This article published on May 19, just after the first round of the election
The May 14 elections provide very important information about the Turkish state, the Palace Regime. Of course for those who want to see. The eye that does not want to see is the blindest eye.
First of all, if a play were to be written about how to “lose” an election that has been “won”, this election could be staged as a tragicomic play. This has been done. At one extreme the bad guy is a thief, at the other extreme the “good” guy is a reluctant one. The one who does not want to win the election cannot win the election. Just like a civil servant, he can wait for his masters to elect him, just as they elected Erdoğan. CHP cadres who have been through NATO training cannot be expected to behave otherwise.
It is known that we called the July 15 coup a “theater”.
The elections of 2015, 2017, 2018 and now May 14, 2023 are worse than theater; they resemble plays staged by elementary school children.
The 2015 elections were rigged. The AK Party and Erdoğan had already lost the elections in June. But it didn’t happen that way. The CHP came to the rescue of the Palace with Deniz Baykal. [1]
The 2017 referendum was rigged. The referendum rejected the “new system”. There was no popular approval. In any case, a referendum under a state of emergency is not legitimate.
The 2018 elections were rigged. Ince, who is notorious due to various rumors about him, won these elections. But he declared that “the man won”. [2]
The May 14, 2023 elections were rigged.
All the decisions and governments formed by these elections are illegitimate, not legitimate.
And all parties, including the CHP, have recognized all of these elections and referendums as legitimate. Each time they told us, “it already happened”, “what can we do” and waited patiently for the next one.
You cannot win an election with cautions to stay indoors. [3]
Under the conditions of the Palace Regime, this is by no means possible.
1
We have been saying it all along and we will say it more and more. Turkey is a colony. What it means to be a colonial country is clear and unambiguous in the literature in all various tendencies. There is no qualitative difference of the colony with the “banana republic,” which our so-called intelligentsia team despises. Turkey is a colonial country. The fact that it is an “important” country does not contradict its colonial status.
The definition of semi-colony is only valid for a certain period of time. The Ottoman Empire became a semi-colony in the 1800s. The Turkish state was organized from the very beginning as a colonial country. If a country is a semi-colony, it cannot remain in that status forever. That is against the course of life. The Turkish state was born as a barrier, an outpost against the October Revolution. It is one of the prisons of the peoples and bases of anti-communism, organized against the USSR by the common will of the imperialist front. With NATO, this situation has become completely clear.
The imperialist camp, which was defeated against the Red Army (in the Second World War), has treated the Turkish state as a joint colony in the new world order which was created through NATO. The Turkish state is politically (i.e. with its military, army, police, judiciary, bureaucracy, etc.) tied to the US and economically tied to the EU. It has always been as such until the dissolution of the USSR. A colonial country, but a “joint colony”. Since the dissolution of the USSR, there has been a war of partition over whether the Turkish state will be a colony of the US or the EU. This war still has not been decided. The fight between the US, which holds the political direction, and the EU, which holds the economic direction, i.e. the fight between the masters, is reflected in every aspect of the mechanisms of sovereignty. This is why there is not one AK Party, but at least 5 different AK Parties, in which the US, Germany, France, the UK and Israel are active. The same is true for the CHP. It is possible to see this in every institution of the system. Cults, gangs, etc. can be considered together with this.
The reason why the AK Party lost the Istanbul elections was the open conflict that existed between the US and the EU at the time. Because of this conflict, the US rigging was limited. Today, the EU has bowed to the US with the Ukraine war. Therefore, the conflict is now more subtle and “negotiations” are emerging as a form of this conflict.
This is something to keep in mind when talking about the elections.
2
The May 14 elections were rigged.
No one should have any doubt about this. Every person has gained an opinion from their circle that Kılıçdaroğlu won and this cannot be covered up by any deception, by any lie, by any theft. The election was stolen, the election was allowed to be stolen.
We may not have a deep enough knowledge of the thief’s mechanisms and ways of stealing the election. But we know that the thief is a master at it. The Palace Regime does not run the state with “meritless” cadres, contrary to what has been said; it is ruled by master thieves who are adept at stealing, master thieves who pull rabbits out of hats. Indeed, if power is based on the economy of looting, profit and war, the cadres worthy of it will also have merit in this regard.
The Palace Regime is a master of theft.
The objections of the so-called intelligentsia, such as “well, but how do they steal?” is a case of “a person’s finding an excuse to believe in something”. It is also impossible to understand why those who have such faith in the Turkish state, in “democracy” and the electoral system are calling Erdoğan and the Palace Regime “thieves”.
From Peker, Muhammed Yakut and Ali Yeşildağ’s statements [4] we hear astonishing stories of theft and cheating. It is not possible to understand the thefts by pondering them. The man is a thief and that is his job.
How can a man who is a thief in every field, in every issue, not be a thief in this issue?
One of those who published confessions from the state and palace circles, Ali Yeşildağ, says: Erdoğan is such a thief that he steals and then makes you applaud him. He did it in 2015, he did it in 2017, he did it in 2018 and he is doing it on May 14.
This network of theft is managed and operated by NATO. In other words, Erdoğan’s downfall through the ballot box can only happen if and only if NATO decides so. NATO, which supports and ignites war policies all over the world, is also mortifying the parliamentarism. Even in the most “democratic countries”, the star of parliamentarism has faded and is fading.
The Palace Regime is bloody-handed, murderous, thieving, war arsonist, war addict, looter, rentier. In accordance with all these, the “law of civil war” is being implemented in the country. Accepting all this and then falling for the CHP propaganda and expecting that the Palace will obey the law when it comes to elections is absurd, it is an eclipse of reason and the so-called intelligentsia of our country believe this.
Those who suffer from mental eclipse do not understand the illusion in front of their eyes. Their job is either to applaud or to fall down with sadness and grief and blame it on the people, but when realized, the success will be theirs.
Is Erdoğan really a “legal” candidate? Those who do not resist that also happen to be the ones who agree to do nothing against the theft.
It is clear that the vote cast in the ballot box and the vote that comes out of the ballot box are never, can never be the same. To be so naive about democracy needs to be a person who lost his mind.
3
NATO, the masters, have made an agreement under the weight of the United States. We do not know the details of this agreement. But this agreement is the basis for the announced results of the May 14 elections.
The elections were held as two elections in one.
The presidential part of the elections went to the second round.
But the parliamentary part of the elections is over. The parliament is dominated by the AKP. And the CHP did not object to this parliament. Moreover, the CHP candidates are the most right-wing candidates possible. This is how the parliament was intended to be. There is more than one AKP in the parliament.
The palace has once again stolen the election.
The CHP is a partner in this theft, it has remained silent, it has approved it.
Those who told the people “don’t take to the streets”, “trust us”, “stay at home” are the supporters of the Palace in creating the impression that there was a “democratic election”. NATO wanted it this way and the parties complied.
Nowhere did the CHP object to the parliamentary elections.
It gave the parliament. It is understood that this was the first step of the agreement.
But is there a clause in the agreement to give the presidency to Kılıçdaroğlu in the second round? We do not know this. But it is quite meaningful that the Palace stopped at 49.50%. It is meaningful that they did not go a little further and say that they won the election. This is because they want to create a perception of a “democratic election”. They need public approval for what they are going to do. That is the purpose of the theater. Otherwise, they would have said that they won the election with a little more fraud.
The master wants the people to believe that the elections were legitimate and all bourgeois parties, including the CHP, are supporters of the Palace in this regard. This is because the aim is to restore the worn-out institutions of the Turkish state.
However, these elections are not legitimate.
– President Erdoğan could not have been a candidate. Those who say yes to this, those who do not raise their voices are accomplices in this crime.
– The HDP was not allowed to take part in the elections and was faced a closure case. This is the clearest proof that the elections were not democratic. This situation provided good opportunities for the theft of HDP votes.
– And thirdly, the elections were rigged.
For these three reasons the elections are not legitimate and a normal “bourgeois opposition” should declare the results of these elections illegitimate. This is not a revolutionary position; on the contrary, it is an ordinary position for any bourgeois party. They don’t want to do even that.
4
With the elections, the Turkish state, the rulers have made some gains.
First of all, all left parties shifted to the right. In this way, the hopes of the masses in a state of resistance are turned towards the system and they wanted to take the possibility of rebellion away from them. Those who are disappointed today are the ones who actually believed that Kılıçdaroğlu would win and that there would be a democratic election.
Those who believed in the thief left their doors open and took no precautions.
Secondly, the Turkish state created a huge perception that a democratic election process was taking place in the country. The CHP was part of this process and the left participated in this process on the CHP’s tail. Today, those who repeat the words of the EU press, which declared that the elections were not on “equal terms”, cite as evidence the government’s use of the levers of power of the state. As if this was an unknown situation. They ignore the the desire to exclude the HDP, the illegal acceptance of Erdogan as a candidate and the rigging of the election.
With great anger, the literate team is angry with the people in the earthquake zone. But what is the vote that the people of this region cast? It is certainly not the vote that came out of the ballot box. CHP does not object to the election even in these provinces. It is a complete illusion and a fraud that the people in the earthquake zone supported the Palace, especially at this rate.
5
The CHP’s promises to the people “we have taken every precaution, trust us” were made to keep the masses away from the resistance and the streets.
It is a big lie that the signed election documents from ballot boxes will be monitored and that the election will not be rigged. The CHP must have been convinced after midnight. Where are the signed election documents from ballot boxes? Why did the flow of CHP results stop after midnight? Or did a cat get into the CHP’s system? Can this responsibility be removed with the resignation of Onursal Adıgüzel? Those within the CHP who objected to the process, especially Kaftancıoğlu, were silenced. All CHP staff know the truth.
The MHP’s votes are below 5 percent. Oğan’s votes are full of lies and the AKP’s votes are rigged.
The architects of this process are the NATOists within the CHP. Erdoğan Toprak and Oğuz Kaan Salıcı are the architects of this process. Almost every CHP member knows this. These two and their entourage are acting on the orders of NATO.
The Palace stole the election. The CHP, on the other hand, did not want to win the election and allowed it to be stolen.
In the name of using a “polite” language, they hid behind the agendas of the Palace, did not voice the realities of the country in any way, and the real agenda was covered up. The rotten Palace Regime, which is full of filth, was not criticized, and the propaganda of “spring will come, good days will come, wait, trust us” was created. Thus, the masses, including the CHP base, were kept passive and ads spectators.
Not all the ingenuity lies with the thief, a significant part lies with those who did not put the will to win the election, who yesterday created the Ekmeleddin case, the İnce case.
Those who do not see this, who vomit their anger at the people in a broken and hurt state, are not honest. Those who did not fight to win the election, those who neutralized those who did, those who locked the people in their homes, are also adept at blaming the people.
6
We said from the very beginning that HDP had to field a candidate. The entire left, the Labor and Freedom Alliance had to unite around this candidate.
Today, those who look for wisdom in Oğan, those who declare him a key force, have to weigh once again the results that would have occurred if the HDP had fielded a candidate.
Such a candidate would have carried the real agenda in the elections, the real problems of the people and the working class, women and youth. In this way, in the second round, these agendas would have become debatable again. Now, instead of a debate about how to respond to Oğan’s “nationalist” rhetoric, the debate would be about how to respond to the real agenda that the candidate of the Alliance for Labor and Freedom would articulate. The shift to the right and politics based on illusion and lies would not have been so effective.
This is not a mistake to be underestimated.
7
One of the important results of the elections is that the parliament has become the most right-wing parliament possible.
But even more important is the introduction of a new mood of nationalism.
The MHP’s votes are the result of theft. Otherwise, one would have to claim that Bahçeli’s recent statements such as “Hans, Joni, Toni, Herkel” were found “funny” by the masses and turned into votes. This is not true.
Oğan’s votes are also like this.
It is also not correct to talk about “nationalism” based on these votes. In this way, such a perception is created, as if there is a “domination of the nationalist mood” among the people. This is not true, this is what is aimed to be created.
Within the “new nationalism” that is wanted to be created as a result of the elections, there is also the nationalism of the left.
The left, which had collectively shifted to the right, is now wanted to be taken into the vortex of a nationalism with a slightly different tone. One would have to be mentally paralyzed not to realize that this is a NATO project.
TİP entered the elections with a separate list. The loss caused by this is quite heavy, both for the TİP and for the Alliance of Labor and Freedom. Those who everywhere say “boycotting the presidential elections will benefit Erdoğan” should now look at who benefits from the fact that the TİP entered the elections with a separate list.
The rulers want to revive a new nationalism in society, at every level, in every style. The path they are taking in this regard is much more important than the new composition of the parliament. The latter is more grave in terms of its consequences.
The masters, the rulers, want this new nationalism for the war policies that the world capitalist system, the imperialist centers of the West, NATO, have fomented and perpetuate. The masters, the rulers need this new nationalism to continue these war policies, to silence the social opposition, to take it off course, to tie it to the state. This is what they want to do.
The new “nationalism” is not yet a reality, it is artificial and they want to create it.
In the new period, the war addiction in our country will reach even more advanced dimensions. It is a separate issue what kind of war the masters will ignite against whom with the hand of the Turkish state. But without understanding the war policies, without seeing the “discredited” parliamentarism in the world, the election results cannot be understood correctly.
8
The working class, women, peoples, youth, must continue their line of resistance against this new wave of nationalism (which is presented as real, which they want to be create), without losing their morale, by gathering their energies.
The working class is nothing without organization.
Therefore, the issue is not a matter of elections. It is a question of the organization of the working class.
The Palace Regime will not be defeated with the ballot box, it will be defeated with resistance.
Already, according to the results of the first round of the election, the rulers have taken steps to restore the Palace Regime. The shift of the left to the right is a big problem in this respect.
This general shift to the right contradicts the desire and will of the masses to shift to the left, to connect to the line of resistance. We saw these two tendencies on May 1, 2023. Of course, the real movement will take shape within the line of resistance. After the elections, all the realities of life will be revealed with all their weight, and workers, laborers, women and youth will once again be confronted with the realities of the hellish life they live.
We do not know every aspect of what the sovereign, NATO, the masters are planning.
Perhaps Erdoğan will lose in the second round. Or rather, he has already lost and the second round of the elections will be used for the perception that “democracy exists”. We do not know this. But we are sure that there is a bargaining process between Germany and the US. It is clear that this bargaining process is going on with the weight on the side of the US. Therefore, the elections cannot be understood without understanding the war policies.
It may be that in this bargain it was promised that Erdoğan and his family would be left untouched. But it is difficult for Erdoğan to believe this. Because, starting from the moment he loses power, the demand for Erdoğan to be put on trial will somehow come to life.
However, what is clear today is that the masters have already reached an agreement among themselves.
An extraordinary process in Ukraine and Idlib could influence the second round of the elections. It is unlikely that this is possible, but it is possible.
If Erdoğan wins, he will not really have won, nor will anything change in the country if Kılıçdaroğlu wins. Either way, the elections are not legitimate. Whoever runs the casino of course knows the results.
The vote that comes out of the ballot box is important, not the vote that is cast.
Just banging on the table saying “I am here” does not put anyone in a state of “standing upright”. [5] Those who sink into the quagmire, by necessity, make a show of standing upright. This pounding on the table is a stage of the theater being played.
Those who told us, the people, “let’s end the elections in the first round” did not protect the votes. Those who think of democracy as nothing but the ballot box, those who exaggerate the ballot box and talk about it as “honor”, show us the results of their “great” system based on signed documents from the ballot boxes.
We say it once again; the masters want to impose their decisions on the people through the ballot box, want to make all say “the people chose”.
Within the capitalist system, under bourgeois rule, every election is an election with a predetermined outcome. Nevertheless, elections are important under normal conditions. These elections, however, are not “normal”. They are state of emergency elections. A civil war law is present in the country. Therefore, the only thing that could be done in the elections was for the left front to put forward a joint candidate. This candidate could have been the candidate of the Labor and Freedom Alliance, and this candidate could have had the opportunity to tell and explain the truth to the people. This could have had an impact on the whole election process.
So, we revolutionary socialists are not talking about boycotting every election. But today, we only have the presidential election. In the first round, it was important to influence the parliamentary elections by voting for the Green Left Party. Today we don’t face a such a situation. There is no election, there is no real ballot box. The election results are managed by a software program. The center of this software is in NATO. It is not enough to talk only about manipulations, only about repression and violence, only about unequal conditions.
The country is being steered towards an agenda based on a full-scale war, and they want to stop the line of resistance that has been going on since Gezi. These are open preparations for war. We cannot be a part of this. The working class, women and youth must take sides on the line of resistance. They must organized in this way and mass and organized resistance must be developed.
[1] After 7 June 2015 elections, Deniz Baykal – former chairman of CHP – had a closed-door meeting with Erdoğan in the Palace. After this meeting, CHP started negotiations with AKP under the title of “exploratory talks” in order to form a coalition government. After 45 days of negotiations, efforts to form a government came to an end and the elections were decided to be renewed. (t.n.)
[2] referring to Erdoğan(t.n.)
[3] This expression refers to the cautions of CHP and other main opposition parties towards the people, telling them to not protest, take it to the streets etc., but to show reaction at the ballot box. (t.n.)
[4] These are several Turkish mafia bosses and whistle-blowers who has made various allegations about Turkish politicians and numerous government engagements in illegal activities through their own social media accounts on Twitter, YouTube etc. (t.n.)
[5] refers to the video Kılıçdaroğlu published after the elections (t.n.)
