One Year of Brutal Dictatorship in Turkey

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THIS week is the first anniversary of the military coup in Turkey. It has been a year repression, torture, imprisonment, death and starvation for the working masses and their organisations in Turkey.

120,000 are political prisoners; more than 400 have been killed by the state forces; 16 prisoners have died under torture; ten people (eight of them revolutionaries) have been hanged; all trade union and democratic rights have been taken away; DISK, (the revolutionary trade union confederation) is closed down with 52 of its leaders on trial, facing possible death sentences.

Closed down All labour movement organisations are closed down with their leaders put on organisational trials. 1768 death sentences are being demanded by the military prosecutors, in addition to the numbers of trade union leaders already shot dead by state forces (the latest being Kenan Budak, leader of the Leather Workers Union (DISK). Some union leaders are still under systematic torture.

This is a brief summary of the facts of repression in Turkey. But these facts are ignored or consciously covered-up by the media.

The military dictators in Turkey get favourable coverage from the press, and support from European governments.

SO readers who watched the BBC documentary film on Turkey several weeks ago would have noticed that the BBC prefers to spend its time on navigational problems in the Bosphorus rather than on the repression of the working ciass movement in Turkey.

The Thatcher government is currently planning £15 million in military aid to the generals.

Stabilisation

Moves in Turkey towards the establishment of a "constituent assembly" in reality seek only internal and external stabilisation of the regime:

This assembly will consist of 160 people. Of these 160, 40 will be simply appointed by the five-man National Security Council. But there will be some "elections":

"Nominations will come in through local mayors and from among them the 5-man Junta will "elect" the other 120. Whichever way you look ai it, this is "democratic" rule by 5 men over a 45-milhon strong nation.

Turkey is a backward capitalist country. It is a country where, historically, capitalism was developed from outside by the intervention of imperialist capital.

Therefore Turkey has historically been dependent on imperialism. and major political and economic decisions in Turkey have always been HNSON Evren subordinated to imperialism and its crises.

In the 1970s the development of the world capitalist crisis had three or four times more impact in Turkey and similar countries (Latin America, Pakistan, etc) than in the advanced nations.

Massive defeat

Because of its economic dependence on imperialism, (importing such basics as industrial goods, machinery and oil with very little to export) Turkey has always faced a massive deficit in the balance of trade.

In the late 1970s Turkey's deficit rose annually to 3-4 billion dollars and Turkish capitalism was faced with bankruptcy.

The Turkish bourgeoisie had no other options but to go to the IMF and other imperialist institutions for credits.

In return, successive Turkish governments tried to introduce IMF conditions which went to subordinate the Turkish toiling masses to further capitalist and imperialist exploitation.

Throughout the 1970s Turkey witnessed bitter class struggles, together with national resistance in Kurdistan, since the working class and the oppressed masses were by no means prepared willingly to accept massive attacks on their living standards and rights.

Fascist More and more the possibility of introducing these attacks by parliamentary means was eliminated, and the bourgoisie Turkey and imperialism turned more and more towards solutions outside parliament - developing and financing a fascist party and a mass fascist movement.

The masses, they decided, must be terrorised and forced to submit to the demands of capitalism and imperialism.

The fascist movement of NAP has been used to intimidate the masses and systematic violence and terror has developed in every section of society. Every street, village, factory nad school; even entire cities have been divided into warring camps of revolution and counter-revolution.

In this period there were 20-25 political killings a day and the fascist movement reached over 1 million followers (in the NAP trials figures officially claim 700,000 members and over one million supporters).

The fascists were mainly from the petty bourgeoisie and lumpen proletariat suffering under the savage economic policies, and looking for a bold and decisive alternative.

Offered no such alternative by the workers' movement they turned in desperation to the fascists.

In this sense the development of fascism and repression in Turkey also signifies the crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class in Turkey.

Through the late 1970s, the Stalinists of the Turkish Communist Party (TKP)

together with reformists and the "democratic left" advocated a strategy of a "popular front" with the "democratic" sections of capitalists as their arswer to fascism.

That in practice meant an alliance with Bulent Ecevit's bourgeois radical Republican People's Party - leading to DESPITE the obvious danger of victimisation of Turkish citizens being involved in anti-junta activities, a solidarity movement is being built up in several West European countries.

At an international Turkey solidarity conference held at the end of August in Hamburg, representatives attended from Denmark, Britain, Belgium and Austria.

It was convened by the West German group Alternative Turkei with a perspective of drawing together all those who are actively involved it the struggle for democratic rights in Turkey.

Detailed reports were received about organisation for the September 12 anniversary, where various forms of protest are planned, throughout Europe.

The biggest will be in Duisburg, West Germany, support for the RPP both in elections and in government.

In return, the RPP when it formed a government, introduced the IMF's anti-working class measures and waged massive attacks on the working masses.

The slogan of the late 1970s, "our only hope is Ecevit" has led millions of Turkish workers to political confusion and disorientation.

The Stalinist TKP did not change its course of supporting the bourgeois RPP even after the RPP-led unions took control within DISK and suspended the TKPcontrolled unions for a year.

These organisations) constantly run away from physical combat against the Turkish state forces where 15,000 are expected to demonstrate in response to a joint appeal from nearly all the Turkish democratic and socialist formations, this unity itself being something not possible in the past.

On September 5 a hunger strike is due to begin in Vienna and in Britain there is the Week of Action and September 12 rally.

It is hoped a representative of the German campaign will be able to participate the London meeting.

An important step towards strengthening the links between national campaigns was the decision to begin publication of a bi-lingual Newsletter which can carry material of each group's activities. The first issue will be published towards the end of September.

fascists. Instead they demanded government action to ban the NAP and its youth organisations.

The alternative offered by pro-Albanian Stalinists was to adopt sectarian policies reminiscent of the 1929-34 "Third Period" of Stalinism, stridently denouncing Ecevit's RPP as "social fascist"

Those organisations which originated from the DEV-GENC movement of the 1960s, continued with its traditions, and genuinely fought against fascists. But theit programmatic and political weakness meant in practice, that these actions were carried on in isolation from the working class.

However, despite the massive confusion and crisis of revolutionary leadership, within the labour movement the Turkish working class and oppressed masses have resisted the attacks of the fascists and state forces.

The resistance of workers at the Taris plant in Ismir and armed resistance of the toiling masses who for several weeks combatted the fascists in Corum, have been the highest points of these struggles against fascism.

The working class and oppressed masses in Turkey demonstrated time and again that they would not surrender until the last person fell in struggle against fascism.

Civil war

By 12 September I98U, the imperialists and the bourgeoisie in Turkey were forced to decide how to resolve the political crisis.

They had to turn either to the fascist NAP or to the military. The first alternative would almost certainly have meant an open civil war, where the Kurdish masses (influenced deeply by the developments in Iran) would be pushed into open armed resistance.

A prolonged civil war in Turkey would not be favourable for imperialism in relation to the Middle East.

Instead millions of backward petty bourgeois layers, politically confused and frustrated by years of systematic terrors, created the conditions and consensus for a military coup.

From these conditions emerged the "anti-terrorist" "anti-anarchist" posture of the military dictatorship, which poses as "against both left and right"

It has gained a mass base of support and this support has enabied the military junta to carry out wholesale repression against workers' movement.

This same mass consensus has been used by western governments and the USA to openly support the massive repression of the workers' movement in Turkey.

Credits

Since 12 September 1980 the military junta has introduced the IMF's economic Through the successful application of these policies, the Junta has managed to obtain credits and loans from western governments and the USA. The survival of their economic programme very much depends on these credits, and relations with Europe and the OECD.

Because of the delicate internal and international balance that the junta has to act on, concrete solidarity actions of the labour movement organisations in Europe and in Britain can have an immediate and direct effect on the regime and the type of repression against the labour movement in Turkey.

This is why it is the duty of the labour movement in Britain to be at the forefront of defending working class organisations in Turkey.

Save lives

Every protest and every resolution passed within the labour movement bodies in Britain and in Europe can help save lives of trade unionists, revolutionaries, and democrats in Turkey.

Furthermore, every single bullet, machine gun or plece of industrial equipment going to the military butchers of Turkey that is blacked by the labour movement bodies in Britain can help lay the basis for the overthrow of the military dictatorship in Turkey.

ADARK

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