We Salute the Republic
THEY WILL LEAVE AS THEY COME
The Republic of Turkey was born out of resistance — a struggle against imperial occupation and against the decaying remains of an empire that had turned on its own people.
Imperialism is not simply “foreign interference,” as the cliché goes. It is the global system of multinational monopolies — an economic order built on exploitation and inequality. It the inevitable consequence of the “free market” the sweetheart of the bourgeoisie. The same powers that sought to carve up Anatolia after the First World War are once again at work across a region that still includes Turkey.
What’s different is that we now have a domestic capitalist class marching in step with them. This class has grown rich off the labour of our people, seized control of the country’s resources, and used the state as a tool in its own competition with others. Yet it has never broken its ties with imperialistic capital — economic, political, or military.
A century ago, those who collaborated with the occupiers were branded traitors. The National Struggle made collaboration a crime — and rightly so. Today, that same behaviour is dressed up as diplomacy. Praise from Washington is treated as a mark of prestige.
At the heart of this lies a simple truth: Turkey’s ruling class is both self-serving and dependent. It condemns the majority to poverty and insecurity, kneels before the powerful, and growls only at the weak. The boundaries of “mainstream politics” are set by its interests. Whether it wraps itself in the language of “Western modernity” or “national pride,” its loyalties never lie with the people.
A nation cannot exist without its people. A system that leaves its working majority to hunger and hardship cannot call itself “national” — in its domestic policies or in its foreign ones.
Across the world, the corporations that dominate finance, technology, industry, and trade are tied together by capital flows, supply chains, and markets. Yet what truly binds them is their shared dependence on cheap labour and their shared interest in keeping it that way.
And despite all their interconnections, they remain locked in constant rivalry — dragging whole states into their quarrels. Those rivalries are the real engine of conflict and war. There is no capitalism without war. There is no such thing as a “peaceful capitalism.” And the idea of a “national capitalism” is a contradiction in terms.
The attitude that says, “At least the thief is one of ours,” or “If we’re going to be exploited, better by our own than by outsiders,” is not realism — it’s a betrayal of the very struggle that founded the Republic.
Communists supported that struggle because they opposed injustice in every form. They didn’t simply cheer it from the sidelines; they fought in it, because they opposed imperialism itself. They trusted the people and loved their country. Even when others tried to twist that struggle for personal gain, they refused to let it be discredited. They opposed not only the imperialist war but also the so-called “imperialist peace” that followed — the Treaty of Sèvres, which our people torn to shreds.
We stand in that same tradition today.
The Communist Party of Turkey does not approach the Republic or the War of Independence as matters of blind nationalism. Injustice is injustice, wherever it occurs. The billions of ordinary people across the world who have no quarrel with one another are our brothers and sisters. We do not hide behind talk of “foreign powers.” Imperialism is not an outside conspiracy — it is the rule of global monopolies that plunder every nation they touch: Turkish, Kurdish, Arab, Greek, German, British, French, Russian, Indian, Pakistani alike. Among the guilty are our own so-called “local” and “national” profiteers. You cannot honour the National Struggle while excusing them. Wherever there are exploitation and injustice, our duty is clear: to resist them.
Our own capitalist class has another defining trait: no matter how rich or assertive it becomes, it cannot break free of its dependence on the USA and NATO. The same elites who once took a beating from the poor Anatolian peasantry during the War of Independence still cling to the coattails of the British. They circle endlessly under imperial wings, dreaming of being a “regional power.”
Look at the current government. In economics, it follows the British school; in foreign policy, the same. Even in intelligence, the ties run so deep that the head of Britain’s spy agency can hold a press conference in Istanbul urging our people to “serve” them — and the government barely raises an eyebrow.
The truth is that the predators at that table of wolves don’t much like one another. With few exceptions, the pro-American, pro-British, pro-German, and pro-French factions in Turkey all quietly despise their patrons abroad — and the feeling is mutual. The Americans know their “allies” can’t stand them. But in the world of capital, where money sets the tempo, friendship is an illusion. There are only interests — and collisions between them. In such a world, collaboration becomes a recurring crime.
Once again, Turkey is being pulled back into the orbit of Washington and London. The roots of this lie in the structure of its capitalist class — whether it wears the colours of TÜSİAD or MÜSİAD, yellow, green, or pink. On that line stand Menderes, Demirel, Evren, Özal, Çiller. On that line stand the Muslim Brotherhood and the so-called “National Outlook.” On that line stand the religious orders fattened by the anti-communist crusades. The AKP is both the product of that line — and its inevitable end.
A hundred and two years ago, we founded the Republic. The Republic meant equality — government by the people.
A hundred and two years later, our people are drowning in inequality. A hundred and two years later, imperial powers once again roam freely across our land.
To salute the Republic today is to defy that disgrace. To salute Mustafa Kemal, the leader of the National Struggle, and those who stood with him, is to stand once more against imperialism and exploitation.
We give our word: we will rid Turkey of imperialism and exploitation. Whether “foreign” or “domestic” makes no difference — both are diseases in the body of the nation. We will rebuild the Republic on socialist foundations and remove every parasite that clings to it.
As it was a century ago:
They will leave as they came.
Exploiters of the world!
You will leave as you came.
