What is the regime in Turkey?

There is considerable confusion about the nature of the regime in Turkey, and this presents itself as an obstacle at the points where we come into contact with our people. For example, has Turkey’s regime, at least over the last 25 years, been fascist?

The term is used very widely and formulaically, making it increasingly difficult to make sense of the issue. It has become an obstacle to the formation of a revolutionary republican identity.

However, in order to unpack the question in the title, we will need to address a series of interrelated concepts:

The first of these is the concept of “bourgeois dictatorship.”

In every country where the bourgeoisie comes to power, it establishes a bourgeois dictatorship, regardless of the regime. Particularly when power is taken from a feudal class that is collaborating with imperialism, this dictatorship acquires a revolutionary character. However, by its very nature, over time the bourgeois dictatorship comes to target the working classes’ struggle for equality and freedom. Even if the ruling class organizes the most democratic regime—that is, even if it establishes a system in which the people have the right to vote and stand for election, different classes can defend their political views through political parties and press organs, and can be represented in the national assembly—that regime is still under a bourgeois dictatorship.

It is a bourgeois dictatorship because the bourgeoisie will never surrender its power to the working class through the electoral system and parliament. When such a possibility arises, it resorts to ultra-political methods: provocation, murder, repression, civilian gangs, inviting the military to take over the government, and so on.

Therefore, under a bourgeois dictatorship at the national level, regimes ranging on a continuum from the most democratic regime to fascism are established according to the needs arising from the class struggle.

If the bourgeoisie has been able to create a broad middle class that also includes some sections of the working class, if it can preserve its ideological legitimacy, and if it is difficult to create a breach in the existing order even when the working class is organized, then the regime will be democratic. In other words, the exploitation of the working classes is masked by a democracy produced through class collaboration.

However, if the opposite is true—if the middle classes are shrinking, popular discontent is increasing, legitimacy crises are erupting one after another, and the working classes, together with their political vanguard, are making attempts to seize power under these conditions—then fascism may be preferred as a regime.

For example, at a historical moment when the people in Turkey were seeking a left-wing alternative, when socialism enjoyed a high level of prestige worldwide, and when the organized struggle of the working classes was on the rise, the military coups of 12 March 1971 and 12 September 1980 represented periods in which the bourgeoisie opted for a fascist regime.

Fascism is the punishment imposed by the bourgeoisie in response to the working class’s rising struggle and its quest for power. It also eliminates parliament and the other establishment parties for a period of time, leaving behind nothing but its own law of coercion and its implementation. It is extremely brutal, recognizes no rules, and operates with the freedom to commit murder.

Unfortunately, the forgetting of what revolutionary politics means and the forgetting of what fascism means are proceeding together. Otherwise, after producing so many analyses of fascism, people would not be looking to the ballot box through alliances among establishment parties whose programmes are essentially no different from one another as a way of overcoming fascism. Fascism can never be overcome through the ballot box, because no such possibility exists. Such an analysis of fascism has turned people’s brains into a colander, deprived them of their ability to think, and paved the way for class collaboration.

Today, although working-class politics remains potentially the most powerful enemy of the existing order, the capitalist class assesses the threat through criteria of socialization such as the percentage of votes obtained in elections, looks at the international situation, and does not need fascism. It is not because the bourgeoisie has become democratic; they simply do not need fascism. Despite many restrictions, parties are still able to operate; parliament, however dysfunctional it may be, can still convene; and although the judiciary has been turned into an instrument of politics, it continues to function to some extent, and so on.

Fine, but then what is Turkey’s regime?

We said that the bourgeois dictatorship establishes its regimes across a spectrum ranging from the most democratic to fascism. In order to understand Turkey’s regime, we have to analyze the last 30 years.

The 24 January 1980 Decisions had announced that the bourgeoisie had adopted a programme of full integration with the imperialist system and unrestricted exploitation. At the time, we had not fully grasped that this also meant abandoning the Republic. In 2001, Kemal Derviş’s “15 Laws in 15 Days” gave concrete form to integration with imperialism, privatization and the assault on labour.

The bourgeoisie now needed a very powerful implementer. They decided to solve this by bringing in a team that had passed through the machinery of religious orders but had made taking commissions from every undertaking carried out in the municipalities of the 1990s into a way of life. They added to them the Gülen movement, which operated like a clandestine organization and was an extension of the CIA, as well as liberals who had at one time also been involved with the left.

Thus, the AKP, entirely the choice of imperialism and the Turkish capitalist class, set out on this path. This highly empowered administration carried out very important transformations. Very briefly: first, they transferred everything owned by the state to capital; second, they created a paradise of exploitation for employers by dismantling the organization of the working classes; third, once the judiciary and legislature in this paradise of exploitation ceased to constitute an obstacle to international capital, a considerable inflow of capital into Turkey took place.

This is Turkey’s regime!

In an environment in which Turkey has become the property of capital, whenever the ballot box is set up for workers to endorse this order, they are left with no choice but to go to the ballot box. Capital governs its own property and has no need whatsoever for the will of the people. We are talking about a regime in which the people have, at a certain point, become slaves of the capitalist class. We might as well laugh at the term “one-man regime”: this absurd concept misses the capitalist class behind the “one man” and takes class collaboration to its extreme.

Of course, in this regime, parliament and the judiciary become dysfunctional, secularism is thrown into the garbage, trade union leaders who resist are imprisoned, the right to vote and stand for election becomes obsolete, and the media is shaped by the capitalist class.

There is only one little flaw in this regime, which is so useful to the bourgeoisie itself. Such a powerful implementer was created, and commission-taking from plunder became such a natural part of the regime, that even if they share the same programme, the regime does not allow a change of horses. Otherwise, we know that everyone who aspires to govern, such as İmamoğlu, is a candidate to become the administrator of the same regime.

Therefore, if you are going to oppose this regime, above all you must have a revolutionary programme against the bourgeoisie. Turkey can only be saved today by transferring the property that has been plundered or built through the export of capital into the sovereignty of the working people. A Republic can be rebuilt with our own hands.

In order to advance the discussion of what Turkey’s regime is, it is necessary to examine the structure of Turkish capital and its relationship with politics.