The Free

Secular Opposition Crushes Islamist AKP in Turkey’s Local Elections

from thefreeonline by ARZU GEYBULLAYEVA at ( Globalvoices.org )

Turkey’s local elections which took place on March 31, will go down in history as one of its most surprising.

Turkey’s demoralized opposition, namely the [secular] Republican People’s Party (CHP), dominated in what many pundits described as the ruling [center-right] Justice and Development Party’s worst defeat of its 22-year existence.

For the first time since 1977, the CHP took more votes nationwide. In his televised address afterward, the CHP leader Özgür Özel called the elections “historic” as he teared up. Scores of supporters took to the streets to celebrate the results across Turkey.

Tonight, #Istanbul has spoken clearly: our collective desire for #democracy shines brighter than ever, marking a pivotal step towards #unity and the end of polarization.

At a time when the world witnesses a retreat from democratic values, our city stands as a beacon of hope and… pic.twitter.com/Z2A9gnfTq6
— Ekrem İmamoğlu (International) (@imamoglu_int) March 31, 2024

Istanbul, where CHP secured victory in 2019, was one of the key cities in this year’s race. At the time, losing control over the municipality in Istanbul was described as a major blow to President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development party (AKP), as it was where he started his political career when he was elected mayor in 1994.

The results of the election nationwide cemented this rejoinder on Erdoğan’s openly fascist agenda…. …..

ARZU GEYBULLAYEVA

Continues HERE……https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/secular-opposition-elections.html

https://www.juancole.com/2024/04/secular-opposition-elections.html

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Despair and Anger in Ukraine Concentration Camp – Interview with Assembly

from thefreeonline on 3/6/24. original 24/3/24 by assembly.org.ual

Winter conversation for a book project on the revolutionary left against the war currently in the making by communaut.org and and diebuchmacherei.de. Published before the release of the German version with the consent of the interviewer.

Mobilization kidnapping in Kharkiv,

1. How can we imagine everyday life in Kharkiv at the moment? By everyday life I don’t mean your political work, which I’ll come to in a moment, but the day-to-day life of a normal worker. Is there still work, how well can you live from it at the moment? How is the welfare state and its infrastructure, is there unemployment benefit and enough medical care? Do people sometimes sit in cafes and bars and talk about something, is there anyone left to talk to – or is everything completely subsumed under the war or reduced to the bare essentials?

– This is such a voluminous question that a separate conversation can be devoted to it. In very general terms, on the eve of the New Year we published a large analysis of the prospects for 2024, where we called it a decisive year for the maturation of a revolutionary situation that will make it possible to turn the war of states into a war against them.

On the title picture from pre-war times: “We love Kharkiv – we hate capitalism!” (in Ukrainian)

A positive thing: utility services in Kharkov are provided normally; if there were any outages this winter, they were for no more than a few hours due to technical faults. Electricity, gas, heating – everything is there. Russian troops are now bombing not power plants, but what they consider to be military enterprises, warehouses or places of deployment of personnel.

Officially, there are now 1.2-1.4 million people in the city, out of an estimated 2 million before the full-scale invasion. But this is largely due to immigrants from more front-line territories. How many locals remain is unknown. In addition to this, the Kharkov region is in third place in Ukraine in terms of area of arable land, and at the end of 2023 it was the absolute leader of the country in terms of its sale. The disappearance of the population is quite beneficial for part of the bourgeois class.

One can also only guess about the real situation with unemployment, because many do not want to register in job centers for fear of being drafted. But half-year ago we published an article about how women and pensioners are replacing men liable for military service at Kharkov enterprises due to mobilization.

The parallels with Western Europe during the First World War are perhaps obvious. Despite this, as noted in our January material about mobilization kidnapping in Kharkov, there is a severe shortage of workers in many areas of the economy.

It is available in Russian, English, French, Italian and Spanish. As for our city specifically… If Ukraine is the backyard of Europe, then Kharkov, located almost on the Russian border, is the backyard of Ukraine. People here live either out of love for thrills, or out of complete hopelessness. A prison where lights out at 9 pm, roughly speaking. If in 2020, according to then-mayor Kernes, the average age in Kharkov was 35 years old, then at the beginning of a full-scale war there were mostly pensioners, and now the average age of the population is about 50. Although this is only a visual impression of public places, because men of conscription age (in Ukraine it is from 18 to 60 years, and leaving of the country is prohibited for most of them) often do not risk leaving the house and try to move along the streets only by car. Depression, alcoholism and complete sadness. The ship has been at the bottom already for a long time, but the passengers have locked themselves in their cabins and think that there will be enough air until someone saves them…
Daily busification on the streets of Kharkov. Winter 2024

If this continues, then the only public transport in the city will remain “buses of invincibility,” as people call cars for catching passers-by (a reference to the cliche “Invincible Kharkiv” from officious propaganda). Due in part to increased insecurity on the streets, coupled with decreased donations, our group has had to refocus its efforts this winter from providing humanitarian aid to residents in need to developing media activity.

We do not want to change the look of the website – connection here is often bad, and with a more complex design it may be difficult for our local readers to open it. Rather, we will focus on improving the quality of content and involving more audience. To support this you are welcome to join our fundraising Mutual Aid Alert for East Ukraine.

Among other things, on the evening of February 9th, Russian drones attacked an oil depot in the middle of private housing sector in our city. That enterprise has already been minimally fined twice for violating fire regulations, but it seems no measures have been taken.

Burning fuel spilled throughout the area, causing two families with three small children to burn alive, and at least four rivers got blackened by oil products. Our team joined the fighting of this environmental disaster, searching the coastal bush for wild birds stained or poisoned by oil.

Poisoned rivers and springs of Kharkov: from our report on the ecological catastrophe this month

2. The Ukrainian military is currently running out of soldiers. A new law on recruitment has therefore been passed. Men of military age who receive a notification must report back within 48 hours and will then be drafted. But morale seems to be exhausted. You have reported in your last article on numerous protest actions directed against the continuation of the war, e.g. women protested in numerous cities for the release of their husbands from the military. How do you assess the current mood of Ukrainian women and their attitude towards a continuation of the war? Is the mood in Ukraine changing?

– There are also no exact figures about what Ukrainian women think, because many are afraid to express their real view in opinion polls.

Even among those of them whose male relatives are fighting, the opinions are directly opposite – somebody want the maximum tightening of mobilization so that everyone else suffers in the same way like they (just as someone who does not have the strength to get out of a quagmire tries to drag others into it). Others, on the contrary, want an immediate end to hostilities through peace negotiations of just freezing.

It is noteworthy that while in Kharkov talking about collective defense from pixel Sonderkommandos remains just talking, in Transcarpathia this began to come real: women there begin to resist their raids.

Solidarity Message for Anarchists Arrested in Sicily for Molotov Attack on Weapons Company

from thefreeonline on 3rd April 2024 at anarchistnews

read in Italian original.. at Il Rovescio

Via Abolition Media

We receive and gladly disseminate this contribution – distributed in Palermo during a solidarity march with the comrades affected by the repression, and at a demonstration of solidarity with Palestine – which rightly frames the precautionary measures against the Sicilian militants of Antudo in the climate of mounting war. From Palestine to Sicily… Solidarity with those who rebel!

GO AND EXPLAIN THAT IT’S SPRING

The winds of war are blowing. From the confrontation between NATO and Russia on Ukrainian soil to the genocide of the Palestinian people perpetrated by Zionist barbarism, the states of the Atlanticist bloc are moving to preserve their geopolitical dominance while those of the other side try to undermine them.

For the exploited on both sides, if the bosses’ plans are not stopped, the prospect is the same: misery, repression and death.

When states are preparing for confrontation with the enemy outside their borders, they begin to mobilize their populations:

it has been reported in recent months that Denmark has extended military conscription to women as well, France wants to raise the age limit for reservists from 65 to 72 years, and Germany, after investing €100 billion in rearmament, is considering reintroducing compulsory military service.

But the mobilization of the population is not only a strictly military issue, it also involves the sphere of the imaginary through war information and the clearance of the presence of the army in the streets and in the places of culture and the production of ideology, as has happened in Palermo these days on the occasion of the International Forum for Peace, Security and Prosperity, an event in which thousands of middle school students, university students and cadets of military academies from different countries met to hear leading exponents of the military world talk about peace and prosperity: freedom is slavery, war is peace, ignorance is strength!

In order for the total mobilization against the external enemy to take place, the State also needs to wage war against its internal enemy: the rebels, those who with their voices and their actions make their negation resound.

It is no coincidence, then, that in recent years we have witnessed a stiffening of penalties for comrades, of which the application of the 41bis prison regime to Alfredo Cospito and the accusation of terrorism to some anarchist comrades from Carrara for the publication of the newspaper Bezmotivny are perhaps the most striking cases.

And it is in this context that on March 21 the Palermo Police Headquarters carried out a pre-trial detention in prison and two signature obligations for three Antudo militants: the charges refer to the publication of a video showing the throwing of a Molotov cocktail at a headquarters of the Leonardo Spa armaments company in the Sicilian capital.

The repressive operation is orchestrated by the National Anti-Mafia Directorate, which in 2015 became the National Anti-Mafia and Anti-Terrorism Directorate, thus also starting to deal with political crimes.

All this should stir the minds of those who live on this island: we know all too well how the spectacle of the anti-mafia subsumes every imaginative impulse under the suffocating cloak of legalism and the cult of the servant of the State and how this spectacle is born and develops right here starting from our minds and our bodies, making it difficult to develop and put into practice the tension to emancipation from all domination.

Initiating a radical critique of all this may be difficult, but it is an increasingly urgent act that is impossible to postpone.

We do not know – nor are we interested in knowing – who attacked the Palermo headquarters of Leonardo Spa on November 26, 2022, but we do know that when individuals find the lucidity and courage to return, in the form of emancipatory violence, some of the indiscriminate violence that this company of death distributes around the world, we can only be in solidarity, as we know that when a counter-information site gives voice to these actions, it is doing its job in the best possible way.

COMPLICITY AND SOLIDARITY WITH THOSE WHO ATTACKED LEONARDO SPA

COMPLICITY AND SOLIDARITY WITH THE COMRADES OF ANTUDO AFFECTED BY THE REPRESSION

LEONARDO SPA SLAUGHTERS AND ASSASSINATES

Source: Il Rovescio