No to war! No to nationalism!

No to the reactionary competition of the ruling classes in Greece and Turkey! No to imperialist interventions!

For Peoples’ Peace and Solidarity!

We sign this text to unite our voices against nationalism, chauvinism, war cries, and the new arms race.

We stand for peace, cooperation and solidarity of the peoples of Turkey and Greece. We struggle for bettering the life of our peoples in a supporting environment. We stand decisively against the aggressive and adventurist plans of the Greek and Turkish bourgeoisies, and against all imperialist interventions in our area.

We will never assent to nationalism, bourgeois enmities, or participation in imperialist competitions and war preparations.

• We fight for peace in our area, and for the defeat of capitalist and imperialist plans. We do not fight for any Exclusive Economic Zones, but for social liberation and for the workers’ and peoples’ interests.
• We fight for the defeat of war preparations and nationalistic rage. For arresting the arms race, cutting instead of swelling military expenses, covering our societies’ needs for education, health, and a life worth living. 
• We fight for stopping all mining activities in the Exclusive Economic Zones of the sea. No mining in international waters by Greece, Turkey, or extractive multinationals! We strongly oppose the enclosure and the capitalist plundering of the seas via the Exclusive Economic Zones.
• Only the peoples, cooperating in internationalist struggle, can free the way to peaceful and beneficial activity (economic, exploratory, salvaging) in the open seas. Workers’ rights and environmental protection must be respected, against the interests of capital and imperialism.
• We fight for Turkey and Greece exiting NATO and removing American bases and troops.
• We condemn and fight against all direct or indirect threats, coming from both sides, for the modification of land or sea borders. Both Turkey’s challenging of the Lausanne Treaty of 1923 and Greece’s invoking her “right” to extend Greek territorial sea from 6 to 12 miles in the Aegean.
• We fight for the soldiers’ rights and freedoms! No to any lengthening of the draft in any of our countries.
• We fight for free movement, asylum rights, equal rights for refugees from war and poverty. We fight for abolishing the  18 March 2016 EU–Turkey Agreement, that allows for military style operations against refugees and migrants in the bloodied frontiers of Fortress Europe.

We unite our voice with workers and leftist Militants in Turkey, supporting the common Appeal for Peace. We call all organisations, collectivities and militants, whatever their particular political positions, to unite in this struggle.

Text of the Common Appeal from Greece and Turkey

Peace is the most beautiful word in every language: Let Aegean become a sea of peace!

We democrats, progressives, socialists, communists, and peace-loving people condemn the tense strife that inflames our countries.

Peaceful ways to solve issues of continental shelf, Exclusive Economic Zones, and natural gas deposits can be found. However monopolist corporations fighting for profit turn these issues into causes for war.

Under monopoly rule, natural resources and wealth never ever contribute to a better life for the people. Exactly the opposite happens. The harsh exploitation of natural wealth leads to pandemics, draught, and climate change.

Extracting mineral wealth from the bottom of the international seas only speeds up this process. The peoples of Turkey and Greece have no interest whatsoever in the carving up of the Mediterranean.

Peace can reign in our area, and in the world. We can live peacefully and decide by common accord, in a spirit of cooperation, on the employment of natural resources without destroying our environment. We should use every opportunity for the peoples’ wellbeing, not for war.

We mobilize so that imperialists keep their hands away from the Mediterranean and Cyprus, and take away their military bases and their armed forces.

We mobilize against all conflicts originating in antagonisms of local and foreign monopolistic corporations, while they try to divide among themselves natural gas deposits and all kinds of resources. Competition for natural gas deposits must cease immediately, instead of feeding nationalism and the arms race.

We demand that the governments of both countries agree a peaceful solution. We call the peoples of both Turkey and Greece to mobilize against the governments of both Greece and Turkey so that this fight stops.

The Mediterranean belongs to the peoples who live around it, and to all its living creatures, not to monopoly capital.

Peace is the only way for our living as humans. Peace is the only way to secure a life worth living, the life that all people on this earth deserve.

►Send signatures to ltuzel@gmail.com, peaceforthepeoples@gmail.com