DAILY OPINIONS

The election defeat of Erdoğan, the counter offensive and the line of struggle!

Erdoğan and his 'men', who represent the most powerful bourgeois focus as the central power of rule, are involved in an attempt to overcome the impasse and moral rout they have reached with a campaign alike “Jihad”

The election defeat of Erdoğan, the counter offensive and the line of struggle!

In his speech rousing the crowds gathered in the non-functional “Atatürk Airport Apron” at his behest on the third anniversary of the 15 July coup attempt, which he had dubbed “God’s Blessing,” Tayyip Erdoğan attempted to alleviate the negative moral impact of the 31 March and 23 June election defeats. And in the preceding days, having convened enough journalists and television programmers to form a squad or two, he had dictated the scope and line of the propaganda they were to disseminate, and pointing to the “force and power” of his governance and policies, he had requested them to preach “the will to overcome” the great issue and hardships they face.

Erdoğan and his “men”, who represent the most powerful bourgeois focus as the central power of rule, are involved in an attempt to overcome the impasse and moral rout they have reached with a campaign alike “Jihad” launched against the Great June Resistance associated with the name of “Gezi Park.” But this is not so easy and will not prove to be so! Internal and external facts and conditions have been triggering developments on the converse for a while which cannot be regarded as short. Economic-social issues have become heftier, causing the support for Palace rule within the masses to melt away. The polling agency, KONDA, have reported a regression from around 38% to around 27% in the “core electoral” of AKP (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi – Justice and Development Party). Even when Erdoğan and the “preordained” in high bureaucracy who has gained the biggest share from the economic plunder and spoil during his rule, attempts to prevent this by reiterating the “sacred cause” and the “unity of the ummah,” material social realities have been triggering internal party divisions with the international circles of capital and the bosses of TÜSİAD's ‘classic corporations’ working on the new alternative (TÜSİAD, Türk Sanayicileri ve İş İnsanları Derneği - the Turkish Industry and Business Association). Tensions experienced in the context of policies concerning Syria, Libya and Iraq, relations with Russia and the S-400 “trade” and the “oil search” operation in the Mediterranean, and the “sanction decisions” with which the US and EU reacted to these are indictors of the increasing international pressure.

Internally, the amassed reaction rooted especially in unemployment and poverty has increased. If the 4.5 million workers were to mobilise for their own demands, one could not even find a “blessing” to save the government. Tens of millions of people are living at the limit of poverty and with the recent increase of the price of electricity by 15%, the price of all consumption goods will rise. Although there is still a mass of people from small or middle strata who consume plentifully in visible sectors, which cannot be disregarded, it is not possible to sustain this situation. The volume of internal and external debt is surging. Even the number of young people with credit debts amounts to some 5 million. With the rhetoric of “terror” and bombardments for which millions and millions were spent becoming routine in the name of “the fight against terror,” the soundbites of “One nation-one state-one flag” and the agitation of “martyrs and veterans” alongside the tactic of deceiving Kurds by appeal to Öcalan', Osman' and Barzani bore no result other than increasing the reaction amongst Kurdish labourers and concerns amongst Turkish nationalist sections.

We are at a period when social change and the division between poor and rich is continuing at a faster rate. It is now more difficult to hinder this division and development by new prisons and an even more harsh policy of suppression directed at curbing the progressive-revolutionary attempts and opposition. From the point of view of working class and the labourers of country and city, this situation necessitates making progress along a line of struggle that is more resolved and united for their demands without any expectation from bourgeois parties of opposition and the establishment of “new” parties of the capital. In the eventuality of the persistence of disjointedness and restriction with local action, as was seen during TÜPRAŞ negotiations, the capital and bourgeois rule will be the winners. Despite this, even for the emergence of results favourable for workers in solely the challenges in the economic field, there is a need for the united opposition of the workers and other labouring sections. Being at a period when the morale and courage needed for this is more evident and “plentiful” will play an easing function both in terms of driving away the collaborating trade union bureaucracy and collectively mobilising broad sections of the masses angry at “one-man rule.” Working to enable the shaping of the cumulative reaction and tendency to struggle of the most broad and different working sections of the society oppressed under harsh conditions of suppression and striving to get out of this situation, as a united movement for securing demands, with those urgent ones primarily, without tailing the systems own opposition, is the forthcoming task and responsibility of the period. And this could be accomplished to the extent that it is based on attempts at organisation at factories, workplaces, local neighbourhoods and spaces where young people and women masses are found, and to the extent that working people are mobilised through these organisational attempts. 


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