Trotskyists of the LIT-TI call to vote for a bourgeois alliance in Turkey, to defeat Erdogan. The same dog with a different collar!

By Juan Giglio

On March 22, the small Turkish group of the International Workers League published a statement, which was reproduced on the LIT-CI website, explaining its position on the upcoming presidential elections, which will take place in that country on March 14 next May.

In point number 4 of the text in question, the Turkish section of the LIC-CI says the following: In conclusion, we call on the workers and the oppressed sectors not to vote for the reactionary alliance of Erdogan and Bahçeli[1] in the elections [2]. To overthrow the palace regime, Erdogan must be defeated at the polls!

The masses mobilized to overthrow Erdogan in the presidential elections are concentrated around Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu[3]. As Kırmızı Gazete, we will accompany the masses in this process. Without pinning any hope on the bourgeois opposition, we will act together with the masses who voted for Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu to stop Erdogan and his autocratic palace regime.

Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu (picture above) is the leader of the CHP, the Republican People's Party, founded by the creator of the Turkish republic, Mustafá Kemal “Ataturk”, who rose to fame after being one of the generals who allowed the victory Turkish at the Battle of Gallipoli (Dardanelles) during World War I.

Due to the crisis of the government of Recept Tayyip Erdogan, which deepened with the earthquake that left thousands dead, the CHP is in a position to win the presidential elections. This party leads an alliance that includes the ultra-right Party of Good, IYI, a break from the MHP - where the anti-Kurdish gangs called "Grey Wolves" are - which is part of the current government alliance, along with the president's AKP.

With the excuse of "confronting fascism", the LIT-CI calls on the Turkish masses to change one bourgeois leader for another, just as reactionary, or even more reactionary ,than the first. In this way, its section in Turkey follows the path of the Brazilian PSTU, which in the second round of that country supported Lula against Bolsonaro, when none of these countries runs the risk of falling into the clutches of a regime similar to Hitler's or Mussolini.

The Turkish region that most resembles this is the southeast - Bakur for the Kurds - where the curfew is in force and a brutal repression against the movement for the liberation of Kurdistan, led by the PKK, takes place. This reality will not be modified by the CHP, which, like Erdogan, is in favor of maintaining a strong policy of attacking the rights and freedoms of the Kurdish people, whose population is the majority in that area.

The guarantee that this line will continue to develop in a hypothetical government of Kılıçdaroğlu, is the participation in the alliance headed by the IYI, whose leaders claim the anti-Kurdish strategy of the party they come from, the MHP of the Gray Wolves. There are no important differences between these two organizations, except in the forms or in the names of their leaders.

The LIC-CI policy of supporting one bourgeois gang against the other is similar to the old reformist strategy of the camps or, as Mao would say, of the “main contradiction”. This line led to the capitulation of important organizations of the revolutionary left, which ended up raising expectations in the “progressive” bourgeoisie, a great trap that put the working class in a blind alley.

We call on the comrades of the LIC-CI to put aside this tactic and, as befits the current circumstances, to draw lines against all the bourgeois variants. The only way out for Turkey and the entire region, as well as for the rest of the planet, is to promote the revolutionary mobilization of the mass movement behind the socialist banner.

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