As the economic crisis worsened and the government’s recipes for dealing with it at least partially failed, the Turkish bourgeoisie found a diversion in the vindication of democratic freedoms, protest over cronyism and widespread corruption. A heterogeneous set of grievances against the ruling party came to the attention of voters: disrespect for civil rights, women, minorities, Kurds, homosexuals and trans people; lack of merit in access to State organs and offices; hostile stance toward Western-style secular democratic principles; arbitrary arrests of opponents and journalists and subsequent court convictions.

Yes, some space was given to the oppression of the working class, but in the debunked forms in which it is denounced by every bourgeois opposition force, insisting on the lack of job security, wages below subsistence and the legally established minimum, the legal presence of child workers in factories, etc.

The opposition had therefore declared this year’s elections crucial, that “the people” would finally make the “right decision” and that “Turkey” would emerge from this difficult situation. Many leftist parties adhered to this rhetoric.

This presented a “polarized” society in which, even in significant sections of the working class, there was an expectation that “this time” would achieve a real electoral “victory”. “Turkey” would return to the path of parliamentary democracy and solve its problems peacefully, according to the democratic standards of a European State and become a country “better able to compete with the world”.

The Turkish Bourgeoisie and Elections

Instead, this round of elections has also been yet another showdown between bourgeois gangs, which for now suggests at least a temporary compromise between the warring factions, with the winner Erdoğan’s coven trying to grab the lion’s share.

One of the internal contrasts within the Turkish bourgeoisie is between organizations of the industrial bosses. The large industrialists were traditionally organized in the TÜSİAD (Turkish Industry and Business Association), founded in 1971, with more than 2,100 members representing 4,500 companies, which fuel 80% of foreign trade, employ 50% of the workforce and pay 80% of the companies’ taxes. In contrast, a new, relatively small but fast-growing group of bosses is organized in the MÜSİAD (Association of Independent Industrialists and Entrepreneurs), founded in 1990, with 13,000 members controlling 60,000 companies. The TÜSİAD declares itself secular and pro-Western, the MÜSİAD Islamist and pro-government.

On the external front, the TÜSİAD favors close relations with the West, particularly the United States, while the MÜSİAD supports the policies of the current government, which aspires to become a relatively independent regional imperialist power.

In the early years Erdoğan was supported by the TÜSİAD, who openly backed his bid for EU membership. But after the time of the Gezi movement in 2013, Erdoğan and the TÜSİAD drifted apart until Erdoğan accused the TÜSİAD of siding with the opposition. Erdoğan, in addition to being a politician, is the head of one of the largest “families” in Turkey today, with considerable influence in the new bourgeoisie organized in the MÜSİAD.

Between the “old” and the “new” bourgeoisie, the major accusation boils down to that of “unfair competition”, the rampant bourgeoisie, favored by the government, often employing immigrant workers at very low wages and in poor conditions, while large industries are mostly obliged to hire within the framework of legal regulations. Another issue is the government’s policies on interest rates.

A Fragile Compromise

Despite what was said in election propaganda, Erdoğan’s first move after the elections was to extend an olive branch to the big bourgeoisie. Mehmet Şimşek, known for his closeness to strict Western-style economic policies, was appointed as a powerful minister of treasury and finance — a clear attempt to soften the financial markets. In addition, controversial figures such as Interior Minister Süleyman Soylu found no place in the cabinet.

The TÜSİAD immediately accepted Erdoğan’s generous offer, calling for stability and reforms. Some opposition journalists and economists went further and, endorsing Mehmet Şimşek’s appointment, agreed that “we are all in the same boat”.

Thus, just as the results of the elections were determined at the table and not at the ballot box, the end of the country’s crisis was dissolved not by the flaunted “will of the people” but by moves calculated in consideration of the power relations among the domestic bourgeois gangs and among the imperialist powers. Erdoğan’s victory was at the same time a victory for Russia, the Gulf States and most European States, which fear migrants, and a partial defeat for the United States and European States whose interests are more aligned with NATO.

With the resolution of the crisis in Turkey, the U.S. in particular will not hesitate to normalize relations with Erdoğan, in exchange for allowing Sweden to join NATO, and perhaps with the delivery of F-16s, which was denied after the purchase of the Russian S-400 anti-aircraft weapon system.

All these facts suggest that in all likelihood a compromise has been reached on Turkey and its place in the imperialist hierarchy.

However, the economy remains in serious crisis, official inflation is still over 40% annually, and a significant recovery in accumulation is certainly not in sight. In short, it would be wrong to think that the warring parties have permanently recomposed their disagreements.

Elections Are Always Against the Interests of the Proletariat

None of the parties that participated in the elections promised lighter working conditions and hours or wage increases that would counter inflation. No party demanded more rights for oppressed minorities or refugees fleeing war.

When one considers who has been harmed and who has benefited from the common positions of the opposing parties, it is clear that all are actually on the side of the bourgeoisie and never of the workers.

Democracy is a system in which there is no place for parties that oppose the bourgeoisie.

The participation of communists in elections, besides being of no effect toward the seizure of power by the working class, is now also to be ruled out as a propaganda forum, because of the serious misunderstandings it inevitably engenders in the class about the revolutionary aims of the party.

Bourgeois democracy now throughout the world no longer contains any progressive aspects. All the more so for the workers and the oppressed.

Even these elections in Turkey, beyond the red-hot climate between the two sides of the parties, were kept within the democratic institutional framework and did not have the disruptive, perhaps even bloody, outcomes that a propaganda interested in dramatizing that card-carrying ritual was hinting at. In fact, the aim of the ruling class is to shift the attention of proletarians to interclass issues and to prevent any circumstantial and non-generic reference to the working-class condition, even by artfully emphasizing and magnifying the minimal and insignificant program differences between the parties in the field.

The elections in Turkey proved once again that the bourgeoisie, behind the democratic mask, as long as it can will never give up an iota of State repression. Turkey’s oppressed groups (women, Kurds, homosexuals, trans people, immigrants, etc.) know this: genocide, torture, massacres, forced migration, executions, unjust sentences and similar disgusting and monstrous events are not a thing of the past! As much as the bourgeois States try to hide it, as much as they deny it, they continue to commit these abominations.

The Kurds, the women, the discriminated, those who pay the price for these cruelties, will never be able to mitigate the oppression they suffer through the instrument of elections. Of course, before the elections some parties of the bourgeois left claimed “you can solve your problems by voting for us every four years”. This attitude only reinforces the illusion that the solution lies in voting rather than in subordinating every social demand to the strength of the working class, its independent organization, unionization and strikes, and rather than the delusion that it is easier to achieve socialism through reformism, “common sense” and an electoral victory.

The will of capital will always come out of the ballot box. It will not be education that will open voters’ eyes. Nor will their status as exploited wage earners or oppressed minorities. The dominant ideology will always be the ideology of the ruling class. Only in the Communist Party is the condemnation of bourgeois society consciously guarded.

The idea that the young proletarian and oppressed generations will come to communism solely because of the effect of social evolution and the increasingly cosmopolitan environment, access to more information thanks to the internet and the rapid increase in the number of students in universities and migration from rural to urban areas is completely wrong.

In fact, these elections have shown that right-wing tendencies are also on the rise in the younger generation. Many, including young people, complain that the current government is not racist enough, that immigrants are the cause of their problems.

Once again it has been shown that the road to workers’ liberation does not pass through bourgeois democracy.

The true communist party does not give up its principles and is not afraid to express them lest it lose supporters or, worse, votes! The true communist party has nothing to do with bourgeois democracy, which stinks like a sewer, where we are fed filthy lies of all kinds.

A New Wave of Labor Struggles in Turkey

In the first half of 2023, several important class struggles took place in Turkey. Continuing the period of struggles initiated by the strike of Kocaeli Bekaert workers organized in the Birleşik Metal (DİSK) union on December 13-30 (“Bekaert Strike Despite Strike Ban”) and the Antep foundry strike that united Turkish and Syrian workers and ended on January 5 (“Turkish and Syrian Foundry Workers Unite in Gaziantep”), we can consider these struggles as signs that the reaction of the Turkish working class to the economic crisis is approaching a critical threshold. On the other hand, it is important to note that these struggles took place as independent cases and have not yet emerged as a common class movement.

The biggest struggles in this period took place in the private sector, mostly in workplaces where DİSK or Türk-İş unions were organized. The most important exception to this was the de facto strike of the Trendyol GO motor carriers in the first month of the year. On January 16, workers in Istanbul gathered in front of the company’s headquarters to protest working conditions and low wages, and shut down their bikes. On January 17, 350 workers in Izmir and 300 in Bursa joined the struggle. The struggle of Trendyol GO workers would continue until an agreement was reached with the employer on January 24th. The Tourism, Entertainment and Service Workers Union, which is very active among the strikers and is not part of any confederation, described the agreement, in which the employer made certain concessions, as a gain. The small base unions outside the confederations contain some of the most combative sections of the Turkish working class and are fighting hard first to organize and then for better living and working conditions in many difficult sectors that the opportunist leaders of the leftist confederations and regime confederations do not want to get involved in. However, it should not be overlooked that the base unions outside the confederations have, for the time being, very little numerical strength and influence in the wider class. At a time when workers in the rank and file of DİSK and even Türk-İş have begun to struggle en masse, it can be said that the struggles of the small rank and file unions are lagging behind to some extent.

Struggles of DİSK Workers

Following the strike of Bekaert workers, who managed to achieve a partial victory by breaking the strike ban, the demand for an additional raise against the effects of the economic crisis began to spread in the metal industry. Finally, on January 17, the Metal Industrialists’ Union (MESS) met with metal unions Türk Metal, Birleşik Metal and Öz Çelik İş to discuss this demand voiced by tens of thousands of metal workers from different unions. Against the 54% raise demanded by the workers, MESS and the unions announced in a joint statement that they had agreed on 34%. In a situation where the minimum wage, which is considerably lower than the wages of metal workers, is 55% and public employees receive 30%, this raise was enough to prevent a major struggle in the metal sector. On the other hand, 2000 Birleşik Metal member workers, who were not bound by the agreement, were preparing to go on a legal strike on January 23rd in 11 factories in Istanbul, Kocaeli, Manisa and Bandirma over a collective bargaining dispute. Both the workers and Birleşik Metal administrators emphasized that they would not recognize a possible strike ban. On January 22, in 5 factories employing 600 workers, a 40% raise was agreed upon, well below the workers’ demand for a 100% raise. By the morning of January 23rd, another series of agreements had been reached, reducing the number of factories on strike to two and the number of workers to 900. In the end, 350 workers at Schneider Energy would go on strike in a single factory alone. On January 24th, the strike of the Schneider Energy workers was also “postponed”, i.e. banned, on the grounds of national security, but the workers did not recognize the ban and continued their strike for one more day. On January 25th, an agreement was reached at Schneider Energy under similar conditions as in the other factories.

It would not be long before the workers of Birleşik Metal would be engaged in another important struggle. On February 26th, 1200 workers at Mata Otomativ in Tuzla, Istanbul, which produces spare parts for Tesla, walked off the job despite threats from the boss, demanding the reinstatement of 50 militant workers who had been fired, improved working conditions, workplace safety and a raise. Continued threats turned the one-hour work stoppage into an indefinite de facto strike. The number of workers fired by the company during the process would reach 650, and scabs would enter the factory where riot police prevented workers from approaching. The company executives eventually approached the leaders of the CHP and the İYİP and asked for help. In response, a prominent CHP MP instructed Birleşik Metal leaders to “get together with the employer and end this business”. Although the opportunist Birleşik Metal management failed to comply with this instruction from their political patrons, when the workers came to Ankara on the 30th day of their resistance to make their voices heard, the chairman of Birleşik Metal visited another senior CHP leader and asked the party to get involved in the process on behalf of the workers. The Mata workers were sent off from the CHP headquarters with slogans, but the CHP’s support did not go much beyond that. Mata workers continue their struggle in Tuzla.

On March 31st, Uluğ Enerji workers organized by another DİSK member union, Enerji Sen, began their struggle with a one-day work stoppage in Bursa, Balıkesir, Yalova and Çanakkale over a dispute in the collective agreement. Although unions in the energy sector do not have the legal right to strike, the 1700 workers organized by Enerji Sen would continue their struggle with actions such as work slowdowns. On April 10, the workers set out from the cities where they worked, met in Ankara and staged a demonstration in front of the Ministry of Labor and Social Security. The struggle of Uluğ Enerji workers continues, demanding a raise and an end to the suppression of union activities.

Members of Genel İş, the union of DİSK that organizes municipal workers, have also been involved in important struggles recently. The collective bargaining negotiations between Genel İş and the Social Democrat Public Employers’ Union (SODEMSEN), of which the workers of IZELMAN and IZENERJİ companies belonging to the Izmir Metropolitan Municipality are members, failed to reach a conclusion. Although one of the leaders of Genel-İş said, “[t]he best collective agreement is the one that ends at the table”, workers at İZELMAN, which employs over 7,000 workers, and İZENERJİ, which employs 10,000 workers, rejected the 35% and then 38% raises and harsh working conditions imposed on them. At IZELMAN, male workers grew beards, while those in official clothes went to work in civilian clothes to protest against the municipality. On April 5, Genel İş decided for a three-hour work stoppage. On April 17, SODEMSEN and Genel İş agreed on a 54% raise at İZELMAN. SODEMSEN offered IZENERJI 45%, but the workers rejected it. On April 18, IZENERJI workers stopped work for half a day and demonstrated in front of the company headquarters. The collective bargaining process of İZENERJİ workers is still not finalized.

Struggles of Turk-Is Workers

The struggle of Izmir Metropolitan Municipality workers against the effects of the economic crisis and intensive working conditions has found an echo in Selçuk, one of the city’s districts. After the ongoing collective bargaining negotiations between Belediye İş, a union affiliated to the Türk İş Confederation, and SODEMSEN, representing the Selçuk Municipality, failed to reach an agreement, on April 4th the union announced that it would hold a ballot in front of its 400 members to vote on whether to go on strike. 92% of the workers voted yes to striking, thus making the strike decision official. If no agreement is reached between the union and SODEMSEN, the strike is expected to start in June after a 60-day period.

Meanwhile, the main agenda for Türk İş in the first half of 2023 was the pay raise for 700,000 public workers with private sector status in the negotiations on the Framework Protocol for Public Collective Labor Agreements for 2023, which started on January 20th. The confederations representing the workers, Türk İş and Hak İş, were demanding a 45% raise against the State’s offer of 30%. On April 5-6, in Istanbul, Kocaeli, Eskişehir and Kayseri, workers from Harb İş, the union of Türk İş organized in the war industry, protested against the confederations’ demand for a below-inflation rate of pay and the fact that unionists were paid 4 to 5 times more than workers in what they described as “a rebellion that will continue to grow all over Turkey”. The workers demanded a 60% raise. On April 17th in Eskişehir, Harb İş members once again took to the streets to protest against Türk İş, Hak İş and the government. On April 18th, Harb Workers took to the streets in Ankara and Kayseri, and again on April 19th in Ankara, Marmaris and Afyon. In addition to Türk İş and Hak İş, Harb İş executives also took part in the protests. The fate of the raise that hundreds of thousands of public sector workers will receive remains uncertain as of now.

In April, Petrol workers also carried out a series of class actions. In early April, in Kocaeli, 400 workers of the fertilizer producer Gübretaş, who were members of Petrol İş, began to consider going on strike after no new negotiations took place between the union and the boss. At Gübretaş, where the union had demanded a 150% raise, the employer first offered 50% and then 65%. On April 17, the workers staged a two-hour work stoppage. The possibility of the struggle at Gübretaş evolving into a legal strike remains. In the same period, on April 15th, 3 struggling workers, members of Petrol İş, were fired from Drogsan pharmaceutical company in Ankara. The workers did not go back to work on Saturday and started a protest in front of the factory on Monday morning, April 17th. During the meeting between the union and the boss, it was decided that the workers would return to work until the meeting in the evening where the dismissed workers were reinstated. Finally, in Mersin, the Soda and Kromsan Factories and Salt Works failed to reach an agreement in the collective bargaining negotiations and a legal strike has been called for May 12th.

Conclusions

Due to the schedule of collective bargaining negotiations in Turkey, workers’ struggles tend to intensify in the Spring. The wave of struggles that emerged after the central actions organized by DİSK on the minimum wage and KESK on the livelihood problems of public employees, which we discussed in our article “Class Struggle on the Rise in Turkey” in March 2022, was limited to the health sector, where inter-class tendencies are strong, as well as not very large enterprises organized by DİSK member unions, small unions outside the confederations and non-union workers who went on de facto strikes. In the 2023 strike wave, struggles took place in a larger number of enterprises with more workers. Workers who were members of DİSK fought in more sectors and in larger workplaces. It is a very important development that Türk İş members from different sectors also started to mobilize, especially the members of Harb Labor, who became the voice of 700,000 public sector workers in a widespread way, targeting regime unionism. By far the largest trade union confederation in Turkey, Türk İş is also the most useful regime trade union confederation of the Turkish bourgeoisie in keeping the working class in line.

The greatest weakness of the current wave of class struggles is that even the struggles of workers in the same enterprise and in the same line of work are taking place independently of each other. It is true that this is partly due to the way bourgeois law regulates collective labor agreements. On the other hand, the opportunist leaders of DİSK do not try to overcome this situation, which the leaders of Türk İş openly exploit to prevent workers from uniting, and instead of calling for class solidarity, they find the solution in begging for help from opposition bourgeois politicians. The emancipation of the working class, even in the unions, does not come from the ceiling, that is, from the agreements made by opportunist or pro-regime union leaders with each other, or with politicians and bosses. According to the International Communist Party, the solution lies in the unification of all the rank-and-file unions of the working class of Turkey, big and small, into a single front against the attacks of the bourgeoisie, drawing the workers oppressed by the regime unions to its side starting with the most combative ones.