Message to the conference of Özgür Der, Turkey

Dear friends and brothers of Özgür Der!

Please accept the most comradely greetings of the Anti-imperialist Camp to your congress which we unfortunately can not attend due to obligations in the struggle for our common cause i.e. the support to the Iraqi Resistance.

We have the highest esteem for your organisation as we believe that you can play a central role in unifying the Islamic and the leftist resistance against the American empire.

Today it is the Islamic and not the communist movement which provides the first line of the struggle challenging imperialism. We have the highest appreciation of the Islamic militants who show the necessary determination and we know that behind them there are the popular masses who provide support. Otherwise such a powerful resistance not only in Iraq would not be possible.

The Anti-imperialist Camp is not only engaged in defending the Muslims´ democratic rights both in the world and especially in Europe. You and your brothers are under attack on all levels by the crusade against Islam waged by imperialism regardless whether it assumes the American Christian fundamentalist or the European secularist form.

But we also politically support the vanguard of Political Islam -- of which Özgür Der is an integral part of – conscious of the fact that for the historic struggle against the US empire the Islamic determination is a pre-condition but does not suffice.

We must have a common strategy to unify the wretched of the world both Muslims and non-Muslims in a common universal struggle for freedom, equality and fraternity. We must reach out with our appeal also to parts of the Western population as without their support we will never deal the final blow to imperialism.

We absolutely need the block between the popular anti-imperialism of Islamic and of communist provenience. In substance our goals are the same: freedom and self-determination, popular and national sovereignty, social justice and equality, community and fraternity.

Sheikh Bedreddin might be a precedent in Turkish-Ottoman history analogous to Francis of Assisi for Europe who both paved the way for our union.

Today our common struggle crystallizes around the support to the Iraqi Resistance (which itself contains the currents we need to unify) which struggles to save humanity from being enslaved by the US imperial capitalism. Tomorrow we need to build a common anti-imperialist front under the banner of Özgür Der´s central struggle:

Long live the global Intifada!

Willi Langthaler
Spokesman of the Anti-imperialist Camp
September 22, 2005
Assisi, Italy