What should Tsipras do?


EU countries, particularly Germany, are concerned about Greece once again. Actually, this is what wealthy European countries have been experiencing since the outbreak of the crisis. They thought, however, that they would handle the situation by dominating southern European countries like Greece. They also thought they would treat the struggling countries as they would their own domestic market, by dominating them at the end of the process. To this end, the formula of a non-political and technocratic government came to the fore and was practiced. However, they overlooked two important points. The first reason for the Greek crisis was not the "sluggishness" of Greek people, but the economic policies that prosperous countries like Germany imposed on southern countries - a situation that makes the crisis a crisis for northern countries. Secondly, the people of countries like Greece were aware of what was going on and objected to the neoliberal policies imposed on them by wealthy northern countries and by the troika of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), European Commission (EC) and European Central Bank (ECB). Thus, they did not let technocratic governments remain in power for a long time and the Syriza government of Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras emerged as a result of this objection.Now, Greeks are angry with two figures who they blame for all the troubles that have accompanied the crisis. The first is German Chancellor Angela Merkel, who was recently named as the world's most powerful woman, and the other is the IMF's troika representative to Greece, Poul Thomsen, an ordinary IMF technocrat who smoothed the way for Syriza to come to power. Before the 2015 Greek parliamentary elections, Thomson went to the ends of the earth to prevent the Greek government from reaching an agreement with its creditors. The IMF and Merkel wanted Greece to unconditionally bow and comply with all the troika's requests, or else they would not launch bailouts. They opted for a more severe crisis or a Greece where uprisings would prevail, expecting that another technocratic government would come to power. However, the Greek public gave their game away, bringing Syriza to power. In other words, the Greek public proved that it could remove neoliberalism without sacrificing democracy. Meanwhile, Germany's calculations on Greece came to light and the Greek public awakened to the fact that Germany was practicing a quasi-Balkanization strategy in the whole of southern Europe on the pretext of the crisis. Now, a global war is continuing via Greece at full steam. Syriza leader Alexis Tsipras is striving to handle the situation for the moment. Although he emerged victorious from the elections, he might be thinking that he must be rational and refrain from challenging the outside, otherwise he might lose power inside the country. However, this cannot be the way out for Tsipras. Turkey has also been there and learned many lessons the hard way. Just like in Greece, the same powers masterminded technocratic governments in Turkey and, worse still, organized schemes that were similar to Egypt's military coup and caused Turkey to regress. Nowadays, Turkey is going through a very strategic time because it has survived all these malevolent attempts, including the Dec. 17, 2013 operation. It raised the Gülenist organization within the Turkish state for many years and let it make its greatest move on Dec. 17. Indeed, the Gülenist organization is the unarmed version of the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) and is as dangerous as ISIS in terms of world peace. Now the same powers are awaiting the June 7 election and its aftermath to organize new conspiracies. Turkey did not fall into such traps and did not become like Greece or Egypt for the following two reasons. Firstly, President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan always prioritized democracy and popular will and has never made any concessions and held no fears or vacillation. Secondly, the public saw his firm stance and supported him in all the elections, particularly in the March 30 local elections and Aug. 10 presidential elections, both of which followed the Dec. 17 operation. Now, rumors about a coalition government are a result of the wish to introduce a supra-political technocratic government that thinks little of popular will, and a new post-coup process that will lead Turkey to regression. We recommend Tsipras and his government observe the public will that brought him to power and fulfill the promises that he made to the public during his election campaign instead of complying with external impositions and the troika's requests. Just like Erdoğan, he should embrace the Palestinian public, object to Egypt's coup-maker President Abdel-Fattah el-Sissi and say "the world is bigger than five" without fear or favor. Also, he should support the EU's expansion toward its east, and should not join hands with Israel for the sake of natural gas resources off the shore of Gaza in the Mediterranean, bearing in mind that these resources belong to Cypriots and Palestinians. He should know that Greece's prosperity will be possible only by defending the rights of poor and oppressed people like himself.