EMEP MP Karaca: "This is the budget to intimidate the people and we do not approve it"

Labour Party (EMEP) Gaziantep MP Sevda Karaca made a speech at the General Assembly on the 2024 budget.

EMEP Gaziantep MP Sevda Karaca, who was intervened by the gendarmerie with water cannons together with Özak Textile workers resisting for their rights in Urfa, showed her gassed and muddy coat and said, "This coat shows the barbarity you treat Özak workers with."

Karaca appealed to the millions of labourers whose lives were mortgaged by the anti-people budget and stated that they should show an organised reaction against the budget.

Karaca's speech is as follows:

"I took the floor to speak on behalf of the Labour Party regarding the 2024 budget. The not-so-secret boss-loving, capitalist guardianship and public hostility of the People's Alliance [led by Erdoğan's AKP] has once again emerged in this budget.

Those sitting in these rows know very well that this budget is the budget of a handful of capitalists. The election-oriented economy has emptied the coffers, the budget deficit has reached a high level, the domestic and foreign debt is growing, and we are talking about a budget that completely eliminates the last crumbs of the people's rights in order to close these deficits. You eat the flesh of the poor and drink their blood. You sit at the table with the bosses you have nourished with tax cuts, exemptions, wealth transfers and guaranteed payments.

December 23, 2023

We are talking about a budget designed in such a way that while a small minority multiplies its wealth, the poor people can live in hell in this world, but be content, not raise their voices, and if they do, they will be suppressed with tear gas, batons and water cannons. This budget is the budget of the Özak boss [referring to the owner of the textile factory where hundreds of workers walked out almost four weeks ago for their union rights], those who are backed by your power and take the blood of workers, those who shield themselves with the local governor, gendarmerie, religious leaders, municipality officials and yellow unionists so that labourers work like slaves without any rights.

Here, take a look, at this coat [which is stained with mud]!… It shows the barbarism you have inflicted on Özak workers who have been resisting for 27 days so they can live like human beings. I have brought this coat to you as a sign of shame, as it shows stains of the dragging of MPs who supported the workers on the ground while they were fighting for their bread and their constitutional right to join a union of their choice. This coat does not have the smell of the barbecue you had in the garden of the Parliament. AKP MPs! It has the smell of the tear gas you sprayed on the workers by order of the governorate; but, of course, you do not know that.

You constantly make speeches from this rostrum saying "We are all in the same boat", but you stand hand in hand with and wait on the bosses hand and foot, bosses whose hands never leave the pockets of the people and the coffers of the state.

Look here [holding a picture of hands]! Against those hands and your barbaric system of exploitation are the hands of workers who have been sacrificed to the wheels that are instructed to "turn at any cost". This budget is a budget to increase the number of workers with lost limbs and lost lives.

It is a budget that pushes the people into deep poverty and make capitalist policies even more barbaric. Praise be! You never stop talking about morality and honour, but we see that the smell of decay you have created rises from a different corner every day.

We see the protection of the son of the President of Somalia, the protection of a murderer from the bottom to the top; we see footballers who lost millions of dollars to a con in pursuit of usury interest, the money laundering fronted by social media influencers, their connections with betting companies, human-money-drug smugglers, gangs, and the mafia connections… You are the closest friends of these corrupt people, who rob millions of people in all kinds of ways like the Forty Thieves in the Ali Baba story, who have accumulated unimaginable wealth.

All this has become the routine in your government as well as non-compliance with the decisions of the Constitutional Court, bribery negotiations in the judiciary, power struggles among religious sects and communities…

The wealth of Turkey's richest 100 people is far more than the wealth of millions of people in this country, but while you erase the debts and billions of dollars of taxes of the rich with the stroke of a pen, you do not take the whip off the backs of those who have to live on the lowest wages.

Not only with this budget, but also with the Medium-Term Programme and the 12th Development Plan, you are shaping the fate of the working people. The Turkish economy will experience high interest rates, high inflation and high unemployment due to the policies of exploitation you are gearing up, exploitation and poverty will increase, and because you know very well the anger that will rise, you have allocated a generous share for your iron fists to fall on the people. There is no free school meals for children, there is no budget to prevent violence, but the internal and external security functions that you will use to label and intimidate opposition groups and those who speak out as "terrorists" are reaching the highest figure of all times. This is the budget to intimidate the people, to silence the voice of the people. And we do not approve it.

Here I would like to address the millions of labourers whose lives are pawned with this anti-people budget: Labour in the country is unorganised, some of the trade unions have become collaborators with capital, the government uses all the means at its disposal to crush anyone who raises their heads, millions of people are rapidly becoming poorer, the profits of the bosses are growing, but at the same time, big talk, religious abuse and nationalism are on the rise. For this reason, the share allocated by this government to the clergy and black propaganda apparatus is even more than their ministerial departments.

If there are no workers who hold power to account, who use their rights and their power from production, who show solidarity with one another, if there is no organised working class, then the answer is obvious as to why the budget, wages, income distribution, tax burden, democracy, parliament and the country is in this state. Only you can change this situation. Do not obey, do not remain silent, do not submit to this barbarism. If you are organised, this barbaric order will be defeated, the working class and peoples will win." (EVRENSEL DAILY)