How do I make textures transparent in OpenGL?

Answer 1

So the other answer which was here but was deleted mentioned this - Generally, for alpha blending to work correctly you need to sort the objects from far to near in the coordinate system of the camera.
This is why your polygons are blended with the background. You can confirm that this is indeed the problem by disabling the depth test. Without depth test all the fragments are displayed and you'll be able to see the alpha blending.

More on this in this page.