The Parliament is a platform for the oppressed, workers, women, the poor, communities demanding freedom of belief, to express their demands for political freedom. Of course, the people’s representatives who back the power of the oppressed and workers, who come to parliament with their approval, will continue to speak out for our people without hesitation. As in other areas of the class struggle, fascism will be fought bitterly in the parliament.
The Constitutional Court issued a second violation decision for TİP (Türkiye İşçi Partisi — Worker’s Party of Turkey) Member of Parliament Can Atalay, whose will to be the representative of the people was usurped by the judiciary guided by the fascist regime. The Constitutional Court declared that the verdict upheld by the Court of Cassation was ‘null and void’. This decision was supposed to be read in the Parliament. However, the AKP-MHP fascist bloc prevented this legal process from taking place. In the General Assembly, the Constitutional Court decision, which means a certificate of people’s representation for Can Atalay and the restoration of a right, was once again usurped with AKP votes.
The fascist bloc in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey was not satisfied with the usurpation of Can Atalay’s rights with a mere vote. The fascists roared as mounted assault troops, marched to the rostrum drooling and spewing hatred. They attacked the people’s representatives of TİP and DEM Party (Kr. Partiya Wekhevî û Demokrasiya Gelan, Tr. Halkların Eşitlik ve Demokrasi Partisi — Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party) , who defended the will and rights of our peoples on the rostrum, with swearing, punches and kicks. Fascist Alpay Özalan, one of the AKP MPs, administrative head of the parliament and Tayyip Erdoğan’s pseudo henchman, attacked TİP MP Ahmet Şık. DEM Party representative Gülistan Kılıç Koçyiğit, who ran to defend Ahmet Şık, was violently attacked by the same fascist mob. Her eyebrow was split with the blow she received. Once again blood was spilled in the Parliament, one of the authorities where the fascist regime takes its bloody decisions. This was not the first time. Just a few weeks ago, Ali Bozan, the people’s representative of DEM Party, was attacked by the same fascist mob. Similar attacks on the political representatives of the working class and the oppressed, our peoples, have happened many times in the Grand National Assembly. It is clear that this is a form of political class struggle and does not require a special explanation. These examples crystallized by the current class struggle in progress
It also describes the mission of parliament historically.
Bourgeois parliaments are everywhere presented as temples of democracy where popular sovereignty rules itself through the representatives of the people. However, parliaments are no temples of democracy, arenas of compromises of the widest tolerance or the legal rule of different classes, as they are described or displayed. Cooperation and compromises take place mainly between different sections of the ruling classes and the bourgeoisie.
Bourgeois parliaments are formed through universal suffrage and elections with the participation of different classes. Therefore, the interests of different classes are brought into this so-called democratic instrument of bourgeois rule as the struggle of various political parties and their representatives. Parliaments inevitably become sites of class struggles. The combination of parliaments, depending on the level of the achievement of political democracy, is essentially aimed at reconciling the different classes with the ruling class and its sections. In this sense, bourgeois parliaments are the political instruments through which bourgeois rule is imposed and built.
Bourgeois parliaments are the vine leaves that hide the bourgeois dictatorship. They are also the political space of bourgeois rule where political exclusion, hegemony and violence are laid bare. It cannot be described as a place where elected deputies from different social classes, who are authorized to represent them politically, solve problems through discussion and consensus. Parliaments are a political space where class domination is revealed and the class war continues in all its nakedness. This space is a revolutionary rostrum where the oppressed put forward their political demands and programs. For the revolutionary-democratic people’s parties and representatives of the working class and the oppressed, the class struggle continues and must continue in parliament as it does on the streets.
We must remember repeatedly that fascism is a form of state organization. One of the most fundamental pillars of the political regime of the fascist state is the fascist parliament. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey is also an instrument of violence due to this clear function and mission. Since its establishment, the TBMM has been a site of all ruling class violence against our rights. It has functioned as an effective institution of the established order. The war decisions, death sentences, fascist laws and bans against the working class and the oppressed taken in the Grand National Assembly of Turkey clearly show the real function of the it.
The waiver of parliamentary immunity is empty talk. The systematic judicial clamping of the people’s representatives of the oppressed for their speeches in and out of the parliament, the lifting of their immunity and imprisonment draws the limits of political freedom of the fascist parliament. The closure of parties representing the working class and the oppressed is a more comprehensive form of political liquidation. The history of the Parliament is the history of party closures and closing the parliament to the popular representatives of the oppressed. The fascist attacks and the practice of violence inside the parliament are only one dimension of this policy of denying freedom.
The parliament of the collaborationist Turkish bourgeoisie is a space where political freedom has been limited since its foundation. Let alone the fact of opening the parliament to the representatives of the working class and the oppressed, the bourgeoisie has limited this freedom even to its own class divisions, parties and representatives. The bourgeois parties that have been shut down since the bourgeois liberal Free Party until today document the fact that the bourgeoisie does not recognize political freedom even for its own class divisions. The parties of the working class and the oppressed have been excluded from the parliament with complete class hostility. Through various coups and conspiracies, the representatives of the oppressed were constantly purged from the parliament. The fascist parliamentary coup d’état and liquidation movement that followed the HDP’s June 7 election victory is evidence enough to explain this phenomenon.
The actions of AKP-MHP deputies to silence the people’s representatives in parliament in various ways constitute a systematic and organized fascist practice. The violence in parliament is not detached and separate from the violence of fascism on the streets. It’s the approach of the fascists to the representatives of the laboring leftist movement in the parliament since the attempted lynching of TİP deputy Çetin Altan in 1969.
Guarding the fascist order!
The practice of the people’s representatives in the parliament cannot be judged only by their actions in it. The militant attitudes and examples that emerged very strongly in the practice of the DEP, HADEP, HDP and the parties that followed, combined with the popular movements on the streets, show us the way to walk. Today, as in the past, our people’s representatives are unhesitatingly asserting themselves in popular resistances. They are ours. They fight relentlessly against fascism. Here is Leyla Zana. With her Kurdish shout from the rostrum of the Grand National Assembly of Turkey, she raises the flag of Kurdish identity against denialism. Orhan Doğan engraves the just struggle of the Kurdish nation in history with an unyielding defiance. Here is Figen Yüksekdağ. She walks boldly against bullets and bombs in self-government resistances; she embroidered the practice of people’s representation from the barricades to the dungeon bastions, from the rostrum of the parliament to the rostrum of the defense of the peoples in the Kobanê conspiracy case. As the ‘street child of politics’, she offers us lessons in the practice of political leadership. Of course, we do not forget the dignified and resilient marches of the Kurdish people’s representatives, who bleached the honor of all the oppressed, who crossed the dungeons as a dusty road and took up the struggle again. Here are Sebahat, Gültan, Selahattin and other people’s representatives who did not bow down… They all show us the tradition and strength to continue the struggle in the fascist parliament.
The Parliament is a space and a platform for the oppressed, workers, women, the poor, communities demanding freedom of belief, to express their demands for political freedom. Of course, the people’s representatives who back the power of the oppressed and workers, who come to parliament with their approval, will continue to speak out for our people without hesitation. As in other areas of the class war, fascism will be fought bitterly in the parliament. The positions won by our people with great resistance and costs will be defended as the positions of the struggle to overthrow the fascist regime and will be used in the most creative revolutionary ways. In this aspect, the struggle to be waged in parliament, as one of the political centers of the fascist regime, will be based on the accumulations of the oppressed and the Kurdish people in all these areas. As in other areas of struggle against fascism, the unrelenting struggle against fascism must be continued and enlarged in the parliament.
*Editorial article of the 181st issue of the Voice of the Working Class and the Oppressed, ATILIM newspaper, dated 23 August.