Şafak Ayhan Wrote 'Brother, did you see that Marx defended the Syrians?'
Türkçe
English
Deutsch
Italiano
Français
Ελληνικά
Kurdî
Español
There is a one-man play currently being staged in theaters: Karl Marx in Istanbul. The play is actually a translation, a one-act play that was played by Genco Erkal in previous years under the title The Return of Marx. Hamit Demir takes on the role of Karl Marx. The one-man theater play Marx in Soho, written by the American Marxist historian Howard Zinn in 1999, was translated into Turkish, updated by Genco Erkal in 2009, and adapted to the present day. In the original text written by Howard Zinn, "It begins with the proclamation of the death of Marxism, when Karl Marx persuaded the above to go down to London Soho for an hour, but due to a bureaucratic mistake he landed in New York Soho. He uses the time to defend himself and his writings by giving references. He presents sections from his private life and makes self-criticism." In its updated and Turkish version, Marx again wants to go to London's immigrant district, Soho, but this time, Marx is sent to Istanbul by the other world bureaucracy, again by mistake, to an entertainment club called Soho in Beyoğlu. The purpose of Marx's arrival is clear. He comes to give lectures in a limited amount of time to the "fake leftists" who are walking around as if they understand him, to those who say, "Is there any Marxism left", to those who stubbornly do not want to understand what he tells in his works? The concepts that Marx used in his works, such as the definition of capital, surplus value, the contradictions created by capitalism, class struggle, alienation and exploitation, are interpreted within the framework of contemporary political-economy. The game has started. Those who are interested in the striking story or Marx's political economy, out of curiosity, waiting for this game for maybe months, buying a ticket saying 'Ooo Marx's game, we were revolutionary at the time', said, 'Are we so enlightened in vain that we should be different from these ignorant people? There was a diverse audience until those who said, 'Let's go'. The audience enjoys the way he tells his troubles, yells at the capitalist system, 'what are you people, what are you waiting for to destroy this system', and shouts at the rulers, sovereigns and capitalists. The audience is pretty happy with the game. In the later part of the play, Marx introduced another subject that more than half of those who had just said "yes, yes, exactly like that" to everything Marx just said in the hall fell silent. What part was he talking about? Of course, the litmus paper that separates the socialist from the racist: "Immigrants, especially Syrian Immigrants." The debates Marx experienced during his time in Istanbul were his own. A "refugee" while living, without being a citizen of any country when he died, who lived most of his life without borders, who had deportation orders in every country he went to, who showed that nationalism is a deadly disease for the working class by saying "the working class has no homeland". Even to think that the founder of scientific socialism, who died as "stateless", could have passed through this world without defending immigrants was in fact a lesson for those "enlightened" friends who claimed to know Marx. According to them, Marx will make a criticism of power, hate religion, criticize private property, okay. While talking about the refugees in Istanbul, whose living conditions are not befitting human dignity, who had to sell their labor for three to five liras, who were humiliated, killed, raped, and forced to "live" in houses made from barns in their geography, Marx had just said, 'yes, yes , Those who said 'just like that' could not understand this situation. In the exploitation system created by capitalism, the racism criticism used by the capitalists to divide the exploited was not in the lexicon of those who were silent on that stage. The arguments they considered socialist were perhaps six arrows. Those who do not give a chance to live in a world without borders, but to those who are not themselves, who are not like themselves, will never understand Marx's defense of immigrants, that is, Syrians. Of course, thanks to the game, they understood that the anti-immigrant ideas they accepted as the left were racism and they decided to do something to change it, so happy for them.
