Ertuğrul Kürkçü said that “the Erdoğan regime is so reactionary that even its ideological foundation, religion, fails to hold the faithful to its side.
In the second part of this analysis, Ertuğrul Kürkçü, Honorary Chairperson of the Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP), said that the Erdoğan regime is dying.

A political operation shaped by calculations for the 2028 elections

This assault is fundamentally aimed at sabotaging the possibility of a democratic alliance between the Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM Party) and the CHP ahead of the 2028 elections. It seeks to poison the pluralistic and multi-layered solidarity that emerged among the grassroots of these two political spheres in metropolitan areas during the 2018 and 2023 local elections. The plan behind this offensive is to create an ethnic rupture within the opposition by instilling a dangerous prejudice between Kurds and the CHP base—one that makes both sides afraid to touch each other, as if doing so would burn them.

The intention is clear: to make Kurds believe that if they show solidarity with CHP supporters, they are sabotaging a resolution; and to make CHP supporters believe that if they express solidarity with Kurds, they are betraying the nation. And in the space created by this division, Tayyip Erdoğan can slip through and rule over everyone indefinitely. The goal is to force Kurds, if they are not going to vote for the AKP, to vote for no one at all, thus removing them entirely from the political equation, erasing their presence as if they never existed.

The solution lies in the Kurdish movement’s Third Way proposal

Commenting on the political implications of the debates surrounding Ekrem Imamoğlu’s potential presidential candidacy, Ertuğrul Kürkçü drew attention to the following: One of the main reasons the debate has been reduced to the question of Imamoğlu’s presidency is Tayyip Erdoğan’s obsession with deciding who his opponent will be. Imamoğlu’s emergence as a popular candidate, fueled by public interest, has made him the permanent target of Erdoğan’s schemes, fabricated cases, plots, attacks, puppet courts and prosecutors, diploma cancelations, and more. As a result, the opposition has been forced to focus on the conspiracies personalized in Imamoğlu.

However, a political polarization defined purely by CHP–AKP or Imamoğlu–Erdoğan antagonism hinders the integration of Kurds into the broader political process. Within this axis of tension, Kurds struggle to find a place for themselves on the CHP/Imamoğlu side in a way that aligns with the ‘natural flow of life.’ In this regard, the interests of both the CHP and the broader democratic camp, and the political needs of the Kurdish people, would be better served by organizing politics not along vertical polarizations, but through horizontal divisions that cut across society, such as democracy versus dictatorship, authoritarianism versus freedom, and monism versus pluralism.

The most vital possibility still lies in the creation of a democracy alliance. The goal of a ‘Democracy Alliance,’ first articulated at the HDP Congress in 2020, remains highly relevant today, especially in the way it called upon Kurds to take a leading role within broader social opposition. The 2020 formulation states:

The Democracy Alliance includes all forces of social opposition and democracy, but it cannot be limited to them. It refers to the unification of the peoples of Turkey around a common democratic program together with these forces, and the process of constructing their own democratic popular power.

The Democracy Alliance is the political ground for struggle shared by all forces committed to the peaceful transfer of political power and the establishment of a political regime in which citizens can determine their own futures and the economic and political conditions under which they will live.

The Democracy Alliance will enable workers, the poor, women, Kurds, and all the oppressed to become the founding force of a new regime through which they can advance toward their historical goals and interests along a clear path. In such a new order—of which the Kurds will be founding partners—fascism and racism will be purged from the arsenal of the state, society will gain freedom of expression and organization around its real needs and problems, and the path of open class struggle will lead the great majority toward economic and social liberation.

This new form of political regime will make visible, for all society, the inclusive and embracing character of the HDP’s Third Way, provide a basis for mass political education, and prepare the people for self-governance. The HDP’s Third Way proposal will gain real meaning only to the extent that broad social forces pass through the path of democracy and become conscious of their own interests. For this reason, the HDP is not only the most energetic component of the Democracy Alliance, it is also the only genuinely democratic dynamic among all political forces that truly needs this alliance.

This formulation is even more suitable for translating into a foundational political project today at a time when the full weight of the Kurdish Freedom Movement is asserting itself at the very center of political life than it was in 2020.

Possible political and economic consequences of the boycott proposal

Kürkçü also assessed the boycott actions and the calls supporting them, offering the following analysis of their potential economic consequences and the pressure they could exert on the government: “In terms of the relative weight of sectors within the broader economy, which we can observe through their share in the Gross Domestic Product (GDP), the most recent available data tells us the following: In 2022, the share of the manufacturing sector in GDP at current prices was 22.1 percent. The construction sector, which accounted for 8.2 percent in 2016, dropped to between 5 and 6 percent from 2020 to 2024. The energy sector stood between 4 and 5 percent. The media and advertising industry, on the other hand, made up just 0.33 percent of the overall economy. Retail trade accounted for 13.9 percent of GDP in 2023, while e-commerce contributed 6.8 percent. The share of the finance sector was 18.3 percent as of November 2023.

From these numbers, we can draw the following conclusion: the primary sector targeted by the boycott, media and advertising, could collapse entirely without causing even a ripple in the national economy. The capital invested in that sector, however, would be completely wiped out. On the one hand, this shows how the government’s claims that ‘they are destroying the economy’ are pure fiction. On the other, it demonstrates that a well-targeted boycott can, in fact, bring down specific groups it aims at.

Although the sector may be relatively small in economic terms, it remains a critical node in the communication infrastructure, meaning its collapse could likely trigger cascading effects in other sectors as well. From this perspective, boycotts targeting specific actors should not be underestimated; they can hurt their targets. The tearful regret of the head of an event organization company who had branded boycotters as ‘traitors,’ only to find himself squarely in the crosshairs of that very boycott, is, in this sense, a direct hit and a clear example of the strategy’s effectiveness.

That said, it is important to recognize that ‘boycott’ is just one specific form of action within the broader spectrum of resistance strategies against the regime, and in its current form, it does not possess the capacity to decisively influence the broader functioning of the economy. Needless to say, the form of action with the most transformative potential, both economically and socially, is the ‘power of production,' in other words, a general strike. Without the mobilization of a general strike, it would be premature to speak of a genuine climate of social uprising.

Nonetheless, I believe that boycotts aimed at specific targets can and should continue. A boycott of the media and advertising sector, in particular, also creates fertile ground for the rise of alternative media and new visual arts. It encourages the development of parallel communication networks outside of mainstream and state media. It inspires citizens to become independent reporters and sparks a desire in everyone with a smartphone to become the proprietor of their own media. I am fully in favor of keeping this momentum alive. Only through such incremental steps can we approach the conditions necessary for a general strike.”

The Erdoğan regime and the future of Turkey

Reflecting on Turkey’s current political situation, both domestically and internationally, and the ongoing economic crisis, Ertuğrul Kürkçü offered the following analysis: “The Erdoğan regime is dying. Like its counterparts in Russia and the United States (US), this regime represents the shell of a political order dominated by social classes and forces that have either exhausted their capacity, or never possessed it in the first place, as in the case of Turkey and Russia, to respond to society’s vision for the future and its demands for a new civilization founded on contemporary material and technological realities. The masses are rapidly fleeing this shell, but unless it is dismantled, it will not collapse on its own.

At the same time, this is a regime so reactionary that even its ideological foundation, religion, fails to hold the faithful to its side. It can no longer even function as a painkiller; it is unable to relieve their suffering or soothe their spiritual anguish. These conditions call on socialists to reorganize their historical mission, not only to build the material conditions of liberation, but also to construct the grounds for spiritual liberation.

This means waging a struggle to establish the conditions for what Marx described as: ‘a human being fully endowed with all senses, formed in accordance with the social and natural essence of humanity, overcoming the contradictions between humanity and nature, and among human beings.’ Whatever its immediate aim may be—be it democracy, the end of colonial domination, or liberation from patriarchy, a struggle that does not ultimately move toward this vision will fail to meet the expectations of our time; it will not, in Marx’s words, ‘draw its poetry from the future.’ Even when Abdullah Öcalan entered into negotiations with the AKP for a moment of relief, he continued to point toward the horizon of socialism. We must learn from that.”

The people must take initiative to build a democratic foundation

Ertuğrul Kürkçü also assessed the government’s response to Abdullah Öcalan’s new political proposition and the conditions necessary to establish a democratic and legal foundation for it. He stated: “It is becoming clear that the state and those in power are once again failing, and will continue to fail, the test of establishing a ‘democratic and legal foundation.’ The task now falls to the people. Every community, every initiative, every collective must begin to construct the foundations of democracy and legality wherever they are. These structures must then interlock and spread until they encompass the whole country. The hour of a democratic revolution has arrived.”[1]