Election Cheats Legalized in Turkey
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The building up of Erdoğan's dictatorship had put up a legal sheath with the regime change that passed in April 2017. With this referendum, the president Erdoğan had regained his position also as the AKP president and the presidency system had been practically put in order. The success of the historical bloc of the oppressed expressed itself in HDP at the presidency elections in 2014 and the general election in June 2015 had turned especially the national assembly into a burden to get rid of for this build-up. However, until that day, the AKP had used its majority in the national assembly to consolidate its legitimacy. Throughout this process where the assembly became completely useless and the government became just a consultant council gathered once in a while, Erdoğan is ruling the country with his statutory decrees (KHK). Yet, despite holding all the reins, the dictatorship still does not feel comfortable. With the arrangement passed at the assembly last month, the law about the election alliances which has been applied since 1957 was changed as to be used in the first presidency elections in 2019.
This law change does not only bring the opportunity to let the parties ally in the elections, it also legalizes various election cheats which had been very controversial especially in the April 2017 referendum such as unstamped voting paper. While this law passed at the assembly in the midnight, it didn't even become a topic in the media which now is under total control of the government. (By the way, the bourgeois businessman Aydın Doğan, who owned one of the biggest media corporations in Turkey, was forced to sell his media company to another bourgeois who is a big henchman of Erdoğan last month.) According to this new law, if one of the allied parties passes the 10% of threshold vote to enter the assembly, others will be counted as over the threshold too. Through this, Erdoğan convinced the racist nationalist MHP to ally with AKP. Now they are happy together with blood on their hands. Moreover, voters living in the same building can vote at different schools according to the lists announced by the YSK (High Election Committee, all of whose officers are simply cadres of AKP), which means multiple voting can be a possible cheat. Unstamped voting papers and envelopes will be counted too. (YSK ordered papers and envelopes with a number 5 times more than the total voters). Head of voting ballet committees will be constituted of officials, who again mostly will be AKP sympathetics. Voters will be allowed to call police to the voting areas in case of an issue. Voting ballets can be moved to other districts due to security reasons, which aims to prevent the voters in Kurdistan to reach there. All these are clear proofs of organized legal cheat.
In a country where the nationalist-chauvinist winds are blowing and the suppression policies has deepened with the blood flowing from the Afrin invasion, the fascist dictatorship still sees the possibility of a defeat in the presidency elections. This so-called 'people's alliance' they made with the racist, nationalist MHP has already started its election campaigns over the Afrin invasion. This is their first election promise which they openly admit: more blood and destruction. The legitimacy concern of the dictator who controls every little thing in the country is not only resulted from the instinct of protecting his own power. The one who is facing with the legitimacy problem is the Turkish bourgeois state at the same time. That is why all the system parties are on the same line. We have already known that when it comes to Kurdish people all of them align on the side of the state. The second biggest party, CHP is also playing its historical role and substitutes right after the fascist colonialist policies to sustain the unitarist state tradition. CHP declared that they will never consider a possible election boycott despite all the signs of fixed election results and claimed that they will win. No need to comment about it. A probable system alternative of the AKP which is trying to be built as the CHP-IYIP-SP bloc together (IYIP, The Good Party, the party founded by ex-MHP member fascist Meral Akşener; SP, The Welfare Party, Erdoğan's former traditional politic-islamist party) does not carry any meaning about the democratization of the country. Founded as a democratic front of the oppressed, the HDP, on the other hand, has not declared its position about the elections and is still in search of a democratic bloc which brings all the democratic opponent sections of the society together. The HDP, now, concentrates on finding the policies which play the vanguard role in the antifascist struggle waged against Erdoğan's dictatorship at the democratic field and increases its effort to organize this struggle street by street through going to the people.
From science to art, from women's freedom to the freedom of beliefs, a decaying society with all meanings can get its push to break down from the economical crisis. Mass dismissals of sub-contracted workers, problems of financing the huge construction projects like 3. airport of Istanbul or Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant and credits and tax settlements provided to the bourgeoisie are some recent developments filling out the anger of the masses. Crisis delaying policies is coming to an end in this period of Turkish economy giving SOS signals. Constructing a foreign source-dependent economy since the beginning compatible with the imperialist globalization stage, the AKP cannot hide the crisis despite its made-up economical growth numbers. High inflation, high currency, high interest rates and high unemployment goes along together, so the economical growth is fake. The state which lost its lawfulness is trying to run the economy also with tyranny. The closest shelter for them right now is the elections and the regenerated trust from it. Through trying to suppress the gainings of the Kurdish people in Rojava, which shook the foundations of the state, with the fascist state reflexes, the colonialist dictatorship has been looking for compensation for its losses with balance policies with the imperialists up to now, and it is planning to take the elections to an earlier date before its Pirus victory of Afrin gets cold and internal politics lost its stability especially with the economical crisis. Thus, the presidential election can happen in this year's autumn.
Looking from the viewpoint of the oppressed, elections under these circumstances will have no legitimacy. Already, the need, the requirement and the focal point of the struggle is totally different right now. Fascist violence rising in the streets, preparation of the state for a civil war with its paramilitary gangs, exponential increase of plunder of the labor and nature condition a total warfare against the dictatorship. Everyday tens of people are detained due to social media sharing or for no reason at all. The pressure on the media has expanded to censoring the content of internet broadcasting. This black atmosphere dispersed the hope created by the Afrinian's heroic resistance. There is the indomitable and courageous tens of, hundreds of thousands of people filling the streets and the squares, first at the HDP congress, then at the March of 8th demos and lastly in the Newroz week. There are guerrilla actions all over the North Kurdistan with the onset of spring. There are communists fighting against the fascist state in the streets, in the cells, in the factories, in the mountains from Afrin to the laboring neighborhood of Istanbul. The spring is here, the motto of the resistance growing with hope and courage is freedom.
 

 

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Election Cheats Legalized in Turkey
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The building up of Erdoğan's dictatorship had put up a legal sheath with the regime change that passed in April 2017. With this referendum, the president Erdoğan had regained his position also as the AKP president and the presidency system had been practically put in order. The success of the historical bloc of the oppressed expressed itself in HDP at the presidency elections in 2014 and the general election in June 2015 had turned especially the national assembly into a burden to get rid of for this build-up. However, until that day, the AKP had used its majority in the national assembly to consolidate its legitimacy. Throughout this process where the assembly became completely useless and the government became just a consultant council gathered once in a while, Erdoğan is ruling the country with his statutory decrees (KHK). Yet, despite holding all the reins, the dictatorship still does not feel comfortable. With the arrangement passed at the assembly last month, the law about the election alliances which has been applied since 1957 was changed as to be used in the first presidency elections in 2019.
This law change does not only bring the opportunity to let the parties ally in the elections, it also legalizes various election cheats which had been very controversial especially in the April 2017 referendum such as unstamped voting paper. While this law passed at the assembly in the midnight, it didn't even become a topic in the media which now is under total control of the government. (By the way, the bourgeois businessman Aydın Doğan, who owned one of the biggest media corporations in Turkey, was forced to sell his media company to another bourgeois who is a big henchman of Erdoğan last month.) According to this new law, if one of the allied parties passes the 10% of threshold vote to enter the assembly, others will be counted as over the threshold too. Through this, Erdoğan convinced the racist nationalist MHP to ally with AKP. Now they are happy together with blood on their hands. Moreover, voters living in the same building can vote at different schools according to the lists announced by the YSK (High Election Committee, all of whose officers are simply cadres of AKP), which means multiple voting can be a possible cheat. Unstamped voting papers and envelopes will be counted too. (YSK ordered papers and envelopes with a number 5 times more than the total voters). Head of voting ballet committees will be constituted of officials, who again mostly will be AKP sympathetics. Voters will be allowed to call police to the voting areas in case of an issue. Voting ballets can be moved to other districts due to security reasons, which aims to prevent the voters in Kurdistan to reach there. All these are clear proofs of organized legal cheat.
In a country where the nationalist-chauvinist winds are blowing and the suppression policies has deepened with the blood flowing from the Afrin invasion, the fascist dictatorship still sees the possibility of a defeat in the presidency elections. This so-called 'people's alliance' they made with the racist, nationalist MHP has already started its election campaigns over the Afrin invasion. This is their first election promise which they openly admit: more blood and destruction. The legitimacy concern of the dictator who controls every little thing in the country is not only resulted from the instinct of protecting his own power. The one who is facing with the legitimacy problem is the Turkish bourgeois state at the same time. That is why all the system parties are on the same line. We have already known that when it comes to Kurdish people all of them align on the side of the state. The second biggest party, CHP is also playing its historical role and substitutes right after the fascist colonialist policies to sustain the unitarist state tradition. CHP declared that they will never consider a possible election boycott despite all the signs of fixed election results and claimed that they will win. No need to comment about it. A probable system alternative of the AKP which is trying to be built as the CHP-IYIP-SP bloc together (IYIP, The Good Party, the party founded by ex-MHP member fascist Meral Akşener; SP, The Welfare Party, Erdoğan's former traditional politic-islamist party) does not carry any meaning about the democratization of the country. Founded as a democratic front of the oppressed, the HDP, on the other hand, has not declared its position about the elections and is still in search of a democratic bloc which brings all the democratic opponent sections of the society together. The HDP, now, concentrates on finding the policies which play the vanguard role in the antifascist struggle waged against Erdoğan's dictatorship at the democratic field and increases its effort to organize this struggle street by street through going to the people.
From science to art, from women's freedom to the freedom of beliefs, a decaying society with all meanings can get its push to break down from the economical crisis. Mass dismissals of sub-contracted workers, problems of financing the huge construction projects like 3. airport of Istanbul or Akkuyu Nuclear Power Plant and credits and tax settlements provided to the bourgeoisie are some recent developments filling out the anger of the masses. Crisis delaying policies is coming to an end in this period of Turkish economy giving SOS signals. Constructing a foreign source-dependent economy since the beginning compatible with the imperialist globalization stage, the AKP cannot hide the crisis despite its made-up economical growth numbers. High inflation, high currency, high interest rates and high unemployment goes along together, so the economical growth is fake. The state which lost its lawfulness is trying to run the economy also with tyranny. The closest shelter for them right now is the elections and the regenerated trust from it. Through trying to suppress the gainings of the Kurdish people in Rojava, which shook the foundations of the state, with the fascist state reflexes, the colonialist dictatorship has been looking for compensation for its losses with balance policies with the imperialists up to now, and it is planning to take the elections to an earlier date before its Pirus victory of Afrin gets cold and internal politics lost its stability especially with the economical crisis. Thus, the presidential election can happen in this year's autumn.
Looking from the viewpoint of the oppressed, elections under these circumstances will have no legitimacy. Already, the need, the requirement and the focal point of the struggle is totally different right now. Fascist violence rising in the streets, preparation of the state for a civil war with its paramilitary gangs, exponential increase of plunder of the labor and nature condition a total warfare against the dictatorship. Everyday tens of people are detained due to social media sharing or for no reason at all. The pressure on the media has expanded to censoring the content of internet broadcasting. This black atmosphere dispersed the hope created by the Afrinian's heroic resistance. There is the indomitable and courageous tens of, hundreds of thousands of people filling the streets and the squares, first at the HDP congress, then at the March of 8th demos and lastly in the Newroz week. There are guerrilla actions all over the North Kurdistan with the onset of spring. There are communists fighting against the fascist state in the streets, in the cells, in the factories, in the mountains from Afrin to the laboring neighborhood of Istanbul. The spring is here, the motto of the resistance growing with hope and courage is freedom.