Turkey Between Imperialist Subjugation and National Sovereignty: The Crisis of the Semi-Periphery in the Age of Technofascism

By: Mahir Serkan, Weaponized Information

The global system of imperialism, now entering a new phase of decomposition and fascistic militarization, has placed semi-peripheral states like Turkey in a uniquely contradictory position. Neither fully integrated into the imperial core nor existing wholly in the condition of colonial dependency, Turkey represents a nation whose bourgeoisie has been permitted a narrow and fragile autonomy under the aegis of Western finance capital. This autonomy, however, is not freedom—it is the leash extended to the comprador, the illusion of sovereignty granted to the jailer of his own people.

Yet, as imperialist crisis deepens, and the multipolar world asserts itself through the rise of China and the resurgence of revolutionary states across the Global South, the question presses itself with increasing urgency: can Turkey break from this suffocating semi-peripheral existence and assume the position of a genuinely sovereign nation engaged in national development? Or will it remain what it has been—an appendage of NATO, a subjugated subcontractor in the global factory of Western capitalism, a buffer zone for imperialist military aggression?

This is not a question of speculation, but one of concrete historical forces—of the objective situation confronting Turkey’s economy and the subjective capacities of its working masses.

The Material Foundations of Subjugation: Debt, Industry, and the Destruction of the Peasantry

Turkey’s economic condition is one familiar to all semi-peripheral states in the epoch of imperialism: the false dynamism of foreign-financed development masking the reality of subordination. The superficial gleam of skyscrapers and infrastructure projects conceals an economy mortgaged to Western banks. Erdogan’s regime, though wrapped in the rhetoric of nationalist defiance, is the local gendarme of imperialist finance.

The construction boom—praised as a ‘miracle’ by liberal economists—is, in fact, a monument to the parasitic character of Turkish capitalism. Highways and high-rises built on debt; speculative bubbles sustained only so long as European and American banks permit the flow of cheap credit. When this faucet closes, as it inevitably will, the proletarian masses will pay the price in hyperinflation, wage cuts, and unemployment.

Industry, too, operates under the logic of imperialist domination. Turkish factories produce goods not for the development of an autonomous national economy, but as appendages to German capital and European supply chains. The Turkish worker sweats not to build the foundation of socialism, nor even the preconditions for an independent national bourgeoisie—he toils so that the German imperialist may profit from cheaper parts, cheaper textiles, cheaper lives.

Agriculture has been all but destroyed. The smallholding peasant, once the backbone of Turkey’s rural economy, has been driven from his land through the combined violence of neoliberal privatization and the Turkish state’s counterinsurgency war against the Kurdish people. The result is the proletarianization of millions—pushed into urban slums, stripped of their traditional forms of subsistence, rendered cheap labor for the factories and construction sites owned by Erdogan’s cronies.

This is the precise mechanism through which imperialism subordinates the semi-periphery: the destruction of autonomous rural economies; the creation of an uprooted, desperate working class; the funneling of national wealth into the hands of comprador oligarchs; and the ultimate dependence of this entire apparatus on foreign credit and markets.

The Masses as the Subject of Sovereignty

It is the masses—the workers dispossessed by the factories, the peasants expelled from the land, the Kurdish proletariat enduring national oppression—who alone possess the power to shatter this chain of imperialist bondage.

But their capacity is not realized in the abstract. The proletariat does not automatically grasp its historic mission. It is the task of the revolutionary class forces to forge this unity, to organize the anger of the factory worker in Istanbul with the suffering of the Kurdish villager in Diyarbakir. Without this unity, Turkey’s working class remains trapped—divided along ethnic lines, pacified by reactionary nationalism, or diverted into aimless street protests like the Gezi Park uprising, which though heroic, lacked the disciplined leadership necessary to transform resistance into revolution.

The Kurdish liberation movement stands as the most advanced force within this constellation. It is here that the fusion of national liberation and socialism finds its most concrete expression. But the Kurdish struggle, for all its resilience, has yet to break the isolation imposed upon it by Turkish chauvinism. Until the Turkish worker recognizes that his liberation is bound up with that of his Kurdish brother, the reactionary Turkish bourgeoisie will continue to pit them against one another—offering the Turk low wages and job insecurity, while offering the Kurd imprisonment and annihilation.

Sovereignty is Impossible Without Anti-Imperialism

Talk of Turkish sovereignty under Erdogan is a farce. Erdogan is not the defender of Turkey’s independence; he is the jailer who decorates the cell. He flirts with Russia, bargains with China, and occasionally chastises the West, but his entire rule rests on the uninterrupted flow of Western finance and the maintenance of NATO’s military apparatus.

Real sovereignty—the sovereignty that China fought for in the crucible of socialist revolution, the sovereignty that Cuba defends with every blockade-breaking shipment—can only arise from a total rupture with imperialism. This means:

Withdrawal from NATO—the military instrument of U.S. and European imperialism.

Expropriation of Foreign Capital—breaking the power of Western finance over Turkey’s industrial and banking sectors.

Agrarian Revolution—restoring land to the peasantry, particularly in Kurdish regions, and reorganizing agriculture under cooperatives and state planning.

Industrial Sovereignty—developing heavy industry and technology under public ownership, modeled on China’s socialist modernization.

Worker-Peasant Power—establishing a government rooted in the democratic organs of the working masses, capable of suppressing the comprador bourgeoisie and resisting imperialist aggression.


Anything less is compromise; anything less is subjugation under a different name.

The Global Significance of Turkey’s Path

A sovereign Turkey would not simply transform its internal class relations—it would strike a blow at the imperialist order itself. If Turkey were to align with China, Russia, and the revolutionary states of Latin America, it could accelerate the collapse of NATO’s stranglehold over Eurasia. It could demonstrate to other semi-peripheral states—India, Indonesia, Brazil—that the road to development lies not in servitude to Western finance, but in socialist planning and South-South cooperation.

But this path will not open itself. Imperialism will not permit it. The West will wield every weapon—economic sabotage, military provocation, internal subversion—to prevent Turkey’s departure from its orbit. It will seek to engineer ‘color revolutions,’ stoke ethnic conflicts, and blockade trade routes.

This is why only the revolutionary force of the working class—armed with the clarity of Marxist-Leninist leadership—can see such a transition through. There is no room for liberal illusions; no room for social-democratic gradualism. Imperialism will not negotiate itself out of power—it must be overthrown.

The Hour of Decision

The present world crisis demands clarity. Turkey stands on the knife’s edge. Either it will deepen its subjugation—becoming not merely a debtor nation, but a garrison state under technofascist rule, crushing its workers and serving as NATO’s forward base against the East—or it will break the chains of imperialism, align with the peoples of the Global South, and set forth on the path of sovereign development.

The working class holds the key. But keys do not turn themselves.

The task is organization. The task is revolution.