Okuyan: "We have an excellent remedy against hopelessness"

"It will be a festival that rejects hopelessness, despair, and helplessness. We will break through this darkness with our say, song, and poem. We have an excellent remedy against despair: Organizing!"
Thursday, 19 December 2019 15:58

Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) has made a call to the working people of Turkey to meet in major events organized in the three big cities.

soL news discussed with Kemal Okuyan, the General Secretary of TKP, the purpose and the content of these major events titled ‘Calling for Hope, Organizing, and Celebrating to Win 2020’.

TKP is organizing ‘Calling for Hope, Organizing, and Celebrating to Win 2020" events in the big three cities consecutively. The first one is in Izmir on Saturday this week, and the second will be in Istanbul on Sunday. The final one will be in Ankara on 4th January. What is the purpose of these events?

Hopelessness, despair, and helplessness are the biggest enemies of people. We are currently living in a doomed social order, and such a nightmare seems endless. The idea of a never-ending nightmare would corrupt society. Let’s look at what we discussed last week: Davutoğlu, Babacan, Cem Uzan. These names are suggested as solutions. I can say this: We are challenging such darkness, and we are organizing these events to strengthen our challenge. We are rejecting that the darkness that stole the future of our generations is served as salvation. We are rejecting their predecessors, including Demirel, Çiller, and Özal, and their legacies. We are going to show and prove that Turkey cannot be condemned to the imaginations of bosses. We will not give up our love for future Turkey where there is light, no exploitation, equality, independence, and powerful.

From this perspective, our events are no different than other attempts to reach more people and relate to more people and tell our struggle to make Turkey more liveable to a wider audience. We are publishing newspapers and journals, and handouts. We are broadcasting the "Voice of TKP" every day. All of these have similar purposes.

Does TKP have anything to say about the recent processes at these events? New political parties are established, there are debates about early elections, and there are many problems regarding foreign policy.

TKP has something to say about every subject that is of interest to the people, and it shares all of its views with the public. We cannot approach to the processes the same way other political parties do. We cannot lie and deceive people by offering them easy solutions and political tricks. We are not interested to weaken the power of other mainstream political parties to deceive the people. Our fundamental addressee is, of course, political power, and currently, the Justice and Development Party (AKP). AKP now represents the current social order based on exploitation. Our main focus is on the AKP. However, we fundamentally struggle against the rule of capital. The TKP, which declares to tear down the bosses’ order, focuses on communicating with the working classes how this social order functions and calls them to join the struggle against such exploitative order.

We also struggle to strengthen the power of the working classes against the daily attacks on labor. There are processes today in Turkey that are more important than Babacan’s political party and its founding members. Teachers are rising in schools and they are organizing with the parents; workers are resisting in labor-intensive textile factories against dismissals, and they are obtaining their rights; there are new forms of organization in banks. These processes are not reported in the mainstream media; however, the TKP’s agenda is not about the media, it is about the fight between labor and capital. We will say what we have to say on these issues, and we will share the roadmap drawn by the TKP. It will be a festival that rejects hopelessness, despair, and helplessness. We will break through this darkness with our say, song, and poem. We have an excellent remedy against despair: Organizing!

TKP will be 100 years old in 2020. Do these events have anything to do with the centenary anniversary?

They are not directly related. TKP often undertakes political and art events to communicate its policies. These events are useful for reaching out to new people as well as reflexive thinking. There are very few people who attended these events but were not enlightened. The number of attendees could be in thousands but the energy and direction of these events reach beyond that. Recently, they try to silence the voice of labor, revolutionaries, patriots. We cannot accept that. I can add that we want to have our centenary anniversary with a stronger voice. TKP has come a long way regarding political and organizational developments in 2019. We will do more in 2020. We are stronger with our new members and volunteers.

You criticized the mentors of the left-wing by discussing the failure of Corbyn in the election. Don’t you think the left-wing needs a fundamental reassessment?

The left-wing is no longer left-wing because of these reassessments. The left-wing needs to simplify life. Today’s world is the world of capital. There is wild exploitation and the left-wing cannot discuss anything without focusing on exploitation and ways to destroy the current social order. What is a new process? Is Babacan new, or [the Mayor of Ankara] Mansur Yavaş, or [the Mayor of İstanbul] İmamoğlu? No idea can be new so long as it accepts the current world order based on exploitation. Capitalism has offered every idea over the last 200 years. Liberalism, conservatism, racism, social democracy, fascism, religious fundamentalism. In the end, there is nothing new today.

The only solution against capitalism is socialism. There is nothing new or old about socialism. The private property over the means of production will be abolished, the planned economy will be pursued, society will be organized from top to bottom. Step by step there will be a classless society. There is no need for fundamental reassessment here. What we need to discuss is how this perspective needs to be strengthened and organized, and new ways how to do it. We need new ideas for this. However, we cannot give up the ideas of revolution, planned economy, or nationalization. This would be nonsense. All this nonsense is tried. TKP is not part of it. Yes, life is very simple. When everything is so clear, we cannot let the left-wing become part of mainstream politics.