Down with Erdogan’s fascist government!
On 18 February a wave of arrests hit the democratic and labour opposition in Turkey. Fifty-two people were arrested, including members of the Labour Party (EMEP), as well as its provincial president in Istanbul, Sema Barbaros, members of opposition parties such as the People’s Democratic Congress (HDK) and several journalists. Among those detained was also Mehmet Türkmen, president of the BIRTEK-SEN union, an active fighter for labour rights and class unionism. Protests against his arrest and against the repression of workers’ organisations immediately spread throughout the country.
As denounced by EMEP, our sister party in Turkey, these arrests are part of the manoeuvres with which the Erdogan government seeks to build an increasingly oppressive and reactionary regime: Like the dismissal of mayors by court order and the repeated banning of strikes, the arrests of politicians, trade unionists and journalists are intended to intimidate the democratic forces and repress the struggles of the Turkish working class against exploitation.
The workers of Turkey have for years suffered the erosion of their labour and social rights, on which the ‘new Turkey’ that Erdogan boasts of with his ‘neo-Ottoman’ aspirations has been built: working days of 10-12 hours a day, more flexible dismissal, collaboration unionism and violation of union rights, police and judicial repression, erosion of retirement pensions, etc. Now, after several years of obtaining fabulous profits at the cost of the overexploitation of the working class, and enjoying the tolerance and million-dollar exemptions of the state, Turkish companies, foreign capital and the government intend to unload the consequences of the crisis onto the workers’ backs.
For months now, the workers have been engaged in a struggle against the combined attacks of the bosses and the AKP government. In February, BIRTEK-SEN led a wave of strikes in the textile factories of Baspinar (Antep province) involving thousands of workers, to demand wage increases. The mobilisations spread to other industries and victories were achieved in several companies. The authorities immediately responded with police repression in an attempt to break the workers’ resistance and the unity of their struggle, extending the arrests to the political and intellectual sectors likely to form a common front with the workers against government authoritarianism.
Despite the repression, large sectors of the proletariat have continued the strike in the province of Antep, defying the bans. In addition, they have extended the campaign for union organisation and the right to collective bargaining, under the slogan ‘Union without barriers! Strike without prohibition! Secure work!’, to confront the obstructions, threats and abuses of the employers.
We, the ICMLPO parties of Europe, join EMEP in their call to all the workers and the peoples of their country to organise and raise the struggle for democracy, peace, work and bread. The working class of Turkey, like that of all countries, must fight for its unity of action in defence of collective rights, and get involved in the political struggle to bring down the foreign monopolies and their ‘national’ collaborators. As history has repeatedly shown, the proletariat continues to have a central role in the struggle for peace and for the revolutionary overcoming of capitalism and the bourgeois state.
We call on the working class in general, and in Europe in particular, as well as on democratic and progressive organisations, to actively show solidarity with our class brothers and sisters in Turkey and to follow their example of unity and combativeness in confronting the aggressions of capital, the growing authoritarianism of the states and the threat of war.
Long live the struggle of the Turkish working class!
For united action against the abuses of the bosses!
Democracy, peace, work and bread!
CIPOML European parties and organisations