2023 CONFERENCE OF TKP: STRONG ORGANISATION, EFFECTIVE POLITICS, QUEST FOR POWER
The main report of TKP’s conference, TKP’s Revolutionary Tasks After the Elections, focused on the developments that emerged in the context of the elections, TKP’s work during the electoral period, the results that were achieved and the direction of TKP’s political and organisational goals for the coming period. Although some evaluations about the new period of AKP rule are present, it has been refrained from premature conclusions.
TKP determines that the counter-revolutionary operation carried out by the AKP, which came to power at the end of 2002, has succeeded in the sense that the capitalist social order has gained a new political and ideological ground by 2023. This means that from now on, without the interventions of the working class and the revolutionary movement, it is impossible for this ground to be questioned or radically changed only as a product of the internal tensions of bourgeois politics.
With the parliamentary picture that emerged after the elections, it is observed that the AKP has all the conditions for the preparation of a Constitution that will bear the signature of AKP, and their rule. What is lacking is the AKP’s historical and social legitimacy. It would be a great mistake to even discuss the content of the Constitution they are to create. What the revolutionary, patriotic and communist forces should do regarding the theme of a new Constitution is to bring forward the idea of a socialist constitution and reject as a whole any draft Constitution that this Parliament may present.
Moreover, the capitalists and AKP know very well that the silence of the working class cannot be taken for granted, as many individual resistances in the past period have proven. In many workplaces that have set positive examples and serious responses in the struggle for their rights in recent years, it was exactly those workers who voted for the ruling AKP. Therefore, it can be expected that the AKP government will increase the pressure on the working class movement, redefine its red lines according to the new economic policy and increase the degree of Islamisation as one of the main pillars to keep the working class away from the struggle. The attack on workers launched by the government immediately after the elections can be taken as a sign of this tendency.
The electoral success of the AKP and the fact that Erdoğan received almost the same number of votes in the three consecutive presidential elections may give the impression that the ideological-political preferences of Turkish society are fixed. However, Turkey is a country where the earth is loosening as it is experiencing a deep shake-up affecting all social segments that voted for both alliances. The main cause of this shaking is the desperation of the people in the face of the rising costs of living and the devastating earthquake that came on top of this desperation.
The fact that the AKP, which is supposed to appeal (and in reality does appeal) to the conservative electorate with Islamist and nationalist references, has not lost much blood while making harsh manoeuvres in domestic politics, economy and foreign policy with a realpolitik approach can be explained by the poor masses’ search for security and stability. However, it would be an illusion to think that all these ebbs and flows do not cause any erosion in the ideological-political preferences of Turkish society.
Even though the urban pro-Republican segments has lost its energy and self-confidence in recent years and surrendered to an abstract discourse of libertarianism, TKP will continue its efforts to clarify the class distinctions within them. However, more effective tools and a renewed language are necessary to convince the more conservative blue-collar workers and a broad swathe of workers across Anatolia, ie. to convince them for a secular-independent country and a programme based on a statist-planned economy. Communist Party of Turkey has the creativity and sincerity to uncompromisingly defend secularism without entering into an antagonistic relationship with the belief systems of millions of poor people, and to bring together its anti-imperialist position and its goal of a statist-planned economy with our citizens’ search for a “strong and stable Turkey”. The socialist revolution becoming a timely and legitimate option for our working people can only be the outcome of the steps to be taken in this direction.
It must be recognised that the libertarian discourse, which does not question the relations of exploitation and is based on the interaction between bourgeois democracy and radical democracy, has become a serious obstacle for the struggle for socialism in Turkey. The world revolutionary movement has a vast experience in defending democracy and freedoms against absolutist regimes and later fascism, and beyond that, in intertwining a revolutionary rise with the fight for freedom. However, it is not only unproductive but also harmful for communists to wage a struggle for hegemony in a liberal “freedom” discourse based on identities that cannot break away from the definition of “democracy” determined by the imperialist world. TKP will prioritise readdressing rights and freedoms, especially in the fields of youth and women’s struggle and culture and arts, within a class perspective.
The instability of the labour force, flexible and unregulated employment practices, high and widespread informality and high unemployment rate result in the fact that networks based on families, neighbourhoods and hometowns still maintain their weight in determining the ideological-cultural preferences of the workers and continue to put neighbourhoods into an essential place for a revolutionary strategy. On the other hand, the high prevalence of such networks, which render traditional workplace organisations obsolete, and the repressive interventions of the AKP government in the last 20 years to prevent the right to unionise and the right to strike, make intermediate forms inevitable for the relations between the political party and the working class in Turkey. TKP considers neighbourhoods and workplaces as two complementary spaces within the organised struggle of working people. The TKP District Houses and the PE (Patronların Ensesindeyiz- We Breathe Down the Bosses’ Neck) network continue to be our most creative and fruitful experiments in this respect.
For the TKP, the focus is on the situation of the working classes in Turkey. The AKP government, which tried to manage the developments that would perhaps cause big explosions by transferring a certain amount of resources to the poorer segments of society before the elections, has no choice but to implement policies that will force a large part of the society to “austerity”. The shameful optimism around Mehmet Şimşek (the new Minister of Finance) should be seen as a tacit alliance between the government and the opposition to legitimise the attacks of the Turkish bourgeoisie on the working people. In this sense, TKP has to make it a priority task to strengthen the resistance of the working class against the capitalist class, regardless of the ideological and political agenda.
All conditions are ripe for the Kurdish question, which is stuck in a liberal, libertarian, identity-based, nationalist framework, to be redefined on a class basis and for an anti-imperialist, pro-enlightenment ideological-political line to gain weight among Kurdish workers. Contrary to the approach that considered class contradictions as a mere detail of the Kurdish question, placing the problems of the Kurdish people in a class context will pave the way for the struggle for equality and freedom in Turkey. In this sense, TKP has to take bold and effective steps, create new political and organisational channels and prevent pro-Turkish and pro-Kurdish nationalist sentiments from feeding each other and distancing the working people of Turkey from a common culture of struggle.
In the harsh and ruthless political and ideological climate of the coming period in Turkey, the socialist revolutionary political line has no chance to maintain a meaningful impact without being heard on a much wider scale than today. TKP is reviewing its channels of communication and publication policy accordingly. Action has been taken for publications that reflect the main agendas of the struggle for socialism in a diffuse way, that will pull the struggle forward, with a vanguard and partisan character, and on the other hand will be innovative, in terms of language and content.
Following the July 2023 Conference, the Communist Party of Turkey is preparing to make a strong organisational and political breakthrough in line with its historical mission.
In this context, the July 2023 Conference has taken the following decisions:
- In its search for a social, political and ideological alliance that will pave the way for the struggle for socialism, TKP will focus on ideological and social interactions that will bring Turkey’s pro-enlightenment and anti-imperialist accumulation closer to the goal of a Socialist Republic. The People’s Representatives Assembly of Turkey will be the instrument of such an alliance. The Assembly of People’s Representatives of Turkey will serve to strengthen the interaction between the patriotic, pro-enlightenment accumulation and the strategy of socialist revolution in the 100th anniversary of the Republic of Turkey. At the same time, it will help Kurdish workers to become integral to the foundation of socialist Turkey by replacing all kinds of nationalist prejudices and approaches with a class perspective. It will be a real Assembly where vanguard workers from the PE network, workers from district houses, students from universities, women from women’s solidarity committees, intellectuals and politicians are elected.
- In addition to the Central Committee and Party Council elected by the TKP congresses and conferences, the Central Executive Board (CEB) has been added to the central organs of the party. The CEB is the executive board responsible for implementing the party’s political decisions and initiatives more effectively, evaluating the party’s work in the light of concrete data and ensuring coordination.
- A WORKERS’ ACADEMY will be established, which will act as a school, develop special training programmes, prepare printed and visual materials to help the organisational, political and theoretical development of the party’s worker cadres and to increase and strengthen the number of party organisations at workplaces.
- Breath Down the Neck of the Bosses (PE) Solidarity Network have a mission to expose the profit rates, mechanisms of exploitation, dirty relations, lay-offs, mobbing and similar practices of capitalist companies, in monthly periods, in the most effective way and turn them into concrete topics of struggle in which party organisations will also be involved.
- The role of the District Houses in the creation of a class partisanship will be strengthened and will continue to be one of the main tools for the TKP to enter the regions where organisation of the working class is necessary.
- It is an absolute necessity for our party to address the “women’s problem”, which has different dimensions, in a way centered on the organisation/struggle of working women. In this context, Women’s Solidarity Committees will be strengthened as the main means of organisation and struggle.
- A central task focusing on the fight against religious sects will be set, and in this context, a propaganda and struggle tool will be developed under the name “We Breathe Down the Sects’ Neck”.
- A similar task will be set in the name of fighting against imperialism.
- TKP’s publishing activity will be restructured by putting soL PORTAL at the center. The most important element of this restructuring in terms of content and form is to increase production in the field of publishing, but to ensure focus by reducing diversity. soL Portal, including soL TV, will become the mail platform where the new period is unified in terms of broadcasting, and the resources required for a transformation and leap will be created.
- TKP’s theoretical publication GELENEK (TRADITION) will be published regularly on a monthly basis in digital media and through soL with an improved content that responds to the needs of the party.
Another decision taken by the Conference is growing the solidarity with Cuban Revolution. The full decision text is as follows:
“TKP STANDS BY THE CUBAN REVOLUTION.
The Cuban Revolution has been the pride of humanity for 64 years.
The Cuban people and the Communist Party of Cuba, who have been waging a vital struggle with various sacrifices for the survival and progress of this source of pride, are going through a difficult period. US imperialism is doing its best to subjugate the Cuban Revolution. It threatens the Cuban people with poverty and hunger in order to prevent the revolution’s admirable progress towards the construction of an equal and free society and to subjugate the Cuban people. It seeks ways to use the deprivations caused by this attack as a ground for direct intervention in Cuba under the pretext of “human rights violations”.
However, socialism, which is targeted by imperialism, is first and foremost the guarantee of sovereignty for Cuba. The Cuban people, who never compromise their independence and freedom, have no intention of stepping back from an egalitarian and free country gained through socialism.
We have no doubt that the Cuban Revolution will frustrate the plans of imperialism with its extraordinarily developed human accumulation and power, hard work, determination and creativity, and insistence on socialism.
TKP will continue to maintain its solidarity with the Cuban people who struggle against imperialist attacks stubbornly and determinedly, under all conditions. We will always stand by the revolutionary cadres of the Communist Party of Cuba, who take every step in this struggle without giving up the priority of protecting the socialist character of the country. We will not allow the lies and smear campaigns of the enemies of Cuba and will continue to tell the truth about Cuba against the unwarranted accusations of the so-called friends of Cuba.
Long live Cuba! Long live socialism!”
