A delegation of the KKE took part in the mass event organized by the CP of Turkey on Sunday 9/3 in Ankara ahead of the national and presidential elections that will be held in Turkey on 14 May. Thanasis Pafilis, member of the CC of the KKE, MP and head of the National list of the KKE delivered a greeting speech.

The full speech reads as follows:

“Dear friends, dear comrades, 

On behalf of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Greece, we extend a warm, comradely and militant greeting to the members, cadres and friends of the Communist Party of Turkey.

We would like to thank the Central Committee of your party for the invitation. We are in a period when Turkish and Greek communists are fighting an important electoral battle in May, since the elections in both countries are held with only one week difference.

But what does a vote for the communists mean in today’s conditions, when capital is intensifying its exploitation, when it is pushing the people into the slaughterhouse of imperialist war, such as the war that has broken out in Ukraine between the USA-NATO-EU and capitalist Russia and its allies? A vote for the communists both in Turkey and in Greece means:

- A vote against soaring prices, against inflation that eats away at the people’s income;

- A vote against the reactionary policies implemented by the anti-popular right-wing governments and at the same time a vote condemning the illusions that the social democratic parties are fostering, allegedly that this barbaric system can be changed and humanized;

- A vote against privatization, against cuts in wages and pensions, against the elimination of social gains;

- A vote against imperialist war, against US bases, against nuclear weapons, against NATO and all other imperialist alliances.

- A vote against everything that both the right-wing and the social democratic anti-popular governments are implementing.

Comrades,

A few years ago, rumours were spreading in Turkey as well that the electoral victory of the “leftist” SYRIZA  in Greece would supposedly change things for the better for the people. However, as the KKE had warned, life itself triumphantly refuted them. When SYRIZA was in government, it passed and implemented numerous new anti-popular laws that burdened  the people and, in addition, it proceeded to an agreement to expand the US bases in Greece. Then, it handed over the baton of anti-popular government measures to the right-wing party of New Democracy. In our country, all kinds of governments have been tried: right-wing, right-centre, left-right governments; and all of them have placed new burdens to the people!

Enough is enough!

The solution for the people is not to change the train driver every now and then, but to change the tracks on which our country is moving.

This was highlighted by the KKE also during the recent unprecedented demonstrations that took place all over Greece a few weeks ago, when 57 people, mostly young children, university students, were killed in a train collision. Both communist trade unionists and the MPs of the KKE had warned of the crime, of the lack of basic security measures due to the criminal policy of the bourgeois state in favour of capitalist profit. We have shown the people that things have now reached the point where they have to choose between their lives or the profits of big capital, so that the peoples:

- not to be buried under the rubble when earthquakes occur;

- not to be burnt alive when wildfires break out;

- not be drowned when floods happen.

On this occasion, let us express once again the sympathy and solidarity of the communists and the entire people of Greece with the earthquake victims of your country. An unprecedented wave of solidarity was triggered throughout Greece, expressing the genuine, popular will to help the neighbouring people of Turkey, who were struck by the earthquake. The KKE and the All Workers’ Militant Front (PAME) were at the forefront of this wave of solidarity. Numerous activities showed that there is nothing dividing the peoples of Greece and Turkey. They both can and must live in peace, and this can be achieved by getting rid of all the interests of the bourgeois classes and the imperialist powers that constantly prevent it from happening.

Comrades, communists in both countries have the same positive agenda, the one that can really make a difference for the peoples. We struggle for a society free from the exploitation of man by man. A society organized in such a way that it meets the contemporary needs of the people and not the profits of the capitalists. Such a society, the socialist-communist one, requires the socialization of the means of production, the central scientific planning of the economy, and workers’ control.

We are well aware that this society cannot be build in a single go, simply with a vote in the elections and that it will take hard struggles to turn the wheel of history. But at the same time, we know that a vote for the Communist Party in May can also strengthen the Communist Parties and the labour movement in both our countries; it can open a new and hopeful path to change the current negative correlation of forces, so that we can breathe down the bourgeois parties and their bosses’ neck!

As the electoral slogan of the KKE says “Only the people can save the people, on the path of the overthrow of capitalism, with a strong Communist Party”!

The working class of Turkey has its own party, the Communist Party of Turkey, and is called upon to vote for it in the elections. 

Today the peoples need a strong Communist Party in Turkey, in Greece, in every workplace, in the trade unions, in every popular neighbourhood and in the May elections, so that “everything changes”!

WE WISH YOU STRENGTH IN YOUR STRUGGLE!

LONG LIVE THE TKP AND THE KKE!

LONG LIVE PROLETARIAN INTERNATIONALISM!”