La Marx International

A huge revolution with mobilizations growing on historic scales is unfolding in Turkey against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the Justice and Development Party (Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP). These mobilizations, which extend to more than 55 of Turkey’s 81 provinces, erupted on March 19 when the AKP government arrested 45 people, including Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, Erdogan’s main opponent. But the arrests have created more outrage and moved millions to take to the streets in mobilizations that grow and do not stop even though 1,900 people have been arrested in the demonstrations, including journalists and students.

Revolution strikes at a pillar of global capitalism

Turkey is a sub-metropolis of imperialist capital, a country that belongs to NATO whose army is heavily equipped technologically as it belongs to the global imperialist alliance. Like countries such as China, Russia, South Africa, Israel or India, Turkey acts as a gendarme in the region by intervening in the revolutions that take place in the region under its influence, fulfilling the role of guardian with a wide network of detention and deportation centres financed with EU money. where the human rights of refugees are systematically violated to prevent them from reaching Europe.

The sub-metropolis is a country dependent on imperialist capital, but which in turn acts as the headquarters of imperialist capital for smaller economies. The sub-metropolis acts by redistributing global investments, placing them under its banner and protection, and facilitates competition to develop the profits of the oligarchy of the sub-metropolis. In this way, the sub-metropolises are dependent on imperialist capital, and act in turn, semi-colonizing smaller economies of America. India does the same with smaller economies in Southeast Asia, Latin America and Africa, as do Russia, and China. Turkey intervenes at this time semi-colonizing countries such as Sitia in which they intervene militarily and economically.

That is why this revolution is not a minor issue, because it is a revolution that is striking at a fundamental pillar of the world counterrevolution, and the support of capitalism. Erdogan’s government is one of the governments that had achieved greater internal stability, to act in the Middle East region that is immersed in a serious crisis, as a result of revolutions such as the 3rd Palestinian Intifada, the revolution in Yemen, in Syria, the Rojava revolution that continue to hit the Middle East region and the entire world hard.

Erdogan and the AKP-MHP government in crisis

Mobilizations in Plaza Sarachane

The Erdogan government and the AKP-MHP, which has been governing Turkey for more than 10 years, is now completely in crisis. During these 10 years, the government managed to weather several crises, such as the devaluation of the Turkish lira in 2018 through different maneuvers and agreements with minor parties. But in 2024 Erdogan began his collapse when he suffered a defeat in the elections, and began to suffer rejection from the population for his reactionary character but mainly because of the growing poverty in Turkey that was projected to broad sectors of the people.

The economy of capitalist Turkey is collapsing from a growth of 11.4% of GDP in 2021 to 5.5% in 2023, while social indignation grows over the miserable wages and pensions condemned by inflation that officially reached 44.4% in 2024, making living conditions worse and worse for the workers and the people.

Capitalist Turkey shows the trait of cruelty typical of all capitalist governments with growing inequality in which the gap between rich and poor did not stop increasing with 40% of the population receiving 16.5% of the total income, while 1% of the super-rich control most of the country’s wealth. This is the basis of the growth of social discontent, and the rise that triggered the mobilizations, which has led the government to implement various policies to stop the revolutionary process of the people against it that threatens its control of the capitalist state.

Erdogan has launched a large-scale operation to eliminate his political opponents, repress and intimidate the population, seeking to curb mass rejection. Erdogan began his entire operation by appointingState Trust Administrators to remove elected mayors and replace them with government-appointed officials, especially in Kurdish municipalities. of the population, with the aim of displacing opposition officials and placing addicted characters in order to maintain an iron control of the state apparatus.

The Kurdish Revolution and Öcalan’s Capitulation

Erdogan launched his attack on the opposition with the cancellation of İmamoğlu’s mayor’s diploma and then with his arrest along with almost a hundred people. After four days of detention, police and judicial interrogations, İmamoğlu was imprisoned on charges of corruption, while the Attorney General’s Office appealed the decision to release him. Arrest warrants were also issued for three people, including the mayor of Şişli, Resul Emrah Şahan, on this charge and a trustee was also appointed to intervene in the municipality of Şişli. It is clear that all these accusations were produced in order to criminalize, intimidate and eliminate the opposition.

Erdoğan’s great concern is the revolution of his people, along with the revolution of the Kurds. The minority of Kurds who, like the Palestinian people, were dispossessed of their land after the 2nd World War as a result of the Yalta and Potsdam agreements and their population was scattered in 4 countries: Syria, Iraq, Turkey and Iran. From there, the Kurdish communities went on to fight for national liberation and in each nation they became a minority fighting for the liberation and reunification of the Kurdish nation. This is how the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) headed by Abdullah Öcalan emerged in Turkey, which initially formed a Marxist-Leninist leadership.

Kurdish guerrillas in Rojava

In 1999 Öcalan was imprisoned by the Turkish state and has been a political prisoner for 23 years. Öcalan turned the PKK’s program from Marxism and went to the reformism of anarchist autonomism in 2005, forming a political current called “democratic confederalism”. But after the outbreak of the First Arab Spring in 2011, the Kurds of Syria developed a revolution, formed an army of their own and began to build their own state called Rojava, which led the Kurds living in Turkey to join the revolution. The Turkish state violently repressed Kurdish cities and political leaders residing in Turkey to prevent the Kurdish revolution in Syria from succeeding in Turkey as well.

To prevent the advance of the Kurdish revolution, the Turkish army invaded Syria in 2016 and 2019 to attack the Kurds of that country and establish a “buffer” separating Rojava from Turkish Kurdistan, after which it maintained the Turkish military presence in Syria to attack Rojava and Kurdish militias. On the other hand, the Kurds of Iraq live in the autonomous region of Basur that was ruled by Massoud Barzani of the KDP (Kurdistan Democratic Party) until November 2017. The KDP is a capitalist party that tried to dispute the leadership of the Kurdish people, but it does not enjoy the sympathy of the Kurdish people because in 2003 the KDP supported the NATO coalition that invaded Iraq, in exchange for the new Iraqi constitution of 2005 granting Basur autonomy. Erdogan maintained cordial relations with the KDP, taking advantage of the fact that Basur is an oil-exporting region, which made it one of Turkey’s main oil suppliers.

Despite all these maneuvers by Erdoğan, the Kurdish revolution continued to develop, and Rojava grew and spread to more and more regions within Syria. To prevent the Kurdish revolution from developing within Turkey, Erdogan sought to deflect the rise by trying to divert the demands of the Kurdish community towards the electoral process, inviting them to form their own political party. The Kurdish bourgeoisie formed the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM), and began to obtain deputies and mayors from which it can conduct business, establishing a non-aggression pact with Erdoğan and in fact betraying the Kurdish revolution. As part of this process of betrayal of the revolution of the Kurdish bourgeoisie in Turkey, Öcalan has called for the dissolution of the PKK in the DEM, definitively renouncing the struggle for national liberation of the Kurdish people, which is a great support that Erdogan receives at this time when he is going through a great crisis.

Öcalan is a treacherous leadership that supports Erdoğan’s policy, when the Turkish people have come out to confront him. In other words, instead of taking advantage of the rise of the revolution in Turkey to come out and defend the rights of the Kurdish people, Öcalan comes out to announce the dissolution of the PKK, a policy of support for the Erdogan regime. This shows the treacherous, bourgeois and reformist character of anarchist autonomism, and democratic confederalism, which prioritize the defense of capitalism over the rights of the oppressed. Many honest activists who believed in the autonomism of Subcomandante Marcos, Tony Negri, as well as the Öcalan current, today turn their backs on this treacherous current.

Social Democracy seeks to divert the revolution

In July 2016, a small Islamist faction of the army that accused Erdoğan of being a “traitor” staged a coup d’état, but the coup was defeated and from that triumph, Erdoğan sought to advance in his project of changing the Turkish Constitution towards a completely presidential and Bonapartist regime, with which he called on the Turkish people to take to the streets to defend their government. Millions of people answered the call and, in some cases, confronted the insurrectionary military. This coup attempt was finally defeated and Erdoğan came out very strong in his project. In 2017 he called and won a constitutional referendum. That same year, the parliament approved the reform of the Turkish bourgeois political regime. However, now things have completely changed, and the people’s revolution confronts Erdogan’s Bonapartist and anti-democratic project.

Mobilization in Istanbul

On March 21, the new board of the Istanbul Bar Association, composed of socialist, left-wing and Kurdish representatives, was dismissed. However, the lawyers did not back down and marched towards Taksim Square as part of the fight against the Erdoğan government, which is trying to intervene in the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Turkey’s social democratic party by alleging irregularities in the last party congress.

Özgür Özel, the main party leader of the main opposition party, which is the CHP, is calling for the mobilizations seeking to be a decompression valve for the rise, to bring the whole political situation to the people to express their discontent in the next elections.

The young students led the struggle against the government and called for action against the government, after which the leaders of the social democratic CHP called for action in Saraçhane, following youth actions and growing social pressure. From day one and increasingly, the masses filled the Place Saraçhane and mobilized in defense of democratic rights. Mass demonstrations took place not only in Saraçhane Square, but also in many other squares in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and across the country. This mobilization of the workers was the main factor that destroyed the legitimacy of this action of the Government. Although the CHP leadership called to the streets under the pressure of mobilization, it showed that it is more afraid of the power and mobilization of the streets and the masses than of the power of the government.

The CHP leadership carried out the calls for action under the pressure of the masses, in order to limit and control them, and to the extent that it could not prevent them, to try to turn them into its own demonstrations. He did not take any initiative to further mobilize the masses, seeking to make the mobilization have a limited character of bringing “protest to the ballot box.” Despite the CHP’s demobilizing policy, the government had to take a step back from appointing trustees in the Istanbul municipality. There is a debate in Turkish activism about what to do to continue the fight against Erdogan, while the social democratic CHP wants to end the calls in Saraçhane Square, to return to its policy of “waiting for the ballot boxes”.

However, the mobilizations that began with İmamoğlu’s arrest arose in defense of democratic rights as a result of the pent-up anger against the oppressive attacks of the one-man and authoritarian regime. The mobilization must continue and become widespread until all political prisoners are released, the criminalization of the political opposition is ended, and a real break with the regime and the interventionist policy that extends from the municipalities to the universities and the administration of the country is achieved!

From Marx International we support the revolution of the Turkish people against the Erdogan government, we support the struggle until the end of the Erdogan government, and at the same time, the struggle for a workers’ and people’s government for Turkey that ends capitalism. The struggle for democratic freedoms is inseparable from the struggle against inequality, hunger, poverty, which the Turkish people suffer, imposing the freedom of all political prisoners, and the right of self-determination of the Kurdish people, on the path of the struggle for Global Socialism.