The following is the text of a leaflet distributed at a solidarity protest in London on 22 March 2025
Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s main political rival Ekrem Imamoglu, the mayor of Istanbul, was arrested on 19 March on alleged corruption charges. The arrest took place days before the biggest opposition party, Republican People’s Party (CHP), was set to announce Imamoglu as its candidate for the next presidential elections.
Defying the ban on demonstrations and other restrictions, students and young people have been organising, heroically battling against police brutality. The protests quickly spread to many cities across Turkey.
Members of the Revolutionary Workers’ Union Confederation (DISK) and Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions (KESK) also took part in the protests.
Young and working-class people – so far the driving force of the movement – have had enough of constant attacks on democratic rights, rampant corruption, repression and worsening living standards.
The recent attack on Imamoglu follows a series of arrests. However, these attacks do not come from a position of strength, but weakness. The austerity programme implemented by the government, with brutal cuts to public spending, has added to Erdogan’s growing unpopularity.
Erdogan is trying to use intimidation against all opponents and using everything in his means, including the judiciary and the police, to stifle the opposition and end the mass protests. Hundreds have been arrested and many have been severely injured by pepper spray, rubber bullets and police batons.
Erdogan’s biggest fear is the protests spreading to workplaces, pulling in wider sections of the working class, demanding an end to attacks on democratic rights and living standards.
Imamoglu’s popularity was already on the rise because he was seen as the main challenger to Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian regime. Some of the welfare policies he introduced in Istanbul, such as the ‘city restaurants’ for people on low incomes, have added to his growing popularity.
His party, CHP, is now organising rallies in his defence. But, as the youth attending those rallies have pointed out, the movement is not just about the arrest of Imamoglu, it is about repression, worsening living standards and lack of future for young people.
In fact, there is mistrust towards the CHP leadership including concerns they will act as a brake on the movement. The youth are trying to force the CHP to take a more combative stance.
The movement can go further and shake the core foundations of Erdogan’s regime and capitalism itself if it can link the attacks on democratic rights to economic issues.
These protests have been the biggest since the Gezi Park movement in 2013, when millions of people took to the streets and saved the park from demolition. That heroic movement could have gone further had the working class been at the helm, with its own mass democratic organisations, including a mass workers’ party.
But since the Gezi Park movement, the CHP has been portraying itself as the only hope to get rid of Erdogan. Clearly, that approach has not worked and Erdogan was able to get away with more attacks on democratic rights. Like Erdogan, the CHP has got no answer to the problems facing the working class and young people, as it too defends the interests of big business.
There is an urgent need for all trade unions, socialists and student organisations to build a united front, offering a working-class alternative with a clear programme.
A socialist programme for democratic rights, as well as for jobs, homes and services for all, could bring millions more workers onto the streets in a mass democratic struggle against Erdogan’s regime.
Forming democratically organised action committees to decide the next steps for the movement would be a crucial development. Already, there is increasing pressure from young people for trade unions to organise a general strike. Any steps for the workers’ movement and the wider working class getting organised would create an even more explosive situation and change the balance of forces in favour of the working class.
Such a united front of workers emerging from this struggle, armed with a political programme, could force Erdogan out and offer a socialist alternative – fighting to take the banks and other giant companies that dominate the economy, like textile and steel, into the democratic control of the working class, planning society in our interests and securing a decent future for all.
