Kemal Atatürk (1881-1938) had founded the Republic of Turkey in 1923 upon six principles: republicanism, laicism , reformism, nationalism, populism, and statism. Under the Kemalist regime the State was set free from the dominance of religion and religion was put under the control of the State. Especially the ideas of Republicanism, Laicism, and Reformism were made good use of by the Kemalist élite to oppress people of Islamic faith. The relationship between the oppressor and the oppressed generally involves both oppression and resistance. But the relationship between Kemalists and Islamists in Turkey, as we will see, does not only consists in that: they also tend to exploit each other to achieve their ends
Nationalism, Populism, and Statism, the other three principles upon which the Republic was established, are merely expressions of repression against various ethnic groups and nationalities, in particular Kurds who live within the national borders of Turkey, and against Turkish Cypriots who live in Northern Cyprus, occupied since 1974 by the Turkish army. It was the ruling Committee of Union and Progress that first put the Nation State's racist politics into practice during the First World War-the last period of the Ottoman Empire-by exterminating Armenian people in 1915, who were in substantial numbers mainly in the East and Northeast. "Estimates of the Armenians killed in the deportations and massacres of 1915-1916 range from a few hundred thousands to 1,500,000." When the Republic was founded, the Kemalist ruling élite inherited the same racist politics, and there were several uprisings and rebellions in Kurdistan, the most important of which are the Rebellion of Sheikh Said in 1925 and the Dersim Rebellion in 1938.
Unlike the Islamist movement, the Kurdish political movement, pioneered by Kurdish intellectuals, could not find any allies within the élite, and had to endure repression for many years. Only in the 1960s when the Turkish Left began to rise was it able to open up and express itself to a certain degree. In the 1970s, various Kurdish nationalist groups from different tendencies, not having found in the Turkish Leftist movement a platform on which they could declare their own cultural and national demands, separated from the Left and experienced an organisational preliminary period to assert their rights for independence or autonomy. One of these groups, the Workers' Party of Kurdistan (PKK), however, rather than attacking the Turkish State, began to eliminate rival Kurdish and Turkish organisations of the Left, and thus established its power base in the region and dominated the area by force. It is interesting to point out that the State ignored the PKK's actions and followed a policy of non-interference. The fact that the PKK and other groups were fighting and destroying each other did not matter much for the State.
With the military coup d'état of 12 September, 1980, the Generals tried to militarise the whole society. The aim of this Latin American type of coup d'état, which came later in Turkey than in some Latin American countries, where the militaries were retreating back to the barracks, was to gag the people. Did they achieve it? No. On the contrary, such an appalling atmosphere of oppression created among the people a feverish desire for freedom and democracy. The reason, therefore, for the collapse of the Turkish Left after the 1980s, which was dominated by Stalinism, should be attributed to this desire for freedom and democracy rather than to the military's attacks on the Left. It was inevitable that the Leftist organisations would lose their "charm" particularly in the eyes of Leftist people, considering that these organisations ignored and scorned the idea of freedom, individual initiative and organisational democracy, while they praised "the dictatorship of the proletariat" and "the vanguard party." This led to the emergence of anarchism, feminism and other currents such as libertarian socialism. The number of people who sympathised with such currents increased in the 1980s, particularly in big cultural centres such as Istanbul, Ankara, and ðzmir. Such ideals were favoured more than others, because the idea of freedom and individual initiative was important. Of course, there were differences between the big cities in western Turkey and the rural areas in Kurdistan in terms of what people felt and heard and what kind of existence they led. The general atmosphere of terror and repression together with the racist practices of the Turkish State made life extremely unbearable for the Kurdish people. In such circumstances, in which there was no alternative other than to support the PKK, the desire for freedom of the Kurdish masses was channelled into this organisation, where not a vestige of freedom could be found.
The PKK began its guerrilla war in the mid-1980s, when the military was still in power and the regime looked as powerful and intact as before. The Kurdish masses responded positively and gave active support to the PKK. The PKK found its most active supporters and followers among young people in rural areas who had no possibility of employment and lost all hopes in the future. The guerrilla warfare and the number of deaths on both sides reached their peak in the early 1990s, when the Turkish State decided to curb all the guerrillas, their followers, and supporters by counter-guerrilla war. The State organised its own Secret Gangs, backed by the Army, its own Secret Police and Gendarmerie to murder thousands of Kurdish people. Between 1990 and 1996 thousands of villages in the Southeast were either destroyed or burnt down. People were forced to leave their villages, and if they did not, they were brutally killed. Many "disappeared" and their murderers-Secret State Gangs' members-were sheltered and protected by the State itself. Despite all this, the guerrilla movement did not stop; on the contrary, it grew.
However, after the Susurluk scandal in 1996, the PKK leadership, which was under the influence of Yalç"n Küçük (a Stalinist writer and a supporter of Kemalism, who worked as an expert at the Institute of State Planning in the 1960s), seemed to believe that the military had shifted its policy and was now willing to give some concessions to the Kurdish guerrilla movement. The PKK henceforth sought to reach a compromise.
Until the Susurluk scandal, the Generals had been in close collaboration with the then ruling party (DYP) and the police in order to destroy the Kurdish guerrilla movement. But after the general election in 1995, this collaboration changed into a quarrel between the Generals leading the army and the DYP, because the DYP now engaged in a coalition with the Islamist RP. This angered the Generals. They blamed the DYP for all the failure of their bloody war against Kurds and for the murders committed by Secret State Gangs. The Susurluk scandal created an unmissable opportunity for the military to overthrow the DYP-RP coalition. (We have mentioned this "post-modernist coup d'état" above.)
The PKK still proceeds with its policy of compromise. However, army operations in the Kurdish regions near or over the Iraqi border have increased, and the PKK leadership seems to be disillusioned because of this, though they have not changed their idea of coming to an agreement. The army, on the other hand, seems as if it does not wish to end this war. It is obvious that the prolongation of the war on a certain level serves the army to pay its high debts, but most importantly, to determine the political life of the country. It is the young, the poor and the oppressed in Turkey and Kurdistan who perish everyday that pay the price of this bloody war. The fact is that the Turkish army tends to recruit its soldiers among the poor young people. The rich always avoid joining the army by "legal" ways and those who happen to join find their own ways (personal contacts with élite bureaucrats) not to go to the front. Many poor young people refuse to be part of this injustice and brutal savagery. There are more than 300,000 deserters in Turkey and this number seems to be on the increase.
Wars are the grave-diggers of revolution and they result in more despotic regimes for both sides. Even if wars may result in revolutions, in the last analysis they destroy them. (The First World War resulted in the Russian Revolution, but the Civil War destroyed it.) The war in Kurdistan not only militarises every cell of the society, but causes in the long term the complete paralysis of society as regards violence. It not only creates and feeds chauvinistic feelings among Turkish and Kurdish people, but helps an authoritarian sentiment spread, to the detriment of the cause of freedom. All this makes it necessary for us to be more active in the struggles to stop the war. The Turkish army must stop all its operations in Kurdistan. We have always been in support of the struggle of Kurdish people against the Nation State. This, however, does not mean we support nationalist and patriotic feelings of the oppressed people, nor does it mean we support the PKK, an organisation that wants to create its own State.
As Turkish and Kurdish anarchists we also oppose the colonialist policy of the Turkish State as well as its policy of assimilation, settlement, and forced immigration against Turkish Cypriots in Northern Cyprus. We believe that Turkish and Greek Cypriots can solve their own disputes among themselves without any outside intervention and without any manipulation in regard to this or that Cypriot government. The concept of nation is an imaginary concept often employed by ruling élites as the basis of their power structure as well as by aspirant cliques to deceive oppressed minorities. For this reason, we believe not in the so-called self-determination of an imaginary "nation," but in the self-government of voluntary individuals, groups and communities, working and unwaged people, etc.
It is crucial for Turkish, Kurdish, and Greek peoples to be in solidarity with each other against the expansionist and chauvinist policies of the Turkish and Greek States. It is, therefore, important to strengthen the existing links between Turkish, Greek, and Kurdish anarchists.
The people who live within the borders of Turkey have been under the dictatorship of the Kemalist élite for 75 years. The main principle of this dictatorship is called Statism that means domination rather than an economic form of governance by the State. The State continually interferes with our liberty: on the one hand, they say that women should not veil themselves, and on the other, they attempt to check whether female high school students are virgins or not. Everything is dominated by the State, including the media, labour unions, and some parts of the Left. The media is the most important and effective instrument of the present regime to brainwash people into accepting their traditional roles. People, whether they be political or not, are tortured systematically in many police stations and prisons. The patriarchal State indirectly justifies domestic violence against women and children. Workers and peasants are oppressed and exploited as long as the State exists. Poor people who flow day by day into the big cities because of the war in Kurdistan are in desperate situation.
Some of the Left such as the Worker Party (IP) have become organs of the State. Members of IP now carry Turkish flags in demonstrations and attack other organisations of the Left which are in opposition to them. IP also has relations with some factions of the fascist Grey Wolves. Another party, the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP), is a coalition of some Leftist factions. Although it fights against the State to defend democratic rights, it does not go beyond the confines of western democracy.
On the other hand, the radical Left, whose enemy is the Kemalist State, is unfortunately narrow-minded and cannot somehow rescue itself from the Stalinist tradition. According to each organisation of the radical Left, the revolution will only happen, if "the party of the proletariat" gains strength after strength. (There is no disagreement whatsoever among them with regard to this point.) It is ironic that there are so many so-called "parties of the proletariat" which are deadly enemies competing with each other for power. But only a revolution built upon the self-initiative of the masses and individuals and without these self-indulgent parties is likely to be successful.
The era of parties has ended. Even their members and followers agree on the fact that all parties are miniature versions of the tyrannical States and bureaucracies of the future. In this regard, what is dead is not only Marxism, but also liberalism, the creator of party systems. This also explains the new interest in anarchist ideas.
We have so far drawn a negative picture of Turkey. It should not be understood from what we have said that the society is under the total control of the State. Despite everything, people resist to the present regime in various ways and forms; and the parliament, the fig-leaf of the dictatorship, is losing its credibility in the eyes of people. In 1995, for example, Alevi people in the Gazi district of Istanbul spontaneously rebelled against the local authorities because of the murders committed by the secret police. There were violent clashes between the police and people for three days. 22 people died and many were injured. In this uprising Alevi people organised their own independent networks to fight against the authorities. Another example of self-organisation is the ecological resistance movement of the Bergama peasants and town people in the form of very creative and imaginative demonstrations against the gold mines run by the Eurogold Company. The Bergama people organised themselves on their own initiative and did not care what their so-called "leaders" said or did.
Nobody except for Bergama peasants and their creative minds could have thought of an illegal demonstration on the Bosphorus Bridge where hundreds of women and men protested half-naked against the government and the Eurogold Company. One of the most interesting aspects of this struggle is the spiritual driving force of the women involved who could neither read nor write. A third example is the Human Rights Association (IHD) that publicises tortures and "disappearances," despite all the attacks of the police and the media. (Its president, Ak"n Birdal, was recently seriously injured in an attempted assassination.) The significance of this organisation lies in its brave and uncompromising attitude against political prejudices and nationalist public hysteria. There are also the "Saturday Mothers" who come together ever Saturday in the Galatasaray avenue to ask for their "disappeared" children and relatives. The fight of Osman Murat Ülke, a conscientious objector and an activist from Izmir War Resisters (ISK), is also important, because Murat Ülke confronts the huge military machine as an individual and shows to everyone that the individual who has decided to resist is stronger than any weapon.
When we were preparing this paper for publication, another scandal occurred in Turkey: one of the most notorious Turkish mafia bosses, Alaaddin Çakici, was caught and arrested in Paris. On him was found a red passport-red passports are usually only given to high-ranking diplomats-given to him by the National Intelligence Service (MIT). It was also found out that before he was caught he exchanged several phone calls with two ministers of the present government of which the military is in control.
The Turkish State is involved in "dirty-work" jobs, including drug trafficking, without which the economy may collapse. It becomes clearer everyday that politicians, the MIT, the police and the military are working with the mafia; that some of the Turkish mafia bosses are even members of the MIT. It is known that Mahmut Yildirim (code-name "Green"), a mass murderer who is "looked for" by the police, will not be caught, because from the beginning he has been protected by the State.
Corruption goes hand in hand with expansionism. The State corruption is linked with the expansionist policies of the Turkish military. The Generals who are in collaboration with the US and Israel proudly declare that Turkish military forces have the power to occupy several parts of the Middle East, the Balkans, or Caucasio.
It would be best to bury the 75 year old Republic where it belongs, just next to the grave of the Ottoman Empire. Amen to that.