When the Masks Fall, Who Is the True Patriot?

Young comrades, the first great and naked truth that will hit you when you step into life and the street is this: In this rotting capitalist order the rulers built, searching for morality, justice, or shame is a futile effort. For the powerful and the capitalist class, life's reality is to seize billions of lira from the people's backs, steal, plunder, and then brazenly wag their fingers at us from ivory towers as if nothing happened. Poverty and oppression fall to your share, while theirs is to waste the people's resources and live in luxury.

Today is Tuesday, 7 July 2026. In Ankara, the summit of NATO—the bloodiest, dirtiest organization of imperialism—is beginning. And today we are receiving a splendid life lesson in how the rulers' masks fall. Those who declare themselves "local and national" closed Ankara's streets with millions of lira worth of screens so foreign masters would not see our poverty and giant corruption like the 800-million-dollar Ankapark scandal. We watch how those who talk anti-American in words paint bridges in American colors when the matter is protecting their own power and looking sweet to imperialist capital—even competing in servility down to the perm in horses' manes. Life's clearest truth is here: The rulers' nationalism is nothing but fraud hidden behind screens.

Young comrades, life's and the street's reality does not promise you comfortable spaces. In this order, reality lies in the cell of young comedians thrown into pit-type prisons in reverse handcuffs for making jokes; in the resistance of journalists whose months of life were stolen for defending the country's independence; and in the struggle of revolutionary comrades beaten before NATO barricades at the cost of broken ribs.

Now let us tear those shame screens the rulers drew because they were ashamed before the people in our minds, and examine through process analysis who is a collaborator and who is a true patriot, passing it through history's sieve.

Fake "Local and National" Advertising and Screen Politics

Young comrades, you know that conservative politician profile appearing on every television channel and social media platform with big letters pumping a "local and national" perception—we see in naked form through this summit how that profile "errors" before imperialism and how its masks peel off piece by piece. The rulers' nationalism is nothing but a useful PR apparatus they use only to cover their crimes and the people's poverty. Before us is servility and screen politics in the full tragicomic sense.

Let us put on paper the realities behind this fake billboard:

• 181 Million TL Censorship Filter and Shantytown Screens: So the deep poverty, destitution, and shantytowns on the streets would not catch the foreign NATO delegation's eye, the regime spent 181 million TL drawing giant screens in front of the avenues. A power structure ashamed of its own people's reality pours the people's budget into these walls of shame just to sell imperialist masters an illusion of a "sparkling" capitalist order.

• 800 Million Dollar Capital Graveyard (Ankapark Scandal): That giant Ankapark corruption sunk during former Ankara Metropolitan Mayor Melih Gökçek's term, wasting all of Ankara's and Turkey's resources, is today again hidden behind those screens. Not only can we not hold them to account for burying 800 million dollars of ours there and destroying the people's future, we also pay from the people's pocket to screen that ruin so NATO guests do not see it. Gökçek continues with extreme ease, without even explaining why he was removed from office, grabbing seats for his children in parliament, building palaces, and wagging his finger at the people from Beyaz TV of unknown origin.

• The Effort to Look Sweet to Imperialists: The state mechanism that puts every bureaucratic obstacle in the way of opposition local governments serving the people entered full coordination with Mansur Yavaş's administration when the matter became NATO. To look sweet to foreign guests, to give the image "see how modern we are," they turn unimaginable somersaults. Permed-haired, blow-dried mounted police were driven into the avenues, environmental arrangements were made; every detail down to the perm in horses' manes was calculated with great servile intent.

• "Limousine Togg" Scandal and US-Colored Bridge Show: They converted Togg vehicles advertised as local and national into limousines and laid them at imperialists' feet. And they did not stop there; they lit the Fatih Sultan Mehmet Bridge in the colors of the United States flag. Conservative politicians who talk of "foreign powers" when words are spoken and declare everyone agent or collaborator leap for joy and declare festival when Trump loves Erdoğan or when an opportunity arises to please NATO. At that moment neither Gaza nor Palestine nor the blood imperialism sheds in this world, nor the lives it takes, crosses their minds!

• "Made in China" Thermos Fiasco (Summit of Visionlessness): At the promotions the Presidential Communications Directorate distributed to journalists attending the summit, a literal "ideological bug" occurred. One of NATO's most basic reasons for existence and strategies today is to organize the Western world against China alongside Russia and to position China as a global threat. Our visionary Communications Directorate distributed souvenir thermoses worth 2,500 TL each to journalists. What do you see when you look at the bottom of the thermos? A huge "Made in China" inscription! That genius cadre thinking of the perm in horses' manes fell into a tragicomic fiasco distributing at the NATO summit the goods of China, which NATO itself targets. Those who reserve us a cheap life like Chinese goods and cover it with screens are in full submission before imperialist masters.

There you have it, comrades, this is as far as the capitalist order's "local and national" refrain goes. Their nationalism lasts until money is seen and imperialist masters set foot in Ankara.

Anti-Imperialist Stance and Youth That Pays the Price

Young comrades, in this rotting order where the rulers draw screens on city squares to look sweet to foreign masters and run a blow-dry race on horses' manes, do you know where we meet the street's most naked reality? In that revolutionary spine that does not bend before imperialism—in you, young comrades. While capital power and its collaborators turn somersaults to be a "sweetness mask" for NATO delegates, this country's true patriots throw their chests as a shield against imperialist exploitation.

Let us lay on the table this honorable resistance stretching from streets to the digital world and the climate of fear opposite it in full nakedness:

• NATO's Bloody Record: The NATO structure bourgeois media polishes is in reality global capitalism's most vicious, bloodiest paramilitary apparatus. It is the direct designer and headquarters of counter-guerrilla, unresolved killings, torture, and extrajudicial executions across the world, with Turkey foremost. When this bloody apparatus set foot in Ankara, while conservative bourgeoisie that talks "anti-imperialist" in words fell silent, revolutionaries who took to the street and tore off this crime organization's mask were again young revolutionaries.

• The Youth Barricade: The anti-imperialist wave started by TKP youth marching against the NATO Summit in Ankara turned into a giant youth solidarity crossing street boundaries. TİP Youth, Labor Youth, and young comrades from different left politics stood shoulder to shoulder as one voice, one barricade against imperialist occupation and exploitation. This united youth will shouting the country's love and NATO's historical crimes with vatan love completely broke the rulers' script.

• Savage Detentions and "Don't Embarrass the Masters" Concern: 146 TKP youth exercising the right to march were detained very harshly and savagely by the bourgeois state's police, beaten. The intervention was so merciless that among our young comrades there were those with broken ribs, seriously injured. And as these lines are written, those revolutionary youth are still being held in detention. Just so "NATO is not embarrassed," so imperialist guests' pleasure is not spoiled, they open the doors of prisons and police stations to young children.

• Digital Barricade and Banned Social Media Accounts: Faced with this multi-voiced and locked youth solidarity in the street, the regime panicked so much it did not rely only on batons and tear gas; it activated a full censorship mechanism in the digital world. To silence the voice of resistance, hide that savage police violence from the masses' eyes, and prevent truth from going viral, access blocks were placed on official social media accounts of youth organizations supporting the resistance, pages were banned. The regime fell into such a pathetic state as to try to make invisible with digital censorship the wrist it could not bend in the street.

• Arrogance Threatening from Social Media to the Police Station: Melih Gökçek, who threw 800 million dollars of the people's money into the trash at Ankapark, shared video of these savage detentions with that rotting tone, writing "TKP members marched against the NATO summit in Ankara. 100 people ended up at the police station. My children, be careful, Turkey is not the old Turkey," as if implying the bad treatment at police stations and threatening youth. A person who cannot account for their own giant corruption thinks they can scare young people with the police station whose ribs were broken for this country's independence. The level of shamelessness is truly a joke.

Comrades, who gets along how well with foreign powers behind closed doors and who is beaten for this country's full independence, whose accounts are shut down, has been laid before our eyes. True patriotism is not perming horses' manes for foreign capital delegates; it is standing upright against that treacherous plan before NATO barricades despite censorship and repression.

The Justice System Errors: Theater of the Absurd

Young comrades, the clearest proof that bourgeois law has turned entirely into a fiction apparatus in the ruling classes' hands and that the justice mechanism is a club designed to intimidate opponents is today's courtrooms. The legal system is officially in revenge mode and the system keeps "erroring" without pause. Even what happened on 6 July alone lays the theater of absurdity behind the justice illusion before our eyes in full nakedness.

"Fear Production" for Comedian Deniz Göktaş and the Smile That Would Not Submit

Young comedian Deniz Göktaş, detained at Istanbul Airport in reverse handcuffs upon returning from vacation solely for political humor and jokes, was thrown into the pit-type prison at Çorlu Karatepe. The tragicomic theater the regime's propaganda machine staged here is a full fiasco: They filmed Göktaş's reverse-handcuffed images from behind exactly 5 times. Why? Because every time they filmed from the front the child carried a smile on his face that would not submit; this completely broke the regime's "creating a climate of fear" PR plan. They had to shoot from behind so production would be complete and a greater fear could be pumped into society.

When CHP Chair Özgür Özel met Deniz in prison, he reported Deniz regretted "Was it wrong, I was upset" about past jokes regarding Ekrem İmamoğlu's studying in Cyprus and horizontal transfer while İmamoğlu was in prison. İmamoğlu, noting in the courtroom that these jokes were listed, said "He made very funny jokes, what's wrong with that, I laughed and enjoyed myself, very successful too," sending a comradely greeting to Deniz from the 35-screen television in prison. Here is the absurdity of bourgeois justice: on one side a pathetic effort to cram humor into a cell, on the other people laughing at each other from behind bars.

Multitasking Trial: İmamoğlu at the Silivri Campus

Ekrem İmamoğlu, elected mayor of a city of 16 million, faces a full judicial torture and ordeal. According to Barış Terkoğlu's account, the man carries the weight of exactly 15 separate cases and compensation lawsuits. To cut off social opposition and keep him working as if in a cell constantly, on the same day he is put through a trial marathon of three separate cases at once at the Silivri Prison trial campus.

• The 31-Year Diploma Cancellation Bug: To definitively block İmamoğlu's candidacy for president, the regime cancelled at jet speed an Istanbul University diploma obtained 31 years ago. İmamoğlu is being tried today on a "forgery" charge over education he earned when he was 18. The figure behind this decision is Istanbul University Rector Prof. Dr. Osman Müet Zülfikar. While he talked absurd visionlessness at graduation ceremonies telling students "come with your babies, your children," students at Çapa Medical Faculty turned their backs on him in protest. İmamoğlu explained in court; this rector who cancelled the diploma told İmamoğlu on the phone "Professor, we are in a very difficult situation, I don't know what to do either, Mr. Mayor," cried, then cancelled the diploma on orders from above. To eliminate one man they had to burn the diplomas of 28 people including a professor.

• Dark Web and Informer Stepchild Comedy (Espionage Case): Journalist Merdan Yanardağ, Necati Özkan, and Ekrem İmamoğlu have been tried in detention for 8 months and 8 days for "espionage" on a completely imaginary indictment without a single MIT or intelligence report in the file. What is the "evidence" of the affair, you ask—a five-minute congratulatory photo with a person named Hüseyin Gün. Supposedly some IBB mail data leaked to the Dark Web; yet even in the report the court itself requested, this leak is clearly recorded as having occurred during the AKP period. Hüseyin Gün detonated the bomb in court, saying "I worked for my state; after the 15 July coup attempt when Fuat Oktay was chief advisor to the prime minister he gave me an authorization document, I gathered information abroad about Fethullahists abroad, submitted documents to court, hold a secret session I'll tell state secrets." Did MIT find this magnificent espionage show? No—the informer was the biological son of Hüseyin Gün's spiritual mother calling 112. The claim in the report is a complete joke: supposedly Hüseyin Gün blew up Hizbullah leaders' pagers on behalf of Mossad. Prosecutors and the court continue stealing people's lives with continued detention, using absent BTK and MIT responses as excuse. At the end of the hearing Merdan Yanardağ shouted "Down with despotism, long live freedom!" while Necati Özkan said "Long live democracy, long live justice!" shaking the walls of bourgeois courts; İmamoğlu defied with "All of this is nonsense, all of it will pass."

• IBB Exchange and the Threat Mechanism: Fatih Keleş, former IBB Sports Club Chair on trial in the IBB case, exposed in court that prosecutors personally threatened him saying "Harm will come to your family too, they'll take them too, be effectively remorseful." To prevent this fiction from collapsing they detained four people from Keleş's family. Pro-government Sabah newspaper ran İmamoğlu and Keleş's photos on the front page saying "Ordered the killing of confessor Aktaş," throwing assassination mud, but the fiction was so transparent an non-prosecution decision came from the investigation. The uglier part is lawyer gangs establishing an "IBB Exchange" in prisons have descended on the prisons. They came to Fatih Keleş saying "Pay this much and you get out, be a confessor and you're free," setting up a market. Instead of listening to defenses, the court tries to forcibly finish the case by 9 July as if fleeing a fire.

Class Revenge: Those Who Stand Up to Urban Rent and the Ministry of Agriculture in the Crosshairs

Young comrades, if you want to see how the bourgeois state is not only in courtrooms but at the very heart of life—on the land, in production, in the city—a capital protector, you must look at the mechanism of class revenge. What the capitalist system loves most is uncontrolled rent and producers who obey. The moment you touch these two sacred things, the regime falls upon you with all its apparatuses. If you oppose the power and the capital gangs it feeds, your means of production are taken from your hands and you are thrown from seats you reached with the people's votes into cells. Here are two fresh and shocking examples of exactly this class revenge:

An Urban Planner Who Stood Against the Rent Gang: Resul Emrah Şahan

Urban planner and Mayor Resul Emrah Şahan, elected in Şişli with more than 70% of the people's vote, pays a very heavy price for standing against the capitalist plunder order. Şahan openly opposed rent-focused skyscraper projects driven into the city's heart that ruin infrastructure and constitute urban murder. He stopped those giant towers rising with capital's insatiable appetite and sealed construction sites one by one.

What did the system do? The owner of giant construction firm Taş Yapı, committing urban crime, became complainant and witness. Result? The will of Şişli's people was seized and Şahan, like Ekrem İmamoğlu, has been held hostage in prison for months. The tragicomic part is that when citizens complaining on social media about garbage collection problems in Şişli reached his cell through lawyers, the elected mayor's answer completely washes off capitalist democracy's makeup: "Unfortunately I am detained, Şişli is not run by me but by a trustee." Touch rent and the people's vote is zeroed; your place is taken by capital's trustee.

"Raid" Punishment for a Producer Defending Food Sovereignty: Sencer Solokoğlu

Another target of class revenge was CHP Shadow Agriculture Minister and highly experienced agricultural expert Sencer Solokoğlu, who exposed the collapse of agricultural production. This figure who proved himself in agricultural production on his own farm, when he threw the Agriculture Ministry's lies in their faces saying "you are lying," the regime showed a mafioso reflex. The ministry first threatened "we will raid," then carried out that threat.

Ministry teams that descended on Solokoğlu's farm on the pretext they would "take it as an example" literally terrorized while taking blood samples from cattle and crushed and killed a cow in the process. As if this savage show of force were not enough, to punish Solokoğlu and collapse him economically they cancelled at jet speed all licenses and documents of the enterprise he owned. To hide the political revenge operation they also burned the "Disease-Free Enterprise Certificate" of 19 other producers along with Solokoğlu.

Young comrades, while we speak of food security and the people's healthy and cheap nutrition for all society, the capitalist regime is willing even to sabotage production and agriculture for its own survival. If you oppose the power in this country, if you defend the people's interests, the regime considers destroying you economically and legally a "debt." We must sharpen our class consciousness: we will not surrender our cities to rent, our agriculture and future to these revenge gangs!

Ideological Memory Erasure Operation: Curriculum Scandal and the "Seat Guarantee" Show

Young comrades, the capitalist ruling class does not use only police, army, or prisons while exploiting the masses; it also activates the state's ideological apparatuses to castrate your mind, memory, and historical consciousness. Because youth that forgets its past and does not know whom it fights submits more easily to today's chains of slavery. Exactly while the NATO summit continues in Ankara, bridges are painted in American colors and acrobatics are performed before imperialist masters, National Education Minister Yusuf Tekin announced with his own hand a scandalous ideological purge move of the kind to please them.

Let us X-ray together this memory erasure operation carried out under the name of curriculum and the rotting education policy behind it:

• Imperialist Adjustment to Historical Consciousness (Purging the "War of Independence" Phrase): The Ministry of National Education announced it will completely remove the phrase "War of Independence" from books and curriculum. They will use only the concept "National Struggle" instead. The argument Minister Yusuf Tekin offered as justification for this scandal is a complete example of historical ignorance and fiasco: "Did we liberate ourselves from the Ottomans, brother, did we liberate ourselves from the Ottomans that we should call this a War of Independence?" To normalize today's NATO dependency and American servility in young minds and to dry up the country's anti-imperialist founding roots, they resort to word games.

• Truths in the Light of Historical Materialism: Yusuf Tekin is probably a figure who does not read history books and is extremely inadequate on education. Historical truth shows us clearly that this country was under imperialist occupation at that time; the Ottoman Empire was partitioned, the Treaty of Sèvres was signed, and the sultanate fully accepted this surrender. Even those at the head of that sultanate abandoned the people to the occupiers' mercy and fled without looking back aboard a British warship. Mustafa Kemal and comrades did not fight against the Ottomans but waged a bloody War of Independence against imperialist powers tearing these lands piece by piece. The aim of that war was to emerge from the sultanate's darkness and build a bright republic of gender equality, democracy, human rights, freedom of belief, and secularism. But of course the structure of the rulers and this minister, hating secularism and equality, cannot bring themselves to call this great anti-imperialist victory "Liberation."

• Strategy of Collapsing Education and Opening Space to Sects: Actually Yusuf Tekin's move is not the first. He is a figure who previously banned writing letters to Atatürk in schools and filled schools with sects and communities under the name of "civil society organizations" through foundations. The class hypocrisy explodes here: this minister who educates his own child in private schools directs the people's children to Imam Hatip schools and makes a show of it. Yet children going to those schools cannot even pass the bourgeois system's university exams; the regime converts all state schools into Imam Hatip to destroy quality education. They dropped the education system leagues behind world peers. In this country a family must pay the world's money to private schools for a child to get decent education; worker children without money are condemned to darkness.

• Agenda Diversion and the "Seat Guarantee" Show: When schools are raided by armed children and massacres occur, the ministry does not twitch a hair; they close the matter with one or two passing statements that "measures will be taken." When they see someone speaking on secularism they immediately jump on them. Those who cannot utter a single word from fear against American colors on the bridge during the NATO summit, against imperialists' massacres, against blood shed in Gaza and Palestine, try to guarantee their seats with these artificial history debates and "piety shows." Just to look sweet to ruling gangs and protect their power seats, they throw away the "War of Independence" concept that would disturb imperialists.

Young comrades, those whose mentality is entirely surrendered to the occupier continuation of the sultanate can erase from the curriculum the war fought against imperialism today. But we as revolutionary youth with historical consciousness will not let the truth be forgotten. That War of Independence fought for full independence, secularism, and class freedom against darkness is a barricade that must be defended!

True Patriotism Is Not Measured by Fake Tweets

Young comrades, read the system, the rulers' language, and the street's dialectic well. Those doing keyboard heroism on social media pumping "local and national" perception, those drawing millions of lira worth of screens on the street so foreign delegates do not see poverty, those shrinking enough to blow-dry horses' manes for imperialism's bloody generals cannot be this country's patriots. Their nationalism is nothing but a fake PR show protecting foreign capital's interests.

The greatest truth Marxist philosophy teaches us is this: Patriotism is not dry love of country or abstract flag rhetoric; it requires a class stance.

Because what makes the land we live on a "homeland" is not the rulers' bank accounts or palaces; it is the laborers sweating on that land, the riches beneath and above it. No one without class consciousness, who closes eyes to exploitation of labor and shakes hands with imperialist gangs while condemning the people to poverty, can be a patriot.

True patriotism is:

• The anger of revolutionary youth who throw their bodies as a shield against NATO barricades in Ankara's streets and do not give imperialism passage at the cost of broken ribs.

• The barricade of villagers clinging to their trees, water, forest against capital's insatiable appetite at Akbelen.

• The upright stance of the urban planner thrown into a cell in Şişli for not giving passage to rent towers.

• Deniz Göktaş's humor that will not surrender the revolutionary smile on his face against the vile climate of fear and reverse handcuffs the regime tries to create.

• Merdan Yanardağ's unbending spine shouting "Down with despotism, long live freedom!" from behind prison walls.

The sentence Özgür Özel even established during a prison visit and recorded in history summarizes very clearly what our class honor and compass must be:

"Being someone the regime makes pay a price is a hard thing, not easy, but it is not shameful. Being someone the regime disciplines is shameful."

Comrades, we must be that conscious, rebellious youth capitalism, the regime, and capital gangs could not domesticate or discipline. Patriotism is protecting our living spaces from holding plunder. Patriotism is defending labor's right against this parasitic class that eyes our bread, steals our future, condemns us to minimum wage and precarity. Patriotism is pulling this country from the hands of plunderers who descend on our lands, valleys, cities as if they were booty of savage capitalism.

The masks have fallen, perceptions have burst. Now is the time to tighten ranks and arm class consciousness. This country belongs not to the brazen ones hidden behind screens but to the working people who defend, produce, and sustain it at the cost of their lives! The struggle continues in the very heart of the street until an fully independent and classless world is built!