Turkey: Erdogan to second round and good election of the socialists

orTilbe Will – TIP and LIS Türkiye

He 14 general elections were held in May, presidential and parliamentary elections in Türkiye. They were closely watched from all over the world as they, for the first time in a decade, the possibility arose that the dictatorial regime of Erdogan would fall.

Finally the opposition candidate Kılıçdaroğlu came up short with 45% of the votes and lost the elections. But Erdogan, with the 49%, he didn't manage to win either. It is the first time that he does not win in the first round and has to go to a second round. And this is good.

Nevertheless, it is unlikely that the opposition can win the runoff. There is a difference of about 2 million votes between Erdogan and Kılıçdaroğlu, and the third-placed candidate is a far-right figure. He is openly racist and anti-refugee, and his party is a splinter of the MHP, member of Erdogan's alliance. got more than 5% of votes, which was a surprise, and most of those votes are likely to go to Erdogan in the runoff.

But the other problem is the new parliamentary balance. The extreme right will be very strong in the new parliament. Erdogan and his allies will have a comfortable majority of 323 seats of the 600 of the parliament. The Nation Alliance headed by Kılıçdaroğlu and his party, the nationalist CHP, occupy 212 seats and our Labor and Freedom Alliance will have 65.

So, we are going to a scenario of a probable new term for Erdogan with a parliament more inclined to the right. This means that we are going to see a sharpening of the oppression against the Kurds, against women and against workers in general. Erdogan will be stronger to impose greater adjustment measures and try to improve the economic crisis by increasing exploitation. We are also going to see a strengthening of the repression, against the Kurdish nationalist movement in the first place, but also against the left.

Nevertheless, I think we are also going to see a worsening of social polarization and class struggle. Important segments of the population are already fed up with the effects of the crisis, that have destroyed the purchasing power of millions of workers and merchants and the social bad mood worsened with the treacherous disdain of the government in the face of the earthquake that killed at least 50.000 people in the south of the country. That is why the result achieved by our Turkish Workers' Party is important. (TIP).

our alliance, formed by the former HDP of the Kurdish nationalist movement, now called Party of the Green Left (YSP), and our party, in addition to some other smaller socialist groups, pulled out near the 11% of the votes and maintained almost the same parliamentary representation that we had.

But there was a change in the relationship of forces within the alliance. The YSP lost some votes. Partly, because the electoral threshold before was 10%, now it's from 7%. and some sectors that previously gave a vote of solidarity to the HDP, now they took another path. Another reason is that there were many political operations against the YSP, many of its journalists and deputies were arrested, especially in Kurdistan. And this obviously hurt his campaign.. further, the YSP campaign was simply weaker than previous ones. Overall, the Alliance has one less deputy than before the elections, so there is no big change. But the YSP has regressed a bit, and the TIP has made some very important progress..

Our result is definitely a success, with almost a million votes, we put four deputies. Out of Kurdish nationalism, no socialist campaign has seen such a vote or success in recent 60 years.

The four deputies were elected for the first time on the TIP ballot. We had two deputies who were elected in the previous elections, but as HDP candidates, and two others who joined the TIP after taking office. So, having put four deputies directly from the TIP ballot, despite the strong CHP propaganda against us, saying that we could not cross the threshold of 7% and that voting for us would benefit the AKP, it's a giant leap. further, three other TIP candidates nearly entered parliament in their constituencies, one of them was left alone 200 votes. So it's a success.

This consolidation of the TIP as a national socialist force is an important fact for the adjustment, the repression, la polarización y las luchas que se avecinan en el próximo período.