The Republic will endure only if our people can put bread on the table through their own hard work, claim what is rightfully theirs, build a happy life for themselves and their families, and see smiles on the faces of the children and the elderly.
The lives we lead bear no resemblance to the picture-perfect worlds depicted in the commercials that holdings produce to commemorate the Republic. In these commercials, a handful of fat cats and profiteers heap empty praise on the Republic, built through immense sacrifice. They fund such commercials to hide the fact that their own world rests on our people’s suffering. The truth is simple: they stole the Republic.
Those who call for a renewed Republic must first and foremost fight these thieves. A renewed Republic must be a Republic of the working people. It must offer a political programme around which the workers, pensioners, students, farmers and small business owners, i.e. people who now have to count every penny just to put food on the table, can unite. The rule of plunderers must give way to people’s power. A programme that shall guarantee every citizen’s security and well-being from the very moment they are born.
Only by rebuilding the Republic can we reclaim the security we have lost, restore our safeguards and take back our future.
We must wake up, break out of our complacency and confront reality. We must decisively reject the lie that there can be a “reasonable” bourgeoisie or a “tamed” form of capitalism.
The world we live in today is being turned into a living hell for those who toil and sweat for a living.
The destruction of the Republic cannot be stopped by looking to the imperialist West for salvation or by refusing to break with the capitalist class.
During its years in power, the AKP launched fierce attacks to suppress and break republican resistance. Unfortunately, these attacks were not without success. A strong resistance rooted in popular gains and the egalitarian principles at the heart of true republican values failed to emerge. Republicans found themselves confined to the artificial polarisation engineered by the AKP. They accepted a struggle fought along lines drawn by their opponents.
Us, the Communists, for our part, failed to convince broad sections of society of a fundamental truth: the only way to defend the Republic is to confront big capital, which profits from the dismantling of the Republic’s achievements.
This regression was possible because the resistance that emerged lacked a class perspective.
The counter-revolution could only be halted on the social terrain, through the class struggle. Defending the republican revolution was not a task to be entrusted to institutions presumed to stand above class divisions — the military, the judiciary or the bureaucracy.
It was class struggle that proved decisive. Yet this simple truth was overlooked.
We understand the concerns and anger of republican citizens who, faced with this desperate situation, turn to mainstream bourgeois politics for a way out. This is happening because the basic truth remains unrecognised and the class character of the government and the counter-revolution is being disregarded. But we must be honest with one another: no new founding will can save Turkey from within the capitalist system. No political line operating within that system can constitute a genuine alternative to the AKP. So long as the capitalist system remains in place, the Republic is bound to lose.
But this defeat is not inevitable. We can halt the retreat.
We can put an end to the rot spreading through every stratum of society, to reactionary darkness and to moral and social decay.
Together, we can build a republic for the people.
The capitalist class only survives by exploiting the working people and no longer shares even the slightest common ground with the vast majority of the population and their interests have become wholly incompatible with theirs. We can rid ourselves of this corrupt class.
We can build a country in which its people stand together as part of a common struggle and win their freedom collectively. This shared emancipation will once again lay the foundations of brotherhood. Peace will be built to last, never to be shattered again.
For our country, for our working class, for our cause, we stand for the Republic to the very end. And we know this — and let there be no doubt about it: the Republic can become a reality once again only when working people hold power.
This Republic Day may leave us all feeling a little bereft.
Still, day by day, we continue to build momentum around a republican programme. Once we unite and take up the struggle, we will begin to rebuild our Republic, placing it back in the hands of its sole true guardians, the working class.
With this resolve, we salute all the heroes of the War of Independence and the founding of the Republic: the poor Anatolian peasantry, the intellectuals and officers, and Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, the leader of this struggle.
