On the eve of the elections, we continue to exlaim loud and clear: No votes for the fascist Erdogan and his accomplices! No votes for AKP or MHP! No votes for the parties of denialist colonialism! No bourgeois order party in the local elections! Today, a fundamental condition for expanding the struggle of our people to overthrow the colonial fascist power and gain political freedom is the isolation of the bourgeois left, CHP. Its entire history is marked by the mission and practice of backing up the working left to the order. Therefore we insist: no vote for the CHP in the local elections!
The clear political alingments and confrontations that were evident at the beginning of the local elections are becoming more refined in the days leading up to the elections. The policy of backing the bourgeois left, which continues as a deep and structural weakness in some sections of the working left movement, has been unveiled once again during the last period. It seems that some reformist sections of the working left movement in particular have not learned any meaningful lessons from the experiences and political mistakes of the 2023 general elections. The opportunist style of politics repeats itself. These reformist sections of the left bind the freedom-seeking of the laborers and the oppressed and their desire to get rid of the fascist regime to the ballot box and the success of the bourgeois left CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People’s Party, bourgeois Kemalist party). As if conditioned, the act of supporting the bourgeois left is being carried on, shamefully. At this juncture, the fronts are becoming clearer; those of the antifascists and antichauvinists that exist within the working left movement in the process of the local elections, the revolutionary, socialist and Kurdish democratic forces are on the course of developing the third front of the oppressed.
In all the elections held so far, the working left groups that supported the bourgeois–left CHP against the political–Islamist fascist head–of–state Erdoğan and his national–fascist partner Bahçeli, strengthened the politics of order in the simplest sense of the word. This ill–fated political approach, which considers voting for bourgeois opposition candidates in the elections as a cure–all, has made the working class and the oppressed follow their parties, thus manipulating the demands and aspirations of millions of workers and laborers. It likens the bourgeois style of politics that has left voters of the working class and the oppressed, tired of their subjugation, the prohibitions and the terror of the fascist regime and thirsty for freedom. Certain sections of the laboring left movement, which have become supportive of the bourgeois left, ideo-politically disarmed the working and poor people against the political Islamist fascist regime. These opportunists, which aligned themselves with the bourgeois opposition parties, led the working class and the oppressed onto a path of disappointment. It weakened the revolutionary confrontation of the working people and the oppressed against the regime.
Some reformist groups belonging to the laboring left movement, so to speak, who have fallen into the trap of bourgeois liberal logic and become political objects, are not only digging their own graves, but also clouding the consciousness of the working class and the oppressed. New types of impudent and unabashes freshwater leftism, which attempt to demonstrate in the vast waters of bourgeois populism under the patronage of the establishment left CHP, have formed and appear today. The reformist left, which chases its own tail and distracts our people from engaging in a proper antifascist, antichauvinist confrontation, is deepening its involvement in intra-establishment politics. The phase the revolutionary–reformist alignment lived through during the local elections points to a new crossroads in this sense. The new political conditions that will be presented to the entire laboring left movement after the elections, and especially the colonial occupationist war, will be a test to democracy and leftism.
Undoubtedly, what will truly defeat the denialist colonialist regime during the local elections is the recovery of the usurped trustee municipalities in North Kurdistan and their transfer to the people’s administration. The real battle of will for our people will take place and be expressed in the cities of Kurdistan. The regaining of municipalities in spite of the colonialist, fascist regime’s attack of not recognizing the will of the Kurdish people and usurping the municipalities it won through trustees, will unquestionably be concreticized as a demand for a national referendum. Every municipality won in North Kurdistan will put on display the power and will of our people to the colonialist Turkish state.
On the Turkish front, the situation is a completely different one. The success of the bourgeois opposition in the West in defending its positions in the local elections will not create more favorable political conditions, neither for the working class and oppressed masses, nor for the laboring left movement. The regime left, which is but a prop of the Erdogan regime, regaining a significant part of the metropolitan municipalities in the West will not make for a decisive situation. It will not create a brand new political climate that will reverse the process in a significantly, other than the recovery of the defeat and disorganization of the bourgeois opposition. Especially their political agitation to stop the institutionalization of fascism, which liberal leftism believes in as a foolish consolation, will remain the echo of a helpless call. The opportunist and tailist reformist left, which wants to tie the working class and the oppressed to the political damage–control of the bourgeois left with the great tactical rhetoric of making the AKP–fascism lose, will once again be disillusioned.
The fascist AKP-MHP bloc is marching in these elections with the politics of political Islamist, racist and chauvinist purification. It is following the procedure of other elections it has won. By winning the local elections, it aims to stop the dissolution of the fascist mass base and with a renewed electoral victory, as well as to scale up the attack on the working class and the oppressed with economic terror. The CHP, the flagship of the bourgeois opposition, is trying to inflate its sails by instrumentalizing the desire of our peoples to get rid of the fascist Erdogan regime for its own interests.
The antifascist, antichauvinist struggle front of the oppressed stands against the political Islamist fascist regime and both bourgeois political blocs of the order. DEM Party is waging a real local election battle as the focus and pioneer of this front’s united struggle. Those who side with political freedom against the fascist AKP–MHP bloc in North Kurdistan and Turkey are organizing the will of the oppressed and the united front of struggle. The ESP is waging the election war with a perspective aiming for the united general political resistance of the oppressed. With the harmony and enthusiasm of united and independent political activity, it organizes the political will of our people and prepares the struggle for tomorrow.
On the eve of the elections, we continue to exclaim loud and clear: No vote for fascist Erdogan and his accomplices! No vote for AKP and MHP! No vote for the parties of denialist colonialism! No vote for those who usurp our right to speech, press, organization, demonstration and strike! No vote for those who are engaged in the murders of women, those who try to enslave women, those who impose the AKP–style family policy! No vote for the thieves who are responsible for unemployment, cost and poverty! No vote for the rentiers who make our cities uninhabitable!
No bourgeois order party in the local elections! Today, a fundamental condition for expanding the struggle of our people to overthrow the colonial fascist power and gain political freedom is the isolation of the bourgeois left of order, CHP. CHP plays a very decisive role as the left wing of the bourgeois order, which undermines and prevents the development of the united revolutionary struggle and confrontations with the laboring left movement. Its entire history is marked with the mission and practice of backing up the working left to the order. There: not a single vote for the CHP in the local elections! No votes for the CHP, which castrates the freedom demands of the workers and the oppressed and exploits their aspirations, is the crutch of the fascist autocracy, and secretes social chauvinism as the founding ideology for the entire society! No votes for the CHP, which approved the removal of the parliamentary immunity of people’s representatives and negotiated with racist fascists for trustees!
Immediately after the local elections, a new colonialist war of occupation awaits us. The colonialist Erdogan has announced the new occupation war in advance and is making extensive preparations from all four sides. This is a new phase of the war that has been ongoing for over eight years. It is a colonialist war of denial that appears in the form of genocidal, occupational offensives at certain periods, but in total, it is directed against the entire existence of the Kurdish national freedom movement inside and outside, aiming to crush and disperse it, break its will and force it to surrender.
The working class, the oppressed, women and youth are suffering the full economic and political toll of the genocidal war. The impoverishment crisis is deepening with the economic and financial robbery policies implemented unbridled by the fascist palace regime. Colonialist war policies, on the other hand, exacerbate the crisis and restrict freedoms. The fascist regime is organizing attacks with special policies against different beliefs and ways of living. A new enslavement attack is being developed against women with the concept of the AKP–model family. As one of the conditions for the existence of the chief-type family, it is aimed to eliminate the public presence and all visibility of LGBTI+. Different lives and beliefs are targeted and threatened by fascism.
Revolutionary socialists face the task of uniting all resisting forces in a united front of general political resistance against the economic and political terror of the palace regime that will be unleashed on the working people and oppressed after the elections. The finalization of the Kobanê–trials on August 6th of last year, during which long–term prison sentences were imposed, will be sounded as the beginning of the colonial occupation war. Saying No vote for any bourgeois establishment party in the local elections also means preparing for this attack in its entirety and shouldering the struggle. Now is the time to channel and organize the accumulated and growing reactions of workers, the poor, women, youth, Kurds, Alevis, oppressed national communities, oppressed beliefs and oppressed sexual orientations against the regime of isolation, prisons, robbery, trusteeship, colonial occupation, fascist terror and massacres into the route and crucible of the united general political resistance of the oppressed.
*Editorial of the 161st issue of ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated March 29.