Right now, the struggle for justice, intensified by the crimes committed by the fascist regime against our people, is expanding its political field into news areas. The collaborative Turkish bourgeois state and capitalist order produce and impose injustice from top to bottom. This order, based on inequality and injustice, commits new crimes over and over, deepening this imbalance. Despite carrying Justice in its name, the fascist AKP government, is spiraling into a crisis over its unjust ways.
The uprisings of Gezi and Kobanê have been engraved in the history of the struggle for our rights. Both great rebellions are examples of the united political resistance of our people. Gezi began as an uprising of urban classes in every respect and took place as a popular uprising that shook Turkey and North Kurdistan politically, covering its entire geography. The Gezi/June uprising was a popular uprising that spread in waves from west to east. Kobanê, on the other hand, emerged as a serhildan that spread from east to west and shook the entire region.
The political resistance of Gezi united Kurds, Alevis, youth, women, workers, peasants and all the oppressed in an rebellion of honor and freedom against fascist tyranny. The Kobanê serhildan united for our rights against the genocidal aggression of Daesh fascism and the fascist colonial regime that supports it, its collaborator, the AKP. It united the Turkish and Kurdish peoples in a common struggle against Daesh. The Kobanê serhildan organized the united general political resistance for our rights. As a widespread and militant mass uprising of hundreds of thousands, it foiled the colonial fascist regime’s attempt to strangle the Rojava revolution with Daesh.
Although the two uprisings had different starting points, they developed in the character and form of popular political resistance against the fascist state. Both raised open political objection against Tayyip Erdoğan’s despotism and dictatorship. It shook the dictator politically and weakened his social legitimacy. It is for this reason that Erdogan’s approach towards the Gezi uprising and the Kobanê serhildan turned into a politics of full-fledged tyranny, recklessness and revenge.
The political Islamist fascist autocracy applied the same concept of fascist attack and oppression in the Kobanê conspiracy case as in the Gezi trials. By imposing heavy penalties, it attempts to intimidate the working class and the oppressed not to engage in general political resistance against the regime. This is a policy of subjugation and crushing the people’s will. It draws limits on behalf of the fascist order, propagating to all working class and oppressed people, our people, to stay away from the streets while fighting for their economic, political and social demands. Fascist head-of-state Erdoğan, with the judicial decisions he is backing, sends a message to all the oppressed and their pioneers, to not resort to the path of actual legitimate struggle. Moreso, he says, don’t even think about trying to rebel. He implements a policy of intimidation with the heaviest penalties.
We know that the fascist dictator was shaken by two great rebellions of our people. Erdoğan feared losing power during Gezi. He faced a clear political defeat in the battle to defend Kobanê between October 6–8. As his throne was shaking, he found a way to uphold his power by implementing and strengthening autocratic rule and state terror. Suppressing the broad political resistance of the working class and the oppressed was the most basic condition needed to maintain his fascist power.
The 11th anniversary of the Gezi rebellion overlapped with the sentences of the Kobanê conspiracy case. As the trial’s outcome has shown, the fight for justice is one of the most pressing political issue at this moment. The struggle and demands around the Kobanê trials are adding to those of Gezi. Thus, the growing demand for justice stands out as the common denominator and unifying link of the struggle for political freedom.
The medium-term program implemented by Erdogan’s government will is filled with measures of economic and political terror directed at the working class and the oppressed. The collaborative capital order does not refrain, in any case, from using all tools of repression to inflict bitterness on the proletariat and our rigths. As workers and the oppressed overall are being pushed deeper into the vortex of poverty, the gap between rich and poor and subsequent polarization will be reflected in the political class struggle as a distribution crisis and a striking injustice in the same sense. Under the program, which will further enlarge the ongoing impoverishment crisis, misery and mass hunger will become a reality for workers.
Our labor left movement can raise the flag of the working class and the oppressed for justice against all injustice. Our labor left movement and our people, who ignited the Gezi uprising and the Kobanê serhildan in their united struggle, once again have the power to develop political and general resistance. It is possible to create the new Gezi and Kobanê uprisings and to repel and defeat the economic and political terrorist aggression of the fascist regime.
The opportunities for struggle are increasing, today, more than before. The conditions are ripening and becoming conducive for political class struggle. This is obvious. The anger accumulated in the ranks of the working class and the oppressed flows into areas and actions by flagging certain economic and political demands. The tendency to engage in struggle is reflected in the streets and squares. From the Van serhildan to the May 1 clashes, from protest marches against the Kobanê case to mass demonstrations of education workers, to the angry actions of retirees, unassigned teachers, workers and women, the streets have come alive. Social anger, honed in its sheath, turns to political action. The bourgeois opposition, it seems, plays a role in dampening this accumulated and sharpened social anger.
Right now, the struggle for justice, intensified by the crimes committed by the fascist regime against our people, is expanding its political field into news areas. The collaborative Turkish bourgeois state and capitalist order produce and impose injustice from top to bottom. This order, based on inequality and injustice, commits new crimes over and over, deepening this imbalance. Despite carrying Justice in its name, the fascist AKP government, is spiraling into a crisis over its unjust ways. This is the dominant theme sharpening the contradiction between state and people. Different social dynamics come to the stage of political struggle to demand justice.
Here is the uneding cry for justice raised by the Saturday Mothers in Galatasaray in their 1000th week. Here is the socialist youth’s never-ending struggle for “Justice for Suruç, justice for all” and their determination to pave the way. Here is the struggle for freedom and justice embodied in the demand for freedom for the May Day prisoners, freedom to protest on Taksim square, freedom for Labor Day. Here is the fight for justice in case of masscres on workers, from Soma to İliç. Here, the same demand echoes from the Çorlu train massacres to the incessant massacres on women. We want justice! Injustice is rolling over us like an avalanche. The phenomenon of justice is a crucial issue of struggle and a critical link common to millions of the most oppressed and exploited.
Today, the struggle for justice fills a critical position in advancing the united struggle towards a broad political resistance. By capturing the chain of politics and the link of justice, we can move forward with revolutionary gains on a route of united struggle. Currently, united struggle and solidarity are arising in the concrete reaction to the May 1 prisoners, other prisoners, and the Kobanê trial. Our labor left movement is showing greater ability to struggle in unity. At this very moment,it is necessary to remember the remember the united struggle of the Gezi uprising, revivive its legacy and line of united struggle and walk forward on the path opened by Gezi and Kobanê. Gezi and Kobanê uprising are the streets, marching based on the demands of the people. It is to develop the de facto legitimate struggle in a free and creative way, to impose and win the demands for political freedom and justice on the fascist regime. It is to be a catalyst for the mass movement and prepare revolts. It is pioneering agility and unifying labor and flexibility.
Our labor left movement must hold on tightly to their struggle for justice as a common ground and ring of struggle in the political fight. From Soma to the Çorlu train massacre, from İliç to the Ankara Train Station massacre, from Suruç to the Saturday Mothers and all other current struggles for justice, it must take part in a pioneering position and responsibility. It must be able to organize a strong united stance shouldering the tasks of the struggle for justice and present a working left option to the working class and oppressed peoples. The most meaningful response to the current call of the Gezi uprising is to insist on Gezi’s path of united struggle and prepare to create new Gezi.
*Editorial of the 169th issue of ATILIM newspaper, Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, dated May 31.