Friday, June 28, 2019

Statement by the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) after Istanbul's mayoral re-elections

The Communist Party of Turkey's statement came after the June 23 redo local elections in Istanbul as Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayoral candidate of the opposition, won the polls by a wide margin against his rival, Binali Yıldırım, from the ruling party: 

To our people

The overwhelming victory of Ekrem İmamoğlu, who was elected as the Mayor of İstanbul Metropolitan Municipality on March 31, against Binali Yıldırım, the candidate of AKP and MHP, in the elections that were unlawfully annulled and repeated does not only mean the invalidation of an attempt to usurp universal suffrage but also has dramatically changed the political balances in Turkey.

Obviously, the positive aspect of this radical change is that millions of people have seen that AKP could be defeated; moreover, the ruling party has lost its psychological superiority. However, it is also apparent that we have entered the final turning point for persuading the social dissidence, which has made itself evident in various forms for the last 7-8 years, of a rehabilitated AKP regime.

The successive inactivation of the resistance nodes against such a submission, which has blatantly and openly come, and considering an Islamist boss a folk hero increased the responsibility of TKP, thus our Party decided not to support İmamoğlu, whom we regard as the legitimate mayor, in the elections of June 23 for which we withdrew our candidate.

The statements that came from the ruling party, the opposition, as well as the capitalist circles, just after the elections show that they wish to accelerate a process of normalization including all the sections. Although the dimensions of the economic and political crisis and the blockage in foreign policies may lead to unexpected breaking points in this period, a very broad social section in Turkey has been persuaded of a great compromise that would aggravate the people’s real problems, let alone resolve them.

As TKP intensifies its struggle for a true change of social order against any options that would maintain the basic characteristics of the current ruling party, it will not lose time by chasing up those who willfully and deliberately catalyze the goal of leading the people to false hopes or entering into any discussion of “rightfulness” with them. We are carrying on our path by knowing that all the elements and energy are required as they would be positioned against this grand operation operated by capitalism in Turkey.

We are thankful to our members and friends for not surrendering to the campaigns that also attempt to defeat TKP, and for acting very maturely in the face of those who got angry or felt hurt with TKP with sincere sentiments, and we welcome hundreds of TKP volunteers who have participated in our Party in this process.

The Central Committee of the Communist Party of Turkey.