At a time when NATO, the war machine of Western imperialism, held its summit in Türkiye, we gathered in Istanbul to declare our resolve to expand the anti-imperialist struggle for peace against NATO, imperialism, militarism, and the war-driven order. NATO is not a ‘defensive alliance’ but the chief representative of foreign intervention, military domination, occupations, coups, sanctions, and the arms race. The interests of the people are sacrificed to those of the ruling classes, weapons monopolies, energy corporations, imperialist blocs, and their local accomplices.

This gathering is not merely a protest. It reflects our determination to build a common struggle for peace against the rulers who are trying to preserve their world order by dragging the world into a cycle of endless wars. The militarization and lockdown of Ankara for the NATO Summit, with the city reorganized around security measures and restrictions, showed once again that imperialist gatherings are organized not for the security of peoples, but through their repression. The refusal of entry and deportation of some members of the international delegation who came to attend our summit is a direct attack on international solidarity and on the right of anti-imperialist forces to come together.

The struggle for peace cannot be limited to a call to stop wars. It must confront the order that produces them. Policies of destruction are co-produced by weapons monopolies, finance capital, military bureaucracies, NATO institutions, and collaborative regimes. Just as imperialist powers and capital organize on an international scale, the peoples’ struggle for peace and freedom must also organize on this scale. Anti-imperialism must come to life in the collective rebellion of workers, youth, women, migrants, anti-war activists, socialists, and all progressive forces.

Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union, NATO’s existence did not come to an end. On the contrary, NATO has continuously created new enemies, new areas of intervention, and new pretexts for war. While NATO-led military aggression was justified yesterday under headings such as the ‘communist threat’, then the ‘fight against terrorism’, ‘humanitarian intervention’, ‘stability’ and the like, today all ‘humanitarian’ and ‘democratic’ rhetoric has been left behind, and the threat of imperialist expansion has become more overt. NATO’s ambition for growth has made the world not safer, but more fragile and vulnerable to wars.

The ongoing occupation, blockade, apartheid, and genocide in Palestine show the clearest face of imperialism. Israel’s policy of massacre continues with the support of the US, NATO, and European states. Israel’s impunity stems from this collaboration. Therefore, we must stand in solidarity with Palestine, expose fake friends, and apply pressure on all states that arm Israel. The ongoing aggression in Gaza, Israel’s attacks targeting Lebanon and Iran, the continuing imperialist interventions in Syria, the military tensions stretching from the Red Sea to the Eastern Mediterranean, the invasion of Ukraine, and the accelerating armament moves in Europe all show that NATO and imperialist powers are preparing the world for greater wars.

Since joining NATO in 1952, Türkiye has been an important part of the security strategy of imperialism. Through military facilities such as Incirlik Air Base in Adana, the Kürecik Radar Base in Malatya, and NATO’s Allied Land Command (LANDCOM) in İzmir, Türkiye plays a critical role in NATO’s regional operations. These bases have been centres for planning and carrying out military operations, from Iraq and Syria to Afghanistan and across West Asia. When a country’s territory is used for military operations, it cannot be considered outside the war, even if it is not directly engaged in armed conflict.

Over the years, especially under the Erdoğan regime, Türkiye has maintained close relations with the US and NATO while also developing a special relationship with Israel behind closed doors. Its military presence in Syria, cross-border operations, and interventions that ignore the will of the peoples of the region reveal the expansionist ambitions of Türkiye’s ruling classes. Türkiye presents itself as a mediator that can negotiate with all countries, but this image hides its collaboration with imperialist powers. Ongoing trade, diplomatic, and military relations with Israel expose the insincerity of its claims of solidarity with the Palestinian people. The military presence in Northern Cyprus, multiplying military bases, its role in the competition over energy resources in the Eastern Mediterranean, and interventions in Syria all demonstrate Türkiye’s regional ambitions.

Despite the orientation of the Turkish state and capital, socialists in Türkiye have a strong tradition of resisting both NATO and imperialism. The anti-imperialist movement in Türkiye has long combined opposition to NATO and the call for sovereignty. Today, drawing strength from this history, preventing Türkiye from continuing to play this role in the region and resisting its future actions remain among the main goals of Turkish and Kurdish revolutionaries.

The five-percent military spending target imposed on NATO countries means that public resources are transferred to arms monopolies. Likewise, the normalization of nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons on the grounds of ‘deterrence’ or ‘national security’ is unacceptable. These weapons do not provide security for any people, but instead pose a threat to all life. The arms race does not only expand aggression in foreign policy. It also deepens authoritarianism at home. The aggressive imperialist rule represented by NATO and its allies, the growing far right in Europe, and the security-driven nationalist regime in Türkiye are all different faces of the same global dark order. This order uses the threat of war as a pretext to strengthen border regimes, xenophobia, the criminalization of opposition, and anti-labour policies.

The same dark order is also escalating attacks on the fought-for rights of women and LGBTQI+ people. Militarism and authoritarianism reinforce the patriarchal family model, seeking to confine women to the burden of care, precarity, and a regime of obedience, and to target women and LGBTQI+ people in order to discipline society around reactionary, nationalist, and patriarchal values. War policies produce occupation and intervention abroad, and repression, patriarchy, and social control at home. As military budgets grow, the rights to education, healthcare, housing, social security, care services, and a dignified life are being seized. The working class is condemned to lower wages, heavier taxes, greater precarity, and deepening poverty. For capital, the war economy means profit. For working people, it means the cost-of-living crisis, unemployment, debt, the loss of social rights, and a futureless existence.

Ecological destruction and militarism are not separate from one another. War machines, military bases, fossil fuel competition, struggles over energy routes, and the arms industry destroy nature, agricultural lands, resources, and living spaces. The future of the peoples cannot be handed over to those who profit from war.

For this reason, opposition to NATO is opposition to military blocs and also a struggle against authoritarianism, racism, nationalism, patriarchy, ecological destruction, poverty, and anti-labour policies. The struggle for peace goes beyond simply calling for an end to war. It is a struggle to defend the people’s right to life, equality, freedom, labour, nature, and a future free from war and exploitation.

These responsibilities, carried over from the summit, are a powerful call for solidarity to build a common front against imperialist war, NATO, the arms race, authoritarianism, imperialist ideologies, patriarchy, racism, ecological destruction, and anti-labour policies. This summit should be noted as the first step to build further collaborations and actions such as regional meetings and demonstrations against imperialism and regional rearmament. Building on the political continuity of the Porto Alegre International Antifascist Conference, the Global Antimilitarist Webinar, the mobilisations against the G7, and the International Anti-Imperialist Peace Conference, we will, in the coming period, strengthen mobilisations against COP31, to be held in Antalya, Türkiye, in November 2026. We will also support the planned Antifascist Conferences in Puerto Rico and Argentina, and set ourselves the task of preparing a Balkan-wide Anti-Imperialist and Antifascist Conference.

As the concrete political ground for this line, our demands are listed below:

• Dissolve NATO, shut down all military bases!
• No to nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons!
• Stand with all colonised and occupied people against imperialist powers!
• Support the Palestinian resistance against Zionist genocide! Sever all commercial, diplomatic, and military relations with Israel and impose a weapons embargo!
• Divert military budgets to health, education, and the means for a dignified life!
• Anti-imperialist solidarity and internationalist shoulder-to-shoulder struggle with the earthquake-stricken people of Venezuela; with the Cuban people under blockade and embargo!
• Build solidarity and common struggle against the provocation of Turkish and Greek governments’ militarist policies and nationalist threats!
• From the Balkans to West Asia: uninterrupted and permanent coordination against imperialist aggression and organizing new actions!
• Defend life against the war economy, patriarchal oppression, and ecological destruction!