Statement No: 2020/3
48 YEARS WITH SOLIDARITY AND STRUGGLE!
WE WILL KEEP THE RED FLAG WAVING!
The march that leader comrade Ibrahim Kaypakkaya started with his words “Now we are pulling a flag high up in front of everyone” continues with successes but at the same time with failures, with determination but also with occasional insufficiencies, however, always with targeting political power despite obstacles. The most important evidence for this is that vanguard and leader party of the proletariat of Turkey which was established on April 24th, 1972 with a humble power has not compromised since then. This evidence is not abstract, but rather concrete with our struggle in our history; it is also dialectic since it has contained all the contradictions within itself and these contradictions represent principal and progressive ones. As we enter a new year of struggle, our march continues uncompromisingly.
The establishment date of our party also corresponds to the anniversary of the Armenian Genocide on April 24, 1915. This is not a coincidence. It is known that while our party was founded under the leadership of comrade İbrahim Kaypakkaya, in these lands, MLM theses have been put forward in many issues such as the Armenian Genocide, Kemalism and the Kurdish National Question, which were previously taboo in terms of the revolutionary and communist movement. In this sense, the establishment of our party has been a historical turning point for the people of Turkish, Kurdish nations, various nationalities, and beliefs.
The fact that the establishment of our party corresponds to such a historical anniversary is an indication that the lands in which it was born are not independent of the class struggle, the struggle of the masses. As a matter of fact, the communist ideas that were wanted to be buried in the cold waters of the Black Sea by Kemalist fascism after comrade Mustafa Suphi sprouted again in the mass struggles of the peasants, youth, women, especially the working class. While rising above such a historical reality, on the one hand, it relied on the dialectic of the transformation of pain into hopes, defeats to victories, deaths to rebirth.
Palaces to the bourgeoisie and their representatives, poverty, and death to the people!
We are welcoming the new year of the party while the attacks of the imperialist-capitalist system against the people of the world with war, hunger, poverty, occupations, massacre, migration routes, etc. While these attacks continue, we encounter a process where the peoples of the world face a big and new threat. The COVID-19 outbreak today threatens all humanity in general, but essentially and in reality, the oppressed working peoples who have been left to their own destiny. An organism that is too small to be seen has revealed the rottenness and disgrace of the imperialist-capitalist system today, the gap between the classes and the depth of the contradiction into everyone’s eyes. And of course, it also revealed whose state these states are which are the most important superstructure organization of this exploitation system… All the precautions and policies they put into effect by the Turkish ruling classes for the epidemic served only the rapid spread of the epidemic among the working class and the working people. The ruling classes, on the one hand, make calls for “stay at home” and on the other hand, they force the working class and the laborers to work by explaining that “production and export should continue”. This situation left the working masses between the epidemic and hunger-misery-death.
It is of course in the interest of the revolution that the working people see this aspect of the state significantly, but every process where the alternative is not created tends to turn against the oppressed. The fascist Kemalist Turkish state is also trying to use its ability to use all kinds of agendas (as a blessing from Allah) for its own profit in this process.
The AKP-MHP government compensates the economic losses of the bosses with the money stolen by the public instead of slowing down the speed of the virus outbreak, taking measures against the public (which, of course, we do not have such an expectation). It centralizes the state, which it has gradually lost before the epidemic, especially after the local elections, by strengthening the state in every way. It implements new enforcement law regulations that are opposed by the social opposition despite certain weaknesses. While the everyone is putting “their effort to survival”, it strengthens its occupation in Syrian Kurdistan. The trustee continues the coup and brings new suffering to the Kurdish people. It extorts the gains of women’s struggle. Gangs, mafia, rapists, female murderers, child abusers in the prisons are being released and turn the prisons into killing houses for political prisoners. It tries to prevent the solidarity of the people under the name of “prevention against the virus”.
These practices, which were imposed upon the working class and the working people in times of the pandemic, are results of the over-exploitation and profit ambition of the imperialist capitalist system and the Turkish ruling classes that are dependent on it. Just like the reality that the outbreak itself is a direct consequence of this system. Everyone accepts, albeit with different theories, that the pandemic is not a cause, but a consequence. It is the result of the imperialist-capitalist system and its policies that disregard human life, nature, ecological balance, living things, such as “globalization” and neo-liberalism. In fact, our party in Article 28 of the program announced by the 1st Congress, underlines “The structure of the imperialist-capitalist system based on excessive greed for profit, together with the comprador capitalism of Turkey leads to a massacre of the environment. Exploitation and looting policies lead to ecological destruction, and as a result, our geography is rendered uninhabitable. This situation causes wide and widespread reactions to the pillage of nature and the environment and the deterioration of ecological balance both in cities and rural areas. This struggle has become one of the important components of the democracy struggle in our country”. By pointing out this reality, we added “the contradiction between the system and the ecological system” among the main contradictions.
Beyond the scenarios whether COVID-19 is produced in the laboratories of capitalism, or if it is a part of the biological warfare against China, etc., the reality is that this system is an enemy to the ecosystem, all living things, human life, laborers, women, LGBTI + s, young people. The reality is how important and urgent it is to establish the power of the people by organizing the common struggle of the masses and destroying this unfair, exploitative, enemy system of people by the war led by our Party.
Today, contradictions have intensified; fear, suspicion, anger, and anxiety have taken place within the masses. The majority of the people does not believe in the statements of the state; they do not think that the measures they have taken are in their own interest. Therefore, while the Turkish ruling classes are already struggling with a deep economic crisis, they are in a political crisis as well, a crisis of non-governance, as revealed by the pandemic. On the other hand, this crisis situation sharpened the contradictions among the dominant class cliques and the rift between them became more visible.
However, what important is to answer the question “What to do?” after analyzing all of this reality. As our party enters a new year of struggle under these conditions it focuses on the means of struggle to be carried out under current conditions, and takes steps forward by not taking the armed struggle out of its agenda for a moment with the relations it has established despite the “social distance” with the masses.
Our party is behind its promise to the working class and the public. It continues to wave the red flag we have raised high and is aware that the only way to our liberation is through the collapse of fascism, the only source of the power of our freedom is through the promotion of struggle. Against the slavery system, imposed on the working class and our people, hunger, poverty, misery, death; the massacres against women and LGBTI + s; the alternative is the New Democratic Revolution against all kinds of national and religious pressures, pillages for nature and the environment; We have no other way than to organize and fight.
We Shall Organize, Fight, Triumph!
Glory to Those Who Have Fallen in the Revolution Struggle in the 49th Anniversary!
Long Live the Party TKP-ML, People`s Army TIKKO, Women Organization KKB, Youth Organization TMLGB!
TKP-ML Central Committee Politburo
April 2020