ERTUGRUL KURKCU BİDS FAREWELL TO BIANET

"(...) working for bianet and working outside for socialist publications and to comply with the duties to reestablish the socialist movement, are not in conflict at all. In order to put all these work in relation, it's important to build a new communication order. This is as important as going to strike, founding a political party or a community organization.

"For me, all acts of objection to the capitalist hegemony, in all levels of life, are revolutionary and we can succeed only if we can connect these efforts through a communication order that is beyond the realm of the market."

This was how I reconciled my efforts to pursue politics and journalism simultaneously, during an interview three years ago. Nonetheless, these two milieus are no more in reconciliation, at least until June 13^th, the day of elections.

As I stand as candidate in coming parliamentary elections, as a part of the Labor, Democracy and Freedom Bloc, formed by the Kurdish dissidents and socialists, it's time to free bianet from me. While this is not a political necessity, it is an ethical one. Bianet must stand in equal distance to all candidates. From its initiation, bianet objected to defining itself with the absurd idea of "impartiality". It has sided with labor, freedoms, democracy, peace and rights... But this is different. Bianet cannot side with me. If it does, it can no longer stay as bianet. Furthermore, the right to stand candidate in coming elections, that I was able to attend as the longest week in Turkey's history is drawing to an end, is a far more personal position than even that of a political party leader. We have to stop here.

I hope that I won't fall outside the new path that I took to fight capitalist hegemony after June 13^th. Bu at least until that day, I have to refrain from frequenting bianet's offices as one of its directors, commentators or as a source of news.

With or without me, bianet will continue to stand as an indispensable source of independent news. Nevertheless, this truth doesn't stop me from thinking that I lay the bigger burden on Nadire's shoulders.

I'll miss all my colleagues deeply, my heart sizzles even as lay down these words. But one has to know to move when the time comes. (EK/EÜ/Ö)