Recently, the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) celebrated the 100th anniversary of its foundation, while a few weeks earlier it held its 13th congress, under difficult conditions. The CC of the KKE in its message to the 13th Congress of TKP noted, among other things:
"The communists of Turkey, honoring the 100th anniversary of the founding of the heroic Communist Party of Turkey, can take further steps. Turkey, but also the whole region of the Eastern Mediterranean and the Balkans, need an even stronger Communist Party of Turkey, a 'revolutionary party, a party for revolution', as is the slogan of your 13th congress."
The Communist Party of Turkey, in the framework of its events, established the "Mustafa Suphi" Friendship Award, in the name of the Turkish revolutionary and founder of the Communist Party of Turkey, who was murdered along with his 14 comrades in 1921 by the bourgeois state. The 1st prize, by decision of the CC of the Communist Party of Turkey, was awarded to cd. Dimitris Koutsoumbas, General Secretary of the CC of the Communist Party of Greece (KKE).
On this occassion, the GS of the KKE Dimitris Koutsoumbas sent a video message to the online event of the Communist Party of Turkey. The message reads:
"Dear comrades,
I would like to thank you very much for your initiative to honor me with the 1st "Mustafa Suphi" Friendship Award, established by the Communist Party of Turkey on the occasion of the 100th anniversary of its founding.
Let me take this opportunity to note two historical events of that period, which show the common ground of our struggle.
Comrade Mustafa Suphi and his comrades were murdered in 1921 by the bourgeois state on the shores of the Black Sea, during their return from the territories of revolutionary Russia. Just a few months ago, at the end of 1920, in the same area, our comrades Dimosthenis Ligdopoulos and Orion Alexakis, who were returning to Greece from the 2nd Congress of the Comintern, were also murdered.
They were the first dead martyrs of our young Party back then, who, like your comrade Mustafa Suphi and his comrades, paid with their own lives the hatred of the bourgeoisie for their decision to stand for the ideals of the socialist-communist society, to struggle for the rights of the people and the cause of the working class! Two years after comrade Mustafa Suphi’s assassination, Nikos Zachariadis, a young dock worker in Istanbul, became a member of the Communist Party of Turkey, and later a cadre of the KKE and its General Secretary for many years.
These are two historical events in the long and heroic history of our two parties, which illuminate the parallel and often identical tormented historical path of the communists of the two countries, who went through the "fire and steel" of the class struggle.
We honor our history, we honor our dead, our comrades who went through unspeakable tortures, imprisonments, exile. We honor them in the best possible way: We continue their struggle every day and at the same time we seek to draw historical lessons, so that our struggle becomes more effective.
Comrades,
I believe that the presentation of this 1st "Mustafa Suphi" Award to the GS of the CC of the KKE, must be mainly approached through the prism of recognizing the necessity of the joint struggle of the communists of Turkey and Greece against the nationalism and the cosmopolitanism of the capital, against the interests that exploit the peoples, sometimes by dividing them and sometimes by sacking them into imperialist alliances, such as NATO and the EU, or the so-called "joint exploitation" of the Aegean for the interests of the monopolies.
Today, the CPs of Turkey and Greece have achieved a high level of cooperation and coordination of their struggle, both internationally, as shown by the co-organization of the 21st International Meeting of Communist and Workers' Parties in Izmir, as well as regarding the relations between the two countries, emphasizing that “the peoples of the two countries can and must claim their right to live in peace! No to a military confrontation for the interests of the bourgeoisie and the imperialist alliances! ”
We oppose to any case of hot incident and war engagement. We express our opposition to border violations and the questioning of international treaties that have defined borders in the region.
We denounce the attempts made by positions of military strength to form faits accomplis in the Aegean and the Eastern Mediterranean, as well as the enormous military expenditures of the two countries, which provide a background for military confrontation.
We denounce the plans for the exploitation of hydrocarbons in the Aegean by the bourgeois classes of the two countries, aiming at giving control of energy resources to foreign and local monopolies, creating conditions for greater complications and sharpening of the confrontation, posing risks to the environment.
The working class and the people of the two countries have nothing to gain from these plans. We struggle for the disengagement of the two countries from the imperialist plans, for the return of military forces from NATO and other imperialist missions abroad.
We struggle for the disengagement of our countries from the imperialist alliances of NATO and the EU, to expel the US and NATO bases from our countries. The peoples of Turkey and Greece have nothing to divide them. They have an interest in claiming to live in peace and struggle for their own future, against capitalist exploitation and capitalist profits, which lead to war and the destruction of the environment.
Comrades,
Now that the imperialists, the bourgeois classes, and the monopolies put into motion sometimes the "machines of death" and sometimes the drills for robbing the popular wealth...
Now that they poison the workers’ minds sometimes with the hatred of nationalism and sometimes with the "plague" of fatalism and submission...
Now is the time for our voice to be heard louder: The peoples of Greece and Turkey must strengthen their struggle to abolish exploitation of man by man and to meet the contemporary popular needs, to uproot those causes that lead the peoples to the "meat machine" of the imperialist war...
Because, as Mustafa Suphi stressed in his call to the people of Turkey: "Workers and poor peasants of Turkey! You will be completely liberated only when the tyranny of the capitalist class is overthrown and the socialist revolution spreads all over the world ... ".
Long live the 100 years of the Communist Party of Turkey!
Long live the joint struggle of the KKE and the TKP!"
