Resistance to NATO is not a crime, but an obligation!: In Solidarity with Turkish Communists
- The Left Chapter
- 3 hours ago
- 6 min read
Statements from Communist and workers' parties in Jordan, Ireland, the USA, the Netherlands and Poland.
Image via the TKP
The Jordanian Communist Party condemns in the strongest possible terms the campaign of arrests and repression directed against members and supporters of The Turkish Communist Party following their participation in popular demonstrations and protests opposing the NATO summit in Turkey. We express our full solidarity with The Turkish Communist Party and all democratic and progressive forces struggling against military alliances and imperialism.
Resorting to arrests and the restriction of public freedoms will not succeed in silencing voices demanding peace and justice. It cannot obscure the reality that NATO has been, and remains, a primary instrument for imposing imperialist hegemony over peoples. It is responsible for fueling wars, violating national sovereignty, destroying homelands, and interfering in the internal affairs of states under various pretexts, as these actions that have caused immense humanitarian tragedies in many regions of the world.
The Jordanian Communist Party asserts that free peoples have the full right to engage in peaceful protest against aggressive policies and military alliances that threaten international peace and security. Confronting NATO’s policies is a political and moral duty for all forces opposed to war, colonialism, and hegemony.
We demand that the Turkish authorities immediately release all those detained for their participation in peaceful protests, cease political persecution against members of The Turkish Communist Party and anti-war activists, and respect democratic rights—foremost among them the freedom of expression, organization, and peaceful assembly.
The Jordanian Communist Party reaffirms its solidarity with The Turkish Communist Party. We emphasize that the struggle against aggressive military alliances, led by NATO, is an inseparable part of the world’s peoples' fight for peace, national independence, social justice, and the right of nations to self-determination, free from imperialist pressures, blackmail, and intervention.
The Jordanian Communist Party
July 8, 2026
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The Workers Party of Ireland condemns the attempts by the Turkish government to suppress public opposition to NATO through the state repression and bans imposed in advance of the NATO Summit which began in Ankara. The attacks on the homes of citizens, including our comrades in the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), and the draconian media restrictions imposed, further exposes the character of the Turkish state and the nature of the NATO imperialist alliance.
Despite these repressive measures, the TKP organised anti-NATO demonstrations in several cities, including Ankara, where all forms of public action had been banned for 13 days. The bourgeois state reacted predictably with a violent intervention in which numerous members of the TKP were injured and detained. The detention of 145 communists including one member of the Central Committee of the TKP and 8 members of the Party Council constitutes an unacceptable attack on the right to organise and protest.
The Workers Party of Ireland condemns these attacks on the TKP and its members and expresses its solidarity with the Communist Party of Turkey and the citizens of Turkey who have been subjected to repression and police violence in connection with the NATO Summit.
These actions underline what we know: NATO is an aggressive imperialist alliance that has brought war, occupation, destruction and suffering to peoples across the world.
We express our full solidarity with the Communist Party of Turkey, with all detained TKP members, and with everyone who stood up against the NATO Summit. We demand the immediate release of all communists in custody, the dropping of all charges, and an end to every measure restricting all anti-NATO political activity.
The TKP will not be intimidated.
Hands off TKP!
Release all communist and anti-imperialist militants detained!
Central Executive Committee
Workers Party of Ireland
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International Committee of the NCPN
The NCPN stands in solidarity with the 145 Turkish communists arrested last Sunday in Ankara, Kocaeli, and Soma, and demands their immediate release. We condemn the regime of President Erdogan and his AK Party, which brutally suppresses the demand for peace and socialism.
The actions of the Turkish regime expose the undemocratic nature of NATO. NATO tolerates no opposition to its warmongering for profit and expansion, against the working class of all countries. NATO member states, which more often than not are quick to talk about freedom and democracy, remain deafeningly silent about repression in Turkey.
Last Sunday, protests against this week's NATO summit took place all across Turkey. In Istanbul, for example, the NCPN, together with ten other parties and organisations, took to the streets against the imperialist NATO, its war machine, and the attack on our social security systems to fund its new arms race.
In Ankara, where the right to demonstrate and the freedom of assembly were completely dismantled by the Turkish government, communists from the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) bravely took to the streets regardless, at the risk of their own freedom and health, to resist the attempt to silence opponents of NATO. There, the communists surprised the authorities and succeeded in organising a march through the Turkish capital. They were met with heavy-handed police repression. The use of rubber bullets, physical force, and mass arrests was excessive.
Many Turkish comrades are in hospital with broken limbs, and more than a hundred have been thrown in jail. All of this to crush resistance to NATO and the working class's desire for a world without imperialist wars. But this resistance will not be banned without a fight.
Resistance to NATO is not a crime, but an obligation!
Freedom for the communists of Turkey!
Long live international solidarity!
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The Communist Party USA International Department extends its solidarity to the Communist Party of Turkey and all anti-imperialist fighters who took to the streets in Ankara, İstanbul, İzmir, Adana, Samsun and Çanakkale to protest the NATO summit.
We condemn the heavy-handed police crackdown and mass detentions carried out against your party members and peace activists. The detention of over 100 comrades — including party administrators — the severe head injuries inflicted on seven party members, the fractures suffered by others, and the suspected heart attack that required emergency angiography for one of your members constitute a brutal assault on the fundamental right to dissent.
This repression exposes the hollowness of NATO’s claims to defend “freedom.” The Turkish government's decision to impose a de facto state of emergency across central Ankara to shield NATO leaders from opposition reveals the true nature of the alliance: a bloody, militarist organization built on occupation, coups and massacres — as Comrade Kemal Okuyan so rightly stated.
The CPUSA recognizes NATO for what it is: the main imperialist military force in the world, led and dominated by the United States. U.S. imperialism uses NATO to push the world toward disastrous wars, with the working class sent to kill and be killed so that the military-industrial monopolies can secure obscene profits. NATO serves as the vehicle for U.S.-E.U. imperialist domination.
At this very NATO summit in Ankara, the U.S. and its allies are demanding that member countries increase their military spending — some proposing as much as 5% of GDP. These demands for more NATO spending are demands for more weapons, more war, and more death. Every dollar funneled into NATO's war machine is a dollar stolen from healthcare, housing, education, and the needs of working people.
We salute the TKP for organizing simultaneous anti-NATO protests in six cities and for upholding the commitment to working-class political independence.
We are confident that with its determination and unity, the Communist Party of Turkey and the Turkish working class will triumph over the war-mongerers.
Communist Party USA
International Department CPUSA
International Executive
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The Communist Party of Poland condemns the violation of the principles of freedom of assembly and expression by the Turkish authorities, and expresses its solidarity with the victims of political repression in Turkey.
During Sunday's demonstrations against the NATO summit held in Ankara, several hundred people, mainly associated with the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), were detained. Dozens of protesters were injured in police violence.
The Erdogan regime has banned all gatherings in Ankara. It has also employed mass preventive arrests, searches of the premises of opposition parties and social organizations, and other forms of repression. The AKP government has once again demonstrated its authoritarian nature, even violating Turkish law.
The NATO summit, held under the cover of police water cannons and rifles, is an imperialist gathering. Its goal is to establish mechanisms for further financing wars and aggression. The NATO summit introduces further mechanisms for increasing military spending in member states while shifting the costs onto the peoples.
We express our support for the TKP and its activists, who decided to violate the unlawful ban on gatherings and took to the streets to demonstrate against war and military buildup. Fighting against the aggressive NATO alliance is not a crime; it is the duty of everyone who seeks peace.
Down with imperialism, down with the repression of the Turkish Erdogan regime!
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