Alliance excitement

Siding with a force that can defeat the one-man rule in the elections. Can intellectuals, progressive and democratic sections of society limit their political preferences to this? Of course, it is important that the one-man rule is defeated and becomes history. But how will Turkey, the workers and labourers, the poor people get out of this bottleneck, how will they be saved?

While saying "The people of Turkey are not obliged to the bipolar bourgeois alliance option", the number of intellectuals who say "The third option also did not create the expected excitement" and turn their faces back to one of the two blocs, the Nation Alliance*, is not small. The main problem here is to limit the "excitement for an alliance" to election polls and electoral arithmetic. Attempting to measure the need for alliance and the equation of alliance with mere arithmetic means falling into political misery. At the same time, it means not taking the risk of breaking away from capitalist policies and the politics of order and ignoring its own political raison d'être.

Should we replace Erdoğan with the economic programme of today's DEVA leader Ali Babacan, the minister of the AKP government, who banned the strikes of about 200,000 workers and went full steam ahead with privatisation until 2017? Should we put the political programme of the leader of the Future Party, Ahmet Davutoğlu, the AKP Prime Minister between 7 June and 1 November elections, who said, "If I speak, they will not be able to come out in public," but never spoke? Or should we put a hybrid bourgeois programme with the IYI Party, the Felicity Party, the DP and the CHP?

The "third option" or the people's option rejects precisely this understanding. Can the country recover with the understanding that "the enemy of my enemy is my friend"? Those who set out with bourgeois pragmatism in politics and lean on one of the blocs of order instead of relying on the people can only complete this journey by surrendering to the old order in the name of saving the country from the "new order". As seen in our recent history, the political consequences of this have always been heavy.

Where should we look for excitement in alliances? We should look for it in the factory lockout protests of TPI Composite and ETF workers, the Atışkan Plaster strike, the march of Somali miners, the resistance of Serel Ceramic and Asen Metal workers, the work stoppage protests of health labourers. For example, is it not thought-provoking that intellectuals have not met with the labour strikes and resistances that have been taking place in recent weeks? Of course, here we are also sticking the needle into ourselves. We also put a task in front of us to ensure these meetings.

We should look for the excitement of alliance in the suffering of hazelnut producers, in the struggle of peasants resisting for their land and streams all over the country. The need for alliance is essential, for the end of the stories of workers whose lifeless bodies were pulled out of the swamp after 43 hours in Soma!

The accumulated urgent demands of the workers and labourers and the people do not wait for elections. Struggle and unity is the need of today; it is the need of pre-election, election process and post-election. Therefore, the search for alliances, including the elections, must be built within these struggles or to organise these struggles. This is the meaning of alliances or the excitement of alliances for the working class, labourers and the people. To feel this excitement requires internalising the demands of the poor people for jobs, bread, freedom, democracy and peace.

Autumn and winter will be heavy as the bill of the economic crisis falls on the labourers. Demands for additional wage increases in collective labour agreements, the banning of dismissals, the cancellation of all loan debts for students, the solution of the housing problem, which has escalated to exorbitant prices, etc. are precisely the issues of struggle on which the people's alliance will rise. While the Nation Alliance says "Wait for the election, don't go to the field, we will save you, not you", the people's alliance initiative says "Let's not wait, let's take action for our demands, let's change together".

The situation is no different in the field of democratic struggle. The simultaneous attacks against Alevi organisations in Ankara are a sign that the process will be difficult. Unless the people, Alevi and Sunni, build their own organised power, they will not be able to pass through these difficult tunnels full of provocations.

It is the same thing that must be done in the face of the reality of the gang-mafia-state that has been emptied of its pus. While the elephants are stomping, a people's organisation against the order must be created in the face of this stomping. Otherwise, the confrontation will not create a spontaneous collapse and enlightenment, it will not bring democracy. The bloody lords of darkness only change hands. The system renews itself through these reactionary forces. Therefore, trying to expand the alliance ground by leaning on one of the elephants will lead the society to disaster.

Another trap in the alliance equation is aimed at the Kurdish people. We are talking about a politics that directly or indirectly tries to back up the political preference of the Kurdish people to the Nation Alliance and its parties. This is a "denialist alliance politics" that does not include the Kurds in the alliance and leaves the solution of the Kurdish question to the post-election period and the traditional policy of denial. It has always ended in frustration, and it must not do so again. Intellectuals must refuse to be the bridgehead of this trap. The Third Option is the independent will and insurance of the peoples against this politics.

Work is accelerating towards a people's option, an alliance of labour and democracy. For the time being, the 7-member structure consisting of EMEP, HDP, TİP, EHP, TÖP, Halkevleri and SMF, which will also visit TKP and Left Party, has reached the end of the common principles. The joint call text to be issued will also serve as an invitation to labour and professional organisations. The third option (you can also call it the second option outside the blocs of order) is for the establishment of the broadest popular alliance. This is where the excitement for the alliance should be sought. Excitement is to be on the side of labour, democracy and the people, in other words, to be on the side of oneself and to actively participate in the work. The excitement for the alliance is the organisation of the people's option not only at the central level but also in every factory and workplace, city and town, village, school, hospital, in short, at the local level (with the participation of intellectuals).

The alliance work is organising excitement. We are one person less without you.

* Nation Alliance (Millet İttifakı) consists of six opposition parties, namely the Republican People's Party (CHP), the Good Party (İYİ), the Felicity Party (SP), The Future Party (Gelecek), the Democracy and Progress Party (DEVA) and the Democratic Party (DP).