If yesterday's IYI Party (Good Party) candidate can become today's Workers' Party (TIP) candidate,

If being someone's spouse, daughter, or relative is enough to be nominated for mayoral candidacy,

If individuals whose signatures are on the permits of buildings that collapsed in the earthquake zone and who have been demanded to resign by the victims are being nominated again,

If mayors who have handed public buildings over to reactionary foundations are nominated for a second time by their parties despite scandals being exposed,

If the proponents of opening up have resurfaced,

If sect leaders are visiting political party leaders and posing for photos,

If someone unfamiliar with a region is nominated as a candidate,

If the AKP president implies "No vote, no service" in the earthquake zone and resorts to blackmail politics,

If not principles or programs, bombastic rhetoric and religious mercantilism are preferred,

It means politics in Turkey has completely sunk into a swamp of foul-smelling populism!

Politics is now more than ever seen as a means for enrichment and patronage, turning the election into a sheer scramble for positions.

THIS FILTH MUST BE CLEANED

Politics has become a nauseating game played by those clinging to their seats, contractors, Islamists, sect members, and celebrities of popular culture. In its current state, it is distant from the people, not in favor of the workers, it is DIRTY!

The power to clean the filth in politics, to remove those looming over the country, and to slap the exploiters, lies with the people, the sole owners of sovereignty.

In a country where the top 20% of earners take half of the total income, it is the steadfast resistance of the working class that will dismantle this order.

While there are retirees in this country struggling to live on 10,000 TL a month, it is the workers who must respond to the Speaker of the Grand National Assembly who says, "We have MPs who only have their salary," referring to those whose lowest salary is 110,000 TL.

The ballot boxes set up will not be enough to clean the filth of this system in one go. Justice will not arrive in a single election, nor will corruption end. However, one must start somewhere. It's necessary to raise one's voice against this shamelessness!

URGENT CALL TO ACTION

The March 31 election is no longer just a local election under current conditions. This election is the response of those whose safety is jeopardized by borders turned into sieves; those left to die as their cities are plundered for profit; those who cannot boil soup in their pot, whose homes, lands, love, and jobs are taken away; those condemned to live in tents; those deprived of justice; those whose lifestyles are forcibly changed by religious fanaticism, to this immoral exploitation system.

The future of the secular Republic established 100 years ago is also directly linked to the response the people will give in this election. The struggle is certainly not limited to a single election, but the March 31 elections will be an important response.

In this environment of cheap populism, a mix of liberalism, ethnicity, religious fundamentalism, sectarianism, plundering, rightism, and slipperiness, acting with principle against those who turn wherever the wind blows; not giving way to the reactionary, the rightist, the thief by activating common sense at the ballot box, is now the most urgent duty of patriotic leftists, secular Republicans!