Deniz Adalı
May 2024 – Kaldıraç Issue 274
We call the state organization of the entire capitalist world after the defeat of fascism the monopoly police state. This is what we call it. We do not see a problem in the essential sense in calling it “bourgeois democracy”. However, we only consider it incomplete in the sense of being contented with general definitions of the state, that’s all. After all, bourgeois democracy is also a pure dictatorship. Every state is a dictatorship as an instrument of the ruling class to dominate the entire “nation”; (we say “nation” because, for example, the state in a colonial country – the Turkish state is a colonial state – and the state in an imperialist country dominate the nation differently) it is the tool of the ruling class to oppress other classes. This also applies to the state of the proletariat, which overthrows the bourgeois state after the socialist revolution. The proletariat characterizes its state which is a democracy for itself, as the dictatorship of the proletariat in order to repress the bourgeois class. For the proletariat has no need to deceive the “nation”, to lull the masses to sleep with lies. To the majority of the society the dictatorship of the proletariat is a democracy, but to the bourgeoisie, which has lost its power, it is a dictatorship.
Fascism is the response of the bourgeois class to the failure of the October Revolution to spread throughout the world, a counter-revolution and is one of the extraordinary bourgeois states. The difference between the ordinary and extraordinary organization of the state is important. Moreover, fascism is a state organization appropriate to the monopoly epoch through which the entire capitalist world is passing in order to suppress the struggle for revolution and socialism.
No state could govern by organizing itself through extraordinary means on a permanent basis. The extraordinary, if it becomes permanent, becomes ordinary. This new normal actually means the consolidation of the system.
In order to understand fascism, the age of monopolies must also be taken into account. Since what we have already written on this subject contains a great deal of detail, we do not intend to restate it here. The reader may access these sources. Besides, to engage in the whole discussion here again, to deal with every aspect of it, would actually distract us from a more current discussion.
In a social organization, it is the substructure of that society, including the state, that determines the superstructure. Depending on social and economic changes, this substructure is reflected back to the state. So, changes in the substructure, in other words social and economic changes, are reflected in the organization of the state. Just like the reflection of monopoly. Surely, the state is also organized to maintain this substructure, more generally speaking, to maintain the established system. The sovereign, of course, reflects all the changes it experiences within itself to this organization, albeit with a delay.
For fascism, both this situation and the organization of the counter-revolution against the October Revolution must be considered together. There lies the basis of the organization of the extraordinary state.
What gives shape to the organization of the state in a socio-economic form is the class struggle going on in that society and in the entire world system in that epoch. On this point, let us remember the Paris Commune. The French bourgeoisie, which had begun to suffer defeats in the war with Germany, developed cooperation with Germany, with whom it was at war, when the workers in Paris declared the commune (which is the first example to look at in order to understand what the state of the proletariat is). The French rulers, the French State, asked for Bismarck’s help to strangle the Paris Commune. This was one of the conditions of the peace treaty, and when the cannons began to pound Paris to strangle the Paris Commune, the rulers of these two countries shared one and the same spirit: to defend the capitalist system from the destruction of the proletariat. Germany was eager to turn what it had initially called a “war of defense” into a war of invasion, and it could not miss this opportunity. In fact, the Paris Commune did not only threaten the French rulers.
The French rulers had started this process beforehand. After the 1848 civil war, Bonaparte (Louis Bonaparte, not Napoleon) acted to take over the state with a coup d’état. This coup d’état was, in fact, the end of the ruling class’s desire and need to create a new organization appropriate to the extraordinary conditions. This is how the bourgeois parliament was annihilated. Of course, the new organization led by Bonaparte was also a democracy for the bourgeoisie. But the sovereign was losing its ability to rule the whole nation and needed war at home and abroad to regain it. There was no Paris Commune yet, but the struggle of the French working class had risen, and the system “thought” that it could not work with the usual, ordinary methods to suppress it, and in fact it could not work.
Anyone waging a revolutionary struggle must study the Paris Commune and the class struggles of 1848 leading up to it. A note is necessary: In our country anti-communism, in the form of anti-Sovietism, is very widespread, especially among the left. We may discuss the reasons elsewhere. But among our leftists anti-communism takes the form of anti-Sovietism, and for this reason we recommend them to study the Paris Commune (and of course the writings of Marx and Engels on the civil war in France and Bonapartism). Those who refuse to learn from the Soviet revolution might, by any chance, learn from the Paris Commune.
Now let us focus back to Turkey, to the present.
The extraordinary organization of the Turkish state has also taken a long time.
Two factors were initially more prominent here.
First and foremost was the suppression of the Kurdish revolution. The war to suppress the Kurdish revolution, which the PKK rightly characterized as a “special war”, was in fact a civil war. But in order to sustain this war outside the West, namely in the Kurdish provinces, a special war was developed. At that time, the “state of emergency” that was imposed in the Kurdish provinces actually existed in the West as well. But there was no resistance of the working class in the West and that working class had already been defeated by the September 12 counter-revolution. Under these conditions, the special war was also waged with the ideology of the Turkish-Islamic synthesis. Prison escapees, drug networks, clownish clerics, lumpen, thieves, rapists, vagrants, racist remnants of the military, generals who have made service to NATO their crown jewel, charlatans disguised as journalists, social scientists and researchers covered in blood, heroin smugglers, vagrants, junkies were organized as elements of this “special war”. NATO-trained soldiers from the Special Warfare Department or MIT officers were put in charge of them. Thus, the murderers and those who had no value considered it their duty to destroy whatever they encountered related to Kurdishness for the money they could earn in return. From the operations financed with drug money, they obtained large-scale drug profits. Just like looters, they considered it their duty to destroy everything. This actually means a corrupt war. That is why it is called “dirty war”.
It is no coincidence that gangs such as Ağar, who took part in this war, are among the rulers of the country today as drug barons. Add to these the construction, energy and new weapons companies.
I wonder if we may call them the new elites or the lumpen bourgeoisie.
It’s worth pondering.
The Gülen organization, which called itself the “Service Movement” as if it were a great charitable organization, is well recalled. Within it are all the above-mentioned elements, and its origins lie in the organization of associations for the fight against communism with religion. It is a NATO apparatus. They have not infiltrated the state, it is wrong to speak of “infiltration”, on the contrary, they are already an organization of the state. It is sufficient to recognize that this state is the state of a colonial country in NATO ties. And it also includes religion mongers, lunatics, hedonists, murderers, swindlers, a crowd of people of uncertain livelihood, drug networks. But they have managed to put themselves on the stage with a “trained young cadre” that comes from a long and “normal” period of organization. Their appearance was quite different from the rag-tag bunch, rent-seekers, looters, pleasure-seekers, glamorous life enthusiasts, drug gangs, etc. that emerged with the Erdoğan project.
At this precise moment, it is necessary to see the significance of the imperialist powers in the implementation of the “state of emergency”, which comes from living in a colonial country.
After the dissolution of the USSR, the effects of the imperialist powers’ struggle for the division of the world began to emerge within these gangs, which until then had all been elements of the CIA’s civil war under a single NATO umbrella. They were still in the same structure, but the organizations of the USA, Germany, France, France, Britain and Israel began to separate themselves. War is also about gathering forces. And these forces set out to gather their own forces within this structure. When it came to the war against the Kurdish movement or, as far as it was going on, against the workers’ and revolutionary movement in the West, they became one inseparable body. But they were also organizing their own forces inside. The most concrete example is that in the past, who would be appointed head of the congregations used to be decided by the MIT and no debate would arise. Because NATO was like a single body against the USSR. But today, it is a matter of whether the CIA, or German intelligence, or British intelligence, or Israeli intelligence, or French intelligence will appoint a man to head a sect, and that is why we are witnessing intra-sectarian wars.
Without considering being a colonial country, being a colony within NATO, this point cannot be understood.
Today, those who immediately point to the Gülen movement when they are asked who is responsible for the murders and unsolved murders are actually trying to clean up the state. Yes, the Gülen movement is a part of it, but the main thing is that they are state structures and they are affiliated to NATO. This should not be forgotten.
Every sect, every mafia organization is actually within the sphere of influence of these imperialist powers. Of course, in this situation, religion had to be corrupted as well. Without it, it would be incomprehensible that religious merchants in clean clothes issue fatwas for thefts, or the words would be incomplete.
This is precisely how the theater called the “Fetöist coup” unfolded. The coup is not really a “cleansing”. The coup was “God’s blessing” for the establishment of the current Palace Regime.
In the same way that Gülen is a US and NATO project, the AK Party and Erdogan’s administration is also a US and NATO project (the war against the Kurdish people is also a NATO program). The two are twins and in this respect the “parallel state” is a kind of a fabrication. They are both parallel and their lines are constructed by the masters.
The Gezi Resistance, which emerged in 2013, should be referred to here. The Gezi Resistance was in fact a clear reaction against this dirty corrupt war. Regardless of the cause, the Gezi Resistance was an outright reaction against all state practices, including the state of emergency. It is a reaction against the rent, drug network, looting and war economy that has been established.
In the meantime, a new bourgeois class has started to be developed by the AK Party, precisely in line with the organization of war based upon these lumpen structures.
During the Erdoğan period, under US directives, a new bourgeoisie has begun to be created. Graham Fuller’s “New Turkey” actually reveals all the details of the project.
The policy of “creating a bourgeoisie by the state” is long-standing in our country. This special war, massacres and the use of lumpen masses also took place in the foundation of the Republic. The so-called Hamidiye Regiments were made up of murderers collected from prisons, rapists, tramps, gamblers, and masses whose livelihood was unclear. And in the same period, the policy of creating a bourgeoisie by the state was implemented. The Armenian and Greek massacres are another face of this.
And now, under the leadership of the US, the state has been set in motion to create a new elite in the economy, to create a new bourgeoisie. This economy of plunder, rent and war is actually based on this.
Of course, the Hamidiye Regiments and Topal Osmans of that period are a bit more “diverse” today. They are also composed of drug gangs and so on.
Erdoğan has explicitly stated that he will run the state as a “joint stock company”, and in response to the Gezi Resistance he said “my duty is to generate rent”. These words are in fact the very reality. And note that he does not say “limited company”, he says “joint stock company”. A joint stock company actually refers to the size of the capital.
In fact, this describes the structuring based on rent, war and looting economy. In areas such as energy, construction, health, education, war industry, a new bourgeois society has begun to be created in accordance with the policies of looting and war.
Our new bourgeoisie has a complete lumpen character. They are looters, culturally poor, instant fortune seekers, capable of the most vulgar and despicable forms of theft. They are lumpen in the way they make money and seize fortunes, as well as in the way they live lavish lives and enjoy their pleasures. And Erdoğan did not hesitate to consider this tragicomic situation as history, he expressed it as making history. Hence why he seems to have waged a tragicomic war on the non-existent secularism of the Republic, which was comically declared “secular”. This is why he has rabidly used religion, which he seems to embrace so much, to justify all kinds of theft through the clerics. Religious Affairs, the institution of the old secularism (what kind of secularism has Religious Affairs), has been turned by the Palace Regime into an instrument of war against secularism, which does not exist ridiculously and blatantly anymore. The staff of the Religious Affairs has been increased from 120,000 to 250,000.
Is it ridiculous or tragicomic that new cadres, suitable for the new and “lumpen bourgeoisie”, are declared meritless? If a thief needs a cadre for him/herself, one looks at the suitability of this cadre for theft. To declare that the cadres are of no merit is in fact to ignore, not to see or, as the CHP does, to hide this organization behind it.
The Gezi Resistance made the nightmare of the rulers unbearable. Thus, the third factor emerged for the urgent need to organize the Palace Regime. And of course Erdoğan, who proclaims himself the most influential leader in the history of the world, will characterize the Gezi Resistance as immoral, irreligious and marauding. In fact, he is describing the regime he heads. While he was calling the resistance fighters “marauders” with the emphasis on “if the feet become the head”, he was addressing the members of TÜSİAD, the owners of the order, saying, what more do you want, we are banning strikes, we are adding profit to your profits.
We revolutionaries call the lowest stratum of society the lumpen proletariat. In Hitler’s Germany, these became mercenaries of the fascist organization. In our country, too, they have taken on appropriate tasks.
Let us stop here and dwell a little on the lumpen proletariat.
In “Louis Bonaparte’s 18 Brumaire” Marx put forward a description of the lumpen proletariat. This is the mass that played an important role in the organization of Bonaparte, Louis Bonaparte, the comic version of Napoleon Bonaparte. You should also find it significant that he founded a charity. Both the Gülen movement, the sects and the associations organized by Erdoğan under various names have this mask. This is how history is. They are all pleasure enthusiasts. They are flamboyant and the flamboyance of the elites of a colonial country is a bit different. Their bags and watches worth a fortune, and most importantly, these watches and bags coincide with a period when they proclaim that cell phones have changed all habits. In other words, they are actually presenting discarded items as the pleasures of their new wealth. I presume that Turkey is the country where those expensive watches are sold the most. Nowadays, the glory of the owners of world-wide conglomerates is no longer expressed in the watches on their wrists. But our new rising bourgeoisie chooses dysfunctional items for their flamboyant appearance. A watch worth millions of liras is actually nothing but an ornament on their wrists. In a movie scene, the stars playing the Ottoman period wear that watch on their wrists, even though it doesn’t match the outfit of that period. The man will somehow show off the millions of dollars that has come from “screwing the mother of the nation”.In case his role belongs to a time period when those watches did not exist, he cannot take that watch off his wrist, he does not like his work that much, in fact he carries his arm only to be a venue for his watch. The hand at the end of the wrist with that watch is only used in some cases to represent the watch.
Let’s go back to Marx, he writes:
Under the pretext of founding a charitable association, the lumpen proletariat of Paris was organized in secret units, each headed by a Bonapartist agent and topped by a Bonapartist general. Alongside the ruined roués (pleasure-seekers) whose livelihood and origins were unclear, and the corrupt and adventurous elements of the bourgeoisie, there were vagabonds, discharged soldiers, released convicts, escaped galley convicts, swindlers, charlatans, Lazzaroni (a derogatory Italian nickname for those who had fallen out of the working class – translator’s note), pickpockets, grifters, gamblers, Maquereaux (pimps), brothel keepers, porters, hack writers, luthiers, rag-pickers, sharpeners, pot repairmen, beggars, in short, the whole vague, disorganized, scattered mass that the French call la bohème (those who live without thinking about tomorrow)… (K. Marx, “Louis Bonaparte’s 18 Brumaire, Part V”, in The French Trilogy, Yordam Kitap, pp. 197-199).
Perhaps to these we should add drug distributors (barons should now be considered to be bourgeois), those who make money out of thin air, mayors with 600 houses, types like Gökçek, who owns a quarter of Ankara and makes a fortune by selling girls from dormitories, interesting real estate agents, those who act as pimps for the Palace and for this purpose, close hotel floors in the name of the state in official disguise, etc. It shall be recalled that in various revelations, we learned that some hotels were reserved floor by floor for certain ministers and Palace officials, and that a special pimping system was in operation for this purpose. The Palace also means a “life” in itself. The funniest ones are the most important figures of the Palace, as these most important figures have become buffoons. It is so because the sultan is a fake and if Abdülhamid was a tragedy, Erdoğan can be his comedy. In this Palace, the most important figures inevitably have to become Palace buffoons.
So this brings us to the lumpen bourgeoisie. But to understand this, we must remember that we are talking about a colonized country. The master thinks of this land as a kind of farm for oneself. There are stewards at the head of the farm. The stewards are running a looting, rent-seeking and war economy with a lot of journalists, a lot of murderers, a lot of lumpen, a lot of drug barons, a lot of pimps, a lot of people disguised as clergymen, etc.
Marx describes Bonaparte when he says: “This solemn buffoon who no longer regards world history as a comedy, but regards his own comedy as world history…” (K. Marx, age, p. 199). Fits that much! Ours, too, likes to be called a history-maker, a world leader. Any kind of presidency “suits” him, and not only that, he also wants to be known as a sheikhulislam, as befits us. Now, is it possible to call this person a sultan and the system a “patrimonial sultanate”? No, it is not even the funny version of a sultan. A person who has realized his dream of being the CEO of a joint stock company and has therefore become a role model for the lumpen cannot become a sultan by putting a crown on his head. He is, at best, an imitation of a sultan.
He is an imitation of Abdülhamid. But imitating the peculiar Abdülhamid in the 21st century, in a colonial country, is not funny, it is tragicomic. That is why we can come across professors who say, “My wife and daughter are halal for him”.
The bourgeois and the lumpen of the colonized country are a bit different. And of course our leftists and “intellectuals” also have their share of this, as if recognizing these subjects as unique beings is only possible for laughter at the booze table.
Painfully, nearly 2 million university students have had to suspend their university enrollment due to their economic conditions and have returned to their hometowns. With which humor is it possible to explain this, with sultanate?
In many cases, humor also serves to hide the seriousness of the situation. That is why, in the field of humor, there is a concept called black humor. It makes you laugh but it also makes you think. However, the social decay that has emerged in our society has also affected and decayed humor. Humor allows us to accept severe social situations and act as if they are normal.
If you assume that just talking, maintaining some kind of speech by censoring yourself, is a form of being an intellectual, then you become a part of this tragicomic situation. Self-knowledge is an important virtue. So, we may also consider self-censoring speech as a kind of self-awareness, right?
Let’s move on.
What is a parliament?
Parliament is a system through which the property owners, the bourgeoisie, directly control state debts, the way taxes are spent. In appearance, parliament can be presented as the whole nation electing its own representatives. But it has never been like that. The bourgeoisie, the sovereign, elects its own representatives and has them approved by the people. When it comes to the monopoly era, this becomes even more “refined”. Just look at the money that the person to be elected has to pay, has to spend, and you don’t need any other proof. But the monopoly system must be considered together with the ruling relationships and the violence that it entails. So, their control mechanisms are much more advanced. In ordinary times they operate this system. But extraordinary organizations bring its corruption along with it. And when it comes to a certain point, when parliament is no longer useful as a fig leaf covering the proper places of the sovereign, there is no longer any need for parliament. War and civil war bring this along. In all the major “democracies” of the world, in the imperialist metropolises, in the countries that are declared the “cradle of democracy”, the parliament is now being bypassed. Of course, in a colonial country like ours, this works a little differently.
Normally the sovereign wants a cheap state. Capitalists, monopolies, bourgeoisie are in favor of a cheap state. For this reason, the projects that neoliberals impose on colonial countries in the name of “downsizing the state” are actually compatible with the system. But this changes under extraordinary circumstances. For this reason, the staff of the Religious Affairs Department is suddenly doubled. After all, the Religious Affairs is now one of the organs waging a kind of private war in the garb of religion. And at this point, “Lavish money on prestige cannot be compromised.” It requires luxury vehicles, luxury watches, sumptuous residences, sumptuous clothes, etc.
When the state, on behalf of the bourgeoisie, begins to lose its ability to rule the entire nation, extraordinary organizations come into play. Otherwise, the sovereign cannot sustain the system, and of course this has a financial portrait; the bourgeoisie cannot run an extraordinary organization with a cheap state. This is also how the solution of financing the special war, the internal and external war through the drug network develops. For dirty work, black money is the most suitable.
Depending on social and economic change, the state is also affected by the way in which class struggle takes place. Financial fraud, extravagance, the looting of the state budget, the war economy and, most importantly, the tasks assigned by the masters are reflected in the organization of the state in the course of the class struggle. In this case, may our professors and our cleanliness-mongering and meritocratic writers forgive us, merit works in its own way. For a thief, skills in theft, for a murderer, skills as a hitman, for a swindler, the appropriate skills, for looting, the skills it requires, for lying, skills in lying, etc., become a measure of merit. To expect otherwise, if not stupidity and blindness, if not foolishness, is to deliberately distort the situation. The thief will want a cleric who writes edicts in a way that acquits him, and this is normal.
The Palace Regime is the extraordinary organization of the monopoly police state, the state of our time, organized under these conditions.
Parliament and political parties now exist on paper and are dysfunctional. They are used only in relevant situations. The electoral system and the ballot box have been buried. It is the sovereign who buries them. The elections itself are a kind of theater, like a play, like a primary school theater.
Today, after the illegitimate elections of May 28, 2023, the Palace Regime has handed over the country’s economy to the international consortium. The master has taken over the situation in order to pay the debts and on this condition, the new Erdoğan government has been accepted in an illegitimate manner. And the master is no longer trying to hide the spear. He is explicitly giving orders, bypassing all diplomatic conventions. And in this respect, far from being a sultan, Erdogan is the head of an unauthorized illegitimate power.
Now, can the Palace Regime be called a sultanate or a “one-man dictatorship”? Surely it can, but it would be both wrong and inadequate to describe the situation.
Simsek, who was put in charge of the economy of the Palace Regime, is a British citizen. But he is not only a citizen, he is also an officer of the international consortium. We are not making this up. This is the situation. Minister-civil servant Şimşek was taken to a meeting in mid-April to give a report to the masters, the international monopolies. There, when talking about inflation, the officer Simsek spoke of “the local population”. He talked about the need to “convince the local people that inflation will fall”. Supposedly, if “local people” believe that inflation will fall, inflation may fall back, and expectations will be a way to do this. But it is the term “local people” that concerns us. Officer Şimşek speaks in the terms of international capital. When the European colonizers “discovered” America, they called the people living there ” local people”. This is the colonizer’s language. The term ” local people” is not an ordinary term and is the clearest proof of who Minister Şimşek is working for. There is no connection between him and these people, and this is the truth. The local population is exactly their point of view. This clearly proves our emphasis on the international consortium. And it is well known that the CHP evaluated Şimşek and the Interior Minister in the new cabinet as “meritorious”. Indeed, for international capital, for creditor capital forces and countries, they are meritorious, so much so that they cannot stop themselves from saying “local people”.
Today the Palace Regime has turned into a war cabinet. This is proof that the war policy will increase even more both inside and outside.
And today, the Palace Regime is preparing to carry out the charity system, which it has put in place to keep the people, whom it condemned to hunger, unemployment and poverty, away from rebellion, through the municipalities. Repression, religion and nationalism are not enough. For this reason, they want to develop a kind of charity system and by giving this charity through municipalities, they want to prevent a revolt against the system.
The Palace Regime is waging a corrupt war inside and outside. The war industry is in operation to create new riches. This is what bothers the Bayraktar family. All public savings have been put at the disposal of the new bourgeoisie and the Palace shamelessly declares that “they are not taking any loans”. When TAI and ASELSAN have been placed at the disposal of the new war barons not only with their savings but also with their staff, is there a need for a loan? When everything produced is bought by the state at unreasonable prices, is there a need for a loan?
This is what the Palace Regime is, and the workers and laborers, those who resist, have no way out except to overthrow the Palace Regime. There is no way to “democratize” the system. On the contrary, war and civil war will develop further. For this reason, it should be fundamental to stand against the establishment of a system of charity through municipalities, to develop social solidarity as much as possible and to organize it in the form of assemblies.
Ahead of us is a period in which we will see newer forms of the Palace Regime’s war and civil war policies. The rulers loved the money with blood sauce. It also suits their character. The Turkish state is of the opinion that it can sustain itself with the policies of war and civil war. Its practices are oriented towards this. This is also an expression of the wishes of Washington, the architect of war policies. This is not a temporary policy.
Against these war policies, it is essential for the working class and the resisters to organize, to organize patiently and stubbornly. Without seeing the war and civil war, revolutionary movements cannot produce correct policies. Without taking the revolutionary organization of the working class as a basis, a continuous and effective war against the system cannot be waged. Therefore, for our front, the organization and revolutionization of the working class is indispensable and must always be kept at the forefront.
