The third option

Dominant politics drags millions into misery for the sake of the survival of a handful of happy minorities, the bourgeois reign. Under the one-man rule, the gap between the rich and the poor has widened.

Workers and laborers who are overwhelmed by unemployment and poverty, young people who have lost their hope for the future, and the people longing for freedom are looking for a way out. Turkey's biggest handicap to be overcome is the two poles of being stuck in bourgeois politics. "People's Alliance" on one side, "Nation Alliance" on the other. Both blocks point to the ballot box. The understanding of politics offered to the public consists of voting in the elections that take place every 5 years! Well, can politics be reduced to just the ballot box?

While the AKP-MHP government was ruling the country with night decrees, drafting anti-democratic regulations on political parties and election law, riding on top of laborers seeking rights, women opposing violence, young people seeking autonomous universities, and building a fascist regime in the country step by step, he does not say, “Let there be elections and the ballot box come". In other words, the ruling bloc is conducting politics against the people at full speed and daily. When the day is not enough, night decrees come into play.

While this is the case, the calls of the parties of the "Nation Alliance" to "stay away from the street, do not give in to provocation, wait for the ballot box" on every occasion not only remove the masses of the people from being the subject of politics, but also pushes the masses out of daily struggle and politics. As opposition to a power that implements a daily program of attack, organisations leading a united, organized and daily struggle find that defending their rights and freedoms are incomplete, let alone coming into power.

Are this people obliged to choose the best of the evil people just to let the AKP go? We have two questions for those who cut off the socialists' objections by showing the fear that “What if the AKP wins once again?”: If the AKP wins despite everything, isn't the power to protect the working classes and the people from the attacks of this capital power, isn't it the organized power of the people? Unless the "Nation Alliance" came to power but could not put forward a different program from the AKP; Isn't the organized power of the people what is necessary then, as it is today? Option Three is necessary precisely for this reason. Because unity against one man rule must be based on the organization of the people, the unity of the working class and popular forces. The subject of the union is not only the parties; labor and professional organizations, trade unions, locally elected representatives of the people, locally formed platforms, forces of democracy, are the will of the people as a whole.

In the face of the 19-year AKP government, which has become known with poverty, corruption and prohibitions, the "Nation Alliance" has still not been an option to cut the power. This is because it is not clear how the country will exit the vortex of poverty. There is no concrete economic social program put forward. Making calls and giving confidence to international capital essentially lends money to austerity policies. It raises the question, "Is it a new Kemal Derviş program?" Measures such as the wealth tax for the rich, the equal share of national income, and the bills of the economic crisis being cut to monopoly capital are not even on the agenda of the bourgeois opposition.

The model of democracy offered by the "Nation Alliance" against the one-man rule is both ambiguous and flawed. What is meant by the "strengthened parliamentary system" proposal has not been explained. We know that fascist-authoritarian governments are possible both under the umbrella of the presidency and the parliament. For example, how far is it from the detention of DEP's Orhan Doğan after being dragged from the parliament in 1994 and the detention of HDP's Ömer Faruk Gergerlioğlu today? When the Sivas, Gazi and Maraş Massacres took place, the country had a parliamentary system, and when the 2015 Ankara Station Massacre took place, the presidential system. But the history of massacres has not yet been faced. However, the essence of democracy is to guarantee the political and trade union rights and freedoms of the people. It is the abolition of reactionary laws and institutions that prevent this. In a system where the people do not directly participate in the government of the country at all levels and stages, there is no guarantee of freedoms.

Those who want to support the "Nation Alliance" still have not been able to demonstrate what kind of unity this union is. For example, why is HDP excluded from this alliance, and its votes seem to be ine one’s back pocket? Could such a refusal alliance be principled, consistent? In which common ground will the country be governed in the issue of women while acting jointly with the AKP in the SP Istanbul Convention? How long will we go with the denialist line of the IYI Party regarding the demands of the Kurdish people and its nationalist chauvinist policies that target refugees? As a whole, especially in foreign policy, how willing are the CHP and the alliance parties to break the circle of "domestic and national opposition" that Erdogan desires? Each of these questions needs to be opened up and discussed. Otherwise, it is unthinkable that the promised power option is neither democratic nor popular. A revolutionary people's democratic option, a third option as we have expressed, to ensure that the stones are set firmly to create a fully principled, transparent and determined platform and stable union, as needed by Turkey

The Third Option is for the underprivileged who earn their bread from the garbage dump, the millions with the minimum wage working with hunger wage, the workers whose strikes are banned, the peasants on their tractors, the Kurds whose votes are ignored, the unemployed with diplomas, the university students who are strangled, the unheard screams of health workers "we are running out" in the pandemic, the small shopkeepers who are told "well go on your way and deal with it”, the  women victims of male-dominated violence, and oppressed people seeking justice in Soma, Sakarya, Çorlu, Suruç and the 10th October Massacres.

The Third Option is not the unity platform of "those who do politics in the name of the people", but of the people as a whole and of the people themselves.

Next May, as an alternative to international and cooperative capital, against one-man rule and bourgeois political polarization; It must be the day when the working class and popular forces most powerfully put forward a third option.