Erdoğan to meet with Trump, Turkey and Egypt’s tensions with Israel intensify

Barış Demir & Ulaş Ateşçi

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan will be hosted by US President Donald Trump at the White House on Thursday, during his visit to the United States to attend the 80th session of the United Nations General Assembly.

In a statement, Erdoğan said, “Our meeting with Trump concerns the region; every step taken in the Middle East is of vital importance to us.” Trump stated on the Truth Social platform, “We are working on many Trade and Military Deals with the President, including the large-scale purchase of Boeing aircraft, a major F-16 Deal, and a continuation of the F-35 talks, which we expect to conclude positively. President Erdoğan and I have always had a very good relationship. I look forward to seeing him on the 25th!”

President Donald J. Trump and President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan of Turkey at the United Nations General Assembly

Under intense government pressure through the judiciary, Republican People’s Party (CHP) leader Özgür Özel claimed a few days ago that Erdoğan had held a secret meeting with Trump’s son at his office in Istanbul, that a promise to order Boeing aircraft had been made so that Erdoğan could meet with Trump, and that Palestinians in Gaza had been abandoned to their fate in order to get along with the US President. The meeting was later confirmed.

On Monday, Özel made the following appeal to Erdoğan: “If he [Erdoğan] is going to [the US] in order to stop the bloodshed in Gaza, I would see him off. He is feeding off Trump to gain support for the anti-democratic process in Turkey and remaining silent about the persecution. He shouldn’t place a Boeing order live on air; he should say this to Trump: ‘How can you call Netanyahu a hero? He’s genocidal.’ Then when he comes to Ankara, I’ll welcome him! Let’s see if he dares to challenge Trump. Özgür Özel will welcome Erdoğan at Esenboğa Airport and shake his hand. Come on, bring it on!”

Erdoğan government has been complicit in the Zionist regime’s genocide against Palestinians by continuing trade with Israel “through Palestine,” mediating for oil flows from Azerbaijan to Israel, permitting the use of US bases in Turkey for Israel’s benefit, and through other means. However, the struggle against this cannot be led by the CHP. Despite rhetorical criticisms, the CHP, in line with the reactionary interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie, supports the military-strategic alliance with US and NATO imperialism—the forces behind the genocide.

The Erdoğan-Trump meeting coincides with a period of escalating rivalry and dispute between Ankara and Tel Aviv. Tensions between Turkey and Israel increased after Israel’s attack on Hamas negotiators in the Qatari capital of Doha. This illegal attack by Israel fueled speculation that Hamas officials in Turkey, which does not view Hamas as a terrorist organization, could also be targeted.

The dispute and rivalry between these two allies of US imperialism in the region primarily concerns their shares in the carve up of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Middle East. Ankara, like Tel Aviv, supports Washington’s drive for complete dominance in the Middle East, but it is concerned that Israel’s growing influence in the region, including in Cyprus and Syria, and the outbreak of a large-scale war with Iran, would harm the interests of the Turkish bourgeoisie.

Speaking to Egypt’s MBC Masr channel, Turkish Foreign Minister Hakan Fidan said, “Israel has calculated all risks and turned regional expansion into a policy that goes beyond the Palestinian issue... Adopting such an expansionist policy as a strategy in the name of security is dangerous for everyone.”

Fidan responded by saying that Turkey should cooperate with countries such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt on “military defence,” meaning developing their war capabilities. In this context, it was announced that, in a significant development, the Turkish and Egyptian navies would conduct their first joint military exercise in the Eastern Mediterranean in 13 years, from September 22 to 26.

Tensions are rising between Egypt’s military dictator Abdel Fattah el-Sisi regime and the Netanyahu regime, in whose crimes it is complicit. Egypt’s ruling elite are sounding the alarm bells over the possibility of Israel driving Palestinians from Gaza into Egypt. According to an article in The National News, al-Sisi described Israel as an “enemy” in his speech at the Arab-Islamic summit in Qatar and warned that “the 1979 peace treaty between them would be annulled if the current situation continued.”

According to the article, sources consider the possibility of war between Israel and Egypt to be low. However, the Sinai Peninsula, where Egypt has been building up its military presence, including China’s latest HQ-9B air defence system, was the scene of four wars with Israel between 1948 and 1973.

This escalation in the Eastern Mediterranean, which has large energy reserves, has also affected Cyprus. According to Anadolu Agency, sources from the Turkish Ministry of National Defense announced that the Ministry is monitoring the “ongoing armament efforts” of the European Union member the Cyprus Republic and reports it has “procured an Air Defense System from Israel.”

The northern part of the island, which was effectively divided in two by the 1974 military coup and Turkey’s military operation, is home to the Turkish Republic of Northern Cyprus (TRNC), which is only recognized by Ankara.

The struggle for influence in Syria continues to be the most significant flashpoint between Turkey and Israel. Last December, the rise to power of the US and Turkey-backed and Al-Qaeda-rooted Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) further heightened tensions between Ankara and Tel Aviv, which occupy northern and southern Syria, respectively.

Ankara has declared that the emergence of a US-Israel-backed Kurdish state on its southern border is a red line, while Tel Aviv is seeking to increase its influence by promoting the autonomy of minorities such as the Druze and Kurds in Syria’s new regime.

Ankara is attempting to use its influence over the HTS regime and is proposing the establishment of a “Turkish-Kurdish-Arab” alliance through an agreement with Abdullah Öcalan, the imprisoned leader of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK). This is not cast as an initiative against US plans but put forward as an alternative that is compatible with them.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu recently emphasized that he has no intention of withdrawing from the Golan Heights, stating, “We are discussing with Syria a security arrangement in which they demilitarize southwestern Syria.” HTS leader Abu Muhammad al-Colani (Ahmed al-Shara), who travelled to Washington for the UN meeting, is expected to discuss this security agreement with Trump.

As the “integration agreement” between HTS and the PKK’s Kurdish allies (Syrian Democratic Forces, SDF) in March reached an impasse, recent reports indicate that HTS and SDF forces have again come face to face. Ankara has threatened military intervention if the SDF, which it has called on not to be “Israel’s tool in Syria,” does not end its autonomous political and military structure and join the new Damascus regime.

Amid the Syrian regime-change war, launched in 2011 and supported by Ankara, the SDG became the US’s primary proxy force, one of a series of growing tensions between Ankara and Washington.

Tensions peaked with the failed NATO-backed coup attempt to overthrow Erdoğan on July 15, 2016. At that time, Erdoğan first made agreements with China, and then, after the coup attempt, with Russia to purchase air defence systems. Although the agreement with China was cancelled before the coup, S-400 air defence systems were purchased from Russia and brought to Turkey. This led to Washington imposing a series of sanctions, including Turkey’s removal from the F-35 program.

Devlet Bahçeli, leader of the fascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), which formed a close alliance with Erdoğan after the 2016 coup attempt, made an unprecedented statement last Thursday: “The most appropriate option for the world, in the face of the US-Israel evil coalition that challenges the world, is to build and revive the ‘TRC’ alliance, which is in line with reason, diplomacy, the spirit of politics, geographical conditions, and the strategic environment of the new century. It is our desire and recommendation that the TRC alliance be composed of Turkey, Russia, and China.”

In the US, when asked about Bahçeli’s statement, Erdoğan dismissed the issue by saying, “To be honest, I didn’t quite follow it.”

Both the statement by Bahçeli, leader of the MHP, which has strong historical ties to the US and NATO, and Özel’s accusations against Erdoğan indicate that the imperialist war in the Middle East has deepened the political crisis within Turkey’s government and establishment parties. However, these right-wing bourgeois parties are inherently incapable of providing a progressive response to this crisis.

Treason trial of South Sudan’s Vice President threatens to reignite civil war

Kipchumba Ochieng

On Monday, the treason trial of First Vice President Riek Machar opened. It followed a bloody weekend in which at least 48 people were killed and more than 150 wounded in clashes between government forces and opposition fighters of Machar in the northeastern border town of Burebiey.

According to state officials, Machar’s forces from the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement-in-Opposition (SPLM-IO) attacked a government base but were repelled by the South Sudan People’s Defense Forces.

South Sudan's Vice-President Riek Machar seated in his office, June 30, 2012 [Photo: Hannah McNeish - VOA]

The SPLM-IO, formed after the December 2013 massacres of Nuer civilians in Juba, is the armed and political movement representing Machar’s core power base. Though formally folded into the 2018 “unity government,” the SPLM-IO continues to operate as a parallel military-political force.

Last week its leadership issued a statement calling for “regime change,” accusing President Salva Kiir of turning South Sudan into a dictatorship after Machar was dismissed and charged with treason over an alleged assault in Nasir in March that killed more than 250 soldiers. Soon after, Machar was suspended as vice president and placed under house arrest in Juba. The SPLM/IO denounced the charges as “fabricated.”

Nasir, on the Ethiopian border, is a strategic stronghold for Machar’s Nuer supporters. The Nuer, the second-largest ethnic group after the Dinka, form a significant portion of the population in Upper Nile and Jonglei. Traditionally pastoralist cattle herders, the Nuer have clashed with neighbours, particularly the Dinka, over grazing lands, conflicts deepened by colonial divide-and-rule and post-independence elites.

In 1991, Machar broke with John Garang’s Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) in Nasir, forming his own faction and plunging the movement into internecine warfare that left thousands dead, including the Bor massacre of some 2,000 Dinkas.

President Salva Kiir has relied heavily on fighters from his Dinka base, the country’s largest ethnic group. These forces formed the backbone of the Sudan People’s Liberation Army (SPLA) and, after independence, the national army. Kiir has consistently leaned on Dinka militias and commanders to secure his rule, reinforcing ethnic divisions.

Machar’s trial has shattered the fragile 2018 peace agreement that ended five years of civil war in which 400,000 people were killed, rape was wielded as a weapon of war, famine deliberately inflicted, and more than four million displaced. It recalls the eruption of conflict in December 2013, when President Kiir dismissed Machar as vice president and sacked his entire cabinet, consolidating near-dictatorial powers under the presidency. By purging Machar and other Nuer representatives from government, Kiir transformed a political power struggle into an ethnic confrontation, unleashing massacres in Juba and driving the country into a full-scale civil war.

South Sudan emerged from the 2005 Comprehensive Peace Agreement between the Sudanese government of Omar al-Bashir and the SPLM. Under US pressure, Khartoum conceded to a referendum on independence in 2011, in which 99 percent of Southerners voted to secede. Western media hailed the “birth of freedom,” with US President Obama declaring “an inspiring step forward in Africa’s long journey toward democracy and justice.”

U.S. Senior Representative on Sudan Charles R. Snyder briefs foreign press on the Comprehensive Peace Agreement in Washington, D.C., January 12, 2005 [Photo: United States Department of State]

France’s Pabloite New Anti-Capitalist Party (NPA) joined in. Its Africa writer Paul Martial wrote that “the new state is likely to be quickly confronted with terrible difficulties… but the newfound freedom and the dynamics of revolution in the Arab countries can change many things.”

The referendum was the product of decades of intrigue in which Washington and its allies nurtured the SPLM as a proxy force against Khartoum. As the WSWS warned in 2011, “the referendum has nothing to do with self-determination, peace or democracy. It is dictated by the efforts of the United States to gain strategic advantage in relation to China, which dominates the Sudanese oil industry.” Its aim was “the creation of a puppet state… the separation of the south will only perpetuate religious and ethnic conflict, with the most likely outcome being a resumption of warfare.”

Two years later, as the SPLM fractured and the country descended into war, the WSWS concluded, “partition has produced yet another unviable state, ruled over by warring factions beholden to one or other major power, bringing nothing but hardship to all but a tiny layer in Juba.”

Since independence, South Sudan’s elite has plundered billions. A UN investigation, Plundering a Nation, exposed how oil revenues—$25.2 billion since 2011, including $8 billion since 2018—were siphoned into patronage networks tied to Kiir and Machar. Health spending in 2024 was just $7.9 million for 12 million people, less than was allocated to the men’s national basketball team, while the Presidential Medical Unit, serving only Kiir and his circle, received more than the entire national health system. GDP has collapsed to a quarter of pre-independence levels.

The consequences have been catastrophic. South Sudan ranks second-to-last in global health coverage. One in ten children dies before the age of five, three-quarters from preventable illnesses. Maternal mortality is the world’s highest. Life expectancy has stagnated at 55 years. Two-thirds of the population face acute food insecurity, including 2.3 million acutely malnourished children and 1.2 million women. Entire regions teeter on famine.

This looting is intrinsic to the state created by imperialist partition. A rentier economy based on oil and foreign aid sustains a parasitic elite whose survival depends on plunder and armed factions.

South Sudan’s descent into civil war is part of a wider regional breakdown. To the north, Sudan’s civil war, raging for two years, has killed tens of thousands, displaced 12 million internally, and driven 4 million abroad.

In Ethiopia, the two-year war with the Tigray People’s Liberation Front ended in 2022 after hundreds of thousands of deaths and mass displacement. Armed clashes persist in Oromia and Amhara, while Egypt is whipping up tensions against Ethiopia over its Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam.

Grand Ethiopian Renaissance Dam [Photo: Prime Minister Office Ethiopia]

In Somalia, Al Shabab continues its insurgency, while Somaliland negotiates with Ethiopia for sea access and with Washington to host Palestinians expelled from Gaza in exchange for state recognition.

To the south, Kenya has been convulsed by protests against austerity and collapsing living standards, met with murderous repression.

The catastrophe in South Sudan is the culmination of over a century of imperialist depredation, and the betrayals carried out by every faction of the national bourgeoisie. Colonial rule concentrated resources in the north around Khartoum while leaving the south in backwardness. This laid the groundwork for resentment and two ruinous civil wars.

The Khartoum elite oscillated between alliances with Washington, Moscow and Beijing, but the state remained a bulwark of capitalist rule. US military aid poured into Sudan in the 1970s to counter Soviet influence in neighbouring Ethiopia and Libya, before relations collapsed in the 1980s. When President Nimeiry imposed Islamic law in 1983, sparking the Second Civil War, Washington shifted its support to the Sudan People’s Liberation Movement (SPLM) and its military wing, the SPLA.

Despite employing socialist rhetoric, the SPLM was a nationalist movement led by US-trained John Garang, whose programme was limited to securing a share of Sudan’s oil wealth for a southern elite. Backed by Washington, Tel Aviv and Kampala, the SPLM was armed and financed as a proxy to weaken Khartoum and undermine Chinese influence. Israel saw the SPLM as part of its regional strategy to undermine hostile Arab states and secure access to the Red Sea.

As Beijing emerged as Sudan’s main economic partner in the 1990s and 2000s, controlling 75 percent of oil production, Washington accelerated its drive to split the country. Secession in 2011 stripped Khartoum of three-quarters of its oil reserves, leaving the new state dependent and unviable.

Stalinism facilitated these betrayals. The Sudanese Communist Party, once one of the strongest in Africa, subordinated workers and peasants to alliances with bourgeois nationalists, joining Nimeiry’s regime in 1969 only to be destroyed the following year. Across Africa, Stalinist and Maoist-backed parties tied themselves to the manoeuvres of the Soviet bureaucracy and Beijing, blocking socialist revolution in the name of a “national democratic revolution” and clearing the path for imperialist domination through corrupt local elites.

Mass protests in Brazil against amnesty for Bolsonaro’s fascist coup attempt

Guilherme Ferreira

Mass protest in Sao Paulo against amnesty legislation [Photo: Paulo Pinto/Agência Brasil]

Brazil witnessed massive nationwide demonstrations on Sunday, September 21, opposing the efforts of the political establishment to politically rehabilitate and overturn the conviction of former President Jair Bolsonaro and his military and civilian co-conspirators in the January 8, 2023 fascist coup attempt.

The protests were prompted by last week’s approval of two measures in the Brazilian House of Representatives demanded by the fascist political opposition associated with Bolsonaro as part of what they call a “National Pacification Package.”

On Wednesday, by a vote of 311 to 163, the House approved the expedited voting procedure for a bill to amnesty those who are convicted and who are under investigation for the January 8 coup attempt. On the same day, it approved a constitutional amendment bill dubbed the “PEC da Blindagem” (“Shielding Amendment”), which prohibits the criminal prosecution of members of parliament and party presidents without congressional authorization.

Mass opposition is being driven by the perception among broad sections of the Brazilian population that the corrupt bourgeois political system is striking a criminal compromise behind their backs to preserve the power of the forces exposed for conspiring to overthrow democracy and reimpose a military dictatorship. These sentiments were widely displayed in Sunday’s protests.

In the demonstrations, which took place in virtually every major city in the country, demonstrators held signs calling the president of the House of Representatives, Hugo Motta, an “enemy of the people” and chanted: “No amnesty and no forgiveness, I want to see Bolsonaro in prison.”

In São Paulo and Rio de Janeiro, where the largest demonstrations occurred, more than 40,000 people took to the streets. Renowned artists had a prominent role both in the promotion of the demonstrations and giving speeches and musical performances, which was also characteristic of the historic protests against the US-backed military dictatorship (1964-1985) in Brazil.

The protest in Rio had the participation of legendary figures of Brazilian popular music, such as Chico Buarque, Caetano Veloso and Gilberto Gil, all of them imprisoned and exiled under the dictatorship and now in their eighties. As demonstrators shouted, “No Amnesty!” and “Long live democracy!” they sang the song “Cálice” (chalice, in Portuguese, which is pronounced the same as “shut up”), composed by Gil and Chico, an anthem of the struggle against the military dictatorship.

The turnout at these demonstrations exceeded the expectations of the ruling Partido dos Trabalhadores (PT), the pseudo-left Socialism and Liberty Party (PSOL) and the unions and social movements they control, which initially called for them.

In what were considered the largest demonstrations of a left-wing character in recent years, they spontaneously attracted a crowd that far exceeded that of the September 7 Brazilian Independence Day demonstrations called by these same political forces. There, they sought to subordinate all political and social opposition to the defense of “national sovereignty” against Trump’s tariffs and for the so-called “popular agenda” of the Lula administration oriented to reversing the decline in its approval rating. The agenda included an income tax exemption for those earning up to R$5,000 per month and a reduction of working hours.

More importantly, the protests expressed widespread social, economic and political dissatisfaction, which has also fueled mass protests around the world. Recent years have also seen an increasing number of strikes, particularly by federal public workers against the Lula government’s austerity policies.

Faced with this social powder keg and unable to offer any real solutions to the problems faced by the Brazilian working class, the entire Brazilian ruling class viewed Sunday’s protests with concern. It fears that these protests will become the spark for a massive movement from below, outside the control of the nominal left and the unions it controls, that threatens the fragile bourgeois regime in Brazil, of which the PT is a fundamental pillar.

Against this threat, the PT is doing everything it can to prevent the growing discontent of the Brazilian population and the consequent explosion of protests and strikes from getting out of control. It is seeking to divert this movement behind calls for pressuring Congress to put its “popular agenda” on the table and forming a new bourgeois “broad front” for next year’s general election.

The palace negotiations within the discredited Congress last week also widely exposed the PT, which rushed to minimize the damage and prevent popular outrage from turning against the Lula government. On Thursday, the daily Estado de S. Paulo reported that Lula had advocated a “light amnesty” in a meeting with allied parties, which includes the possibility of reducing sentences for those convicted of the coup attempt in exchange for a better position to negotiate its agenda in Congress.

Equally damning, 12 PT deputies (about 20 percent of the PT’s total representation in the Chamber of Deputies) voted in favor of the “Shielding Amendment” on Wednesday. In various demonstrations across Brazil, they were denounced as alleged “traitors to the PT.”

Explaining the spurious behind-the-scenes negotiations in the Chamber, Gleide Andrade, finance secretary of the PT, stated on Thursday: “The first thing we have to do is be fair to history and to the people. The 12 who voted [in favor of the Shielding Amendment] voted because they followed instructions. And halfway through, some of them, when they saw the reaction on social media, changed their minds. Those 12 are being crucified.”

She continued: “I followed everything closely, and the national president of the PT [Edinho Silva] said so. So, yes, there was an agreement. Because of the breach of this agreement, the Chamber voted for a broad and unrestricted amnesty.”

Despite this, the PT and the pseudo-left around it saw Sunday’s protests as a “turning point” for the Lula government, advancing a clear intention to channel them into bourgeois politics. The PT president himself welcomed Sunday’s protests on X, writing that “I am on the side of the Brazilian people” and that “the National Congress must focus on measures that benefit the Brazilian people.”

Similarly, PSOL leader Guilherme Boulos said at the protest in São Paulo that “today is a historic day” because “the Brazilian left has regained its leading role in the streets.” He also demanded that the president of the Chamber put Lula’s government bills on the agenda this week.

Revealing where he wants to divert the protests, Boulos said that one of the results of the “Brazilian people taking back the streets” will be “electing Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva as president of Brazil next year.” The other, according to him, is “electing the largest left-wing bloc in the Brazilian Congress. Doing the whole job, electing Lula and winning in Congress.”

With Trump’s tariffs against Brazil, the PT and PSOL are also trying to forge a bankrupt link between the “popular agendas” and the reactionary defense of nationalism. Boulos repeated that Sunday’s demonstrations were attended by “those who truly defend Brazil. We are the true patriots.” In São Paulo, the protest also featured a huge Brazilian flag, in contrast to the American flag present at the rally of Bolsonaro supporters on September 7.

The defense of nationalism, however, has nothing to do with defending the interests of the Brazilian working class, which shares common economic and political interests with the international working class, including in the United States.

With their defense of national sovereignty, the PT, PSOL and the unions they control are promoting the interests of Brazilian capitalism. Their response to the crisis is the promotion of “national unity” of the Brazilian bourgeoisie and a bankrupt “multipolar” solution to the crisis of imperialism. As the PT made clear in a document from late August:

The fight against imperialism, allied with Bolsonaro’s extreme right, fascism, and neoliberalism, must take place on two complementary fronts: through popular mobilizations, in the streets and on social media, and through the construction of broad national and international alliances, also articulated at the institutional and diplomatic levels.

Given this situation, it is imperative that we place at the center of our actions the construction of a broad alliance in defense of sovereignty and democracy, under the leadership of President Lula. In each state of Brazil, we will work to form powerful coalitions that strengthen President Lula’s reelection campaign, guarantee a majority in the Senate and the House of Representatives, and support the national development project that is already underway.

The failure of this perspective could not be clearer. At the national level, this broad front includes, as PT President Edinho Silva has already made clear, the same parties that voted en masse in favor of the Shielding Amendment and the amnesty bill. Internationally, the PT wants to strengthen relations with imperialist governments in Europe and the Democratic Party in the US, whose policies of austerity, repression, and support for genocide in Gaza have paved the way for the far right around the world.