Let’s overthrow the fascist regime to protect public health

There are photographs of all of them, from the fascist ruler Erdoğan to the highest ranking bureaucrats of the fascist regime, with gangs, mafias, drug barons, money launderers, in short, those who are involved in all kinds of filth. These Photographs show that the murderous gangs of the capitalist order are backed by turkish fascism. There is no way to protect public health without overthrowing the fascist regime, which protects these gangs, and without establishing the union of people’s republics. Recklessly an with their filthy and rotten behavior they are aiming for the profit growth of capital and the survival of their fascist power. They do not hesitate for a moment to slaughter newborn babies.

„A certain 10 percent profit will ensure its employment anywhere; 20 percent certain will produce eagerness; 50 percent, positive audacity; 100 percent will make it ready to trample on all human laws; 300 percent, and there is not a crime at which it will scruple, nor a risk it will not run, even to the chance of its owner being hanged.” (Capital Vol. I, p. 779, footnote 67)

With the Covid-19 pandemic, we have once again experienced and seen that the capitalist system based on the domination of capital is a system that disregards human health. The capitalist system, which is profit-oriented rather than human-oriented, did not strengthen the health system against an epidemic while it kept developing, but the production of masks, hygiene products, respirators, etc was promoted. They turned to policies that increase the profits. Again, the starting point was not to strengthen the health system for public health, but to turn the emerging epidemics, diseases etc into an opportunity to increase capitalist profits. The elderly were left to die in many countries in order to get rid of their pensions. Many pharmaceutical companies and the capitalist states that supported them competed for vaccines developed against Covid-19. So much so that in that competition, vaccines were quickly put on the market while still being in test phase. In the following years, it was seen that these vaccines had many negative effects on humans. We also see the results of capital’s profit-oriented way of acting in the failure to treat and prevent many diseases that could be treated or prevented with the current level of scientific and technological development. This capitalist order allows people to die from preventable and treatable diseases in order to secure the high profits of pharmaceutical monopolies.

The same capitalist order causes new deaths every day in this region under the rule of the fascist regime. The infant deaths and the story of the ‘infant gang’ were only the current version of this. In a place where the health sector has turned into a profit-oriented centre and hospitals into commercial enterprises generating serious income, it could not be expected that gangs and mafias would not enter. Likewise, in the AKP-MHP fascist government (coalition of the two fascist turkish parties „Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi“ and „Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi“), where most of the health ministers were either hospital or health sector company owners, the health sector had no chance of being ‘healthy’. This is the current reality of the AKP government’s ‘Health Transformation Program’.

Since 2003, this program is nothing but the transformation of the health sector in Turkey with the policies of imperialist globalization supported by the World Bank. In 2002, this transformation was expressed most clearly in the AKP program with the following sentences: ‘The private sector will be encouraged to invest in health’. In all the following years, a serious transformation took place in the field of health on the basis of these incentives. While private hospitals sprung up like mushrooms everywhere as commercial centres, the budget allocated to health did not increase at the same rate. In 2002, health expenditure per person was 83 Turkish Lira, which increased to 219 TL in 2008, 385 TL in 2017 and 876 TL in 2021. Total health expenditure, which was 284 TL in 2002, increased to 4 thousand 206 TL in 2021. The number of private hospitals, which was 271 in 2002, increased by 111.7% to 572 in 2024.

The AKP’s entire health program is a project to transform the field of health into an area of capital accumulation for the capitalist class, by all means and with the consultation of international institutions such as the World Health Organization. In other words, it is the commodification of everything in the field of health and turning it into an object of buying and selling, the encouragement of the private health sector by the state, and the transformation of it into trade at the national level, offering support in case of necessity. All the health policies of the fascist regime and the health transformation program have come to life as privatization policies in line with the functions of capital guardianship such as ‘efficiency’, ‘profitability’, ‘competition’, ‘performance’, ‘quality’ together with the commercialization in health. It is also possible to describe the AKP government’s policy in the field of health as the reduction of public expenditures in health services and the withdrawal of the state from service to a more supervisory role. Of course, this supervision was not the supervision of public health, but the supervision of the profits of capital.

On the other hand, with the increase in subcontracting in the health sector, workers with these subcontracts started to work precariously, under difficult conditions and for long hours. In addition, this has led to severe consequences in public health and health services due to the employment of people who do not have the qualifications required for the task. It has become more and more evident that the city hospitals, which are established and operated with the public-private partnership model, are hospitals that are centred on providing private and profit-oriented services, where the focus of the health service provided is determined not by public health, but by the profit to be obtained. On this basis, the health policy of the fascist AKP-MHP government has led to the working class, toilers and the poor people receiving health services only as much as they can afford, their inability to access health services and unavailable appointments, result in exposure to preventable diseases, and the deprivation of their right to a healthy life. On the basis of the inability to access public health services, incentives were organized for private hospitals. In this reality of profit-based competition, the health services, health problems and needs of people were suppressed by capital, those who could afford to pay were given the right to choose, and ‘customer satisfaction’ became a more decisive criteria than medical criteria. People were transformed into consumers rather than individuals with health problems. Those who could not afford to pay could not benefit from quality health services and were gradually left to their own fate. But this was not enough. These health policies and capital’s greed for profit have reached the level of slaughtering even babies, as Marx said ‘there is no murder that cannot be committed, no danger that cannot be taken’.

When the policies and practices became like this, corruption, theft, financial relations at the level of gangsterism, mafiaisation in the field of health accelerated and became widespread. With the ‘Health Transformation Program’, the people’s right to health was handed over to the gangs of the capitalist order. The ‘infant gang’ that slaughters babies without blinking an eye is just one of them. The fact that all gangs, mafias, drug barons, money launderers, in short, those who are involved in all kinds of filth, from the fascist Erdoğan to the highest ranking bureaucrats of the palace regime, have photographs together, showing how the murderous gangs of the capitalist order are leaning on the fascist system. Likewise, the hospital of the former Minister of Health being involved in baby massacres is another picture.

There is no way to protect public health without overthrowing the fascist regime and establishing the union of people’s republics. The fascist regime is the most reckless practitioner of all kinds of rottenness and filth for the profit ambition of capital and the survival of their fascist power, which protects these gangs. They do not hesitate for a moment to massacre even newborn babies, let alone valuing adult human life. Because; Under this fascist regime and capitalist order, it is not possible for workers and toilers, for our poor people to reach a qualified, free and accessible right to health, which is one of the basic human rights. This right can only be achieved in the unity of people’s republics.