Summit Beyond the Barricades
July 5, the anti-NATO protest led by the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) in Ankara's central Kızılay Square was dispersed by police. Over 100 were detained. In Istanbul, Arzu Çerkezoğlu, chair of the Progressive Trade Union Federation (DİSK), shouted, "More jobs, not more weapons; more schools, not more missiles." In İzmir, protesters marched toward the NATO Joint Force Command, chanting, "Imperialist war center, get out of our country!" TKP member Cem Demirok told Xinhua: "Under the pretext of defense against imaginary enemies, more budget is allocated to the arms industry, and eventually the people are impoverished to bomb other countries." Ankara, where all this took place, is to host the NATO summit two days later with leaders from 32 countries. Turkish authorities have preemptively detained over 4,000 people in the past three months, checked 1.5 million, completely banned protests, and sealed off the city center with barricades. The capital hosting the summit is a fortress.
This scene reveals more than a simple anti-war protest. A NATO ally hosts a NATO summit while its Communist Party and progressive unions mobilize thousands to organize anti-NATO protests. Barış Doster, a scholar at Istanbul's Marmara University, called NATO "the gendarme of capitalism, imperialism, and liberalism under U.S. leadership." A scholar from a NATO member state, just ahead of the NATO summit, called NATO the gendarme of imperialism—and this statement was reported worldwide via international wires. A language exposing the alliance's true nature has begun circulating openly within the alliance itself. The barricades outside the meeting hall and the agenda inside—raising military spending to 5% of GDP—are two faces of the same contradiction. The imperial alliance demands more armament, while its workers and people reject it.
That same night and into the next dawn, Russia launched a massive combined strike on Kyiv with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. At least 7 were killed and 24 injured. A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, and several high-rises in the Darnytskyi district were damaged. Zelenskyy warned via Telegram hours before the attack that a "large-scale strike was imminent." This came just a week after a strike on the same city killed 31. At the very moment NATO leaders gather in Ankara to promise more Patriot missiles, the residential buildings of Kyiv—desperately in need of those air defense weapons—are collapsing. This is another form of the collapse of the buffer zone traced in previous diaries. This time, it is the buffer between the alliance's promises and its actions that is collapsing. NATO speaks of defense, but the objects of defense keep dying.
Meanwhile, on July 6, Canada will select between Germany's ThyssenKrupp and South Korea's Hanwha Ocean as the supplier for 12 conventional submarines. Hanwha Ocean recently showcased its technology in British Columbia after successfully completing the first-ever trans-Pacific voyage of a KSS-III submarine last month. The deal is worth tens of billions of dollars. South Korea's comprador-monopoly defense industry (comprador refers to the structural relationship in which domestic monopoly capital accumulates through the mediation of the imperialist order) competing with Germany's traditional defense powerhouse in the largest military procurement market of a core NATO ally—this scene reveals the complexity of the imperial order. Resistance builds within the imperial alliance, missiles rain on the capital of the eastern front, and in the market created by that same alliance's military spending increases, South Korea's comprador capital seizes profit opportunities. This duality—expanding one's accumulation space within the very imperial order that is the target of anti-imperialist struggle—is the essential modus operandi of the comprador-monopoly system. That is why anti-imperialism and anti-monopoly must be integrated into a single practice.
The diaries of the past three days have tracked the disappearance of buffer zones, the self-exhaustion of imperial pageants, and the failure mode of besieged states. Today, the three scenes of Ankara, Kyiv, and Ottawa converge these themes into a single focus. It is a lens called NATO. On Tuesday, the leaders in Ankara will meet in a city secured by barricades, checkpoints, and detainees, and declare unity. The people beyond the barricades already know what that unity means.
This scene reveals more than a simple anti-war protest. A NATO ally hosts a NATO summit while its Communist Party and progressive unions mobilize thousands to organize anti-NATO protests. Barış Doster, a scholar at Istanbul's Marmara University, called NATO "the gendarme of capitalism, imperialism, and liberalism under U.S. leadership." A scholar from a NATO member state, just ahead of the NATO summit, called NATO the gendarme of imperialism—and this statement was reported worldwide via international wires. A language exposing the alliance's true nature has begun circulating openly within the alliance itself. The barricades outside the meeting hall and the agenda inside—raising military spending to 5% of GDP—are two faces of the same contradiction. The imperial alliance demands more armament, while its workers and people reject it.
That same night and into the next dawn, Russia launched a massive combined strike on Kyiv with ballistic missiles, cruise missiles, and drones. At least 7 were killed and 24 injured. A residential building in the Podilskyi district partially collapsed, and several high-rises in the Darnytskyi district were damaged. Zelenskyy warned via Telegram hours before the attack that a "large-scale strike was imminent." This came just a week after a strike on the same city killed 31. At the very moment NATO leaders gather in Ankara to promise more Patriot missiles, the residential buildings of Kyiv—desperately in need of those air defense weapons—are collapsing. This is another form of the collapse of the buffer zone traced in previous diaries. This time, it is the buffer between the alliance's promises and its actions that is collapsing. NATO speaks of defense, but the objects of defense keep dying.
Meanwhile, on July 6, Canada will select between Germany's ThyssenKrupp and South Korea's Hanwha Ocean as the supplier for 12 conventional submarines. Hanwha Ocean recently showcased its technology in British Columbia after successfully completing the first-ever trans-Pacific voyage of a KSS-III submarine last month. The deal is worth tens of billions of dollars. South Korea's comprador-monopoly defense industry (comprador refers to the structural relationship in which domestic monopoly capital accumulates through the mediation of the imperialist order) competing with Germany's traditional defense powerhouse in the largest military procurement market of a core NATO ally—this scene reveals the complexity of the imperial order. Resistance builds within the imperial alliance, missiles rain on the capital of the eastern front, and in the market created by that same alliance's military spending increases, South Korea's comprador capital seizes profit opportunities. This duality—expanding one's accumulation space within the very imperial order that is the target of anti-imperialist struggle—is the essential modus operandi of the comprador-monopoly system. That is why anti-imperialism and anti-monopoly must be integrated into a single practice.
The diaries of the past three days have tracked the disappearance of buffer zones, the self-exhaustion of imperial pageants, and the failure mode of besieged states. Today, the three scenes of Ankara, Kyiv, and Ottawa converge these themes into a single focus. It is a lens called NATO. On Tuesday, the leaders in Ankara will meet in a city secured by barricades, checkpoints, and detainees, and declare unity. The people beyond the barricades already know what that unity means.