The European Communist Meeting is held in Brussels, on April 11, with the participation of over thirty communist and workers' parties, under the theme “Work in the working class and its labour movement, as a necessary prerequisite for a clash with the EU, the overthrow of capitalist barbarism and the construction of socialism.” The Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) was represented by Secretary-General Kemal Okuyan.
In his speech, Okuyan pointed out that the contemporary political and social conditions in Turkey have been used to defer class struggle.
Dividing the society through Turkish and Kurdish nationalism as well as immigrants and “natives”, sectarian conflicts between Alevism and Sunnism, the vicious circle of war and peace, the geostrategic balances that are reflected in the dispute between Atlanticists and Eurasianists, and Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s individual position and his autocrat causes in terms of wanting to become an Ottoman sultan are all at work in order to put the real conflict between capital and labor aside.
In this situation, Okuyan said, one “may always come across justifications for collaborations, for instance, with the U.S. to defend the Kurds, with Alevi tycoons to defend the Alevis, with the European Union to defend peace, with nationalists and fascists to take a stand against the U.S., or with all other bourgeois parties, not even simply with the social democracy, to tackle Erdoğan.”
However, Okuyan pointed out, a revolutionary stance can only be pursued when each of these issues is addressed with a class perspective. “Without sinking into economism and anarchosyndicalism, Communist Party of Turkey takes a strong stance vis-à-vis all current issues, creates alternatives, and struggles to organize the working class, which is constantly being pushed aside, in Turkey as a political force”, he added.
PRIORITIES OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF TURKEY
The Secretary-General also clarified the priorities of the Communist Party of Turkey in this exact conditions of Turkey to fight for a socialist alternative. Accordingly, TKP is:
1. Restructuring its publications and propaganda outlets in a manner to explain the origins, the bases and real roots of current tensions that take precedence over class contradictions to the working class as extensively as possible,
2. Bringing forward the assaults on the working class that the capitalists manage to conceal due to these current tensions; utilizing the party, people’s committees or trade unions, if any (the unionization rate in Turkey is very low) to encourage the working class to react and resist, and to draw more workers into organized political struggle,
3. Increasing the number and scope of workplace cells, i.e. the basis of revolutionary organization among the working class (making a large leap forward in the last year, the TKP has radically increased the number of its workplace cells),
4. Taking effective steps in ideological and cultural spheres to render working class identity an unshakable political reality,
5. Leading acts of resistance in which workers confront capitalists directly, strikes organized despite the prohibitions imposed by the government or similar actions; acting in solidarity with such actions and strikes, and popularizing and translating such actions into persistent organizations,
6. Keeping the inequality between rich and poor, injustices in the society, the high cost of living, which are all results of the contradiction between labor and capital, on the agenda with a revolutionary perspective, without leaving these issues to populist demagogy which always remains within the confines of the established order,
7. Explaining the fact that there can be no good imperialists or good capitalists, and that the currency of socialist revolution is not a strategic choice, but an absolute necessity for revolutionary politics perceptibly and concretely,
8. Counteracting the bourgeois politicians’ weapon of “immediate solution” by explaining the fact that reforms, when they do not constitute a part of revolutionary strategy, would rapidly lead to more reactionism, oppression, further aggravation in working and living conditions, and even to fascism in the hands of those who are trying to keep people’s reactions within the confines of the established order.
