Two parliamentary candidates of "This Order Must Change Platform" in the city of İzmir, Kemal Okuyan and Deniz Arık Binbay met with the people of İzmir on May 17.
The "This Order Must Change Platform", founded following the unlawful ban on the Communist Party of Turkey’s (TKP) running for the elections on June 24, continues its election running with independent candidates.
Introducing the candidates, Senem Doruk explained that the Platform was formed with the call of the TKP which was unlawfully banned from the elections. Doruk said: “The whole country is focused on statistics, questionnaires, and arithmetic calculations. Ideologies and political positions have been intermingled. ‘This Social Order Must Change’ Platform denies this picture where the working people are ignored and robbed of the right to participate in politics.”
Deniz Arık Binbay, the candidate of the Platform in the 1st electoral district in İzmir, summarised her reasons to be a candidate from several aspects. Binbay emphasised that she is a mother who is worried about the future of her child, a woman who is subject to oppression and discrimination in this society, a medical doctor who sees that the healthcare system is failing despite all the fancying up, and a psychiatrist who listens to people’s sufferings every day, maintaining:
“We are made live like a minority in this country, though we are not few. I want to be the voice of the people who work to live, not those who exploit others … I am a candidate because I think this order has to change. I am a candidate because I want to state that pessimism and despair are emotions that have been used and imposed on us in order for the continuity of this order.”
Stating that the current order is corrupted and also corrupts the country, she also explained there is no way for anyone to be truly freed unless the whole system is changed, unless the whole environment is transformed.
Binbay stated: “We do not have to vote for an ideology we do not believe in, for someone who does not embark on our problems, or for the continuity of the order. Voting for a candidate we do not believe in is much like getting married to someone we do not like. We are not obliged to this.”
After Binbay, Kemal Okuyan, the candidate in the 2nd electoral district, delivered a speech. Okuyan pointed out an oddness in the upcoming elections that has escaped the attention of many people.
Explaining that socialism has always been an alternative in every election in Turkey since 1970’s, Okuyan stated that the TKP was not allowed in this election as a party, which means that the people have been left without a socialist alternative for the first time in decades.
Okuyan said, “There is no left-wing in the elections,” and maintained: “We said that there could not be an election without socialism, without the demand to change the order, and we decided to run independent candidates.”
Underlining that the obvious essence of their discourse is the demand to change this “irrational order that creates nothing but unemployment, poverty, atrociousness, unfairness, and inequality,” he also remarked that they are running in order to challenge the moral corruption produced by alliances founded on haggles.
Kemal Okuyan eventually said: “Our electoral bulletin starts with the question ‘Would you like to live in a Turkey like this?’ Read our bulletin, and if you find that your answer is ‘yes’, then do not follow the false solutions that you do
