Electoral committees and coordinations should aim to ensure the direction and management of our political work in the most effective way and organize the process with a revolutionary will to achieve results. In order to run an effective political campaign, they should be positioned around the candidates, active in the areas that they are based in and should never refrain from taking part in DEM Parti electoral organizations. Our basic motto should be to follow the path of mobilizing all our forces and network of relations for united political work and struggle
ESP (Ezilenlerin Sosyalist Partisi/Partiya Sosyalîst a Bindestan— Socialist Party of the Oppressed) appointed its tactical policy for March 31, 2024 local elections in January. This policy was shaped on the basis of partaking in local elections in Turkey and North Kurdistan as part of the united democratic party, DEM Parti. To participate in the elections with ESP candidates under the roof of the of the united DEM Parti participating in the elections with its own candidates, to actively participate in activities in every metropolis, city, district, town and village, to call for a boycott of any bourgeois party or presidential candidate, and not to accept any candidates with a social chauvinist tendencies. Withholding support for the proposal and the formation of the alliance were the cornerstones of this tactical policy.
It is very important that, as a result of the tactical policy debate and internal struggle within the DEM Parti, the decision was made to enter the elections with its own candidates in politically decisive metropolitan cities such as Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Adana. In addition, it is a decisive step in the confrontation of political forces and in gaining local positions of power. Despite the fact that the DEM Party’s election table was fragmented concerning Turkish cities and the urban reconciliation policy resulted in partial local compromises with the CHP, it did not commit the same mistakes as during the 2019 local elections. They adopted a political line that strengthened the third front. It prevented the laboring left movement from backing up to the CHP as a bloc and clarified its position as a front and focus of the united struggle.
ESP identified electoral districts and started their work according to their organizational development goals, either centrally or in the concrete local election plans determined by field organizations. During the remaining three weeks, election activities will progress, including the agenda of March. At this point today, the 2024 local election campaigns continue with all their intensity and increasing tempo as of the period after February 20. ESP are in the process of revolutionary election work order, handling it alongside the original agendas for the March-May period. Revolutionary political work is organized in line with concrete planning and goals.
Revolutionary socialists are an active subject and force in the political work whose dynamics, political framework and goals are determined by our united party, the DEM Parti. At this moment when alliances are formed and clarified, and the laboring left movement is fully positioned in the field of political struggle and work, one of our most important and unnegligible duties is to build the third front line within mass work. The political and organizational dimensions of this task must be organized as an effective, creative and productive work. Our political and organizational goals must be clear for each revolutionary field of work. The bourgeois parties, one by one, should be exposed to the masses under the slogan “No votes for bourgeois parties”, and the reformist groups of the working left, backed up by the social-chauvinist and order-obeying left, should be subjected to revolutionary criticism and exposure. On the other hand, concrete organizational goals should be determined in an action plan. The goals of each of our field organizations, committees and working groups must be clear. A step-by-step style of work must be organized that firmly holds the guiding threads of these goals and weaves the revolutionary work richly and creatively, motif by motif.
Election campaigns should be considered mobilization for political organization. Expanding various forms of election organizations, committees and working groups established for revolutionary work with the participation of workers, developing the political initiative of our people also means building a revolutionary mass movement and line. Organizing political work together with the masses will ensure socialists’ direct integration with the working classes, as well as the organizational development and growth of the vanguard by gaining new forces. The main organizational goal and critical link of our political tactics should be considered and implemented from here. In this context, localization and massification are the political and organizational perspectives of local election tactics. Without losing this perspective for a moment, the focus should be on concretely expanding the organizational development capacity of the vanguard.
In the cities where they declared the local election work in form of a concrete plan, socialists organize the work within election committees. The opportunities for localization and on-site work offered by local elections should be seized properly and used effectively. It must be ensured that the mass of the party, with which we are more actively engaged on the occasion of the elections, is brought into a single body around the election committees. Socialists’ mobilization of all their forces, which are largely scattered, and even a significant part of which remain idle due to internal disorganization, to political and organizational work within a tight and united party order, will create the conditions for proper organization. During the process of local elections, the forces on different fronts, our socialist institutions and individual comrades in some areas must all be active and complementary subjects of this political mobilization work, including their own specifications.
Electoral committees and coordinations should aim to ensure the direction and management of our political work in the most effective way and organize the process with a revolutionary will to achieve results. In order to run an effective political campaign, they should be positioned around the candidates, active in the areas that they are based in and should never refrain from taking part in DEM Parti electoral organizations. Our basic motto should be to follow the path of mobilizing all our forces and network of relations for united political work and struggle. In line with the motto “Work for all, duty for all”, local electoral organizations should be used in the most effective way. All our masses and public relations that fall within the political circle of election work must be organized to undertake a wide range of jobs and tasks such as provincial–district election commission member, election office worker, candidate volunteers, observer, ballot box committee member, school officer, neighborhood working group member, women-youth commission worker, security officer, logistician etc.
The political influence of the ESP among the working left and progressive masses is considerable. It is possible and at the same time essential to multiply its political impact. With a high degree of discipline and labor in work, comradeship in the trenches, and clarity in our understanding of united struggle, this influence must be magnified and turned into a field of attraction. Complementing the mass relations captured in the revolutionary election campaign with one-to-one organization, ensuring a real organizational relationship and securing it should be considered as the most critical measure of success. Local election work offers a tremendous ground and opportunity to overcome the cage of organizing work, the superficiality in building relationships and the narrowness in the consciousness of legitimacy. Limiting electoral work to voting for a candidate is a practice of reformists and the establishment. Socialists should call on every worker, youth and woman to vote as well as to organize in revolutionary ranks. In parallel with the propaganda of the idea that the established order will not change with positional gains, the revolutionary program and the necessity of organizing in revolutionary parties for liberation should be explained. In the period of local elections, organizing the revolutionary, antifascist tendency among the progressive masses is one of the basic links to be kept.
It is very important to develop an assertive and effective political campaign practice by specifically surrounding our Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality co-mayor candidates with party forces. This is also a historical opportunity and a moment of revolutionary realization of possibility. The Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality election, which is also a testing point for the revolutionary vanguard, must be handled in a qualified practical manner appropriate to the specific revolutionary potential of the socialists. The process should be organized with the aim of a claim and work performance equivalent to the historical and political mission undertaken by the socialists in Istanbul. The special and central organization of contacts and meetings with different areas–such as ecological organizations, workers, labor organizations, intellectuals and artists, Alevi organizations, youth– is important in terms of the practice of popularization and fusion with different sections of the oppressed. In this regard, revolutionary socialists should flag an effective process labor and militancy by relying on the strong experiences of the united struggle style and understanding.
Carrying out organizing work among women, localization and massification are among the primary goals of our policy. The work to be carried out around women candidates should be taken into special consideration. Meeting the masses of working and young women is one of the concrete organizational goals of this process. It should be possible to meet the masses of working and young women, to establish new relationships and to develop them in a permanently, both through mixed work and the original work of our women’s division.
Political influence and propagating efforts that put forward our understanding of cities and populist municipalism and conveys it to our working people through verbal, written and visual means should be carried out intensively and widely. Along with DEM Party election materials, ESP’s own agit–prop materials should also be widely used. The possibilities and opportunities for political propaganda offered by election periods must be utilized in the most creative and competent manner. Widespread distribution of the socialist press in the regions designated for election work must be organized.
*Editorial of the 158th issue of ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated 08 March.