This morning, 105 people, including the mayor of Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality, were detained on charges of “establishing a criminal organization for profit and urban reconciliation.” At the same time, İsmail Saymaz was also detained on charges of “aiding an attempt to overthrow the government of the Republic of Turkey.”
Immediately after the detentions, Taksim Square was closed with a 4-day protest ban in Istanbul. The Palace Regime, based on the economy of plunder, rent and war, is a permanent state of emergency as an extraordinary organization.
On March 31, 2024, right after the local elections, which were completed less than a year ago, those elected said “we will balance the Palace Regime with the municipalities taken in local elections”; it was wrong, it is wrong. The Palace Regime did not come with elections, and it will not go with elections.
However, millions of people in those days essentially chose to change this order. The Palace Regime has been attacking with great decay in every aspect of life as a whole for years.
There is an order that millions of people want to change, even if they do not wholeheartedly believe that those they voted for will change it. They have chosen that women should not be killed in the streets, that newborn babies should not be slaughtered for 8 thousand liras, that pensioners should not be condemned to death with three pennies, that workers and laborers should not be enslaved, that students should not be subjected to an education system that produces ignorance, that peoples should not die in wars, that the entire geography should not be appropriated to mine companies. It is this life that needs to change.
To create this life, to abolish the Palace Regime, resistance is the only choice.
What comes with an election does not go with an election. We can say this for Erdoğan and for Ekrem İmamoğlu. Dozens of municipalities in the country won by the DEM Party are already governed without elections.
The choice of us millions is to end this order. Then what we need is organized resistance that will go to the end.
The Palace Regime will go and the way to do this is resistance. The victory of these resistances passes through organization, through the United Labor Front.
The last word will be spoken on the street!
Kaldıraç Movement
19 March 2025
