Local elections in Turkey: No ”victory of democracy”
Featured image: The results for the local elections in Turkey have been published. Source: Duvar English
The local elections reached their culmination in Turkey. According to official numbers, which can be seen as highly disputable due to widespread and blatant electoral fraud (which to some degree occurs in all bourgeois elections in one way or another) occurring, the turnout was 78,55%. Of this over 2,000,000 were invalid votes: 46,046,101 valid votes were cast. The total number of people allowed to vote was 61,430,934. Therefore, there are around fifteen million who did not vote or cast an invalid vote, rejecting the electoral farce.
The international bourgeois press is calling the result a victory for the so-called ”opposition” forces. The re-elected mayor of Istanbul Ekrem Imamoğlu of the CHP (Republican People’s Party) even proclaimed that ”the period of one-man rule” is over and that the elections are sending a message to the world that the decline of ”democracy” has stopped in Turkey.
The Union of Migrant Workers in Europe (AGEB) rejects this in their statement, and points out the attacks on the DEM Party. As we reported earlier, the election circus did not even fulfill the bourgeois ideals of ”free” elections with blatant violations of the electoral laws occurring, and laws were also used against rivals: in Van, a candidate of the DEM Party was elected mayor with 55% of the votes and a big margin, but he was deemed ineligible to be elected because his electoral rights had been taken away two days before the elections. Also armed clashes between different sections broke out. An electoral official and a member of the DEM Party was killed by AKP (Justice and Development Party) supporters in Ağaçlıdere village of Diyarbakır. In addition, one mukhtar (the headman of the village) candidate was killed after a fight broke out in Konacık village of Siirt.
In February it was said in a declaration published by Yeni Demokrasi: “Those who own the means of production also govern the State, so “democracy” is shaped as the politics under the control of this administration. For this very reason, the will of the people is not realized even in the most advanced bourgeois democracies. “Democracy” practices implemented to reveal and realize the will of the people are ultimately just “democracy games” carried out under the control of the bourgeoisie. This reality is much more clear in Turkey’s conditions. Because in Turkey, the rights of all segments of the population, especially the working class, are far behind the level reached in bourgeois democracies.”
AGEB writes in their statement that the results of the elections do not represent a serious shaking of balance among the ruling classes. Looking at the national level, CHP gained 37,8% of the votes, and AKP 35,5%. These two Parties had a big margin compared to the others, who all respectively gained 5-6% of the votes, similarly to the local elections of 2019. Now CHP won with a narrow lead, whereas in the local elections of 2019 AKP gained 42,5% of the votes and CHP 29,6%. But already in 2019, AKP lost many seats to the CHP, and now it lost even more. The celebration of ”victory of democracy” is nothing more than part of the “democracy feast” meant to reproduce the illusion of choice and change through elections – as Yeni Demokrasi wrote, there is no room for the interests of the people in the elections, where all the Parties serve the interests of the ruling classes.
