1. The Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi – Dördüncü Enternasyonal (Socialist Equality Party – Fourth International) is the Turkish section of the Fourth International, the world party of socialist revolution founded by Leon Trotsky in 1938 and led today by the International Committee (ICFI).

2. The ICFI is the only political party that seeks to mobilize, educate and unite workers worldwide for the overthrow of the capitalist system and the reconstruction of society on a socialist basis. It represents the continuity of the theoretical and political struggle waged by Marx, Engels, Lenin and Trotsky. This legacy is summarized in the documents published by the ICFI-affiliated Socialist Equality Parties under the title Historical and International Foundations of the Socialist Equality Party, which is also the programmatic basis of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi’s work in Turkey.

3. The construction of a revolutionary tendency is possible only on the basis of an internationalist perspective. As Leon Trotsky insisted in 1928:

In our epoch, which is the epoch of imperialism, i.e., of world economy and world politics under the hegemony of finance capital, not a single communist party can establish its programme by proceeding solely or mainly from conditions and tendencies of developments in its own country.… In the present epoch, to a much larger extent than in the past, the national orientation of the proletariat must and can flow only from a world orientation and not vice versa. Herein lies the basic and primary difference between communist internationalism and all varieties of national socialism.[1]

4. The world economic and political system is essentially imperialist. The fundamental problems facing humanity, such as the threat of nuclear war, pandemics, climate change, authoritarian regimes and ever-deepening social inequality, stem from the underlying contradictions of capitalism that led to two world wars and countless disasters in the 20th century. These contradictions are between the global economy and the nation-state system, and between socialized production and private ownership of the means of production. From these contradictions arise not only the danger of another catastrophic world war, but also the objective conditions for the overthrow of capitalism by the world socialist revolution—the socialization of industry and finance, the globalization of economic life, and the social power of the working class.

5. The program of the Sosyalist Eşitlik Partisi, which is the product of a decades-long struggle waged by the ICFI and Trotskyists in Turkey for a socialist and internationalist party, is not based on conjunctural or national pragmatic considerations, but has a principled character. Our program is based on an analysis of the crisis of world capitalism and the assimilation of the strategic revolutionary experiences of the working class and the international socialist movement. This means the assimilation of the historical lessons of the continuous struggle of the Marxist-Trotskyist movement in the 20th century against social democracy, Stalinism, Pabloism and bourgeois nationalism, and for the program of world socialist revolution.