A third front is as essential as bread

That there is a need for struggle against the AKP-MHP coalition known as the “People’s Alliance”, and that this coalition must be overcome, is beyond debate. At the latest, their desire to expand the appointment of trustees loyal to them in opposition municipalities is evident. Their aim is to render public advocacy associations like the IHD (Human Rights Association), bar associations, constitutional civil institutions like the TTB (Turkish Medical Association) and TMMOB (Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects), labor unions and other mass organizations ineffective by making opposition organizations subordinate to the government. They do not want an organized opposition, but a total political monopoly. This is a fundamental characteristic of fascism.

The struggle against the “People’s Alliance” and one-man rule is a struggle against capital and fascism, and can brook no compromise.

But can this struggle be entrusted to the bourgeois opposition of the “National Alliance,” which claims to advance it and contends that it will “send one-man rule packing in the first election”? This is a subject of debate among the opposition. According to the National Alliance and its leading party, the CHP, they are the only alternative and “by God, they will overcome!”

How? By compromising at once and in every domain, by claiming to be an alternative to one-man rule when they are a dictatorship of the monopolies that only seems democratic, by insisting on the parliamentary option which has been tried to exhaustion? Will the “National Alliance”, which has completely adopted and approved its foreign policy, lacking the courage to even criticize it, save the people from this one-man regime? Recently, did the National Alliance not defend this one-man regime against US sanctions that were imposed as a result of the S400 purchases, part of the wavering of bourgeois reactionism between America and Russia, did the government and the bourgeois opposition not declare they were hand-in-hand?

If it was only foreign policy, perhaps we could say “of course we must oppose the USA,” and be taken in by this political maneuver of the one-man regime to use anti-imperialist conceits to solicit support among the people and gather strength so that it can force concessions from the bourgeois opposition. 

Let us examine what the National Alliance, which claims to defend leftism and the principle that “labor is the highest value,” has done in the face of the attacks directed by the so-called “People’s Alliance” against the people.

Has the National Alliance and the CHP taken any steps beyond mere verbal criticism in response to the attacks of this one-man regime against the bar associations? Did it offer aid in the struggle of the bar associations, did it support them? Did it develop any practical position concerning the attacks on the TTB? Or when the one-man regime withdrew from the Istanbul Convention in an assault against women, did the bourgeois opposition take a stand alongside women? In the form of words, criticisms emerged even from within the AKP itself. But what more than words?!

Its record on labour rights is even worse.

Last year, the low-paid workers at İZBAN (İzmir Rail Transportation Company) decided to go on strike after failed collective bargaining negotiations with the company, in which the TCDD (State Railways of the Republic of Turkey) and the İzmir Metropolitan Municipality have a 50 percent stake. The strike was declared illegal by the President. The CHP-controlled municipality was the target of the strike and, forget voicing opposition, was thoroughly satisfied with the result.

This year, workers at Istanbul’s Kartal Municipality backed down from a strike at the last moment. The strike had begun at night, but an agreement was reached in the morning. What happened? The CHP-controlled municipality reluctantly agreed to a 0.85 percent seniority increase in base wages and an increase in general wages of eight percent in the first year and ten percent in the second year. When it comes to words, “labour is the highest value”! But although the Central Bank of the Republic of Turkey reports the rate of inflation at 14 percent, the CHP felt it proper for workers to receive pay increases below the inflation rate.

The collective agreement of Sarıyer Municipality workers in Istanbul, imposed by the High Council of Arbitrators (YHK), expired on June 30th. Since June 30th, the CHP-controlled municipality has refused to reach an agreement concerning the demands of those workers. The municipality, which claims that "labour is the highest value,” challenged the union's authority and took the matter to the Court of Cassation (Supreme Court). Workers whose wages have been declining had to live off less than 2,000 liras a month after taxes, and could not meet their expenses without taking on additional work. Here, too, the CHP hopes for support from the KHKs (Decrees with Force of Law) of the one-man regime, which it claims to oppose; because the majority of the 1,700 workers were handed over to the municipal company under a KHK, and they only received a 4 percent increase for two years last term – again below inflation – and have been stalled for more than 3 years in securing their most basic rights, such as food and travel expenses.

Willingness to compromise with the AKP but intransigence in compromising with the workers abounds among the bourgeois opposition! An alternative center of opposition is a precondition for workers and laborers to secure their bread. This is as necessary and important as their bread.

(Translated by Çağatay ÖNCÜ)