Revolutionary socialists will direct their political practice by relying on the fact that the DEM Party (successor of the HDP [Halkların Demokratik Partisi/Partiya Demokratîk a Gelan; Democratic People’s Party], a left-wing pro-Kurdish party in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan)is the largest front dedicated to the united struggle of the oppressed. The DEM Party’s participation in elections with its own candidates wherever it is organized is a tremendous opportunity for the elimination of the liquidationist blockade and for it to become active as the political center of the third front. The proper implementation of this tactical plan will serve as the strongest response to the situation we are currently facing.
With the establishment of the Erdoğan fascist regime, the structure and rules of politics in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan have changed radically. Its emergence marks the beginning of a new bourgeois political mechanism is being built. The fascist chiefdom regime continues to institutionalize new instruments suitable for its own political architecture. Every general and local election is a stage of this process and a step towards the establishment of the new political order. The fascist regime, which aims to secure its rule on a basis of the two blocs of collaborative Turkish ruling classes, is trying to drive the organized political fronts of the oppressed out of this new field of conventional politics. It is using all its tools and means to liquidate the field of Kurdish democratic politics. Part of this new fascist political mechanism, which is not yet fully established, is the “policy” of joining or subsiding with one of the two bourgeois blocs. Many parties representing the oppressed are being coerced and pressured into obeying the ways of the fascists. This means a clear ideo-political concept of liquidation and a strategy for bourgeois hegemony is being realized from two branches.
We outline this phenomenon in simple terms as follows: The political Islamist fascist dictatorship views the existence of the oppressed as a third front and their ability to produce independent politics as the main threat to the survival of the fascist order. With its new political mechanism, it aims to liquidate the revolutionary-democratic politics of the oppressed, which pose a threat to the order, from below. The dissolution of the third front politics of the oppressed, which was initiated after the HDP’s June 7 election victory, continues until today.
The lifting of the immunity of HDP politicians and their expulsion from the parliament in 2016, their subsequent arrest and imprisonment, was the first attack of this ideological-political liquidationist strategy. Today, the removal of Can Atalay’s, the elected public representative of TİP (Türkiye Isci Partisi; Worker’s Party of Turkey), mandate by the fascist palace regime is only the latest incident of the uninterrupted liquidation attacks and the message it echoes is clear. The antifascist political will and organized existence of our people continues to be viewed as a problem of (non-)existence by the fascist regime and the established order. The unbridled attacks to liquidate the third front of the oppressed through systematic fascist terror in the Parliament, in the municipalities in Kurdistan and from other political positions demonstrate this and prove it to be true.
General and local elections, on the other hand, tied to the axis of the two ruling class blocs, enable the practicalization of this liquidationist concept in a very original way. Since the 2019 local elections, the third front of the oppressed and the labor left movement as a whole have been struggling with the liquidationist blockade of this new political mechanism. The duo conducts politics under the crossfire of the bourgeois bloc’s pressure for ideo-political hegemony. At every general and local election, these conditions of political struggle arise again against our labor left movement. This situation affects the political position of the entire labor left movement at one level or another.
The concept and point of view of parliamentary politics, especially squeezed into bourgeois election processes and periods, distorts the perspective of a consistent and revolutionary anti-fascist struggle of our labor left movement. The perspective of eliminating fascism through parliamentarism prevents the main groups of our labor left movement from the path of consistent and militant struggle. It cripples our labor left movement politically.
The political outcome of the last four total election periods shows us that the laboring left movement was unable to deter this new political mechanism and break the liquidationist blockade imposed on it. Moreover, it shows that our labor left movement is backed up by the bourgeois order opposition bloc in various ways. All political analysis and data point to the drift of the third front of the oppressed and the laboring left movement towards political defrayal. Seeking help from and alliances with the bourgeois opposition appear as a form of political liquidation at the beginning of the 2024 local elections. It shows that the necessary political lessons have not been drawn sufficiently from the results of the 2023 general elections, which were lost in every respect. All parliamentary and intra-establishment arguments for supporting the bourgeois opposition bloc in the 2023 general elections are being put forward by various groups belonging to the laboring left movement, this time adapted to the 2024 local elections. At a time when the local election period begins, the same bourgeois political fair is being established again.
Considering this, it is especially important to unveil the antics of the bourgeoisie proclaiming fair and democratic politics. It is necessary to grasp the facts pertaining the local elections, the conditions which are determined by the political Islamist fascist regime, and to present these to the oppressed. The regime continues to impose economic and political terror on our people. The poverty crisis is worsening. Millions are being tested by hunger. The colonialist war and attacks continue with utmost brutality. The grip of the liquidationist siege is tightening. Erdoğan knows no rules, no laws. He uses fascist terrorism to violate the will of our people. He can forcibly take away the powers of the people’s elected representatives. On this pretext, the 2024 local elections have the potential to become a special moment of the antifascist political struggle. Recognizing the election process as a subject of political struggle on the basis of the anti-fascist revolutionary needs of our people and using it a stepping stone for the struggle of the oppressed against the fascist regime is what needs to be put on the agenda.
Under these given conditions, revolutionary socialists should understand the 2024 local elections as a new process of our political struggle with multifaceted tasks. There will be many alliances, unions, collaborations, etc. in the 2024 local elections. The studies will be discussed within the framework of ideological-political basic principles and attitudes. As with the local elections in 2019 and the general elections last May, we must wage an ideological and political struggle against populist and unprincipled approaches that are based solely on opposition to Erdoğan and AKP-MHP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; Justice and Development Party, political Islamist ruling party — Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi; Nationalist Movement Party, far-right nationalist party in the ruling coalition) inand thus back up the oppressed to the capitalist order. We must keep criticizing the support given to the bourgeois opposition by the laboring left, who are in turn denying their own existence by doing so. Revolutionary socialists will continue to assert their tactic of not voting for CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi; Republican People’s Party; Kemalist party, main opposition in Turkey) candidates in any metropolitan municipality, and will follow the call not to vote for bourgeois presidential candidates. In this same vein, political exposure and revolutionary propaganda are obligations.
Revolutionary socialists will direct their political practice by relying on the fact that the DEM Party is the largest front dedicated to the united struggle of the oppressed. The DEM Party’s participation in elections with its own candidates wherever it is organized is a tremendous opportunity for the elimination of the liquidationist blockade and for it to become active as the political center of the third front. The proper implementation of this tactical plan will serve as the strongest response to the situation we are currently facing.
In this context, revolutionary socialists will actively participate in the work of every city, every district where the DEM Party enters the elections and organize the united struggle locally . At the same time, it will examine the possibilities of political and organizational decentralization and evaluate them in the most qualified way.
The primaries held in Kurdistan are an important and distinctive entry and political preparatory action for these local elections. Despite some obstacles standing in the way, the primary elections are meaningful and functional in terms of the political subjectification of the oppressed. This popular initiative and subjectification will be a ground for unification and cohesion in the expansion of the struggle against fascist colonialism. Revolutionary socialists will assert themselves as an active subject in the struggle to regain and protect the municipalities seized by trustee attacks. It will shoulder the electoral activity with full political mobilization and with the energy and agility that raises the socialist patriotic line as a flag against colonialism.
Revolutionary socialists will not only understand the development and growth of the third front of workers, laborers, women, youth and oppressed peoples, and the struggle against fascism, colonialism and patriarchy as their fundamental task, but will also work tirelessly on implementing it. In this context, it will discuss the alliance requests of various parties of the laboring left movement within the framework of its principles and in accordance with the revolutionary-democratic needs of the antifascist struggle. It will carefully monitor the revolutionary and consistent democratic candidates of the movement, discuss them on the basis of local alliance and revolutionary solidarity, and relate them to the perspective of the local gains of the anti-fascist struggle. The united anti-fascist struggle will act with the measures of political struggle that will compile and evaluate the grounds and possibilities. It will not engage in the practice of general support for candidates on the left. It will not support any candidate proposal or alliance formation with a social chauvinist character.
Revolutionary socialists will conduct local election campaigns in the light of anti-fascist, anti-capitalist, anti-colonialist and gender libertarian principles and will expose crimes against nature and cities alike. It will fight against the transformation of our cities into capital’s rent and profit gates, with the perspective of establishing participatory, climate-friendly, barrier-free cities for the benefit of the oppressed.
*Editorial of the 153rd issue of ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated February 2.