Takes up: Protest in Brazil against a bill that equates abortion after 22 weeks with homicide; the 4th World Congress for the Abolition of Prostitution in Montreal; women outdo fundamentalists in Turkey’s local elections; and the cancellation of a state-sponsored mass wedding of 100 orphaned girls and young women in Nigeria.
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan
Mujeres en lucha contra el feminicidio
May 19, 2024El feminicidio (el asesinato de una mujer por ser mujer) está aumentando en todo el mundo, al igual que las manifestaciones en su contra. En esta lucha se puede ver algo de la visión de futuro implícita en este movimiento: una sociedad en la que las mujeres sean comprendidas como seres humanos libres. La clave está en la “totalidad y profundidad del necesario arrancar de raíz”.
Women worldwide fight femicide
March 16, 2024Femicide—the murder of a woman because she is a woman—is on the rise across the world, as are demonstrations against it. In this struggle can be seen some of the vision of the future implicit in this movement: a society in which women are comprehended as free human beings. Key is “the totality and depth of the necessary uprooting.”
An atrocity: Assad welcomed back
June 7, 2023It is an atrocity that Bashar al-Assad was welcomed back to the Arab League Summit on May 19. This is one more attempt to bury the Syrian Revolution, which has heard its obituary pronounced again and again since the first mass demonstrations of Arab Spring, March 15, 2011.
World in View: Turkey’s president
June 2, 2023Turkey’s President, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, after 20 years in power—first as Prime Minister, and then with a constitutional change as President—faced a challenging election and failed to receive a majority in the first round, before winning the second round runoff.
Editorial: Earthquake deaths are not a natural disaster
March 17, 2023Twin earthquakes on Feb. 6 decimated a vast area of Turkey and Syria. They produced a catastrophe with human tragedies over hundreds of square miles. But it was the man-made disaster on top of the natural one that killed more than half of the over 50,000 victims accounted for so far.
Turkish women challenge Erdoğan
May 11, 2022In April Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, had his public prosecutors demand that We Will Stop Femicide, Turkey’s largest women’s rights group, be disbanded for “activity against law and morals.” Protests immediately broke out across the country with hundreds marching in Istanbul and Ankara.
Women demonstrate against Erdoğan’s closing of WWSF
April 30, 2022In April Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the president of Turkey, had his public prosecutors demand that We Will Stop Femicide, Turkey’s largest women’s rights group, be disbanded for “activity against law and morals.” Protests immediately broke out across the country with hundreds marching in Istanbul and Ankara.
Melda Yaman: ‘New vistas for socialist feminists’
March 15, 2022Interview with Melda Yaman, the Turkish translator of Rosa Luxemburg, Women’s Liberation, and Marx’s Philosophy of Revolution.
Women WorldWide
December 10, 2021Women WorldWide takes up: Afghan women MPs set up an organization in exile to help other activist women escape; the thousands who marched in Istanbul, Turkey demanding action against widespread violence against women; women in Poland marching again against restrictions on abortion; and the 7,000 women who gathered in Madrid, Spain, protesting male violence against women.
Youth in Action: January-February 2021
January 31, 2021Massive youth demonstrations oppose military rule in Thailand and dictatorship of their schools; students at Bogazici University in Istanbul march to oppose Prof. Melih Bulu’s elevation to rector by Turkey’s President Erdoğan; and rural Pakistani youth pedal 100 miles in protest of a rise in the price of flour.
Editorial: Caucasus war concerns all of humanity
November 26, 2020Humanity needs to take head of the warfare that broke out between Armenia and Azerbaijan in late September, over the disputed region of Nagorno-Karabakh which took the lives of thousands of soldiers, and hundreds of innocent civilians, on both sides.
International Women’s Day 2020
March 26, 2020What was new this International Women’s Day was larger marches, greater militancy of women participants, the new places where they took place, and the attacks against them which escalated significantly from previous years.
World in view: In Syria, righteous hours expose evil years
March 17, 2020Free Syrians continue to fight the regime and Russia, and regime supporters keep pressing for genocide. They cannot coexist.
World in View: Trump doctrine for a changed world
November 4, 2019Trump’s Oct. 23 speech on Syria lays out his counter-revolutionary vision of a changed world including his intention to reorient the U.S.’s PYD allies in line with world capitalism.
Kurds in U.S protest Trump’s betrayal
A report on the Oct. 13 demonstration of Kurds in San Francisco, California, to protest Donald Trump’s giving Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan the green light to invade the Kurdish-held part of Syria.
Women worldwide, September-October 2019
August 31, 2019Feminists in Iran call on Ayatollah Ali Khamenei to resign; huge demonstrations against police rapes in Mexico; removal of the “Girl of Peace Statue” in Japan; and the trial of Canan Kaftancioğlu, the Istanbul chief of the secularist Republican People’s Party.
Women bearing the brunt of reaction lead the resistance
March 6, 2019In a year marked by the contradiction between deepening women’s revolt and activism and neo-fascism rising across the globe, women have been fighting back in unprecedented numbers and ways.
Turkey on the brink?
September 27, 2018Under the whip of global capitalism, so-called emerging economies, like Turkey’s, have little real independence, and their masses live under a no-exit sign.
Turkey’s Erdoğan tightens authoritarian rule
July 21, 2018With his victory in the June 24, 2018, presidential election, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has consolidated his one-man rule of Turkey’s 80 million-plus population. He had already eliminated the office of prime minister and created a powerful executive presidency.
II. Spreading revolt opens new doors
May 3, 2018We look at the true opposition to Trumpism: mass revolt worldwide of women, youth, Black people, labor…–the context to work for new beginnings.
#MeToo, Women’s Marches show the resistance deepens
March 8, 2018Women have changed the world through an incredible and sustained activism based on a humanism that runs like a revolutionary red thread through an amazing array of actions, demonstrations and statements. This development is based on over 50 years of a movement that the founder of Marxist-Humanism, Raya Dunayevskaya, characterized as “Woman as Revolutionary Force and Reason.” .
Iranian workers, youth reach for new radical beginnings
January 28, 2018The recent uprisings in Iran start where the 2009 revolt left off. This analysis focuses on the rebellious working-class youth as well as the interconnections to the Arab Spring, Vladimir Putin’s interference, Donald Trump’s racist agenda, and the philosophic-historic significance of the Bosnian and Syrian struggles against genocide.
Women Worldwide, November-December 2017
November 15, 2017Women Worldwide Column on: the Black Women’s March on Washington; Meltem Cumbul in Turkey refusing to shake the hand of a director who supported right-wing President Erdogan; and a class-action lawsuit against coerced sterilization procedures in Canada against indigenous women.
World in View: Kurdish referendum
September 3, 2017Iraqi Kurds are scheduled to vote on Sept. 25, 2017, in a referendum on independence for Iraqi Kurdistan, which is expected to pass easily.
World In View: The crisis of Turkish democracy
May 3, 2017Protests occur across Turkey in resistance to the controversial constitutional referendum/power grab of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan as he has devolved into a capitalist counterrevolutionary ruler. .
Women World Wide, May-June 2017
May 2, 2017Women World Wide column reporting women´s actions in Tunisia and Turkey, as well as the development of a male contraceptive by a university start-up in rural India.
Readers’ Views: January-February 2017, Part 2
February 2, 2017Readers’ Views on: Practical and Theoretical Intervention; Syria and Humanism; International Crises; and Prisoners Speak.
Lead-Editorial: No to Trump’s counter-revolution! No to fascism! Fight for a new human society!
November 26, 2016Trump’s electoral victory by appealing to racism and sexism menaces all freedom movements. It is the index of this system’s crisis and bankruptcy of thought, which needs to be met with a truly revolutionary vision.
Turkey’s Erdoğan – the pious dictator
September 7, 2016A view of what the failed coup in Turkey has wrought, including mass arrests of teachers, trade unionists, doctors, medical personnel, and others as Turkey’s president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, makes a grab for total power.
Workshop Talks: Bleak future if no labor solidarity
July 3, 2016Workshop Talks columnist Htun Lin looks at the world situation from the massacre of LGBTQ people in Orlando to the murder of Jo Cox in Britain to Brexit and to how workers are reacting, suggesting that there is no exit from global capitalism without international labor solidarity.
Woman As Reason: Will Stanford rape be a turning point?
July 2, 2016Terry Moon explores how the rape of a woman by a Stanford University student can become a turning point, rather than a stopping point, in the struggle to end rape culture, and the necessity for revolution to be total from the start and to be permanent.
Britain’s hate-driven referendum a victory for the Far Right
June 26, 2016With Britain’s vote to leave the European Union, the Far Right has been emboldened worldwide. As the economic and social crisis deepens, so does the brutality, while the Right seeks scapegoats for the results of capitalism’s objective laws, which only have force as long as humanity’s struggle to be free is not yet complete. The only solid ground for opposing this latest stage of reactionary retrogression is that of revolution in permanence.
II. The worldwide war against women
May 7, 2016Part II of the Draft Perspectives 2016: The worldwide war against women includes attacks on abortion rights, counter-revolution in Egypt, attacks on women by UN troops. Women celebrated International Women’s day in Turkey and other countries.
Russian imperialism’s genocidal attack on Syria aims to destroy the revolution
March 3, 2016Russian airstrikes create havoc in Syria, embodying a philosophy of unfreedom. Revolutionary unity in Syria isn’t just a tactical issue, but a philosophic question, on the revolution’s ground of freedom and dignity, needing philosophic as well as material solidarity.
Witnessing revolution in Rojava
January 26, 2016Eyewitness report of a trip to Rojava in Syria in mid-2015.
Editorial: Erdogan slaughters Kurds
January 23, 2016Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s slaughter of Kurdish civilians and activists is viewed in the context of world revolution and counter-revolution.
Kurds rage at Erdogan
December 10, 2015Kurds protest at Chicago’s Turkish consulate against recent massacre in Ankara
World in View: Terror and old prejudice in a changing Turkey
Behind the bombing that killed over 100 peace marchers in Ankara, the state equated the Kurdistan Workers Party with ISIS despite the heroic struggle to defend Kobane.
Counter-revolution in Middle East shows crisis of humanity
August 28, 2015From the signing of a nuclear weapons agreement by the U.S. and Iran, to the ongoing war in Syria including the roles of Turkey and of the Left, this wide-ranging article delves into the Middle East situation with an emphasis on the forces fighting for genuine freedom and a multi-ethnic society.
World in View: Turkey’s election
July 8, 2015In a stunning June 7 election, the People’s Democratic Party (HDP), a coalition of Kurds and liberals, won 12% of the vote.
Refugees risk death fleeing war, terror and climate chaos
June 28, 2015Worldwide, the refugee crisis is unprecedented and is fueled by war, terrorism and climate change. The worldwide response is paltry with country after country turning away or deporting frantic and desperate people in search of a safe haven.
From Turkey to USA, women as force & reason fight inhumanity
March 5, 2015Another savage sexual assault and murder—this time in Turkey—brought forth thousands of demonstrators, mostly women, throughout the country and beyond. Özgecan Aslan was a student taking a bus home. Worldwide, women are not only railing against sexism and challenging men to change what is often deadly behavior and when not deadly, deeply oppressive; they are as well explicitly extending their critique to the state itself.
Özgecan Aslan: Sexual assault and murder in Turkey spark widespread outrage, demonstrations
February 17, 2015Preview of article on women’s oppression and freedom struggles worldwide for March-April issue. Comment now so that your thoughts can be taken into account in the finished article.
Rojava & Syria’s revolution
November 21, 2014Today the heroic struggle of the Kurdish People’s Protection Units, along with allies of the Free Syrian Army, to defend Kobane from the IS deserves all support. This means first the support of the people, the workers, women, and all who struggle for a better life.
Put miners in charge
August 29, 2014From the September-October 2014 issue of News & Letters
Detroit—A mid-May fire killed 301 miners by carbon monoxide poisoning due to mine owners’ negligence in the worst coal mine disaster in Turkey’s history (see “Turkish miners killed,” July-August N&L). First reports indicated that the fire started when a transformer blew up. A subsequent investigation revealed that [=>]
WORLD IN VIEW: Turkish miners killed
July 8, 2014On May 13, an explosion in a coal mine in Soma, Turkey, claimed the lives of 301 miners. Turkey is the most dangerous place on earth in which to be a coal miner.
Women Worldwide, September-October 2013
September 26, 2013Women Worldwide: Turkey anti-fundamentalist demonstrations; Egypt sexual violence; California in vitro fertilization; Saudi Arabia segregation.
Revolutionary from Turkey speaks
July 7, 2013Events in Turkey appeared spontaneous, but are a continuation of a long history. It was not the psychology of Prime Minister Erdogan that created opposition, but the institutionalized fascism within a “deep state.”
Turkey is capitalist, but not like Europe, the U.S., or Canada. It did not have a series of bourgeois revolutions. Capitalism in Turkey [=>]
Turkey, Syria and Iran at crossroads of world revolt
July 2, 2013The mass protests in Turkey, the presidential election in Iran and, above all, the continuing struggle for the Syrian revolution express the depth of today’s social crisis. These crises are interpenetrated and inseparable. The stakes are high.