TURKEY: Change will not be achieved through elections, but through the organised struggle of the people!

Hereby we publish an unofficial translation of the article published in Yeni Demokrasi.

The year 2024 began with the dynamics of 2023. The increases in the minimum wage, pensioners’ and civil servants’ salaries, not being improved, remained at a level that led to these groups being dragged further into poverty. We are dealing with increases that are far below the annual inflation rate of 64.77 per cent according to TÜİK and 127 per cent according to ENAG. The working classes are predicted to be impoverished by 40 per cent more by 2024. There is an economic aggression that steals and usurps the minimum standard of living, and this theft and robbery has shown itself with the increases in bridge and motorway tolls, petrol and diesel, road tax, cigarettes and alcohol and basic foodstuffs at the beginning of the new year. The economic crisis of the imperialist system and its spreading economic crisis to all its spheres is being tried to be overcome with a mechanism that does not affect the profit rates and the insatiable capital accumulation of the monopolistic finance capital and the ruling classes in the semi-colonial and semi-feudal countries. This inevitably leads to an usurpation of the economic rights of the labouring classes and a shifting of the costs onto the shoulders of the working classes. The calculation is that the bloody knife has reached the bones of the labouring classes. More deprivation, a poorer life, a more restricted social life, the exhaustion of hope for the future and, of course, the accumulation of stronger anger and reaction against the given situation.

The fascist dictatorship is very determined, consistent and persistent in passing on the economic crisis to the working population. The continuation of political aggression and ideological hegemony, without reducing the dose, testifies to this determination and tenacity. In order to maintain their ideological hegemony, the ruling classes must above all reinforce the belief that nothing will change. This fundamental approach is based on making all its political orientations, its means, its management of the process, its ideas formed on this axis, effective at different levels and in different forms. The working classes, the oppressed Kurdish nation and various nationalities and struggling forces will be oppressed by this approach. The violent mechanism of fascism is constantly set in motion in the most ruthless way against the search for rights, in the demands for political freedom, in every development that is the object of struggle. Mechanisms such as police and gendarmerie repression, the threat to justice under the guise of “terrorism”, the tyranny of the gang mafia, the exploitation of labour through social violence apparatuses such as sects and assemblies are reinforced. In this way, attempts are made to intimidate the working class and all other oppressed groups, to make them resign themselves to what is, and to force them to the limits of the system.

At the beginning of 2024, local elections are one of the things whose boundaries are set and to which we want to be condemned. Just as the parliamentary and presidential elections in 2023 polarised the masses, the local elections will purify them within the order. The year 2023 has become a year that reinforces the rapprochement between the two fascist cliques and puts all the people’s strength, desire and expectation for change on the outcome of this race between the fascist cliques. The anger and reaction of the masses, the desire and expectation for change became the material of the election campaign. The awareness of the need for an organised movement and an organised struggle, this constitutive quality to bring about change, has almost been lost in the electoral purge. The fact that all the fighting forces have become the object of this game set up by the ruling classes should be seen as a result of the weakening of the consciousness, necessities and ambitions of the people’s liberation struggle. Naturally, this picture leads to an increase in disorganisation, despair and the belief that there will be no change in the line of liberation of the masses through independent action.

Now the same story, the same game and the same political environment is being organised with the local elections in March. The fascist dictatorship is organising the municipal elections in March 2024 as an opportunity to distract the masses of the people from their problems and contradictions, to grasp the causes of poverty and misery and, in turn, to basically strengthen the ranks around the two fascist cliques, deepening their disorganisation and disorder. The organised and struggling popular masses, on the other hand, seem to have geared their discussions, their political approaches and their attitudes towards taking up the “winds of change with elections” in 2024 just as they did in 2023. It is obvious that the fascist dictatorship is fast becoming the object of the game it is developing and the process it is directing. After the alliance talks, the candidate line-up and the political orientation, they are convinced that the opportunities for change will be on the agenda in the 2024 local elections. They see the local elections with all their political and organisational forces, their intellectual concentration, their spiritual imprint as the most important opportunity to win in 2024, to develop the struggle and to involve the people in the class struggle. In this context, not only the fascist dictatorship uses the 2024 local elections as an instrument to consolidate its reactionary ideological hegemony, but also the reformist-liquidationist line resorts to this wind that condemns the people to the system. It is obvious that the liquidationist-reformist current reduces the breaking of the people’s belief that “nothing will change” to developments within the system and focuses on these developments. A political line that ties the victory of 2024 to this is dominant. It is a fact that the forces calling for a revolution also carry the blood of this current of liquidation and reform.

The Marxist-Leninist-Maoists will undoubtedly not remain indifferent to the political sensitivity created by the elections. But they will meet this political sensitivity with a tactical approach by focusing on the problems of the revolution, the basic tasks of the revolution and the line of independent action and organisation of the masses. It will never be an electoral issue to consolidate the masses’ disbelief in change. Communists will approach this process with the conviction that the weak can only defeat the strong and seemingly invincible with an organised and creative orientation. Despite all the oppression, control and unequal power relations, the power of change created by the Palestinian resistance with the Al Aqsa Flood on 7 October will be a source of inspiration. It will return to the movement that showed in Hakurk and Zap the dynamism of the guerrilla’s power of change that was thought impossible in the harsh conditions of winter against fascism that thought itself untouchable and invincible, claiming to rule everything “it even knows the size of the shoe you use”.

We will follow in the footsteps of our “fallen comrades-in-arms” who became immortal for the revolution and communism and whom we deployed in the last week of January against this liquidationist, conciliatory, constitutional and electoral tendency to change. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of Comrade Lenin, the great master of communism, who in theory and practice mapped out the path to the full emancipation of the working class and the people, the oppressed nations, communists will approach the process with full commitment to the path he mapped out. On the occasion of the 100th anniversary of the death of the great master, who drew the line that the organised struggle of the people and the preservation of its independent line are crucial, and that the struggle on this basis will destroy all pessimism, all frustration, all belief in the order that settles for less and all belief in immutability, the need for further understanding is emphasised. To commemorate Comrade Lenin means to be more concerned with the problems of the revolution, the needs of the revolution and the possibilities of the revolution. The Week of the Fallen of the Struggle of the Party and the Revolution, called by the Party of the Proletariat for the last week of January, should be understood as highlighting the claim of those who have become immortal for the revolution, as highlighting the claim of those who have become immortal for the revolution, as highlighting the claim to transform the pent-up anger and hatred of the people into an organised force and into a force for political power. The responsibility to stand more courageously against the ideological siege and the currents of the bourgeoisie of all colors and types lies on the shoulders of the communists. We must concentrate on turning the disorganised people into an organised force. The anger of the people, the deep contradictions they are experiencing, are the real agenda and the real possibility of struggle. Let us be determined and ready to make sacrifices so that the working class and the whole people do not turn their faces to false hopes and false changes, but to the search for revolution by those who have been immortalised for the revolution.