans to establish an FBI anti-terrorism center on the triple frontier between Paraguay, Argentina and Brazil, based on an agreement signed between the US and Paraguay. Blackwater founder Erik Prince’s recent visits to Ecuador and Peru to pitch the deployment of US mercenaries to train local police and military forces are also cause for concern.

On September 29, some days after it became known that Trump would provide a financial lifeline to Milei, bypassing congressional authorization, Milei signed a Decree of Necessity and Urgency (DNU) authorizing the entry of US military personnel (including Navy Seals) for unprecedented joint exercises at strategic naval bases in the South Atlantic (Mar del Plata, Puerto Belgrano and Ushuaia), called “Operación Tridente,” between October 20 and November 15, overlapping with the elections.

In what has become customary in Latin American countries where fascist forces are on the rise, the nominal “opposition” has focused on making nationalist appeals. The Peronist Mayor of Ushuaia, Walter Vuoto, denounced the military exercises as sacrificing Argentine sovereignty, noting that Ushuaia is strategically important as the “doorway” to Antarctica and for protecting Argentine claims over the Malvinas.

Far from representing a genuine opposition, the Peronists enabled Milei’s rise to come to power and facilitated his agenda. The low voter turnout is an indication of the Argentine working class’s deep disillusionment with the Peronists as they negotiate some of Milei’s most brutal attacks on social institutions and democratic rights and as the Peronist-led union bureaucracies, like the General Labor Federation (CGT), block demands for general strike action.

The lack of an alternative to both Peronism and Milei is mainly the responsibility of the so-called Left and Workers’ Front (FIT-U) coalition. Employing pseudo-leftist and anti-imperialist rhetoric, the FIT-U closed its legislative campaign by holding a rally in front of the US Embassy in Buenos Aires on October 22 to denounce the “colonial pact” between Milei and Trump. Nicolás del Caño of the Morenoite Socialist Workers Party (PTS), a FIT-U deputy for Buenos Aires Province, declared, “We are the only force that will fight not to be just another star on the Yankee flag.”

Prior to the election, the FIT-U held five seats in the Chamber of Deputies, with four of them up for renewal. They were able to retain only three seats in both the City and Province of Buenos Aires, where the FIT-U came in third. The coalition received 851,000 votes, an increase from the last elections, but still far below the 1.3 million it received in the 2021 mid-terms.

The FIT-U ran on a program of reformist policies articulated around making “big business, banks, and landowners pay for the crisis they created” and the need to “invert priorities” and “reorient the economy to the most urgent needs of workers, women, youth, and retirees.”

This nationalist program has nothing to do with mobilizing workers across borders to overthrow the capitalist system—the root cause of exploitation and social inequality—and build a society based on international socialist principles.

The FIT-U’s reformist policies do not meet the urgency of the revolutionary tasks facing the international working class, which confronts the threat of world war and fascist dictatorship, along with relentless attacks on basic democratic and social rights in every country. Their politics are based on promoting illusions in the ability to pressure the Peronist parties and union bureaucracies into fighting Milei and winning concessions for the working class.

The FIT-U does not even label Milei as “fascist” or recognize that fascism is on the rise, limiting themselves to more generic descriptors like “authoritarian” and “ultra-right.” This question is addressed in an opinion piece published in the PTS’s La Izquierda Diario on February 18:

The term “fascism” has gone from being a well-defined political concept to a label that is used for everything, and its use has increased especially since Elon Musk gave a Nazi salute. In this context, figures such as Donald Trump, Elon Musk, Giorgia Meloni, Nayib Bukele, and Javier Milei have been labeled as fascists. But do these figures really represent fascism? Can we say with certainty that they embody this historical phenomenon? The answer is no.

That this position has not been revised since February—after all that has happened since—is unbelievable! For one, Giorgia Meloni is the leader of the Brothers of Italy (FdI) party, the political successor of Mussolini’s Fascist Party, not to mention Milei’s embrace of the legacy of the fascist-military dictatorship of General Jorge Videla or his ties to Benjamin Netanyahu, Trump, Musk, Bolsonaro and a wide network of fascist figures.

According to the same piece, fascism is an inaccurate label because people can still protest on the streets and anti-fascists can fight with neo-fascists online without restriction. In other words, fascism is only fascism when it’s too late to fight against it.

German government prepares assault on social spending, scapegoating immigrants

Peter Schwarz

On October 14, Chancellor Friedrich Merz denounced immigrants as a “problem in the urban environment” that had to be solved through more deportations. Since then, debate over his statement has not subsided and it is becoming ever clearer what the chancellor aimed to achieve with his racist tirade.

Friedrich Merz [AP Photo/Ebrahim Noroozi]

Merz and his government, a coalition of the Christian Democrats (CDU/CSU) and Social Democrats (SPD), are preparing for ferocious conflicts with the working class. They are planning a frontal assault on social benefits on which millions depend for their existence. Such an offensive cannot be carried out by democratic means. They are therefore making migrants the scapegoat for the consequences of their own policies and drawing deeply from the propaganda arsenal of the far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD). In doing so, they are deliberately strengthening the far right, because they need it to divide and suppress the working class.

Financial crisis of the municipalities

Merz’s reference to the “urban environment” was not accidental. The devastating consequences of the federal government’s austerity policy are most evident in the municipalities. With annual spending of €363 billion (as of 2024), the municipalities spend only €100 billion less than the federal states and €200 billion less than the federal government. However, they can finance only a small part of these expenditures from their own revenues and are dependent on substantial transfers from the federal and state governments.

Years of austerity and the impact of the debt brake have reduced these transfers, while new tasks are constantly being transferred to the municipalities. As a result, social spending—mandated by federal laws—has more than doubled since 2009. It now accounts for over 40 percent, and in some regions up to 65 percent, of municipal budgets.

As a consequence, hardly any municipality is still able to make the necessary investments in dilapidated schools, crumbling roads, libraries, leisure centres, nurseries, social services and other socially essential facilities. The situation has deteriorated dramatically over the past two years. The combined deficit of all German municipalities reached €25 billion in 2024—a fourfold increase in just twelve months! For this year, a shortfall of €35 billion is expected.

“Deficits of unprecedented magnitude are piling up, rising cash credits are triggering a debt–interest spiral, and investment is collapsing,” warn the municipal umbrella associations. “The federal financial architecture is completely out of balance.”

In a letter to Chancellor Merz (CDU) and Finance Minister Klingbeil (SPD), the German County Association wrote: “Cities, districts and municipalities have never been in such dire straits.” Investments, it said, were plunging despite additional federal funds.

Under the headline “A storm is brewing over the municipalities” the Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung reported: “‘Genuinely’ balanced municipal budgets (that is, without drawing on reserves) have become an absolute exception across the country. In a survey conducted at the start of the year among member municipalities of the German Association of Cities and Towns, only 6 percent said they had managed this. In 2024, the figure had still been 21 percent.”

Merz and Klingbeil have no intention of helping the municipalities. The stranglehold with which they are choking off municipal finances serves to shift the enormous costs of rearmament, war and the enrichment of the wealthy onto the working population.

Hundreds of billions for rearmament

Klingbeil’s medium-term financial plan envisages taking on new debt of €850 billion by 2029—a record amount. This massive mountain of debt is intended to prepare the Bundeswehr (Armed Forces) for war against Russia and make Germany’s infrastructure “fit for war.” The budget therefore contains a gap of more than €170 billion, which Klingbeil plans to close through cuts at the expense of the working class.

In the municipalities, he can rely on an all-party coalition of all the establishment parties—including the Left Party and the AfD. Whatever their public posture towards the federal government, in municipal councils they all implement its austerity diktats. Even if they occasionally complain, not one of them is willing to mobilise any opposition.

The main beneficiary of this all-party coalition of social cutbacks is the AfD. The far-right party now has several thousand representatives at municipal level and is the strongest party in some eastern states.

Just a few days ago, a conference of 500 AfD municipal politicians took place in Berlin, at which MP Stephan Brandner ranted against “migration madness” and “climate nonsense.” Rhineland-Palatinate state parliament member Joachim Paul boasted that at the municipal level, one no longer needed to break down firewalls: “It’s enough just to blow them over.” AfD MP and former mayor of Jüterbog Arne Raue praised: “No one helps us grow more than the establishment parties.”

The state governments, regardless of their political composition, are likewise implementing the federal government’s radical austerity course. Although the debt brake has prohibited them from taking on new loans for five years, the states are still carrying €610 billion in debt—almost a quarter of total public debt, which stands at €2.5 trillion.

They are now drastically cutting education, culture and social budgets. Berlin’s universities alone must save €145 million this year. Ten percent of study places—around 25,000 in total—are to be cut, and staff budgets sharply reduced. The situation is similar in other federal states.

The cuts at municipal and state level are only the tip of the iceberg. The most sweeping attack on the welfare state is being prepared at the federal level.

Business associations and the media are pushing for massive cuts to pensions and health spending. “Even stabilising social expenditure will be difficult enough without benefit cuts; anyone wishing to reduce it must proceed drastically,” writes finance weekly Wirtschaftswoche, calling for the abolition of the mothers’ pension and early retirement without deductions, and for a reduction in the benefit level. “The same applies to health and care; costs are rising almost unchecked.” There are dozens of similar articles and studies.

Merz: “We can no longer afford the welfare state”

In August, Chancellor Merz declared: “We can no longer afford the welfare state.” The government, however, is proceeding step by step so as to dampen the expected resistance. It has outsourced the dismantling of pensions and healthcare contributions to commissions that are to draw up proposals, and as a first measure, decided to abolish Bürgergeld (welfare support) and replace it with a basic allowance.

The purpose of this measure—which will save at most €5 billion—is to pressure the unemployed into accepting virtually any job, no matter how poorly paid. Otherwise, they face cuts or the complete withdrawal of benefits. The same method was used by the “Hartz” laws twenty years ago, which laid the foundations for a massive low-wage sector.

The government’s concern is not only the three million already unemployed, but also the tens of thousands losing their jobs each month. They are to be forced into taking low-paid work immediately. Labour Minister Bärbel Bas publicly calculated that the state saves €850 million per year if 100,000 fewer people claim basic support.

According to Enzo Weber of the Institute for Employment Research (IAB), “For over two years, more than 10,000 industrial jobs have been lost every month.” The auto industry is particularly affected. These are typically skilled, relatively well-paid jobs on which many other jobs depend.

This jobs massacre is being intensified by the trade war with the US and China. Traditional manufacturers such as Ford and Opel (Stellantis) are now threatening to close their German plants entirely. VW, Porsche, Mercedes and other carmakers are also deep in crisis. Hardly a day passes without a small or medium supplier declaring bankruptcy or halting production. Added to this is the introduction of artificial intelligence, which is destroying countless jobs in administration and services.

Stock markets explode

So far, the government relies primarily on the trade unions to suppress resistance to the job destruction and social cuts. Their well-paid officials and full-time works council representatives draw up redundancy plans and suffocate every opposition to them. They present job and wage cuts as being necessary to keep German companies “competitive” in the global market.

But their lie that workers and bosses are “in the same boat” becomes more transparent by the day. While workers’ living standards have stagnated or fallen for years, stock prices, great fortunes and executive pay have exploded.

Despite a stagnating economy and numerous bankruptcies, Germany’s DAX index has hovered around a record 24,000 points since June—more than double its level in 2020 at the height of the pandemic. The total market value of the 40 companies listed in the DAX is nearly €2 trillion.

Stock prices remain high despite the economic crisis because speculators trust that the state will “bail them out” in any future financial crash, just as in 2007. Since then, virtually all wealth gains in Germany have gone to the richest layers. The number of billionaires has quadrupled from 42 to 171. Ten percent of households now own 56 percent of total wealth.

At the same time, poverty is rising. In 2024, 15.5 percent of the population—or around 13 million people—were poor. Among young people aged 18 to 24, the rate was 25 percent.

It is only a matter of time before these social contradictions explode. This is the real reason for Merz’s turn toward the AfD. Around the world, the representatives of capital are turning to authoritarian and fascistic forms of rule as social tensions intensify. The same applies to Italy and France, and is seen most starkly in the United States, where Trump is establishing a presidential dictatorship based on fascist forces. The Democrats offer no resistance because they represent the same capitalist interests.

Germany’s ruling elite regards the US with a mix of fear and admiration—fear of Trump’s trade war measures, admiration for his iron hand against workers, migrants and the left. This holds true not only for Merz and the CDU, but also for Klingbeil and the SPD.