To ensure social justice, we launched our "JUSTICE FOR ALL" campaign on February 8. The launch of the new campaign was held in Ankara with the participation of our co-chairs Pervin Buldan and Mithat Sancar, party assembly and central executive board members, women- and youth-assemblies members, MPs, representatives from HDP's constituent parties as well as the individuals from the fields of academy, politics and art. The campaign will continue for 4 months until June 2021. In the lunch event, Co-Chairs Buldan and Sancar shared the declaration of our new campaign with the public:
1.The long-standing economic, social and political crisis in Turkey spreads to all areas of life through the presidential system of government, which is a regime of injustice and inequality. The corruption, lack of resolution and obstruction created by the AKP-MHP government in the fields of economy, judiciary, health, education, politics and culture are reflected in society as a life that is difficult to endure.
Corruption, nepotism, discrimination, vulgar violence, hate and threat language, sexist and othering mentality that are now considered normal are constantly polarizing society. The hostile language of the ruling power that tries to survive in this way, unfortunately, erodes the human values that are the basic mortar of society, drives society into a vortex of moral corruption, and imposes social unravelling.
Although each of these crises has individual consequences, there is one common result that they all produce in total and growing increasingly like an avalanche: injustice.
A society can only exist with Justice. If there is no justice, society will face dissolution, the country will face collapse. When you remove Justice from social and political life, the order of lies, plunder and cruelty remains as it is today. Turkey's biggest and most important problem today is injustice. In history, such periods as today, when lies, brutality, hypocrisy are valid and justice, conscience and morality are ignored are very rare.
Injustice in all areas, from the judiciary to women's rights, from taxes to wages, from workers' rights to consumers' rights, from access to health to housing, from the right to freedom of expression to the rights of the disabled, from children's rights to animals, from the right to peace to the right to life, from the right to water and land to ecological rights, is the main feature of this regime.
They know that they can only maintain illegitimacy, corruption, crimes against humanity only in such an order of injustice. For this reason, they are trying to condemn and oblige society to an unjust life. That's why they're enemies to justice and those who seek justice.
INJUSTICE AND POVERTY IN THE ECONOMY
2.There are tight ties between injustice and economic exploitation and poverty. These are the injustices in which nepotism, corruption become the dominant understanding, the income distribution gap grows every day, and taxes collected from the public are transferred to pro-capital by the hand of power, and the order of looting and exploitation is the most severe in society. On the one hand, those who are pro-power are granted great economic privileges, while on the other hand, a scheme of ruthlessness operates in which there are people who collect bread from the garbage. Those who rely on the resources of this country consider the citizen worthy of garbage containers and marketplace garbage. Unemployment, deprivation, poverty and the cost of living are the worst pictures in recent history.
The workers cannot get their labour paid for while the army of unemployed people, consisting of those who cannot bring home bread and can not sustain their lives humanely, is growing every day. Millions of people on minimum wage are condemned to work on very small salaries. As they swam in glamour, they turned this country into geography of misery, where people lay hungry, woke up desperately in the morning, crawled in debt, ended their lives out of desperation.
Victims of delayed pension age are prevented from enjoying their pension rights, and hundreds of thousands of people are unlawfully and unfairly deprived of their jobs and futures by laws enacted in violation of the Constitution and international conventions, almost leaving them to social death.
The Covid 19 pandemic also exacerbates social injustice. While retirees are sentenced to house arrest, millions of workers lose their jobs, hundreds of thousands of artisans go bankrupt, those who can protect their jobs are forced to work from home, remotely, on unregulated and inhumane wages, public resources flow into the five capital groups that are the favourites of the Palace.
INJUSTICE IN POLITICS AND THE TRUSTEE REGIME
3.The AKP - MHP government is eager to completely abolish the political space in order to maintain its arbitrary and unjust regime. The most typical example of this is the trustee regime. The trustee regime, political order of theft and robbery, is a mirror of the desire of this power to transition to an unelected, unpopular and unfair coup order.
Democratic rights and freedoms cannot be used in this order, as well as the functioning of participation justice is blocked, even the most basic principles of democracy are suspended. By destroying the separation of forces, balance control mechanisms, the one-man state of the emergency regime is being tried to make permanent. The AKP-MHP power, which eliminates the search for negotiations, dialogue and reconciliation, which are the main features of democratic politics, prefers to govern all areas with violent mechanisms. This power, which eliminates transparency and control in public administration, passes into a complete order of thieves and constantly creates injustice.
INJUSTICE AND UNLAWFULNESS IN JUDICIARY
4.A complete decay is also taking place in a jurisdiction where injustice has been struck on a delicate scale. Today, the greatest lawlessness is carried out by the hands of prosecutors and judges without merit, who are subjected to pressure and orders. The judicial system, which focuses on the Palace rather than the basic principles of universal law, is trying to turn the future of this country into a life-long injustice.
The dependent and biased judicial order, which turns the law into a mechanism of liquidation and oppression, ignores the universal values of law, especially the European Court of Human Rights (ECHR), and resembles the medieval inquisition courts.
While injustice has travelled the entire society from one extreme to the other, since 2015, a parallel enemy law scheme has been operating in the political sphere aimed at eliminating the Peoples' Democratic Party and the Kurdish people in the social sphere, going beyond the existing law. In the case filed by our past co-chairman Selahattin Demirtas, the ECHR has decided that the power has turned the judiciary into a weapon that unfairly hits the HDP, which it cannot defeat through political struggle, and has held Demirtaş as a political hostage. By declaring that it will not comply with this decision of the ECHR, the government confirms the international judiciary's determination that the Palace has ordered the judiciary. The courthouses have become places of injustice, representing the Palace.
INJUSTICE OF RECOGNITION AND NON-SOLUTION
5.The AKP-MHP government strives to maintain the thief order based on fundamental injustice at all costs. Knowing that it cannot survive with the support and consent of the people, it seeks to extend its life by constantly polarizing society, popularizing the language of hatred, force and violence. The hostile language of hatred is directed at the identity, faith, gender and cultural differences of society, especially Kurds.
The most natural and human rights of the Kurdish people, culture, identity, education in their mother tongue, and the right to express oneself freely are usurped, and even their demand is punished. With the legal and illegal trustee regime, the Kurds' right to vote and be elected is usurped, local democracy and decentralization opportunities and rights are destroyed. One-man rule is dangerously playing with the peace, prosperity and future of Turkey's Peoples, based on the lack of a solution to the Kurdish problem. The Kurdish problem, left unresolved, deepens the crisis of democracy and justice in all areas. This understanding, which multiplies crises and tries to lead the country through security policies, stands as the biggest obstacle to a democratic solution.
One of the areas where injustice is most intense is freedom of faith and culture. New ones are added by this power to the injustices that have a historical background, especially towards the Alevi society. Alevis are also the target of discriminatory hate language. The insistence on leaving Cem houses without status means nothing more than that the government does not recognize the Alevis, who make up an important segment of society, and leaves their demands unanswered.
On the other hand, the practice of “trustee”, which is deemed worthy for Kurds, is spread step by step to opposition municipalities in the West and to all institutions that do not swear allegiance to power, which we see a striking example of at Boğaziçi University. Laws authorizing the administration to appoint trustees to associations and non-governmental organizations are passed by the Parliament one by one.
INJUSTICE IN PRISONS
6. Prisons are being turned to places where all kinds of inhuman treatment are systematically practised and even minimum moral and conscientious values, let alone laws, are violated. Isolation torture, a universal crime, is used in Imrali as a means of political repression against Mr. Ocalan and other convicts. The lawlessness clearly identified by the CPT reports and the decisions of the Council of Europe is maintained in the form of an aggravated isolation regime. 74 days have passed in an alternate and indefinite hunger strike initiated by political prisoners who resist this situation.
Naked search torture in prisons and detention centres is being normalised. Lawlessness and injustice have become so commonplace that, despite the end of the execution of sentences, people are not released arbitrarily, they are kept in prisons according to the will of prison administrations and without explanation.
YOUNG PEOPLE AND INJUSTICE
7.AKP - MHP power intervenes in all areas of the life of young people with its policies and leaves young people breathless. The power, which sees the youth who do not obey and swear allegiance as a danger and enemy, resorts to all forms of bullying to distract young people from critical thinking, struggle, defending their freedom and politics.
Removing democrat and opposition faculty members from universities, filling campuses with law enforcement, and appointing trustees are just some of the images of injustice. All opposing university students are targeted in the name of Boğaziçi University students.
Unemployment is one of the biggest problems experienced by young people. Youth unemployment today stands at 30 percent. The government's policies towards young people condemn them to have no future. For this reason, young people who are subjected to harsh policies and attacks are at the beginning of the segments of society that experience the most intense injustice.
The illegality of this government, which fears young people, is heading towards a dangerous place. A systematic intimidation policy is aimed at all dissident youth, especially the HDP Youth Assembly. Young people are exposed to repression, detentions and arrests in universities and on the streets; are abducted, mistreated and tortured; are put under pressure to become agents. Young women, in particular, are taken under the grip of harassment and desperate policies.
SOCIAL GENDER INJUSTICE
8.Women are undoubtedly among the segments most exposed to injustice due to the mentality codes of the ruling alliance. Because of the intensity of violence, harassment and murder against women and the injustices created by protecting the perpetrators of these practices, other injustices that women are subjected to cannot even be on the agenda. Economic, political and cultural inequalities and injustices are becoming almost ordinary due to the fact that the security of life, which is the most fundamental right, is in danger. The injustices caused by the severe unemployment and poverty experienced by women, the problems of unequal wages and harassment in the labour process, and the absence of payment for domestic labour, are not sufficiently brought up on the agenda.
As these heavy attacks continue, the government's moves to exit the Istanbul Convention and its rhetoric bear very strong signs that the situation will become worse. The main reason that increasing violence against women is encouraged by the single hand of male power is that this power is afraid of women. Because women are shaking up this power. No order in which women rebel can last long.
INJUSTICE IN HEALTH AND EDUCATION
9.Injustices in the fields of health and education create insecurity and a lack of future for very large segments of society. Public resources are not available to the public in these areas, and only those who have money can receive qualified health and education services. The pandemic more dramatically reveals the depth and magnitude of injustice in these areas, which have always been problematic.
In the context of the COVID 19 pandemic, injustice acquires a status of arbitrary management that violates public health requirements. Brutal discrimination against people over 65, curfews without principles, long periods of non-rotation work of health workers without any additional payment, and injustices in the provision and implementation of vaccines are also bitter examples of the regime's management approach that ignores public health and human life.
CLIMATE INJUSTICE AND DESTRUCTION OF NATURE
10.Nature is one of the areas where the most destructive practices of injustice are carried out. On the one hand, Turkey is being turned into a landfill of developed countries, while on the other hand, underground resources are being devoted to pro-business companies at the expense of the massacre of nature.
The ruling party deepens climate injustice, land and water injustice on a global and local scale, primarily by turning to investments that barren arable lands, forests, rural areas, water resources and wetlands, mining practices where EIA reports are ignored, large-scale construction and road construction, profit-oriented projects such as the Istanbul Canal, and by avoiding signing the Paris Climate Convention.
GOVERNMENT SEES POLITICS AS A HOSTILITY, NOT COMPETITION
Although each of the injustices affects one segment of society, one political force, one interest group more or less than the others, each injustice paves the way for another injustice. Injustice becomes a principle of governance, and the decay surrounds the entire society. Such a social and moral climate also forms the appropriate social basis for ordinary fascism to rise. Politics and gangsterism are intertwined and some politicians even boast of beating their opponents, and every bullying that goes unpunished leads to the attackers becoming even more raging. Violence is seen as the key to resolving all disputes, insults are being made the most acceptable language, and a climate of fear is created.
It is impossible for this order of injustices to be sustained any longer. It is the common duty of all those who yearn for justice to stop this dangerous course, to ensure that all segments of society breathe, to create the ground on which problems will be solved by negotiation and dialogue.
Justice can only be achieved through all our differences, by joining hands and fighting together. Now is the time to say justice for all.
WE CALL FOR THE STRUGGLE: “JUSTICE FOR ALL”
We will be the voice of society's quest for justice. We will put the demand for justice in all areas at the centre of our political and social struggle.
We will raise the fight against unemployment, poverty, corruption, high cost of living, exploitation, looting by the ruling party and the income gap.
We will resist favouritism, discrimination, violence and hate speech, and polarizing policies.
We will continue our struggle for peoples and belief groups to ensure that they are able to freely use their rights and mother tongue and live their culture and identity.
We will expand the fight against femicide and the violence against women, women's poverty and unemployment and we will embrace the Istanbul Convention even stronger than before.
We will stand against all policies that look down on the young.
We will stop the massacre and destruction of nature.
We will defend the right of all social and democratic opposition forces to freely participate in politics.
As in the cases of Demirtaş, Kavala and Berberoğlu, we will ensure that the rulings of Turkey’s Constitutional Court and the ECtHR are implemented.
We will end the violence, tyranny, isolation and violation of rights that currently prevail in Turkey’s prisons...
We are launching the "Justice for All" campaign, which will last 4 months until June 2021, from today to ensure social justice.
We will meet with women, workers, labourers, tradesmen, young people, peasants and farmers, disabled people, pensioners and all peoples whose native language rights, administrative rights, identity, culture and faith rights are violated, and we will strive to pronounce justice more widely and more effectively in all languages spoken by the peoples of Turkey, through meetings, events and resorting to all imaginable forms of expression on the street, in the squares, in virtual and real environments.
Our goal is to ensure that all social, political and cultural forces that object to all kinds of injustice and act against the institutionalization of fascism meet. In this way, a strong step will be taken towards the creation of the “alliance for democracy” of the future on the most widespread and broad social basis. In this process, we will strive to create a strong interaction between the parliamentary space and the struggle for social freedom, both to bring politics into the direction of social struggles and to give a new breath into the politics of social struggles.
OUR CALL IS TO ANYONE ASKING JUSTICE
We call on all social and political opposition forces and our citizens. Let us together demand justice for all, before it is too late, before the AKP-MHP alliance leads our peoples to further deprivation, poverty, hunger and misery and to economic, political, ecological and social destruction.
It is in our hands to create a democratic, equal and fair country. We call on all democratic and social opposition forces and all people of conscience in Turkey to join forces against this unfair, unjust and tyrannical regime and to unite the fight.
One cannot live without justice. Justice should no longer be something we have to desperately seek out, justice should be accessible to all and experienced by all.
Let's make life just.
JUSTICE FOR ALL, JUSTICE EVERYWHERE, ALWAYS, IN EVERY LANGUAGE SPOKEN…
8 February 2021