CRISIS IN TURKEY AND THE PERSPECTIVES FOR THE LEFT
by Ender Yýlmaz & Jose Antonio Gutierrez D. – Red & Black Revolution
Anarkismo.net
10
Oct 31 2007
Modernisation, authoritarianism & political islam
Turkey has been under the spotlight this year, due to the threats
of the Army against the possibility of an Islamist party taking
the presidency. This move came to pose a number of questions to the
European establishment, as Turkey has been negotiating its entry to the
EU. The apparently uneasy two alternatives of government in Turkey are
political Islam or the old fashioned authoritarian Kemalist secularism,
which has the army as its vigilante sector of the ruling block.
Turkey has been under the spotlight this year, due to the threats
of the Army against the possibility of an Islamist party taking
the presidency. This move came to pose a number of questions to the
European establishment, as Turkey has been negotiating its entry to the
EU. The apparently uneasy two alternatives of government in Turkey are
political Islam or the old fashioned authoritarian Kemalist secularism,
which has the army as its vigilante sector of the ruling block.
The European bourgeoisie has been quite keen to support the ruling
AKP Islamist party, instead of the military, sending a clear message
that they won’t favour a dictatorship in the vein of that of 1980.
Actually, they have compared the authoritarian tradition of Turkey
to Greece, saying that entry to the EU would eventually help to
democratise it.
In this context, it is necessary to understand the underlying factors
that shaped Turkish society and its historical roots, in order to
grasp correctly the current crisis: The nature of the current state,
the nature of its crisis, its relationship to the ruling blocs,
and the sui generis(1) nature of Turkish political Islam. In the
broader light, we can see this crisis, as well, as natural to the
re-alignment of forces after the Cold War and in the new era of the
"War on Terror". In Turkish political Islam, the "West", not only has
a neoliberal ally, but as well, an Islamist ally, in spite of the fact
that the base of support of this tendency remains hostile to the US,
and increasingly disenchanted with the EU.
Turkish politics are full of contradictions and paradoxical
situations. But the bottom line is that both the "democratic" political
Islam as well as the "authoritarian" army are elite alternatives
opposed to the basic interests of workers, that have agreed on
the fundamentals and will likely keep agreeing in maintaining the
repressive political structures of the Kemalist state, apart from
some cosmetic change, much to the dismay of those who expect a liberal
wave of renewal from political Islam.
Almost ten years after the post-modern coup of 1997(2), in which
the coalition government of Islamist Welfare Party (WP also known
as Refah) and right-wing True Path Party (DYP) were forced to step
down and later banned, another move by the powerful Turkish military
came as a reminder of the role they keep in politics. Following the
nomination of Abdullah Gul as president by Prime Minister Erdoðan in
April, there was a parliamentary boycott organised by the secularist
opposition of the White Turks, led by the RPP (Republican People’s
Party). Although there were past decisions supporting the case of
the government, the Council of State favoured the opposition, but not
before the military issued a warning on April 27th, resurrecting fears
of military intervention and renewed repression that have plagued the
last century of Turkish public life -signalling that the political
might of the army is well and strong(3).
Two days later a massive demonstration as a part of a series of
"Republic Meetings" was held in Istanbul. The concept was created
by the pro-army Republic newspaper months before the presidential
election and the participants came from secularist moderate or
pro-army NGO’s. These urban secularist middle and upper classes were
also denoted as White Turks. The demonstrators chanted against an
Islamist government, but also, against military intervention. This
added a new dimension to the crisis.
The current impasse with the army came to pose blatantly one of
the paradoxes of Turkish life: that of secularism as being an
authoritarian force, while political Islam is left to play the
democratic cards(4). But to understand the real nature of this
apparent paradox it is important to dig a little bit into the history
of Turkish society.
The Kemalist State and Industrialisation
Turkey was one of the first countries to develop an Import Substitution
Industrialization (ISI) economic model in the ’30s. This was an
attempt to eradicate the reliance on imported goods. The Kemalists
wanted to create a native bourgeoisie out of the ruins of the Ottoman
Empire, after its defeat in the First Great War. It represented a
particularly authoritarian and militaristic drive to modernization,
led by Mustafa Kemal, later given the surname Ataturk which means
"the father of the Turks". He was the leading general of the armed
resistance against the British-sponsored Greek occupation of Western
Turkey in the 1920s and founded the RPP which became the single ruling
party of the country between 1923 and 1950. Though initially having a
liberal free market orientation, after the 1929 crisis, an ISI model
that attempted to eradicate the reliance on imported goods was put
in place for this modernizing endeavour. They protected some new born
industries, to industrialize the country, to make self-sufficient and
to modernize it. They attempted to turn Turkey from a Sultanate into
a modern western Republic(5).
Not only did it stimulate a native Sunni Muslim and Turkish
bourgeoisie; it subjected religion to State authorities. The idea was
not only to create a modernizing essence (a national bourgeoisie),
but also an "appearance" of it through forced secularism.
After the Second World War both US directives and internal opposition
from the large landowners(6) forced RPP to accept a multiparty
system. In the first free elections after three decades, RPP was
defeated by the Democratic Party (DP). Thus, in the ’50s the focus
of growth shifted from industry to agriculture, but industrial
capitalists re-gained their previous role after the military coup
of 1960. The banned DP continued as Justice Party (JP) and with the
support of the large rural population it became a major party in
the parliament during the following two decades. Because it was only
with the backing of the army that they could win the 1961 elections,
the RPP tried to change its image into a more popular alternative. In
the late ’60s it declared itself "left of the centre" and with slogans
like "land belongs to those who cultivate it, water to those who use
it" the RPP formed government many times in the ’70s. In 1973, the
industrialists formed TUSIAD, a business association, which became
a major political actor(7).
The ISI model was largely successful, but though self-sufficient
to a great extent, Turkey still badly needed both oil and new
technologies/machinery from foreign markets. The two oil crises in the
’70s ended the stable and low energy prices regime, which was one of
the bases of global US hegemony and deepened the crisis in Turkey.
A huge problem was that its industry, though in a position to cope
with the internal demand, was not able to compete in the foreign
markets. This led to the main source of the crisis: the inability
to obtain foreign currency (dollars) that was critical in order to
obtain both oil and technology(8).
This led the government to borrow heavily, which caused major
imbalances and a big debt crisis. This crisis, which expressed itself
violently at the end of the ’70s, with the clashes of the left with
right-wing nationalists, found an authoritarian "solution" in the
coup of 1980. Differently to the previous two military coups (1960
and 1971), this coup was a particularly brutal attempt to uproot for
good the revolutionary left in the country, which had pushed massive
workers’ struggles and resistances during the period from 1961-1980,
under the banner of the revolutionary trade union DISK, and saw a
left-leaning intelligentsia and a radical students’ movement emerge
in the ’70s; while at the same time, it made a number of structural
changes in the ISI economic model.
In a vein similar to the one of Pinochet’s Chile, the authoritarian
framework of the State was useful in order to carry out a number
of unpopular changes that would have been impossible to be carried
in a democratic context. And once the changes were carried out,
the physical elimination of leftist militants made sure that there
would be no one, in the near future, in a capacity to challenge the
new order from a revolutionary point of view. But not only did the
putschists use the authoritarian framework of the State for its own
ends: they exacerbated its authoritarian features, by means of a new
Constitution (approved in 1982) and a new institutional figure called
the National Security Council (NSC)(9).
The 1980 Coup: The Turkish State as a Counter-Insurgency State
In Latin America, as well, the NSC has been in place in many states
since the counter-revolutionary period of the ’70s. It is not mere
coincidence that in Turkey we see the same figure emerging after the
military intervention. The crucial position of Turkey as a strategic
ally of US imperialism and NATO in the face of an explosive and
politically unstable Middle East makes the NSC no coincidence but a
logical response from the Army and a monopolist bourgeoisie that is
unable to have a hegemonic position even with the other sectors of
the bourgeoisie (non-monopolist, petty bourgeoisie, etc.). There are
many parallels between the Turkish State created during the coup and
the counter-insurgency state prevalent in Latin America, explicitly
designed to suppress revolutionary or even reformist movements and
ideologically based on the National Security Doctrine. Therefore,
we will resort to the Latin American theoretician Ruy Mauro Marini’s
description of the counter-insurgency State, not to try to forcefully
look for similarities and differences, but to look for useful
categories that allow us to better understand the Turkish political
system from a revolutionary point of view. His structural description
of these kind of States – beyond the particular political facade that
they can present – is useful for the Turkish case:
"The counter-insurgency State (…) presents a hypertrophy of the
Executive power (…) in relation to all others (…) with the
existence of two central decision making bodies within the Executive.
On the one hand, the military body, constituted by the Staff of the
Armed Forces (…); the National Security Council, the supreme decision
making body, where the representatives of the army entwine with the
direct delegates of Capital; and the intelligence services that inform,
orient and prepare the decision making process. On the other hand,
we have the economic body, represented by the economic ministries,
as well as by the State owned companies of credit, production and
services, which have their key positions filled by civilian and
military technocrats. Thus, the National Security Council becomes
the space for the encounter of the two bodies, where they entwine
one another, and becomes itself the top, the vital organ of the
Counter-Insurgency State."(10)
It therefore represents a space where both the Monopolist capitalists
and the Army share power. But it also represents, as Marini states,
a peculiar form of bourgeois State that has four powers instead of
the classic three (Executive, Legislative and Judicial) the fourth
one being the National Security Council, which guarantees the Armed
Forces the ultimate say in politics, an authoritarian "moderating"
role in a political context plagued with internal contradictions.
As described by Keyder for the Turkish case, "within the NSC, military
chiefs of staff met with top cabinet members and dictated the politics
to be followed. The NSC was endowed with a permanent secretariat
and staff, designed to pool all intelligence and to develop policy
to be implemented by the relevant bureaucracy, often bypassing
the politically appointed ministers (…) Virtually everything,
from foreign and military policy to the structure of civil and
political rights, from secondary school curricula to energy policy,
was eventually decided in the monthly meetings of the NSC, invariably
along the lines formulated by its secretariat"(11)
The counter-insurgency State does not exist only under conditions of
military dictatorship, but exists as well under democratic wrappings.
In the Turkish case, it clearly survived the putschist junta, thanks
to the 1982 Constitution, and is present in today’s democracy -the main
characteristics of the "democratic" counter-insurgency state being the
prevalence of this Fourth Power (the NSC), the restricted character
of democracy (usually, these restrictions expressing themselves in
the very electoral procedures too(12)) and the existence of a number
of laws of exception and a broadly interpreted anti-terrorist law.
All these authoritarian features of the State were further exacerbated
with the Kurdish conflict, in the period spanning from 1984 to
1999. And with both an increasing conflict between rival factions
of the bourgeoisie and a renewed wave of PKK attacks in the south
east since 2003, it is quite likely that, notwithstanding some
liberalisation, at least some of these features will be maintained
in the long term and even reinforced at times when needed.
Neoliberalism and the New Blocks in the Ruling Classes
With the 1980 coup, deep changes took place in Turkish society,
not only at the level of the State. The military junta closed all
political parties and all unions except the state union Turk-Iþ.
There was a massive wave of economic neo-liberalisation that would
have been impossible to be carried out if it wasn’t through manu
militari i.e. under the exceptionally repressive circumstances of
military rule. So, without any hassle from the labour movement, the
State started a drastic set of measures to liberalise the economic
model, which included privatisations, downsizing of the public sector,
flexible employment and deregulation of the economy. The predictable
results of such measures were the devaluation and stagnation of real
wages, a forcefully reduced share of wages in the national income,
the dismantling of some industries with the consequent impact on
employment figures and the destruction of the labour force behind
trade unions(13).
Three parties participated in the first elections after the coup,
in 1983: Motherland Party (ANAP), pro-army Nationalist Democracy
Party (NDP) and social-democratic Populist Party (PP). Contrary to
the expectations of the military junta, NDP was defeated by ANAP and
later dissolved itself. After a series of transformations and name
changes PP became the current RPP.
The ISI model was replaced by IMF-dictated fiscal austerity measures
and Export Oriented Industrialization (EOI). The new economic regime
was not quite successful, despite the fact that it managed to ‘solve’
one of the biggest barriers against a stable capital accumulation:
organised working class resistance. Even the modest growth levels in
the ’80s could only be achieved at the expense of a growing foreign
debt. In contrast to the modest gains of the Istanbul industrialists,
the Anatolian(14) small petty and not so petty bourgeoisie benefited
enormously from the EOI. The so-called Anatolian Tigers developed
industrial zones in Anatolia exploiting the lack of unions and
their strong Islamic community ties. They had little state support
and were alien to the life of the traditional elites i.e. the state
bureaucracy and TUSIAD. On the political arena they formed in 1983 the
Islamist Welfare Party (WP) following the tradition of two parties
in the late ’60s and ’70s(15), but not only succeeded in gathering
together the Anatolian bourgeoisie, but also increasingly mobilised
popular support behind them (Right-wing parties like the DP in the
’50s, had strong support among the significant rural population. The
immigrants in the cities continued to support these parties due to
patronage networks provided by them. The RPP and the left managed to
gain the support of small peasants and urban immigrants in the ’70s,
but this was over by the ’80 coup. The vacuum in the cities was filled
by Islamic NGO’s in the ’80s culminating with the rise of Refah).
The Turkish banking system was plagued by structural problems and
corruption during the ’90s and this caused the financial crises of
1991, 1994, 1998 and the most severe of them between 2000 and 2001.
The living conditions of the working class was terribly worsened in
the ’80s, until a wave of protests in 1989, mainly by public sector
workers, caused important increases in real wages and sowed the seeds
of the current public sector unions(16). This caused an increase in
government spending, on top of the cost of the anti-PKK war, which
the government thought could be financed through foreign capital
flows. Behind these crises, however, was the liberalisation of the
Capital Account in 1989 i.e. eliminating the barriers against financial
in and outflows, while Turkey had a very weak legal and administrative
framework to regulate the banking system and lacked macroeconomic
stability. The Turkish financial capitalists made huge profit through
this ill system. They bought debt from the State and granted loans
at ridiculous real interest rates, sometimes of even 20%.(17)
The Anatolian bourgeoisie organised itself in MUSIAD, the business
association that was the counterpart for TUSIAD, in the ’90s and
backed the uneasy WP-DYP(18) coalition government in 1996-97.
Contrary to the outward orientation of the Anatolian bourgeoisie,
this government had an inward orientation and tried to increase the
cooperation with Middle Eastern states. This coalition was marked by
the scandal behind the famous car accident in Susurluk in November
1996, where a former Deputy Chief of Istanbul Police and the leader of
the fascist Nationalist Action Party’s (NAP) violent youth organization
died; a DYP’s MP who was also the leader of a Kurdish tribe and a
large group of anti-PKK village guards in Northern Kurdistan were
injured. This exposed the connections between the security forces,
politicians and organised crime.
The fall of the WP is denoted as a post-modern coup. It was done
through a regular NSC meeting on 28 February 1997 and the army used
a popular campaign(19) to mobilise people against the government,
which they accused of trying to subvert the secular order. In reality,
this was nothing more than another chapter in the inter-bourgeois
conflict for hegemony. With Refah (WP) banned, the WP tradition then
formed another party, Fazilet(20), which was also banned in 2001,
with two parties emerging immediately out of this: the hard-liners of
Saadet(21) and the moderates of AKP(22) who are the current governing
party and have a little less than two thirds of the MPs.
New Millennium, New Intra-Elite conflicts
The devastation caused by the 2000 and 2001 economic crises had a
similar impact on politics, and the November 2002 elections gave the
AKP more than the absolute majority in the parliament. This hadn’t
happened since the DP victory in the ’50s. The parties of the previous
coalition government(23) got only 13% of votes.
The AKP government took a pronounced neoliberal turn and made several
privatisations. This also created a huge foreign capital flow into
Turkey, which financed the increasing Current Account Deficit i.e.
the net difference between exports and imports. Inflation was reduced
to below 10%(24) and since 2002 the Turkish economy has grown by 7.5 %
annually. On the other hand, unemployment is worsening, showing that
the growth was due to an increasing exploitation of the employed
labour force rather than by absorbing the unemployed. The future of
the economy, however, virtually depends on the perceptions and mood
of global financial forces and any bad sign could provoke a crisis
similar to the Asian one of 1997-98.
Over the last four years, four blocks in the rulings classes became
visible: The army, TUSIAD, MUSIAD and the Fethullahist TUSKON.
Fethullah Gulen left the traditional Nursist(25) movement and created
a new empire under his rule, consisting of corporations, high schools,
universities(26), etc. In 1999 the assets owned by this empire in
Turkey were estimated at $25 billion(27). Gulen had good relationships
with the centre-right governments, has a strong pro-US line and in
recent years his associates formed their own business organisation
called TUSKON. In 1999 he was accused of trying to infiltrate the
state apparatus at every level (army, police and bureaucracy) and
left Turkey after that. Gulen lives in the USA but still has a great
deal of influence, with the Fethullahists, probably having an active
role in the last frictions between AKP and the army.
Except for MUSIAD, all three have very close ties to US imperialism
and that’s its main difference with TUSKON, sharing otherwise a
common political history. The army and TUSIAD share a common cultural
background and history, being the traditional ruling block for many
years. All business groups, though, are critical of the role of the
army and favour a more parliament-oriented bourgeois politics.
Especially TUSIAD is in the foreground of pro-EU reforms, but we
should remark that TUSIAD is controlled by a few family holdings.
Therefore, their criticisms against the political role of the army
may not be shared by most of the members.
The occupation of Iraq by the US crushed the political balance in
Turkey. The army did not organise a campaign in favour of Turkish
participation and thanks to the traditional anti-US Islamism of many of
the AKP MPs(28), the parliament did not approve the use of Turkish soil
for an attack(29). The anti-war movement failed to attract the masses,
who felt a strong opposition to the war, into the demonstrations,
but the biggest failure was to remain silent about the war in Turkish
Kurdistan in order not to upset the average person. Today, a de facto
Kurdish state is established in northern Iraq and the PKK ended its
4 year-long ceasefire in 2004 which began after the imprisonment of
its leader Abdullah Ocalan in 1999.
After the November 2004 negotiations with EU, the army began a
"psychological" campaign in spring 2005(30). Today we can say that
the main aim was to channel the anti-US feelings among the Turkish
population against the moderate Islamist government and against any
attempt to solve the Kurdish Question peacefully. The first provocation
was made in the Kurdish Newroz celebrations, on March 21st, 2005. The
following day, newspapers reported that Kurdish children attempted to
burn the Turkish flag. The children claimed that a man with a black
suit gave them the flag, but this was never investigated. This was
followed by lynching attempts against leafleting leftists who were
accused of chanting pro-PKK slogans or waving the PKK flag. We cannot
list all the events of this provocation campaign here, but they include
bombs against Kurdish civilians in Diyarbakýr, the murder of a priest
in Trabzon and missionaries in Malatya and the suppression of Kurdish
protests against the use of chemical weapons against PKK guerrillas
in Diyarbakýr, which resulted in over 15 deaths.
Meanwhile, there were police operations which further uncovered the
relations between the mafia and the State; the so-called "deep State"
in Turkey has a very long past(31). In 2006 the local Kurdish populace
in Shemdinli in the south-eastern corner of Turkey captured members of
the Turkish counter-guerrilla force(32) who threw a hand bomb into a
library. The head of the army, Buyukanýt, said about one the officers:
"I know him. He is a good boy." Their trial remains a dead end like
many other state-related mafia trials.
Another major event in this campaign of provocation was the
assassination of Armenian journalist Hrant Dink, member of the
"libertarian socialist" Freedom and Solidarity Party (FSP). Probably
due to the Fethullahists inside of the police, the murderer and
minor planners were quickly captured and their relations with the
counter-guerrilla networks were somewhat revealed. This did not lead
to confronting the army, because as a part of the ruling classes, the
Fethullahist elites do not dare an open confrontation. One gang of the
ruling class is fighting against another using the body of Hrant Dink.
The left managed to react quickly and mobilised thousands of people
on the day of the assassination. The FSP depoliticised his funeral by
banning slogans, similar to their silence about the war in Kurdish
provinces during the anti-war events, and even the mass media
advertised the funeral. Despite being on a Tuesday, more than 100
thousand people walked behind the banner "We all are Hrant Dink! We
all are Armenians!". The slogan became a major trump in the hands of
Turkish nationalists who used it to "highlight" the non-Turkishness
of the participants.
Towards the Parliamentary Elections(33)
The army successfully managed to prevent the election of a non-Kemalist
president(34) for now and used for this purpose NGOs and its website –
ANAP and DYP MPs did not participate in the presidential election on
the 29th of April after an e-declaration of the army warning against
anti-secularist and anti-nationalist currents(35), meaning obviously
the AKP. Most of the people at the Republic meetings of April 29th
were not in favour of a military coup, but they perceive the army
itself as the sole ultimate guardian of Turkish democracy.
Meanwhile, the centre-right has been unable to form an opposition block
to the AKP, having failed in an attempt to merge ANAP and the DYP,
now called DP, as the ’50s party. This means that most of the bourgeois
block will end up eventually supporting the AKP in the end anyway.
Today the main theme of bourgeois politics is whether the army should
launch a military operation against the PKK bases in Northern Iraq:
in early April, the army’s big man Buyukanýt spoke in favour of it.
Since then the Turkish army has been amassing troops on the South-East
border with Iraq(36), though the Prime Minister says that there is
no written petition for any extra-border military operation.
The US does not favour a Turkish operation nor do the Kurdish
elites in Iraq i.e. Talabani, the president of Iraq, and Barzani,
the president of Iraqi Kurdistan, because this could threaten the
unique peace found in Northern Iraq(37).
Mehmet Agar, the leader of the DYP (now DP) and an ex-counter-guerrilla
chief who proudly declared in the past that he guided "a thousand
operations against the PKK", became a proponent of a peaceful
solution. He declared that they will call on the PKK "to make
politics on the plains rather than fighting on the mountains"
and proposed a common market system consisting of Turkey, Iraq,
Azerbaijan and Georgia. This received a very negative reaction,
although some bourgeois journalists partially backed him. The change
in his mind is also attributed to his relations with the Fethullahist
capitalists who, because of their links with the US, see the strategic
importance of good relations with Kurdistan given the events in Iraq –
they need an alliance between Israel, Turkey and the Kurds to hold a
grip over the volatile region. Anyway, because of the coming elections,
he wouldn’t dare to speak too much on this issue.
AKP leader Erdoðan also began to use strong words against the PKK and
ignore the Kurdish Question, for the army could use it as a tactic
to lower the vote of AKP. The PKK officially ended its ceasefire
in June 2004(38) and a bombing killing 6 civilians in the centre of
Ankara created a strong reaction among the Turks. PKK leadership in
Iraq and also the legal wing of the Kurdish nationalist movement, DTP
(Democratic Society Party) denounced it, but it was probably done by
one of them, who exploded it at the wrong time – it was probably aimed
at Buyukanýt. The leadership in Europe did not denounce it and said
that we should look at the socio-political reasons behind it(39). On
the 12th of June 2007, the PKK announced a new ceasefire just after
Erdoðan’s call for an informal "security summit" to discuss tactics
against PKK.
The DTP is entering the elections together with independent candidates
to jump over the 10% required nationally to be in parliament(40). While
the AKP and RPP in the parliament passed new legislation to reduce
the number of independent MPs, the Kurds will quite likely have
to informally ally with AKP in the new parliament, which favours a
political solution to the Kurdish conflict instead of a purely military
one. The PKK’s new ceasefire was also partially aimed to debase the
criticisms against AKP concerning national security. Meanwhile the
Kurdish nationalist movement is competing also with Islamist currents
among the Kurds(41), which are supposedly linked to the Fethullahists.
The current anti-PKK discourse may cool down after the elections,
but it may also get stronger. The RPP moved to the right by including
famous right-wing candidates on its list. Meanwhile the ex-fascist
NAP made a long journey from extreme right to the centre right in
the last decade. A RPP-NAP coalition government could increase the
repression. We should note that this requires little effort: The AKP
government passed a very harsh "Anti-Terror Law", the notorious 301st
article, which punishes any behaviour against "Turkishness" and over
the last days new legislation enormously increased the rights of
the police.
Perspectives for the Left
The left is in a period of defeat. In the last year every
relatively big semi-legal left-wing organisation suffered from
police operations. The left in the universities is minimised by
investigations and fascist attacks. The left was not able to use
the anti-war impetus as a springboard, because it lacks a program
of struggle and oscillates between soft reformism and militant
marginalised positions. Only few organisations managed to grow or at
least keep their organisational structure. Their success is based
on their programmatic strength and/or their militant insistence to
create a base among the labouring masses. This success is also based
on their anti-democratic centralist structure, but this will turn
against them sooner or later (It has already become the source of
a counter-productive sectarianism). Anarchist communists should be
able to learn from the experience of every organisation whether it
is Leninist or not, whether it is successful or not.
The left should be able to formulate its tactics on class lines both
at the level of theory and slogans and at the level of practise. The
majority of the left tried to use unifying slogans in the anti-war
movement ostracising the Kurdish question. In contrast to that, it
emphasised solidarity with the minorities in the funeral of Hrant
Dink. In the first instance the silence about Kurds paved the way for
the manipulation of anti-US feelings by the army to target the Kurds.
In the second case, putting forward a moral anti-nationalist position
just helped the psychological operation of the army to increase
Turkish nationalism.
Most leftist organisations pointed to the false dichotomy between
the old-style republicans like the army and RPP, on the one side,
and neoliberal democrats like the business blocks and AKP on the
other side. Both sides favour the attacks against the working class
through neoliberal economic measures and repressive anti-union and
anti-left legislation. Likewise both have no real opposition to the
role of US imperialism in the Middle East. While the parties who
sided with the army in the last events were harshly criticised and
virtually ostracised by the currents in the radical left, critical
support to AKP liberals by reformists(42) and the socialist parties
allied with the Kurdish nationalist movement is not challenged. A
futile anti-fascism is emerging among the ranks of the non-Kemalist
left and this reduces it to a defence of liberal elites due to the
lack of a class-centred understanding of anti-fascism. Due to this,
it also ignores the fact that the foundations of more repressive
measures in the future are established by the AKP government itself.
The secularist/Islamist debate provides a barrier for the
prioritisation of more important issues like unemployment and the
low purchasing power of the working masses(43). What it conceals is
that both sides need each other. Therefore the Islamists in the state
apparatuses cannot reveal all the links between the state and illegal
organisations and the Kemalist elites cannot destroy the power of
religious sects. The main victims of these intra-elite frictions are
the women whose bodies have been the battleground for the debates
between moderniser males for more than a century. Tolerance to
and equality among religious beliefs can only be achieved by the
liquidation of class privileges and statist hierarchies. Without a
social revolution every bourgeois block will try to use any religion
to compete with other blocks of the ruling classes and to fight
against working class resistance. The left should not fall into any of
these two bourgeois categories and has to participate in the current
struggles and unite them on an anti-patriarchal and anti-elite basis.
The main practical problems are the lack of contact between the left
and the working masses and its sectarianism. The left could have had
a more correct position in these issues, but correct positions would
not help much, if one does not have ways to bring them to the people.
This can be achieved only by two ways: Firstly the left should have
a pivotal role in struggle for minor, but achievable, reforms and
understand that the most radical demand is not necessarily the most
useful one. Only then can we attract people. Unionisation struggles,
extra-union associations to organise workers and community associations
exist presently and they are important vehicles to reach this aim.
Secondly the cooperation among left-wing organisations should increase
and it should come from below and aim for clear objectives.
The present cooperation attempts are based on platforms of
representatives of organisations. This cooperation structure
proved to be very inefficient to do anything other than small press
declarations. This structure not only excludes the people in the
locality, but also the rank and file of the organisations from the
decision making structures. No wonder that the state propaganda
claiming that left-wing organisations are just using the innocent
people is very successful to marginalise the left. Is it not the time
to criticise ourselves rather than being only criticising the state?
Supplement on the elections
The general election of 22nd July was a determining event to change
the power struggles among the ruling blocs, because it was a test of
legitimacy for each of them. The obvious winner was AKP government
and the obvious loser is CHP (Republican People’s Party) and the
army. AKP got nearly half of all votes and the voter participation
was about 85%. Although some Islamists and liberals presented this
huge increase as "a civil memorandum" to the coup threats of the army,
probably it is related to the success of AKP to fill the empty space
in the centre right. Traditionally, the right wing parties got about
60-70 % of the vote and the left gets the rest.
In this election the nationalist MHP appeared too radical for most
voters and also too similar to the elitist "left"-Kemalism of RPP.
Also traditional centre right parties like DYP and ANAP got
incredibly discredited. Meanwhile the so-called left (RPP and DSP
bloc) was so much into nationalism that it forgot to propose any
socio-economic program for the working masses. Therefore, people
from all classes tended to vote for stability i.e. AKP. The MHP
managed to enter the parliament, but it got only 14 % compared to
18 % in 1999 elections. Since three rather than two parties managed
to get more than 10 % AKP lost seats, but the new parliament is more
AKP-friendly. RPP is almost isolated and even its ally DSP accepted
the popular legitimacy of AKP.
One reason for the softening of anti-AKP feelings is obviously the
fact that the Kurdish party, DTP, lost many votes to AKP. Technical
reasons like the low literacy rate among the Kurds who recognised the
party from its emblem, but cannot differentiate between the names of
many independent candidates had an effect. But the social reasons
are far more important. DTP lacks a definite program to define and
solve the Kurdish national question. It also lacks a socio-economic
program to satisfy the needs of the Kurdish masses. On the other hand,
the Kurdish territories were bases of Islamism in the early 80s and
therefore the success of AKP has deep roots in Kurdish society. An
Islamist commentator noted that the biggest religious sect in Turkey
i.e. Gulen sect made a very strong campaign for AKP.
The second man of AKP, Abdullah Gul, became quite peacefully the
new Turkish president. The next fights among the ruling blocs will
be around the new constitution. AKP will renew the constitution and
proposes to delete the references to Kemalism and Ataturkism. The
EU also advises to cancel the 301st article which protects
"Turkishness". But all of these debates should be seen as inter-elite
conflicts which do not have anything to give to the working class
and working class activists. Even if these liberal changes are made
we will still have the harsh anti-terror and police laws created by
the previous AKP government.
Meanwhile the attack on the working class continues. The public
employees were among the leading elements of the working class in the
first half of 1990s, but their bargaining process became a bureaucratic
fraudulency. Right now negotiations in many private sectors are stopped
due to the open attack of the bourgeoisie. Even the most bureaucratic
unions cannot accept these conditions easily.
The bourgeoisie imposes eventual de-unionisation and atomisation
to the working class and the union bureaucracy either surrenders
or "fights back" (of course for their privileges rather than the
interests of the working class). Without an organised wave from the
rank-and-file workers these attacks cannot be stopped. And we have
seen many positive examples of such a counter-attack recently around
the world and also in the history of the working class of Turkey.
Footnotes 1. ‘sui generis’ is a Latin expression, literally meaning
‘of its own kind’ or unique in its characteristics 2. The coup is
described in Turkish society as "post-modern", a term used to describe
the fact that it was a coup staged by the military but through the
Courts, not through a military uprising as usual.
3. Turkey’s army is the second biggest of NATO after the US Army.
4. A similar paradox existed in some of the old Arab
socialist-nationalist States like Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Algeria.
5. ‘Economic Change in Twentieth Century Turkey: Is the Glass more
than Half Full?’ Þevket Pamuk, Working Paper no.41, the American
University of Paris. Presentation of January 22nd, 2007.
6. During the Ottoman Empire generally the state had the supreme
authority on land. Only in regions like Kurdistan and Lebanon can we
see more feudalism-like social structures. The last tendencies toward
feudalism beginning in the 18th century were defeated in the early
19th century with the help of British imperialism who favoured a weak
Ottoman Empire instead of an entrepreneurial aristocracy. Therefore
big landowners in 20th century Turkey were capitalists rather than
feudal lords, except for in Northern Kurdistan.
7. Though they were greatly favoured by the economic model, they
understood the limits of it in the long term much better than the
State bureaucracy especially, and started a propaganda campaign
against ISI policies in the late ’70s.
8. Caðlar Keyder, "The Turkish Bell Jar" 9. Keyder, op.cit.
10. "La cuestion del fascismo en America Latina", Cuadernos Políticos,
Mexico, Ediciones ERA, núm. 18, octubre-diciembre, 1978, pp. 21-29.
11. Keyder, op.cit.
12. In Turkey, there’s a requirement that any party, to enter
Parliament, needs at least 10% of the national votes. This was designed
mainly to prevent the representation of radical minor parties,
but after the rise of the Kurdish national liberation movement in
1984 it became an obstacle for Kurdish parties to make it to the
Legislative body.
13. Keyder, op.cit. See as well, Pamuk, op.cit, pp.17-18 14. Anatolia
is a region in the centre of Turkey 15. Both parties had been banned
with the respective coups of 1971 and 1980.
16. These protests were called "Spring Actions".
17. Pamuk, op.cit, pp.19-20.
18. Truth Path Party, a right wing party.
19. The Susurluk accident was followed by a popular campaign called
"one minute darkness for permanent brightness". The people were turning
off their lights at 9 p.m. every day. When the army barracks also
began to do the same, they incorporated the movement easily through
the mass media.
20. Virtue 21. Contentment 22. Justice and Development Party 23. ANAP,
MHP and the DSP.
24. Inflation rates averaged around 80% in the 1990s and nearly 50%
in 2000.
25. Said-i Nursi was a Kurdish Muslim scholar who tried to synthesize
Western modernity and Islam, which had been tried by generations of
Ottoman intellectuals beginning from the 19th century. He withdrew
from politics during the Kemalist rule which excluded any idea
related to Islam from the political mainstream. He was a proponent
of jihad through propaganda of ideas, but also a public supporter of
anti-communism in the 50s during the reign of the DP.
26. He has schools not only in Turkey but around the whole world and
in the former State-Socialist countries they were probably aided by
US interests.
27. 22.an…ml#01
28. Though not of its leadership, that were keen to support the
invasion in spite of strong public opposition. Check Cihan Tuðal
"NATO’s Islamists" in the New Left Review 44, March-April 2007.
29. AKP did not include these MPs in its candidate lists for the
elections on the 22nd of July.
30. "Psychological operation" is actually an official term. In 2003
a newspaper – Radikal which is the left liberal newspaper in the big
Dogan media cartel which controls about 60 % of the press – published
the notes of the NSC meetings. There is a secret Psychological
Operation Bureau in the army 31. Probably the two main historical
sources of the "deep State" are the late Ottoman secret service
which also organised the massacres against Armenians and Greeks at
the demise of the empire, and the anti-communist Gladio network of
NATO which was revealed in European countries after the Cold War,
but continues to be untouched in Turkey 32. Called Jandarma Ýstihbarat
ve Terorle Mucadele, or JITEM.
33. This article was concluded on 18th June 2007, before the election
took place. See ‘Supplement’ below for an update on the post-election
situation.
34. Non-Kemalist is a better definition than Islamist to emphasise
the transformation of the AKP leadership.
35. Recently a controversial e-declaration was made calling people to
"show their mass reflexes against terrorism".
36. Recently there were rumours that the Turkish army had already
invaded Northern Iraq; though later proved false, they were enough
to send shivers all over the region.
37. The US is also probably waging a covert war against Iran through
the Iranian Wing of the PKK, called PEJAK.
38. Though since 2003 there was a new wave of attacks.
39. Another bomb attempt was recently discovered, probably targeting
the Minister of Defence.
40. In the western provinces at first they were to support the
independent candidates from the left, but this ended up in nothing.
41. There was a 100,000 strong meeting in Diyarbakýr protesting
the publication of caricatures of the Islamic prophet in a Danish
newspaper.
42. Like the FSP 43. A nation-wide survey from June 2006
concluded that these two have been the most important issues
both in 2002 and in 2006. At the same time more than 65 %
think that civil servants and university students can use
headscarves, while only 9 % wants an Islamic state. Source:
el/agun.html
This article Turkey: Modernisation, authoritarianism & political
islam is from Red & Black Revolution no13. Red & Black Revolution can
be obtained from the WSM Back issues including PDF files of previous
Red & Black Revolutions are on the WSM web site
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