The Regime’s 19 March Offensive and the Escalating Public Anger

The regime’s 19 March offensive has provoked a far stronger backlash than it anticipated. Among the broad working masses, the long-simmering discontent and anger have now significantly erupted in response to this latest assault. Since 19 March, a mass movement has spread across much of the country. The arrest of 50 individuals, including İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu and the mayors of Şişli and Beylikdüzü, appears to have further fuelled the protests. Regardless of how long this continues or what consequences it may bring, the events of just these few days clearly demonstrate what we have long emphasized: the discontent and anger accumulating among the people have reached a breaking point. They also show that the masses have reached a stage where even the slightest sign of leadership could bring them flooding into the streets.

The mass protest movement represents a reaction that goes far beyond mere support for İmamoğlu. The İmamoğlu incident has simply functioned like an artesian well - allowing the pent-up waters from dozens of underground streams that have been accumulating for years (including an unprecedented process of impoverishment in Turkey’s history, the dramatic escalation of repression and authoritarian bans, corruption reaching obscene levels, deepening inequality and injustice, the collapse of healthcare and education, the complete destruction of young people’s future prospects, the annihilation of all meritocratic principles, and unrestrained arbitrary rule and oppression in nearly every sphere) to finally burst to the surface.

In other words, the İmamoğlu affair became the final straw - the ultimate manifestation of the regime’s unchecked arbitrariness, repression, and brazen authoritarianism. The regime had long preserved the electoral process as a staged façade within its carefully constructed political mechanism, while keeping the CHP broadly under control through various means. The CHP’s statist origins and traditions conveniently facilitated this arrangement. For years, Erdoğan exploited this engineered electoral facade as a tool for manufacturing legitimacy and consent - so long as no formidable challengers emerged. However, this carefully engineered system came under severe strain as deepening economic crisis increased the discontent and anger of the working masses, and a strong rival candidate who cannot be defeated by Erdoğan within the existing manipulative electoral set-up emerged. The regime’s predicament was compounded by Middle Eastern developments, particularly the Kurdish question’s external pressures. Facing these internal and external constraints, the regime concluded it could no longer tolerate even the CHP’s docile opposition. A systematic plan was devised to crush opposition influence, beginning with taking over municipalities. The operation was launched when International conditions appeared favourable (anticipating minimal Western backlash). Thus began the assault on Istanbul Municipality and İmamoğlu, escalating to the outright attempt to remove CHP leadership.

This situation forced the CHP leadership into a moment of reckoning. With Istanbul Bar Association’s trusteeship imposed just two days after İmamoğlu’s detention – followed by leaks of impending trustee attacks on CHP headquarters – street resistance became inevitable. When it was abundantly clear that business-as-usual politics would achieve nothing, the choice was stark: either capitulate or take the struggle to the streets. Under pressure from their base and particularly the mobilised university youth, the CHP leadership appears to have opted for controlled resistance. The subsequent mass protests stand as a damning indictment of the party’s crisis management: a) Its repeated attempts to find middle ground with the regime, b) Its self-defeating rhetoric (“They want to provoke us into street protests only to crush us”, “This is just another AKP ploy”). What unfolded was effectively the party’s belated admission that such appeasement strategies had been a catastrophic miscalculation.

For the CHP, this defiant stance has become a matter of survival. It has provided an outlet for simmering public anger against the regime to erupt onto the streets. Despite relentless pressure – the bans, the threats, police brutality, mass arrests, media blackouts and social media restrictions – the fact that millions poured into the streets across multiple cities is important. A major breach has been made in the wall of fear surrounding street protests, which had almost become a taboo. The masses are undergoing an experience that real change can only come through their own direct action. As we have always emphasised, if public discontent does not turn into active resistance or pour onto the streets, it is because there is no leadership to guide and mobilise in that direction. This reality must be etched into memory today, never to be forgotten. Even the CHP’s call and its initially hesitant (later emboldened by pressure from its base) leadership proved enough to open the way for the streets. The working masses expressing their political discontent beyond the ballot box and taking to the streets is crucial for the development of social opposition. However, given its mentality, methods, and the tradition it represents, the fact that the leadership lies with the CHP poses a significant problem for the advancement of the mass movement.

Moreover, the public has become thoroughly convinced that if this assault is not repelled, the ballot box – which they see as their last remaining channel for political expression and thus value deeply – will either never be accessible again or, even if it is, will amount to nothing more than a charade. The chants rising from the protests have now moved beyond mere outrage at the injustice and lawlessness inflicted upon İmamoğlu, taking direct aim at the regime itself. Crucially, slogans that have resonated widely with the crowds –“No salvation alone, either all together or none of us”, “Government resign”, and “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism”– have taken centre stage.

It is equally clear that the anger of a generation robbed of its future forms a vital part of this movement. In many ways, this is both significant and positive. The contradictions developing among seemingly apolitical youth have become impossible to ignore. Young people, stripped of their futures, have taken to the streets in desperation and anger, becoming the driving force behind the protests’ energy. For many young protesters taking to the streets for the first time, these events are an important experience. While most remain deeply frustrated with the CHP too, the general lack of organisation forces them to operate within the party’s narrow ideological boundaries. Yet their initiation to politicisation through essentially left-wing impulses is significant in terms of creating a favourable ground for channelling this energy towards a socialist route, and developing and advancing it along this route.

It is fair to say the regime did not anticipate such a massive backlash to this move. As we have noted earlier, Trump’s rise to power and the resulting rapprochement with Europe - coupled with the lack of meaningful opposition to previous similar attacks - likely led the regime to assume either no serious resistance would emerge, or that they could crush if any. We saw nearly identical circumstances in December 2022 during the “fool’s trial” and attempted detention of İmamoğlu. Back then, the Saraçhane rallies drew crowds and helped the opposition weather that assault. But the current level of discontent and anger dwarfs what we saw then. Having tested the waters before retreating last time, the government has now doubled down, launching a far more comprehensive attack. Today’s protests show radically greater scale, energy and spread. In the intervening period, working people have endured such intense assaults on their livelihoods from all directions that the factors we mentioned rapidly compounded to create today’s qualitatively different situation.

The regime’s calculations in this latest offensive included its so-called ‘process’ with the Kurdish movement. Erdoğan undoubtedly sought to paralyse the Kurdish movement by tying its hands, separating it from the CHP and neutralising it through this initiative. Yet the regime has failed to fully achieve this, largely because – despite all its rhetoric – it has taken no concrete, visible steps on the Kurdish issue. On the contrary, its increasingly suspicious behaviour has only deepened doubts. Amid the uncertain fluctuations of this process, none of the initially promised measures materialised: no new meeting with Öcalan occurred as pledged, consequently no Newroz message came from him, and as recent statements from various Kandil spokespeople demonstrate, distrust and apprehension have grown. Moreover, the “urban consensus” between the Kurdish movement and CHP became one of the tools targeted in the attacks against İmamoğlu and his party. Significantly, while Özgür Özel for the first time addressed the Kurdish people with a message for Diyarbakır’s major Newroz celebration, DEM leadership also condemned the assaults on İmamoğlu and Istanbul Municipality – offering political (if not mass) support to the resistance rather than aligning with the government’s wishes. Hence the farcical spectacle of pro-regime media now shrieking about “CHP-DEM collusion”.

We are witnessing a rapidly evolving, dynamic process. Despite escalating police violence and mass detentions, the movement persists – with the CHP leadership now framing the resistance as a “defiant stand against fascism,” student protests escalating to school boycotts, and regime-aligned business groups being targeted (albeit currently limited to consumer boycotts). These developments signal a critical juncture, whatever the motives behind Özgür Özel and the CHP’s stance may be – be it pressure from below, existential fear of the party’s suppression, or potential backing from factions within the ruling class. From the perspective of anti-fascist struggle, these events mark a broadly positive beginning. What becomes decisive now is whether organised labour –trade unions in particular– can escalate the fight by leveraging the working class’s power at the point of production.