A Milestone in the History of Our Revolution:

Communist Workers’ Party of Turkey is Founded!

A revolutionary step constituting a turning point in the history of our revolution has been taken. Firm and persistent efforts of communists to build the revolutionary party of the working class have eventually been crowned with success. Communist Workers’ Party of Turkey (TKIP) is founded!

The foundation of our party was realized at the Founding Congress, where all existing bodies of EKIM (October), our party construction organization, were broadly represented. Our Founding Congress proclaimed the foundation of TKIP after discussing and deciding on the basic theoretical approaches, programme, statute, tactics and organizational line of the party. So, the communists, who had raised the slogans “Everything for the party! Everything for the founding congress of the party!” in the second half of the last year, have kept their promise to workers, toilers and revolutionaries.

The foundation of our party is a call for militant struggle raised from our country against imperialist capitalist world order condemning humanity and civilization to exhaustion and destruction. The foundation of our party is a militant declaration of war against rotten and criminal order of capitalist exploitation in Turkey. The foundation of our party insures the preservation of the harvest created by past and present revolutionary generations, who for decades have fought, worked, suffered for the cause of revolution and socialism and displayed great examples of heroism. And finally, the foundation of our party is the concrete satisfaction of the need felt by the working class for a revolutionary leadership, the only social force capable of conducting the historical burial of exploitative order of capitalism and leading all toilers for that purpose.

TKIP rises on the basis of a rich revolutionary heritage consisting of victories and defeats in Turkey, as well as in the world. Our party defends this heritage in a determined manner and considers itself its present day representative and torch bearer.

But, on the other hand, our party has been a product of the manifold critical evaluation of this same revolutionary past. It has subjected the weak, deficient and faulty aspects of this past to revolutionary criticism, strived to draw necessary lessons and conclusions for the needs of future struggle and been the expression of a revolutionary renewal on this basis.

TKIP, a product of a revolutionary stock taking with a period characterized by destructive defeats in the world and in Turkey, is determined to face this new period with this stand and identity. The new period, the 2000s shall witness new waves of revolution in Turkey and throughout the world. This is not a prophecy based merely on revolutionary optimism. There are already several concrete signs indicating that the working class and oppressed masses of people have entered into a new period of struggle worldwide and a new historical phase of proletarian movement and popular uprisings has begun. The foundation of our party is a preliminary preparation in our own land to face this new wave of coming revolutions through the intervention of a successful leadership.

Our party bears the title “communist”; it is the party of communism. Its ultimate aim is to definitively end the division of society into classes. It aims to totally eliminate all social and political inequality and all evil arising from this division. It aims to achieve a universal social order, where oppression, exploitation and all types of subjugation shall have been eliminated permanently.

Our party bears a revolutionary identity; it is a party of revolution, a party of proletarian revolution. Today, overthrow of the class rule of the bourgeoisie and conquest of political power by the working class is the main revolutionary task of our party. Present bourgeois class rule upheld by imperialism, is the real source of all fundamental social and political problems troubling our society. The solution of these problems requires the overthrow of ruling bourgeois class, destruction of the present state, its ruling apparatus through a violent revolution and its replacement by the revolutionary state power of proletariat supported by all toilers. That is the only genuine way for the liberation of toilers from exploitation and absence of all and sundry democratic rights, of the country from imperialist dependence and of oppressed Kurdish people from colonialist yoke. This is the gist of the present strategic revolutionary line of our party.

Our party is a workers’ party, a party of the working class. Our party has no interests and aims, other than the basic interests and aims of working class. The working class is the only real social force capable, through a victorious revolution to deliver our society from the present degeneration and decay. Our revolution shall be successful only under the leadership of this class. The fundamental historical mission of our party is to guide the working class in this direction and to lead it in its present day struggle. To form an indissoluble whole with the working class to achieve this aim is the most urgent task of our party. Only in this manner will our party successfully safeguard its leadership over other toiling strata and all other oppressed social strata.

Our party has been the product of towering assimilation of the decades long revolutionary theoretical and practical harvest of Turkey and of its further advancement on a revolutionary basis. This position and identity of our party has enabled it to raise a flag under which all revolutionaries who sincerely believe in the cause of proletarian revolution and socialism can unite. The foundation of our party is a clarion call to all revolutionaries who designate themselves as communist to unite under this flag.

Present degeneration and decay are nothing but an open admission on the part of established order that it has long arrived at the end of its historical time span. And this fact is not something novel. This decayed order is waiting to be overthrown for the last 30 years. Its defenders have been able to check the revolutionary dynamics to further this act of conquest only through military coups d’etat.

The fundamental weakness of the revolution over the last 30 years has been the lack of revolutionary leadership, which has remained a burning question. Our party lays claim to fill this gap. Our party regards its ideological line, its programme arising out of this line and its material organizational harvest acquired on this basis, a concrete safeguard of this assertion.

Our party calls on class conscious workers and all sincere revolutionaries to join its ranks and support its assertion for revolutionary leadership.

Long Live Proletarian Revolution!

Long Live Socialism!

Communist Workers’ Party of Turkey

November 1998