On July 3, 2022, a minibus carrying immigrants in the Saray district of Van was fired by the village guards and gendarmes. The later government explained that “they did not stop with the stop warning”. After the attack, 13 people were injured and a 4-year-old boy died. The boy had been shot in the heart and stomach. The murder has once again struck us in the face that the heavy violence and massacres against immigrants in the lands we live in and all over the world will not end, but will continue to increase.
By Nihan Drama – July 18, 2022
Has an investigation been opened for those who caused the death of the little boy? How will justice be provided for his family? These questions remained unanswered, just as in the examples of attacks in other countries. Because immigrants, who are forced to leave their home and country, are not considered human beings in the functioning of the capitalist system.
If we look at the world in general; with the “push back policy” implemented by Greece, the engines of the boats carrying immigrants are broken by the authorities and left to drift into the sea. Abandoned to their own fate, immigrants are fighting for their lives on boats that are about to sink at any moment. The whole world watched as immigrants trying to cross the Greek border in the cold of winter were stripped naked, beaten and thrown back to the border.
In 2021, Haitian immigrants who wanted to cross the border in the US state of Texas were flogged and attacked by Customs Enforcement Officers on horseback.
Since 2018, Croatia has been using whipping, wounding, cutting, sexual harassment and all kinds of physical violence against immigrants who want to reach Western Europe through its borders.
The European Union opened detention centres in Libya, established in January 2021, for immigrants, where African immigrants are imprisoned in inhumane conditions.
With the “seizure of personal belongings” law applied to immigrants, Denmark confiscates the money and jewellery of immigrants entering the country’s borders. This practice was the practice of the Nazis. In April 2022, again in Denmark, an Iranian woman was deported by force using a drug injection, while she was still under the influence of drugs, by being put on a plane.
On June 24, 2022, immigrants trying to cross from Morocco to Spain were attacked and 37 people were killed, according to the announced figures. Everyone watched the injured and dead bodies published in the media, but no investigation was opened.
For immigrants who set out to cross borders with the dream of a better life, without knowing what will happen to them, the roads they have to follow before they reach the country they want to go to are also deadly. Immigrants’ lives are rendered insignificant on boats that carry far more than their capacity at once.
The number of migrants who died in 2018 due to the sinking of boats on the Mediterranean, one of the deadliest routes, was announced as 2,277. When we look at the date 2021, we see that this number has increased to 3 thousand 231.
Despite all this inhuman violence and massacres, the number of people who have to leave their country and migrate continues to increase every year. Millions of people leave their homes for countries where they can be whipped by guards on horseback or lose their young children to bullets.
The wars and poverty created by capitalism cause an increase in involuntary migration. Due to the civil war in Syria, millions of people lost their homes and were forced to flee to neighbour countries. Turkey is one of the countries receiving the most immigration. At the Turkey-EU summit held in 2015, a fund of 3 million euros was created for Turkey to accept immigrants. Later, the figure was increased to 6 million euros. Finally, an agreement was reached for an additional 3 million euros until 2024. Turkey provides this money to immigrants in exchange for protection, health, education and similar projects.
Since Europe does not want immigrants to come to their countries, they want them to be kept in Turkey for a certain fee. In his latest statement, the British Foreign Secretary said; “We can send immigrants to Rwanda and Turkey,” he said. Same Europe accepted the Ukrainians who had to immigrate due to the ongoing war.
There is a very sharp connection between the racism that Western civilizations have practised against blacks and the desire not to accept immigrants from Eastern countries: the hypocrisy of Europe. The bourgeois states that seem to be helping the immigrants are responsible for the civil war in Syria and the existence of the Taliban regime in Afghanistan. The capitalist system, disguised as an angel, is a community of demons that demolished peoples’ homes, fueling hatred among immigrants and indigenous people, creating an easier system of exploitation.
Turkey, which has a role in the Syrian civil war, to the people living on its territory; while giving messages “We will solve the refugee problem,” the state continues to plan a new attack on Syria.
According to the figure announced in May 2022, the number of immigrants under temporary protection status in Turkey is 5,506,304 million. In the cities where they live most, Istanbul, Gaziantep and Hatay are in the top three places. 432 thousand 956 migrant children cannot go to school.
The economic crisis that started in Turkey in 2018 has led to an increase in poverty every year. As a natural consequence, the working class in Turkey sees the immigrants coming from abroad as people who take their jobs. Local people struggling with poverty do not want to accept immigrants from outside.
Immigrants are excluded by being deprived of employment resources and due to differences in race, ethnic culture, beliefs and identity. Although the apparent reason is ethnic culture and race most of the time, the exclusion of immigrants by the indigenous people is the unequal distribution of surplus value under capitalism. The situation that occurs when a migrant is ostracized because of his/her race is due to inequality. Capitalism creates inequality.
After the pandemic, the working class in Turkey is getting poorer day by day and it is getting harder to live in accordance with human dignity with the increase in all areas of life. While a factory worker is struggling to provide for his family on the minimum wage, an immigrant from another country has to accept cheaper and precarious work. This situation creates anger against immigrants on the worker who is trying to survive by being crushed by the cruel wheels of capitalism.
The duty of a socialist is to always say that the immigrants, who had to leave their homeland due to the wars and poverty on which capitalism was built, the immigrants who were forced to work under slavery, and the working class, who were made to work for their own food so that the bourgeois segments could live better in their own lands, are not enemies, but class brothers.
The solution to the immigrant problem is the overthrow of capitalism, which causes workers to work in inhumane conditions but still not be able to provide a better life for their families as they deserve. Workers and immigrants from Turkey are allies who must fight side by side in the war against the rulers of the capitalist order. The people whose voices are not heard, who are exploited every day by the bosses are the ones who will lead the revolutions.
