Unity and Solidarity is the Only Way to Fight Back

It is commonplace in politics, economy and media to make a balance sheet of the past year and a list of expectations when the new year begins. As we welcomed 2024, the capitalist class’ leading politicians, renowned billionaires, specialists, artists, religious leaders, authorities of international aid organizations, media influencers and many more greeted 2024 with fancy messages. They condemned wars and wished the new year would bring peace and harmony to all humanity. However, they did not even mention the only obstacle to peace and harmony, the capitalist exploitation system that is dragging the planet and humanity from disaster to disaster and that it must be destroyed. Whereas what we experienced in 2023 reveals that the suffering of workers and the threat to our world and humanity intensify every single day capitalism survives.

2023 was a year in which we experienced how much the capitalist mode of production destroys nature and how deep the ecological crisis has become. In dozens of countries from Canada to Greece, from Chile to Italy, forest fires wreaked havoc. As forest areas were destroyed, the air we breathe became heavily polluted, and global warming accelerated. July 2023 was the world’s hottest month ever recorded. Hundreds of people died, and tens of thousands of people were displaced due to wildfires and extreme heat. In China, Libya, India, Pakistan, Malawi, Brazil, Japan and dozens of other countries, floods took tens of thousands of lives and cities were flooded. Due to drought, especially in some African countries, the threat of starvation grew even more. Hurricanes, storms, and other extreme weather events also claimed many lives. Earthquakes claimed tens of thousands of lives in many countries such as Turkey, Syria, Afghanistan, Nepal, Morocco and Ecuador. After each earthquake, it was revealed that the main cause of casualties was capitalism's mode of unhealthy housing and urbanization, and the capitalists' greed for profit.

However, the disasters created by capitalism were not limited to “natural” disasters. Many countries were shaken by economic and political crises and coups. War, conflict and massacres continued in countries such as Yemen, Ukraine, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan and Sudan. At the end of September, there was conflict between Azerbaijan and Armenia, and 600 people lost their lives in Nagorno-Karabakh. On October 7, a new link was added in the imperialist war, and since then, tens of thousands of people, half of them women and children, have been killed in Gaza. The developments in the last weeks of 2023 and Israeli rulers’ statements show that the war will continue to spread and grow.

On the other hand, 2023 was also a year when social inequality reached unbearable levels, global unemployment, poverty, violence, crime rates, drug use, suicides and murder cases increased, and oppression and anti-democratic policies intensified. In 2023, tens of millions have been added to the hundreds of millions on migration routes for these reasons.

Let’s get to Turkey... Located in a tense geography like the Middle East, Turkey has become a country where all these problems are experienced much harder and felt deeply. Because in Turkey, the current regime puts its survival above all else and does not hesitate to throw working people into the fire for the sake of its interests. Since 2018 when today’s oppressive regime was institutionalized, Turkey’s economy has been tumbling down the cliff. Working people are paying the heavy price of economic destruction. 2023 was a year in which this price became extremely heavy in every field. The minimum wage, which was set at 8,500 liras in January 2023, with the claim of a “very good raise”, fell below the hunger line in a short period. The minimum wage of 11,402 lira, which was announced in July according to the unrealistic official inflation rate, likewise rapidly fell below the hunger line. A few weeks before the announcement of the minimum wage for 2024, inflation was 62 per cent according to TÜİK and 129 per cent according to ENAG. In other words, real wages and purchasing power have plummeted. Workers were squashed under the heavy burden of the high cost of living. However, far from covering the losses of the workers and considering the inflation rates, the government set the minimum wage as 17 thousand liras, saying “We predict that inflation will decrease in 2024, a 49 per cent raise will be more than enough.” Moreover, they called this “not to make the workers suffer from inflation”.

Let’s recall the following examples that show which class the current government belongs to and its anti-labour face. On February 6 an earthquake took place in which, according to official statements, 50 thousand people died, hundreds of thousands of people were disabled, and tens of thousands of buildings were turned into rubble. After this great disaster, corruption, irregularities and negligence were revealed. But not a single responsible person resigned, held accountable or punished. Despite billions of liras of donations collected, attacks on the working people were carried out under the pretext of healing the wounds of the earthquake. Free school meals in preschool were cancelled except in the earthquake zone. They made a fortune from earthquake rubble through tenders. They planned to increase tax revenue from the working people by 70 per cent, in the meantime, they announced that the 2.2 trillion liras taxes that companies must pay in 2024 will not be collected. New profit gates were opened for companies under the pretext of “reserve area”. In 2023 they continued their attitude of not taking responsibility for any disasters, from so-called “work accidents” causing hundreds of workers being killed in a single incident to forest fires, of not holding accountable, rewarding those responsible, and profiting from disasters.

As we see in the examples of Mata Automotive, Migros Warehouse, Agrobay Seracılık, Özak Textile, the regime, which used police, gendarmerie, tear gas, batons, courts, laws, prisons, governors, Muftis and media against the workers seeking their rights, preferred to protect and guard the real criminals. The companies where “work accidents” with massive death toll took place and the bosses who fired unionized workers were rewarded with incentives. Can Atalay, the lawyer of the families of the massacred workers in Soma mining explosion, is still being kept in jail despite being elected as an MP, while local and foreign gangs, mafia leaders, drug barons, and murderers of women were set free. Those who condemn Israel for killing tens of thousands of people in Gaza on the pretext of “an existential threat”, in meantime, continue all kinds of commercial relations with Israel. While meeting all the needs of the Israeli war machine, from steel to oil, from army clothes to water, journalists who exposed these commercial relations were threatened. Besides that, many more were jailed for criticising the arriving of soldiers’ bodies from Libya, Syria and Iraq to the poor workers’ homes, for saying that public spending should be allocated not for war, but for elevator maintenance of student dormitories, for children going to school hungry, for health, for the disabled and the elderly.

Let’s get this straight: As the working people, we had a tumultuous year and we all have expectations for 2024. But it is strikingly clear, that more attacks will rain down on the working class in 2024. No doubt, we will not spontaneously recover in 2024, while we are facing a rampant capital class and a government that is determined to make the working class pay the price of economic destruction. We must fight for our expectations to come true. Let’s keep this in mind: We cannot fight back as individual workers in these conditions where even a shred of struggle for rights is strangled by repression and violence, where intolerance towards opposing voices, telling truth and demanding rights has peaked, and where society is besieged and left breathless. In order to become the working class rather than individual workers, we must start by disregarding the lies and polarisation policies of the government and the capitalist class. As workers from all sectors, we must start by saying “An attack against one of us is an attack against all of us.” We must be in unity and solidarity in our workplaces, in our unions, in our fighting organizations, in picket lines, in resistance areas. No matter how tough it may seem, this is the way to overcome the siege, stand against the attacks of the capitalist class and government, and bring strength to the struggle of the working class of the world to overthrow capitalism.