ICC members in Turkey have left the organization

[Leo]

As the militants who made up the section of the International Communist Current in Turkey, we would like to announce that we’ve left the ICC.

We will be working on a text politically evaluating the process and explaining why we’ve left the ICC.

Also, because we think that the problems we’ve encountered in the practice we were involved with are serious enough to warrant a theoretical inquiry, we concluded that we need to have in-depth discussions. We plan to publish the texts coming out of this discussion process which will clarify the points we’ve reached theoretically and the path we’ll take as a group.

We wish the ICC success in its political life.

[The Idler]

I look forward to reading the text.

[Leo]

Below is our text on why we left the ICC:

http://palebluejadal.tumblr.com/post/114780772253/on-our-departure-from-the-international-communist

[Q]

What a sad story really. I had a wow moment, in the negative sense, with this little perl:


Yet the most striking moment of the whole process was the resolution on the Turkish section which came out of a meeting of the secretariat which took place with the participation of the majority of the central organ. This resolution, on the basis of all the myths on the section, decided to ban the members of the Turkish section from having section meetings, insisted that every text to be published in Turkish had to be translated into English to be checked first and that the members of the Turkish section were to participate in the meetings of the two sections they were now tied to exclusively. The Turkish section was in effect dissolved; yet the resolution avoided saying this openly as according to the statutes of the ICC a section could only be dissolved if it openly betrays the ICC and even the resolution admitted this wasn’t the case.
It does remind me of the way the majority of the Russian section of the CWI was expelled in 2009. There, the section also had its criticisms, which were never discussed on an international level as far as I'm aware (as Dutch delegate in 2009 I was told that "everyone was aware" of the situation, but wasn't given any actual explanation or documents discussing both sides, later on the CWI side was translated in English and published where the majority was branded as "nationalists").

Anyway, in late 2009 Peter Taaffe went to Saint Petersburg to a meeting of the Russian section and summarily decreed that anyone not standing with the CWI position was now outside the organisation. The majority, at first happy that at long last finally had come from the International Secretariat to discuss the disagreements, was apparently taken by surprise and didn't put up a fight and left. The CWI section in the Commonwealth of Independent States lost 80% of its membership and is nowadays mainly based as a grouplet in Kazakhstan.

What I wanted to say with this anecdote: There is a lot of recognition I had in the statement text. I'm sure many of the groups on the left have very similar problems.

[Alf]

http://en.internationalism.org/forum/1056/alf/12478/statement-departure-icc-members-turkey