Steve Kaczynski explains the link in Turkey between head scarves and the Turkish army’s invasion of Iraqi Kurdistan Recently, two issues involving Turkey have received wide coverage in the international media. The first is Islamic head scarves, the second is the Turkish army incursion into northern Iraq. I will look at these matters in turn.…
Report on Sandra Bakutz trial, Ankara, Turkey, March 30, 2005
I arrived at Ankara Esenboga Airport early on the morning of March 30, the day of Sandra Bakutz’s trial. I had no problems at passport control and was taken to a flat in Ankara’s Mamak district where I had a few hours’ sleep before going to the trial. It was due to start at 10:45…
Freedom For Sandra Bakutz!
Austrian human rights activist Sandra Bakutz was arrested at Istanbul’s Ataturk airport on February 9th whilst entering the country to observe a trial. As soon as the plane landed police entered the plane and removed her from the aircraft taking her straight into police custody. As a result of an imprisonment order issued by Ankara’s…
To Tame the City
Grzegorz (Greg) Rybak is Polish worker currently living in Edinburgh. He stood as the SSP candidate for the Leith Ward in the City of Edinburgh Council elections this year. To tame the city Sitting on a bicycle With the speed of the wind I wend my way through the city Trying to tame the new…
May Day: Marching in the footsteps of immigrant workers
From an article in the US radical newsletter Dissident Voice (1.5.07) by Sharat G Lin Over 1.5 million people took part in May Day demonstrations in 2006 in what amounted to one of the single largest days of protest in US history. Many also participated in a general strike by refusing to conduct business, go…
No One Is Illegal
Affiliation to the No One is Illegal Campaign is to be debated at the SSP Conference on October. The attitude an organisation takes towards the rights of migrant workers throughout the world defines whether it is international socialist or merely national labourist. We are publishing the first chapter of NOII’s pamphlet, Workers Control Not Immigration…
Homelessness- Who Really Cares?
The experiences of a worker with the homeless in the voluntary sector The city of origin and writer’s name have been withheld because of the likelihood that the writer will lose their job if identified. For the last 2 years I have been a support worker in a Homeless Hostel, and I have observed first…
Naming Women’s Oppression
As we celebrate 98 years of International Women’s Day, Catriona Grant, the SSP Women and Equality Policy Coordinator, explains what feminism is and how it fits into socialist practice and ideology The suffragette movement was a bourgeois movement I’m a Marxist not a feminist, I stand for the liberation of all workers The socialist movement…
Equal Fights
Here we reproduce excerpts from an interview that Carolyn Leckie (SSP MSP) gave to Bridget Morris (published in Sunday Herald on 4 June 2006). Women’s vital role in the struggle From an early age, I considered myself a socialist, and spoke out about inequality, class and poverty. For as long as I can remember, I’ve…
When ‘Raising Consciousness’ Ain’t Enough
Column written by Mumia Abu-Jamal The images of voracious famine leaking out of the steamy deserts of the Northwest African nation of Niger, cuts to the soul’s quick. Babies barely able to grasp a breath. Mothers with breasts as flat, and milkless as boys. Men and women, dizzy with hunger, laid low in the barren…