Everywhere is bribery, everywhere is corruption!
The total amount of money involved in the corruption operations, which have started in March of last year and got fully exposed with the arrests on December 17, is said to be 100 billion euros for the time being. For the sake of making this amount of money more perceivable in practical terms – 100 billions euros come to 3220 TL per capita when divided by Turkey’s total population; it is equal to the sum of the 10 year-worth of minimum wage of the totality of the country’s unemployed; and it is enough to compensate for the damage in Van resulting from the earthquake, not just once but 60 times. It is indeed quite possible to found a modest but an entirely new state with such a sum of money, let alone to build hospitals, or schools.
The government can’t pull the wool over people’s eyes any more!
The government is the primary actor behind the corruption and the poverty resulting from this looting of massive scale. But the same government is now trying to save itself from this ‘trouble’ via a change in the cabinet! And this cabinet change has been done in such a dubious way that we, for example, watched the Minister of Interior Affairs Muammer Güler dismiss 135 police chiefs and 400 police officers and assign 2 more judges by choice to the ongoing corruption investigation before he resigned himself from his seat. Just these series of incidences alone are enough to give hints about the scale and intensity of the looting and dirty relationships behind the cabinet change.
The government is the chief architect of the corruption and poverty. It can no longer keep its mess under wraps no matter what maneuver it makes. We don’t find the change of ministers enough by no means and we want government to step down!
But the stepping down of the government is not enough either! Corruption and fraud are not new for us, the workers; we could even claim that we have gotten accustomed to them to a certain degree. We are also fully aware of the fact that certain power blocs, now and then, put the corruption ball into play intentionally at the service of different power blocs – just like the current theft and corruption case has been brought on in consequence of the AKP’s struggle with the Gulen Movement.
In the present day situation, the AKP have lost its competence to rule and have proven themselves to be the biggest thief in light of their reaction to the surfacing of the corruption and of their subsequent moves. One would expect such a corruption case and the process that follows to be handled by democratic channels and authorities even in the crudest democracies. However, the current unfolding developments show us that the AKP take support from and mobilize all the means of the conventional state apparatus to the full extent in order to sweep the corruption under the rug despite their discourse of democratization. What this process obviates is not the AKP’s fraud alone; but also the fact that its anatomy would never allow for the democratization of state mechanism. As such, we call for the government to step-down and for a subsequent congregation of a Constituent Assembly ensuing from general elections with no electoral threshold, that shall prepare a new constitution, solve poverty, ensure democracy, offer resolutions for the essential demands of the Kurdish people, and achieve disengagement from imperialism.
Government, step down! An assembly to ensure disengagement from imperialism!
This is neither the first theft of the AKP government, not that of state bureaucracy. It is just one among many thefts executed by this government – a government that was very determined to get the parliament to seize the seniority indemnity from workers until a few weeks ago, that carried out meetings with employers, and that claimed that the state would go bankrupt if the minimum wage was to be raised even by 1 TL. That is to say, the key to the success of Erdoğan and of the AKP government lied in their ability to “skillfully” implement offensive policies of capital for 11 years. However, both Erdoğan and the AKP government have eventually become troublesome for a significant portion of the bourgeoisie as well, as a result of their internal and foreign policies, and due to their inability to solve the political leadership crisis of the bourgeoisie. This is why we are witnessing the spokesman of executive clubs such as TÜSİAD (Turkish Industry and Business Association) and Chambers of Industry say that the AKP is doing the exact opposite of its function to provide economic and political stability and becoming the source of the crisis. The bourgeoisie have also come to a point of agreement that the government should step down! Nonetheless, the circumstances such as the meeting between the CHP and the U.S. Department of Foreign Affairs, or the AKP’s declarations of sincerity to imperialism show us that the bourgeoisie is in fact in quest for a new actor to provide stability and to carry out the neoliberal program. The AKP’s same old neoliberal program is expected to continue, but this time, without the AKP. To sum up, these disputes are neither about the theft itself, nor about the state of affairs of the political democracy; they are about the partitioning of state bureaucracy and capital.
A new constitution and constituent assembly to end looting, raid and poverty!
During this period when we are standing at the threshold of an economic crisis, we do not want to be the ones to pay the price like we did during the 2008 crisis. We demand for a constituent assembly, which will not put the burden of the crisis on to the shoulders of workers, which will guarantee the protection of unemployment compensation and seniority indemnity, which will seize all assets of anybody proven to be involved with fraud and corruption, which will bring the minimum wage up to a level that ensures a humane standard of living, and which will stand by all the workers, the poor and the oppressed!
We ask for the congregation of an assembly that doesn’t treat the fundamental rights as matters open to negotiation in providing a solution to the Kurdish problem, and that recognizes the Kurdish people’s right to self-determination. In this regard, the disclosure of the AKP’s fraud is not a sabotage against the peace process; it is rather the birth of a hope for the creation of a permanent and realistic solution for the first time. Because if there is no bread and justice, there is no peace!
One way to solve this crisis, which unveiled that the fundamental problem we are facing is structural, is to immediately hold general elections with no electoral threshold and to congregate a constituent assembly to offer a new constitution! However, it is very evident that what the bourgeoisie, who give green light to the AKP’s departure, seek for is an anti-democratic state structure and an alternative that will sustain the AKP’s neoliberal program. We know that the only permanent solution to this threat would be the establishment of a workers government with the congregation of a new assembly.
So we shout out one more time:
Government, step down!
The present parliament cannot solve our problems; we demand for a constituent assembly to solve our pressing problems and to prepare a new constitution!
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