It’s the rule; the aging forms of struggle are replaced by new ones

When Erdoğan threatened, CHP leader Kılıçdaroğlu had reacted “as if we instructed people to go out? Just the opposite, I told friends ‘you won’t over-react, you won’t go out, you will patiently wait for the ballot box’”. Just about a month passed, the same Kilicdaroglu, this time, announced that he would not pay his hydro bill unless the last price hike was withdrawn. That was not all, on Feb 9th, CHP had a press announcement by going out in 81 provinces. The leader of Istanbul Province said in his press announcement that the announcements were simultaneously made in all 39 municipalities, and these announcements would be repeated every day until the price hikes were withdrawn.

What had happened? What has changed so that CHP, changing its position, took it to the streets? And, having said they would drive away those going out to the streets just as they had done on July 15, why have Erdogan and his AKP kept their silence without any reaction what so ever?

What has changed is neither AKP nor CHP!

The primary change forcing them to alter their positions is in the basic variable of the country and the world. It’s already unbearable, and the people, working class at the head, change their position.

It has not started with motorcycle couriers, but it got spread with them, with people motivating each other. Sock manufacturing workers, Farlplas, Urfa Uğur Textile, and Antep Şireci Textile… uncountably numerous. And they have won, too. It stayed local at the beginning. It is getting united as time goes on. Besides the unionised, the unionised enterprises also get some movement. Last one of those is Aliağa Ship Demolition workers of Izmir. A great class has started moving in front of our eyes. It has not yet stood up, but one has to be blind not to see it go that way.

The inflation taking away 50% minimum wage increase even in less than two months and the utility bills with hiked prices are the primary causes of this movement. Workers are all out demanding the wages increase, and the price hikes be withdrawn. Going out in many of the provinces, Genel-İş branches tell it out loud their demands for “General Strike General Resistance”. Playing the moving role, the inflation, price hikes and inflated utility bills hurt not only the workers but all people, and direct them all out to streets. Not only the factories or enterprises, even neighbourhoods have got into movement. Protests for inflated utility bills have spread from Bodrum and Marmaris to Gümüşhane [one of the cities of Turkey which has most rightest tendencies] and Konya. There is almost not one town where people have not spoken up. Without a doubt, there is not a single person left in Doğu Beyazıt not going out.

Having, for a long time, been convinced by the government and bourgeois opposition, workers and labouring people have been shaken and come to their senses. Has it not short of anything? Of course, it has. But it has one thing going beyond the established politics that has existed up to now, and that is the basic one: At the stage, there will be no more just bourgeois politics and their defenders racing each other. Because this is not a temporary turn or an “eruption” to die down after a short sudden rise up. Just recently, an academician friend wrote about it, Şerif also did in the supplement of the Sunday’s paper. This new variable will transform the political struggle, and yes, it reminds the days of 1989 Spring Functions. Having been started with 1986-87 NETAŞ Strike, and later through Spring Functions, uniting in 1990-91 with Zonguldak Strike and March, the workers movement that overthrew Özal, “the fat person of Çankaya”. Moreover, the foundation of the current movement is deeper and more spread. Making itself felt by increasing its impact since the summer of 2018, the capitalist crisis has not left anyone untouched. It has been playing a basic, moving role. And, starting the Spring Functions with such elementary forms as cutting moustache, walking on bare foot, this time, the workers initiated the movement definitely in more advanced forms. And further, this time, labouring people are also moving into action.

Before, signatures used to be collected, press announcements used to be made, and they used to perform as the primary forms of struggle in those times. However, nowadays, even CHP has started to do press announcements. They could not do without them because workers and laborers go out in the streets to do “announcements”, factory to factory, neighbourhood to neighbourhood,  less in some and more massive in others. Their announcements are of course in their own words.

Workers and people have gone beyond such forms of struggle as making press announcements with long text to few people attending. Aging forms of struggle cannot be contented with any more. This would be suggesting the movement to look backwards. What is needed now is to unite with the workers on the move, for example, to give the megaphone to them for them to “voice their announcements” together with the people already going out to streets to get the price hikes withdrawn.