What we are tasked with today is the fruition of political opportunities amidst the local elections within the period between March and May. Organizing and expanding political mass action must be our practical response to the fascist enemy. Creating organizational abundance should be the aim of all our political work; responding to fascism in a revolutionary way means seizing the opportunities of mass activity in line with our goal of strengthening our revolutionary capacity and to fill our ranks with new potential.
The political Islamist fascist regime is in the process of implementing policies in order to create favorable conditions for the AKP–MHP bloc prior to the local elections. Erodgan makes use of every advantage and opportunity to cling onto his power. The fascist leader and his followers are threatening the working class and the oppressed under the pretense of ‘if you don’t vote, you won’t get any service’. The regime has been making use of the fascist tools of force and consent during the 2024 local elections. Within this process, state terrorism reaches a new scale, being utilized in the most reckless manner against our people and their revolutionary leaders.
The local elections this year overlap with the months between March and May. Such periods, in which the historical and current political agenda of our revolutionary movement coincide, have always had to become periods attacks from sides of the fascist dictatorship. We have experienced this during previous election periods: the revolutionary movement becomes the target of the regime during election season. The operations against ESP, SKM, Partizan, Popular Front and SMF at the beginning of the election campaign embody this truth.
The political influence of revolutionary-democratic organizations gains a high degree of visibility and body at certain moments. Election periods are particularly important in regards to political revival and revolutionary development, where political work opportunities and tactical attitudes become concrete for most of our labor left movement. Likewise, the period from March until May is a specific timeslot in which the effectiveness of revolutionary politics increases and the revolutionary tradition with its historical background is reflected in practical politics. This phase of struggle, which begins on March 8, progresses uninterruptedly through Newroz and reaches its finale on May 1, characterizing a special period of conflict between the fascist dictatorship and the revolutionary and democratic movement. In this respect, these months depict a historical political period in which revolutionary politics becomes visible in the eyes and attention of our people, and the revolutionary movement reveals its existence with its political power and capacity.
The fascist regime is fully and radically aware of this fact. Relying on its own experiences of class struggle, the fascist regime, precisely because of this reality, relentlessly applies a specialized concept of state terror to the leading centers of resistance, especially revolutionary socialists, in the spring months. State terrorism targeting the revolutionary movement is pursued as a systematic policy in the form of raids, detentions and arbitrary arrests. However, it is necessary to emphasize that these attacks are limited only to election periods, as well as to see and understand the strategy behind them.
The operations that took place on March 1 are another step of the collapse strategy implemented by the fascist chiefdom regime. It has been aiming to politically liquidate the revolutionary movement and ideologically capture it using this strategy, that is constantly being renewed and updated, for the last eight years. This concept of state terrorism has the goal of isolating the revolutionary movement from the working class and the oppressed by imposing a siege of fascist terror, to crush and disperse it organizationally, and to turn it into an instrument and political decoration of establishment politics forcing it into subjugation.
There are several dimensions that are targeted by these liquidationist attacks. The elimination of political struggle in its different renditions stands out as the primary goal of the fascist autocracy. Eradicating the actual legitimate struggle from the streets and making revolutionary politics and militancy invisible as an entity are of critical relevance. The policy of actual legitimate struggle, which went to its extreme limits in the Gezi uprising, remains the greatest fear for the regime.
Suppressing street politics and keeping it within acceptable limits, that is, within order, is the main political goal of the fascists in power, just like formalized elections. As long as these conditions are prevalent, they can maintain their power. Thus, they spare no means to attack revolutionary and anti-fascist forces. Revolutionary socialists are regularly being detained in specialized operations, they are tortured within and outsides the confines of their homes, they are being arrested and isolated in prisons. Beyond that, they try to destroy the structures of revolutionary organizations by way of infiltration and pressuring detainees into confessions. Their aim is to disorganize politics by eliminating organizational continuity in political struggle. For this purpose, an intensified and privatized fascist state terror attack is used recklessly. Fascist terror is used to intimidate more than anything else, to drive people to despair and finally make them surrender. Breaking, ideologically eroding and dissolving the political and revolutionary determination and will of the socialists is the crux of this liquidationist campaign.
This strategy also forces socialists to turn inwards by trapping them in a constant terror of the possibility of detention, to preoccupy themselves with themselves instead of the political struggle, and to isolate them from the working class and the oppressed. It is a form of depoliticization, marginalization and, thus, liquidation. For example, the active engagement of revolutionary socialists with the resistance against isolation attracts the deep hostility of the fascist regime. We can evaluate the latest operation carried out after a rally against prison isolation policies in Istanbul. The fascist enemy is attacking every area and vein where revolutionary politics have the opportunity to become active. The attack on SKM to disrupt the mass activities marching on the first day of March 8th exemplifies this. The attack on ESP, which conducts local election work, serves the same fascist purpose.
Revolutionary socialists gained the revolutionary line of struggle under fire and raised their flag against the enemy. Today, the Erdogan regime is trying to liquidate this line, that revolutionaries walk with determination, with unbridled terrorist attacks. Once again, the political struggle of the revolutionary socialists is being tested in many ways. The fascist system is working hard to intervene in the socialists’ work on the local elections with methods of physical and psychological warfare. From the very beginning, it attempts to block their political and organizational gains and narrow their opportunities. Revolutionary socialists will repel this attack by relying on their experience and knowledge against political massacres and organizational coups.
The opportunities of the local election period for political decentralization and meeting with the working class masses, as well as the opportunities of the months from March until May offer revolutionary socialists all favorable conditions for political and organizational development. The meaning of defeating the fascist enemy’s strategic attack of political destruction and isolation from the masses and responding from a revolutionary perspective is clear. What we are tasked with today is the fruition of political opportunities amidst the local elections within the period between March and May. Organizing and expanding political mass action must be our practical response to the fascist enemy. Creating organizational abundance should be the aim of all our political work; responding to fascism in a revolutionary way means seizing the opportunities of mass activity in line with our goal of strengthening our revolutionary capacity and to fill our ranks with new potential.
Revolutionary socialists have raised the slogan of the same determination upon every assault. They said in unison, ‘Hope is standing tall’ and waved the flag of hope and revolutionism high. They did not submit to oppression and walked the revolutionary path with an unbending will. They responded to every vacant organizational position and position with a call and practice to take one step forward. They walked on after every fight and made it to this day. Their stubbornness, determination, courage on the same line of struggle will once again be the clear political answer to the political Islamist fascist regime.