By advancing the most burning demands of the working class and oppressed alongside the defence of HDP and the Istanbul Convention, the preparations for May Day will constitute a crucial stepping stone in the development of the united antifascist struggle.
The dark reality of fascism is revealed before the working people in the form of deepening social, political and economic rifts.
As the fascist courtiers, wallowing in debauchery on the proceeds of corruption, the army of the unemployed has swelled beyond 10 million. 300 tradesmen go bankrupt every day; 4 million a year are deprived of power, and annual worker suicides now exceed 100 in the maelstrom of unemployment, poverty and debt.
The Palace regime, offering unlimited financial favour to its gang of crony-contractors, has finally succeeded in putting the boss of the Limak Conglomerate on Forbes’ rich-list; while 180,000 workers were dismissed under Code 29 in the last year, deprived of severance and unemployment benefits despite mid-pandemic terminations being ostensibly banned.
And as the regime pulled its medical supply plane stunt in London, its own citizens died in the absence of spare hospital beds.
The “justice” of AKP is a sick joke at the expense of the people: the textile worker demanding unpaid wages; the student protesting arbitrary regime appointments; the Black Sea peasant whose habitat is being plundered by construction monopolies; the journalist blacklisted for reporting on brutal state violence; and the mother from Suruç holding vigil at the courthouse after losing her family to AKP mercenary attacks.
Neither the workings of overt police terror or the psychological war machine have been enough to stabilise the position of Erdogan’s regime or solve its crisis of legitimacy. Its efforts are now turning towards a new de facto state of emergency through draft internal security legislation, and an attempt to renew mass support with the vague threat of a coup.
But the spirit of resistance is growing; in the squares of Newroz and the battle cries of fighting women. The student resistance will not bow to police terror; the LGBT community will continue to defend its identity; the Kurdish people, insisting on language and nationhood, will not rest in the defence of their imprisoned deputies and celebration of the Garê guerillas who brought the colonial incursion to its knees. From Migros Depo to Ekmekçioğulları Metal, Baldur Suspension to SML Label and Çiftay Madencilik, Kayı İnşaat to PTT, active workers’ resistance in the public, private and healthcare sectors is on the rise.
May Day will be a critical threshold for all such dynamics of resistance to coalesce. The fascist Palace regime, a fortress of corruption, cronyism, tyranny and injustice, will stand accused before the working people as the chief culprit of social calamity. It will be made to answer for slave labour and unemployment, poverty and hunger, patriarchy, social backwardness, colonial racism, Islamisation and the assault on democratic freedom.
As this reckoning is undertaken, in concert with the defence of HDP and the Istanbul Convention, May 1st 2021 will see the momentous rise of a united antifascist barricade.
It will witness the manifestation of a glorious third front, which does not rely on CHP and Nation Alliance, which does not go squalling to the Constitutional Court or the imperialist Euro-American bureaucrats; but relies instead on the agitation of the masses for the realisation of their own political freedom.
By advancing the most burning demands of the working class and oppressed alongside the defence of HDP and the Istanbul Convention, the preparations for May Day will constitute a crucial stepping stone in the development of the united antifascist struggle.
These preparations will include uninterrupted contact with the masses through widespread agitation and activism; and confrontation with the mass detentions and repression that are likely to occur as May Day approaches.
May Day is a grand opportunity for the continued renewal of the antifascist movement; to amass hope and confidence in victory and open the door to innumerable latent troops of the workers and oppressed. It falls to the United Fighting Forces and communists pioneers to take full advantage.
This responsibility extends well beyond the shredding of Erdogan’s COVID curfew: any attempt to outlaw May Day on such grounds, while millions of workers are crammed into public buses and shop floors without the privilege of vaccination, is no more than a despicable fascist pretense.
May 1st 2021 will see the communist militants out in force, with full strength of will and conviction, to raise the united antifascist barricade – it will be the assurance of our victory.