Keeping this regime in power is only as possible as stopping the flow of life

Political Collective

A series of measures are being taken to maintain a regime that has lost all its social support as a kind of family dynasty.

Operations aimed at restructuring the media order and capital relations are also related to creating divisions within the opposition front... Every area, including the opposition media, is being reorganised in an attempt to lay the foundations for this regime change.

Their only concern and great despair is to convince the society, the vast majority of which is against them, or to create an escape route for themselves by dividing it.

For this purpose, attempts are being made in recent days to spread pessimism among the opposition through the media. Polls showing Erdoğan leading all potential candidates are being circulated, while the opposition is being drawn into internal conflicts and bizarre debates.

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Behind all this lies a multi-layered and insurmountable crisis, fuelled by internal power struggles.

In contrast, there is the society's inexhaustible will for change. There are resistance efforts, which have found their counterpart in the streets with tens of thousands of people, and which now continue in different and widespread forms.

The real issue is to separate these resistance movements from each other and to divide the opposition. Although some steps have been taken in this direction, it is impossible to say that they have found a response in society. However, it is clear that opposition movements need to move beyond their current state and sound the alarm in the face of what is happening. What is happening is hidden in distracting debates, like a magician's tricks. Just as a frog slowly gets used to the heat and prepares for its own demise, the opposition and society are being lulled into obedience.

It must be understood that against such a government, one that holds all state resources in its hands and is seeking support within America's new plans for the Middle East, the struggle inevitably requires active and united social resistance. It must be understood that there is no other way to disrupt the regime's calculations than through such a social struggle, and that the strategy of winning by reassuring America and NATO, promising a better future for capital – and thus gaining their support – amounts to nothing more than a death spiral.

Without recognizing that the objections of the vast majority of society to this regime go far beyond a mere return to a parliamentary system, that they demand a more egalitarian, more libertarian, radical change against the existing exploitative order, and without organizing as a movement for change in this direction, success cannot be achieved. To the extent that the issue has been viewed as removing one person or party from power and replacing them with another, the path to victory has remained closed. Today, without repeating the same mistakes, there is a need for sophisticated, comprehensive and united politics that can defeat the games played by those in power.

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It is clear that they will go even further than they have done so far. They will use every means possible to suppress the opposition. They will declare themselves to be the only option through the media, which they influence both in power and in opposition. They will try to impose, through threats and blackmail, operations and pressure, that ending chaos and disorder will pave the way for them to remain in power for at least one more term, and that, if possible, this should turn into a dynasty from father to son. They will attempt to sever all channels of opposition, restrict all means of expression, and criminalise and fragment the opposition through all manner of discord and strife.

The sole purpose of all this is to find a way to reverse this process that is leading to their own demise... To put it another way, it is like trying to stop the clock and freeze the flow of life... That is why the only thing that can truly be relied upon is the will to salvation hidden within the dynamics of resistance within society.

As the famous saying goes, when power targets life, life turns into resistance against power. Opposition movements will win by merging with this flow of life, and despite everything, this is where hope lies today... It is time to unite and pursue this hope...

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SIDE NOTES

NOTE: 1

THE STRUGGLE CONTINUES TOGETHER

The events of 19 March showed that the dynamics of social opposition, which had been increasingly displaced in Turkey since the June uprising, could flourish again. It went down in the history of the republic as a courageous challenge, with young people, women, workers, pensioners and all those who had a problem with this regime finding the solution in themselves and in each other. However, the anger and momentum that emerged receded to a certain extent due to the visions – or rather, the lack thereof – of both mainstream and non-mainstream social opposition actors. The CHP's move to remain on the streets, which it did not essentially intend but could no longer ignore after the barricade was breached in Beyazıt, eventually retreated to the limits of its own mentality. Millions who gathered daily in Saraçhane and ODTÜ without fear, undeterred by asymmetric police violence, who believed they could bring about change, were treated as mere voters. The gatherings in city squares were turned into election rallies, and within those boundaries, grassroots anger was extinguished. Yet, the strengthening of the popular opposition that took to the streets that day – perhaps even saving the CHP (!) – could only have been possible not just with radicalism in the streets, but with a meaningful united opposition platform and activism that would be worth living for and would be able to stop time.

Today, in the sixth month of the new threshold that began on 19 March, young people are showing the courage to take to the streets again of their own volition. Women are waiting for the right moment to take to the streets again. Since the beginning of the budget discussions, pensioners have been calling on both their fellow sufferers and the entire public to come together through rallies and street demonstrations. Now, the entire opposition, led by young people, is trying to speak out and stand up against MESEM, which is killing two of our children a month on behalf of their bosses. Today, the united opposition is trying to establish itself in a shapeless, formless way, by trial and error.

So why is it that even coming together side by side can only be achieved by trial and error? In the heat of 19 March, those who fell under the spell of the streets and believed that “we are all we need”, those who hid behind symbols to escape the struggle, and those who then tried to bring a "Greater Middle East"-compatible discussion of socialism onto the left’s agenda – at this critical juncture, the left wasted enough time. It is now time to clear our heads and listen to the voice of the streets. Controversy certainly feeds the left, but today we cannot allow ourselves to be distracted by new diversions and take our eyes off the dynamics of struggle that life itself brings. What good does it do to talk about the determinative nature of class struggle when we come from a people who have lost their lives in construction sites and factories, from the age of 7 to 70? What purpose does it serve to talk about stateless, powerless socialism in the shadow of a government whose every moment and every aspect of daily life is determined, whose drawers are full of new sharia drafts? Compared to Gezi, what is the cost of turning our backs and repeating the same stale debates about identity, symbols and history, at a time when the government has seized all the state's resources and young people, whose childhood was shaped between June-November 2015, 15 July, the state of emergency, and TAK and ISIS attacks, have found the courage to take to the streets?

As young people, pensioners, women, and workers take to the streets one after another, is there anyone left who doubts the responsibility that falls on the most organised segments of this country? Is there anyone who still hesitates to come together?

NOTE: 2

‘MARKET DEMOCRACY’, EU SINCERITY

After 19 March, a tendency stemming from helplessness and intellectual poverty is increasingly manifesting itself both at the centre and on the periphery of the main opposition: the idea that this country can be saved by returning to market rationality and reassuring the EU. Today, the leader of the main opposition and the figures in the media are trying to explain, in a somewhat reproachful manner, how they will be a better global actor than the AKP. They even argue that not only Turkey but also the West has become more authoritarian because it has abandoned globalisation!

This is not just a simple misconception, but also the result of a mental distance that has opened up between them and the people. There is no doubt that this is not new; promising that the economy would be entrusted to the Babacan mindset in the 2023 elections was another stroke of genius from this mindset! Yet, perhaps compared to many other examples, we, the Turkish people, have experienced first-hand the deep poverty brought about by neoliberalism and the authoritarianism enabled by market forces. We all learned through experience how the false spring created by the loans distributed in the 2000s led to the most authoritarian working regime in Turkish history, and how the wave of de-organisation and individualisation imposed both legally and socially narrowed the people's political space. We gathered by the millions in Gezi to overcome the darkness in which sects and religious communities began to take the place of trade unions, professional organisations and student movements. That day, too, we were faced with the most “rational” economists, and the cabinet was competing to be “the most pro-EU”!

Whether right-wingers or social democrats were in power in Europe, their approach to Turkey never went beyond the blueprint offered by Washington. As long as Turkey remained a buffer zone for migrants, Erdoğan continued to receive the EU's full support from the 2010s to the present day. What motivated the EU to provide this support yesterday, yet today, instead of backing an Erdoğan who is much more actively involved in both Syria and Ukraine, it supports the CHP?

We are entering a period where we are abandoning globalisation as we know it. However, the parameters of the relations established by both the EU and the US with each other and with Turkey have not changed. Trump does not want the US military to be directly involved in the open fronts in Eastern Europe and the Middle East today, or in any fronts that may open up. To this end, at the last NATO summit and at the UN General Assembly, he openly threatened European countries to increase their defence budgets and publicly rebuked those members who maintain economic relations with Russia. The praise heaped upon Erdoğan is likewise a reflection of military and political expectations in the Middle East. Consequently, globalisation may have come to an end in the context of the US killing millions of people with its own soldiers in overseas operations. Although it is now entrusting the Eastern European front to Western Europeans and the Middle East to Turkey and Israel, it is still entrusting them according to its own plan. To say that the West has now taken on an “anti-democratic” character based on this new trend can only be a sign of dementia. Today, if there is one issue that Turkey needs to address to the West – be it the EU or the US – it is to declare that the children of this people, the brotherhood of this country, its throats, and its lands occupied by bases will not be at the service of Pentagon commanders or Brussels corridors. To the American official who said after the Korean War that Turkish soldiers cost very little, 23 cents, Nazım said in 1953:

"There is just one thing, Mister Dalles,

they probably hid this from you:

The soldier they sold you for 23 cents

was there before you put on your uniform,

was there without an automatic weapon,

was there simply as a human being,

was there, strange as it may seem to you,

was there long, long ago,

long before your state even had a name."

Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Hayatı durdurmak ne kadar mümkünse bu iktidarı sürdürmek de o kadar, müm published in BirGün newspaper on December 21, 2025.