Turkey: COP31 is a Tool of Imperialism

Featured image source: Yeni Demokrasi

Beginning yesterday, on November 9, the UN Climate Conference “COP31” is being held in Turkey. It is planned to last until November 20. This yearly UN event serves mainly to attract “investments”, that is imperialist capital exportation, in the respective countries and to try to legitimize the imperialist world system.

As Yeni Demokrasi analyzes, for Turkey this comes at a time where the economic crisis – whose origins they trace back to 2008, is only deepening, linked to the increasing militarization, war-mongering and imperialist aggression that US imperialism is spearheading around the world.

They add, that conferences like this one use phrases like “green transformation” to obscure the destruction of environments in service of imperialist profits. It goes on to expose an example of supposedly “green” projects, as an attack on the peasant masses:

“The vast agricultural lands of the Mediterranean, Aegean, and Central Anatolia regions, where agricultural production is concentrated, have been transformed from agricultural basins into ‘Renewable Energy Basins’ through renewable energy ‘investments.’ This ‘project,’ which we have no doubt will be proudly displayed to international capital attending COP31, is a picture of the devastation of a peasantry uprooted from subsistence farming and impoverished, now piled up in cities ready for precarious work.“

Yeni Demokrasi has also been reporting on peasant struggles in the defense of their lands, such as recently in İkizköy, a village in the Milas district of Muğla, where they rose up against excavations linked to the expansion of a coal mine, determined to defend their lands.

In another example of the policies applied by the Turkish State, they denounced that the protective status of almost 3,000 hectares of forest being removed.

On November 6 Yeni Demokrasi shared a call by the Munzur Environmental Association (MÇD), highlighting the hypocrisy:

“In Turkey, the perpetrators of attacks on nature, domestic capitalists, are competing to sponsor COP31; companies that are in the public eye due to their attacks on nature for mining, coal, energy and construction projects are being presented as ‘climate supporters’ at the summit.”

Last year, we reported on the previous edition of this conference that was held last year in Brazil where protesters clashed with the Military Police, National Guard, and UN security troops.

In this same spirit Yeni Demokrasi concludes:

“Therefore, let us rise up against imperialist plunder, embracing the angry and stubborn fighting spirit of the impoverished peasantry at the forefront! Let us rise up with the resistance of the people who do not remain silent in the face of any plunder and pillage, but fight for their land, water, forests, valleys, coasts, and parks! Let us rise up with the resistance of the working class, who have been torn from their land and means of livelihood and enslaved in the mines! Let us rise up with the power of the unwavering resistance in Dersim, Muş-Varto, Diyarbakır-Kervanpınar, İkizköy, and the Akbelen forests! Let us rise up with the determined rebellion of a youth carrying the spirit of the Paris Commune! Let us rise up, united by the courageous resistance of the people, and by organizing ourselves! Let us rise up so that the fear of those who amass wealth by ruthlessly plundering our natural resources grows!”