Solidarity with protestors fighting Erdogan’s regime in Turkey

End the attacks on democratic rights! 

Fight the cost-of-living crisis and kick out Erdogan!

Fight for a working-class socialist alternative!

The following is the text of a leaflet distributed by Socialist Party (CWI England & Wales) members at anti-Erdogan protests in London:

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, was arrested on 19 March on alleged corruption charges. The arrest took place days before the biggest opposition party, Republican People’s Party (CHP), was about to announce Imamoglu as their candidate for the next Presidential elections. 

Defying the ban on demonstrations and other restrictions, university students and young people have been organising on university campuses and on the streets, heroically battling against police brutality. The protests quickly spread to many cities across Turkey, but the biggest protests are happening in Istanbul and Ankara.

Members of the Revolutionary Workers’ Union Confederation (DISK) and Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions (KESK) also took part in the protests. 

Young people and working-class people had enough of constant attacks on democratic rights, rampant corruption, repression and the worsening living standards. They see no future for themselves. 

So far, university students, school students and young people, in general, have been the driving force of the movement.

The recent attack on Imamoglu follows a series of arrests of trade unionists, opposition activists, students and even an astrologer! 

However, these attacks on democratic rights come not from a position of strength, but weakness. The austerity programme implemented by the government, with brutal cuts to public spending, has hit home and added to the growing unpopularity of Erdogan.

The meagre increase to national minimum wages at the beginning of the new year, while the super-rich rake in billions, has shown whose side Erdogan is really on. Certainly, not on the side of workers.

Erdogan is trying to use intimidation against all opponents and using everything in his means, including the judiciary and the police, to desperately stifle the opposition and bring an end to the mass protests across Turkey. Hundreds have been arrested in the protests, so far, and many many have been severely injured from pepper-spray, rubber bullets and police batons. 

Erdogan’s biggest fear right now is the protests spreading to workplaces and pulling in wide sections of the working class, demanding an end to attacks on democratic rights and on living standards. 

CHP 

Imamoglu’s popularity was already on the rise because he was seen as the main challenger of Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian regime. Some of the welfare policies he introduced in Istanbul, such as the ‘city restaurants’ for people on low-incomes, added to his growing popularity. 

The CHP is now organising rallies in defence of Imamoglu, mainly outside Istanbul’s city hall. But as the youth attending those rallies have pointed out, the movement is not just about the arrest of Imamoglu; it is about repression, worsening living standards and lack of future for young people. 

In fact, there is mistrust towards the leadership of the CHP and whether they would act as a brake on the movement. The movement is formally under the leadership of the CHP but the real driver of events is the youth. They are trying to force the CHP to take a more combative stance.

The movement can go further and shake the core foundations of Erdogan’s regime and capitalism itself, if the movement can link the attacks on democratic rights to economic issues. 

These protests have been the biggest protests since the Gezi Park movement in 2013, when millions of people were out on the streets and saved the Gezi Park from demolition. That heroic movement could have gone further had the working-class been at the helm of the movement with its own mass democratic organisations, including a mass workers’ party. 

But since the Gezi Park movement, the CHP has been portraying themselves as the only hope to get rid of Erdogan. Clearly, that approach has not worked and Erdogan was able to get away with more attacks on democratic rights. Like Erdogan, the CHP has got no answer to the problems facing the working-class and young people, as they too defend the interests of big business.

There is an urgent need for all trade unions, socialists and student organisations to build a united front – offering a working-class alternative with a clear programme. 

A socialist programme for democratic rights, as well as for jobs, homes and services for all, could bring millions more workers onto the streets in a mass democratic struggle against Erdogan’s regime.

Forming democratically-organised action committees to decide the next steps for the movement would be a crucial development. Already, there is increasing pressure from young people for trade unions to organise a general strike. Any steps for the workers’ movement and the wider working-class getting organised would create an even more explosive situation and change the balance of forces in favour of the working class. 

Such a united front of workers emerging from this struggle, armed with a political programme, could force Erdogan out and offer a socialist alternative; fighting to take the banks and other giant companies that dominate the economy, like textile and steel, into the democratic control of the working class, planning society in our interests and securing a decent future for all. 

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