Manufacturing is an entire process which involves not only creating the products that can be consumed but also revealing some ideas.
Therefore, to be blocked from manufacturing is not only to be unable to produce the goods to be consumed but also is an extinction; the diminishing of an individual’s creations as ideas and their intellectuality becoming narrower each and every day.
This condition also progresses parallel to making people dependent on someone or some people.
This is exactly how the living conditions of the Turkish Cypriots are. They were dragged into this since the second half of the 50’s and were condemned to after 1974, still getting deeper.
As the Turkish Cypriot industrial production and manufacture is blocked, they get economically dependent. This is a blind hole; while its own economy is drained away, its socio-cultural production also diminishes, making it dependent on someone else from both perspectives.
People who become dependent on someone else, also start losing the feasibilities of producing with their will and their own power.
Every resource granted from Ankara to Cyprus has been transferred as a condition of an imposition by the help of the structure constituted in the north of Cyprus.
As a result of this, two political sides were created; the ones who were receiving political and economic support by obtaining an obedient relationship with Ankara, and the ones who were exposed to all kinds of oppression on account of raising an objection to the impositions from Ankara.
Historically, left-wing was always the one taking a stand against the process of Turkish Cypriots becoming dependent on the Republic of Turkey and losing their quality of being a productive society.
The left-wing, with its all different bodies, was always the one dissenting the political, economic, and cultural interventions by the governments of Ankara, Turkish Embassy, and the Republic of Turkey Aid Committee.
With their submissive approach and by the use of ‘patriotic literature’, the right-wing has always been busy filling their pockets up.
The leftist arguments to the politics of Ankara -which are oppressions and pressure to be fully dependent- are that Turkish Cypriot community to be self-governing and to determine their own destiny freely. The left-wing embodies these arguments in practice by the political agency created by its own power. The leftist practice is also in line with the demand from the Turkish Cypriot community to self-govern.
In other words, by saying “We, as people want to produce, no to creating idiots from us by blocking the manufacture”, the left-wing was forming its opposing activity with its financial power, creativity, and its mass capacity by its own power and production.
After all, that was what made left-wing leftist.
However, with the developments that have taken place specifically since 2003, the sympathy to the funding and projects by the USAD, UNDP, and the European Union gained a vast space within the Turkish Cypriot leftists.
The traditional areas of leftist struggle including the struggle for peace, to get the two communities closer, women rights, ecology, and conservation of cultural and historical values have become favourite subjects of the projects and funding approach.
At the instant, all the struggles that the left-wing used to carry out despite all the impossibilities and oppressions was indigent, in need of the “support” of the institutions who have economic power, with an understanding that “it cannot happen if there is no economic resources”.
A news report appeared recently on social media, is an exact example of this.
The news report titled “Last 5 days for the Cypriot Friendship Program” indicated that as part of a project, 64 Turkish Cypriot and Greek Cypriot youths would spend a month in America with host families. Following this event, a bi-communal camp would take place in Troodos.
This is just a recent example. With the changes taking place nearly for the last 15 years, funding from foreign institutions became a must for the leftists.
If there will be a bi-communal event organised within the peace struggle, a project is designed right away.
If a campaign is considered to be organised regarding the gender equality or the LGBTI rights, then a project is designed right away.
If there is an issue concerning nature, again another project is being found.
If an historical artifact will be renovated, a funding institution will be applied.
Although the content of the projects committed are beneficial in majority, there is a question still to be answered:
The left-wing who was objecting to be dependent on Ankara for years, not also objecting to this type of dependence, independently from its content?
In short, under the conditions where the governments of Ankara made us dependent on them, instead of building a mosque to every neighbourhood, if they would have renovated historical artifacts, would everything be nice then?
So, the problem is the aims, but not the tools are important?
To live dependent on others apart from itself is not all about having the economic feasibilities.
Having its socio-cultural dimensions, it is a problem about proceeding further with self-confidence.
It is inevitable that the ones who do not exist with their own power, will extinct.
Today, the reasons for infertility and unproductivity that the Turkish Cypriot leftism is draining, should be looked for within the change it has gone through in the past 5 years.
The revolutionists’ responses to the questions above are determined.
The aim for the leftists of a community should never to be rescued by the “good”.
This is because leftism trusts not the vertical relations of the “rescuers” but the horizontal relations of the solidarists.
The revolutionists have always believed in their peoples’ own power and that is the way where they have done the build-up of their basis.
The revolutionary accumulations in Cyprus and worldwide still continue guiding us.
Writer: Ali Şahin
Translated by: G. I.
Article first published on: 25/02/2017
Original article in Turkish: http://www.ankaradegillefkosa.org/amaclar-araclar-ve-solu-sol-yapanlar-ali-sahin/
