‘On with the road’ but does the ‘road’ lead to Fascism?

"Keep going!" is a power code! It is sloganized from the top of the state bureaucracy. On the "Path" that Erdogan and AKP administrators foresaw and pursue, the rich-poor gap has been growing and the policy of pressure, prohibition and violence against the revolutionary and bourgeois opposition is intensifying.

As the props of the policies pursued under Erdogan, Devlet Bahçeli [leader of the nationalist MHP] and Doğu Perinçek [of the Motherland Party] want the [pro-Kurdish] Peoples' Democratic Party (HDP) to be "closed". The action necessitated by this demand continues under the command of the Minister of Interior. Not only those who are members of the HDP and support them, but even those who say "hello" are almost labelled as "terrorists".

Even the presence of the parliament, which functions as a front for the administration centered on the strengthened executive body, is seen as a confusing excess. A parliament in which the voice of a "contradictory" party such as the HDP is heard is still problematic with its complicated appearance, despite being shelved in Erdogan's words. Some statements made by HDP members by forcing the conditions due to its formal grounds such as legality, although its activities are largely prevented, as well as the revelations by some HDP and [social democratic main opposition] CHP MPs of some contra relations and mafiatic tender tricks disturb the ruling partners.

In the statements made by the "one man" office, the situation of the CHP, which could not avoid being declared a "national security problem" despite its support for all "nationalist expansion" policies and whose full surrender was requested, also explains the "nature" of the Perinçek-Bahçeli-Erdoğan policy against the HDP. It was the HDP, which did not sing Azerbaijani victory marches and did not fall into the line of the other four parties in support of the operations of the Turkish army in Syria, Libya, Iraq and the Mediterranean.

Social history has an instructive function for all classes. The bourgeoisie and the working class try to be the winner in the struggle against the class enemy by making the least mistakes through the teaching of the lessons they have learnt from this great teacher, especially through the most advanced and class-conscious elements. Even in cases where the exploiter-exploited and the oppressor-oppressed relationship is the most obvious, every event in the field of social relations, which is obscured by the mechanism that works in the interest of the dominant power, contains clues about the future as well as gaining strength from the past. When the marches of military victory were more frequently sung by the bourgeois governments with the aim of "raising the national agitation", the peoples were dragged into the vortex of new great problems.

Rulers of Turkey are making the largest investment to strengthen the social impact of militarism and religious ideology. The arms industry develops rapidly, its share in export goods is increasing, and it is a factor of concentration in the warrior policy. Within the framework of the arms agreements signed with the Ukrainian administration which is in cooperation with the great powers of the EU and the USA against Russia, it has become possible to develop the technology of war planes and helicopters; while a few more additions were made to the buyers list in the armed drones trade, the statement "We are against the annexation of Crimea" was renewed. In the military show of strenght in Baku, the understanding of "the great power of the Turkish world" was renewed. The anti-Armenian show of force should not be seen only within the framework of the "national rampage" towards the outside; with the moves inside, they give the message: "Either shut up or you cannot guess what will happen!"

What will happen are being talked about through what had happened: an "executive" power where all administrative powers are centralized in "one man", through the reinforcement of authoritarian-totalitarian elements such as election fraud, the press and propaganda monopoly, the secret police, the attempt to silence the opposition by means of state violence, the strengthening of militarism, the arbitrariness of the bureaucracy, etc. And the economic functioning and politics that both strengthen and strengthened by this situation! Armed with the "National" armour and strengthened by the presence of monopolistic capital and its most aggressive and expansionist faction, the executive power is reinforced by modern military and financial means, as well as the "strong leader-strong state" policy called from the old-and recent times of history.

While the political pressure was intensified, the economic policy that served the interests of the monopolies was applied more predominantly by means of the “strengthened executive”. The big business circles further increased their wealth. The Erdogan administration, which received the support of some sections of the laborers with his rhetoric of "the poor and the impoverished", increased the number of millionaires. The poor and the unemployed have increased. The number of millionaires, which was 54,461 in 2012, increased to 322,225 in October 2020. The state-run Anadolu Agency announced that the number of millionaires residing in Turkey and abroad increased to 322,225 as of the end of October-2020. Accordingly, the number of millionaires, which was 225,441 at the end of last year, increased by 96 thousand 784 people in 10 months (which is the pandemic period). The total bank deposits of these millionaires increased to 2 trillion 61 billion 497 million lira. This means an increase of 669 billion 898 million lira in a 10-month period.

It has become quite clear who the AKP and Bahçeli-Erdoğan-Perinçek front are doing business for. This development has come at the expense of further impoverishment of tens of millions of workers and laborers, increase in unemployment, and the proliferation of economic-sociological murders and suicides. The concentration in the chauvinistic nationalist discourse is aimed at narrowing this class-social gap. The emphasis of militarism, the reactivation of the counter forces and paramilitary organizations called ülkücü (idealist) are linked to the aim of suppressing possible reactions. All in all, these are the forces of the "strengthened executive" and their historical examples point to the fascist threat that must be blocked by struggle. The danger grows as "strong execution" commands to keep going!