Contribution of Communist Party of Turkey

Dear comrades,

On behalf of the Communist Party of Turkey, I salute all participants and member parties of the European Communist Action. I wish you a happy and militant 2024. Thank you for hosting this online meeting of the European Communist Action and thank you all for your contributions on this important matter.

Let us start with the importance of today’s topic. Climate change and the warming of the atmosphere and earth is a fact that has a negative impact on all species and this negative impact will be even worse for the upcoming generations. Communists need to have a word and strategy on this matter. Yet it is also critical to understand the root causes of this problem and why the existing policies can only postpone if not deepen it.

Climate is a dynamic phenomenon that has been changing throughout the history of humanity. Yet scientists underline the fact that in the past 200 years, together with the development of the capitalist system, climate change has occurred in an unprecedented way. Members of the United Nations are in a consensus for more than 30 years that fossil fuel consumption is among the main causes of global warming. However, in the past 30 years, fossil fuel consumption has continued to increase, the fossil fuel sector has continued to grow, and so does the carbon emission rates. After the crisis of capitalism in 2008, "climate change" has become an important theme in establishing new markets to overcome this crisis. Whether it is called “sustainability”, “green growth”, “clean growth” or “green new deal”, as termed a couple of years ago by the US bourgeois democrats, the protection of the environment or the prevention of the global climate crisis has become the new field of competition within imperialism. And it follows exactly the same rules of competition for the domination over other industries, energy and its transfer routes. The EU uses this “green” approach, to replace the competition over “digitalization” which it lags behind the other imperialist powers.

While the imperialist countries are making deals between them and shedding false promises on less use of combustibles, greener technologies or higher taxes on the use of fossil fuels and promoting minimal carbon emissions, contradictions are increasingly evident. It is noted that the top 1 percent are responsible for 175 times more emissions than the bottom 10 percent. 70% of the carbon emission of the whole world since 1970s belongs to the top 100 monopolies. Valuable minerals necessary for their so-called “green” technology are extracted from other parts of the world at the expense of threatening the lives of people and all other living creatures on those territories. Lithium, chromium, cobalt, gold are examples to these, and we know very well that these industries have no limits in terms of barbarity against workers, especially in Africa and Latin America, where dangerous and even mortal working conditions exist. Such extractions are made at the expense of polluting or heating water, degrading forests, drying the land and emitting toxic byproducts. Still, the monopolies that claim they receive energy from “renewable resources” only cover the fact that the initial resources of those renewable resources are fossil ones.

The EU institutions as well as the OECD openly say that “green growth” aims to “boost investor confidence”, pointing to which side they are lining with. Predictable weather, predictable water or energy, availability is to make sure that capital owners are not frightened to continue their profitable activities. Voices of liberal ideologies are day by day speaking about “planet”, “climate”, “crimes against the earth”, “our own carbon footprint” calling for immediate action, but to and for whom? In this way, their call serves for the whitewashing of “greener” capitalists who can export their outdated technologies to poorer countries and continuing the exploitation of nature and human labour, kept away from their sight. Of course, each of us have a dialogue with the environment, and better knowledge and awareness about environmental issues is a responsibility for all of us, but we should also be aware of whom we are defending, when there is no mention of exploitation but claims of saving the world.

It is also no secret that the countries that sign some major protocols such as the Kyoto or Paris agreements are also the ones that later on make the conditions more flexible in favor of imperialist countries, and they are not binding either. Now we can see new projects with attractive names such as “European Green Leaf Awards”, “Green Capitals” etc. One simple question: Who can explain the paradox of continuously and increasingly investing in the war and ammunition industry, and fueling an ongoing imperialist war in the heart of a wide region, while expecting to downturn the carbon emissions?

Now, we can give another very dramatic but also very demonstrative example of what we mean by hypocrisy: Some companies in Turkey, that are affiliated with the pro-government employee organizations, are on the top of the list of those which are importing waste from Israel. This makes Turkey the country that pollutes the Mediterranean sea the most, while Israel is not even on the list, because their waste is bought. One day, you can see them exporting waste, the other day you can see them chanting slogans against Israel being anti-Muslim, on top the polluted waters of the Bhosphorus. The waste-importing companies are incentivized in our country and in the end, this makes Turkey the top waste-importer of the EU. This is mainly plastic waste, whose decomposition requires very high standards and major equipment, and most of the time it is left to earth with no supervisory mechanism.

This is among the reasons why 2023 was the hottest summer in Turkey according to the records, and some even stated that last July was the hottest of 120 thousand years.

This will have multidimensional impacts, on agriculture, marines & fishing, industry, hygiene, health and even mental health of people. We can very clearly see these changes, by the wildfires in the south part of the country, and disastrous floods in the North.

Capitalism and unplanned, irrational capitalist growth, an order of unplanned production and uncontrolled consumption, an order of chaos for the sake of greater profits for monopolies, is the main reason for the global environmental degradation. Capitalism, by no means, can solve the crisis that it now stands on. Environment, and we humans, as an integral part of it, needs public-based, scientific, central, long-term planning, embracing its dynamic nature and prioritizing life over profit, by the collective contribution from many disciplines, requires a radical change in political, cultural and social planes. Environmental problems cannot be denied, but we also have to see that protecting the environment in today’s capitalist world is a class issue. This is why the hope for saving the environment is red.