Tuesday 16th June saw the first organised trade union demonstration in Turkey's history against government legislation aimed at curbing the growing power of trade unions in the industrial cities and towns of what. « is still a backward country economically, politically and socially.
Over 100,000 workers are estimated to have fought with police and troops in the streets of Istanbul and other major industrial cities, The issue was the proposed legislation before Parliament which aims to outlaw Devrimci Iggi Sendikalari Konfederasyonu (Revolutionary Workers' Trade Union Confederation) - known as D.I.8.K.
The troops were called_in because the workers had threatened to defeat the police and in one place, Kadikty (on the Asian side of the Bosporus) had put the police to flight, overturned the vehicles to form barricades, satked the administrative building and had only been defeated by troops armed with automatic weapons and backed up with tanks.
Other places in Istanbul where clashes cccurred included Levent (where there is a large industrial estate), Galata K8priisti, Ataturk KUpriisti, Topkapi, Bakirkty, Cagaloglu, all on the European (Rumeli) side; and Kuzguncuk, Umraniye, Usktidar and Kartal on the Asian side (Anadolu) of the Bosporus.
By far the most serious clash occurred at Kadik8y, but so widespread was the demonstration, which turned into a riot when police intervened brutally, that the authorities suspended the ferryboat service across the Bosporus and opened the Ataturk and Galata Bridges across the Golden Horn thus effectively dividing the city into three, and preventing workers from further co-ordinating the struggle.
It is reported that at a later stage, before the Army was called in and when the police were calling for reinforcements that at Emin8ni riot police refused to go into action because they were vastly outnumbered by the workers who were obviously ready to fight.
The Army was called in, Police had been firing indiscriminately into the body of the demonstration, inflaming the workers to the point where, in spite of the hail of bullets they charged the police ranks and overcame them. The Army using tanks soon had the demonstrators "under control”,
One estimate, on good authority, was at least 23 workers killed, and at least 300 injured. Official figures: two workers and one policeman killed, a 100 injured.
Martial law was declared and a curfew imposed. Leaders of D.I.S.K. have been arrested and although the calling of the demonstrations was quite legal under Turkish law they are now being tried before a military court. Martial law was declared after the demonstration - at 9 p.m. Tuesday.
There are 1,300,000 trade unionists in Turkey. There are two Confed~ erations, TURK-1§ (pronounced Turk-ish) and D.1.8.K. (as written). TURK-I§ has a membership of 800,000 and is government-sponsored. D.1I.5.K. has a membership of 50,000 and is independent.
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Federations are organised according to industries. Under existing law you can organise a union in an industry and join a confederation of your choice. Law 274 permits trade unions to combine in Federations.
The proposed alter-ation to it is that before a Federation in a particular industry can be recognised it must have one-third of the members of that industry as its members.
Federations can then be organised into Confederations. Under existing law 275, any Federation in a particular industry without reference to percentage of the total workers in that industry can join a Confederation of its choice.
The proposed change to law 275 is that only recognised Federations (as defined in amended law 274, with one-third of the members of that industry) ean become affiliated to a Confederation.
There would only be one Confederation that can qualify under the. new law; TURK~I§.
The government ruling party (ADALET) and the main opposition party (HALK CUMHURIYET) ere in favour of the changes in the law. They claim these changes are necessary to "protect workers from unscrupulous gangsterorganisers",
It is a fact that most of the racketeering unions are known to be affil-~ lated to TURK-I5, which is government~sponsored and controlled. They are known as ‘yellow unions’ because they are paternalistic and approved by the government. The change in the law will not stop racketeering; it may even encourage it, It will certainly outlaw the militant unions organised in the smaller Gonfederation, D.I.S.K.
It is generally agreed among all shades of opinion in Turkey that the real aim of this new law is to outlaw D.I.S.K. whose power and influence among workers with real grievances appears to be growing fast.
That the Demirel government was prepared to take the step of provoking these riots, which cannot have been entirely unexpected as a reaction by the government in Ankara, is a measure of the panic they (the goverment ) must feel at the growth of an organised revolutionary opposition in the main industrial cities and towns of Turkey.
: Istanbul, in common with other industrial cities, is growing at a tremendous rate. The majority of workers are first-generation proletarians, having moved into the city from the countryside in search of a higher standard of living than the abysmal poverty that generations have passively accepted in the East. Thus in Istanbul and other industrial towns and cities the situation of the majority of workers is similar, in some respects, to that of immigrant workers in Britein. They are referred to by the tradi-~ tional city-dwellers - sophisticated middle-class ~ as "animals", and are supposed not to be able to think for themselves. Because they are "animals" they are treated with a similar degree of viciousness and intolerance as Commonwealth citizens in Britain; not for reasons of colour or race so much, but mainly because they are regarded as “inferior animals"
There is no doubt about the tension felt among the bourgeoisie in Turkey, This ruling class, until now so complacent, so overfed and so 19th-century in its undisguised aggression is now sniffing the air ner~ vously, scenting "the animals" who are no longer willing to be domesticated without a snarl and without biting the hand that represses.
The question remains ‘Why did the Demirel government take this action at this time?’ It is possible that they think -. and they may be proved right in the short-term - that they have nipped the movement in the bud.and that martial law eventually backed up by legislation outlawing all but ‘yeliow' unions would serve their purposes in keeping the working class isolated in units of production and incapable of organising effective oppo~ sition due to harrassment, since such organisation would be illegal.
However, at the present moment it is just as possible that the Demirel government has over-estimated the usefulness of the Army as a substitute for political concensus and that the workers. of Istanbul may yet stage a comeback. In which case it is to be hoped that the workers of Istanbul have learned sone lessons from their defeat of Tuesday 16th June.
A banner carried by a worker on the Tuesday demonstration contains the key to a change in the present deadlock, “Workers and soldiers hand-inhand". ("Iggi ordu elele").
An eye-witness reported seeing a worker at + Bninom, when threatened by a soldier wielding a rifle with a fixed bayonet, bare his chest and Challenge the soldier to kill him. The soldier drew back, confused. He had been ordered to clear "communists" from the streets, (he has been taught from childhood to hate and fear “communism") but not fellow-countrymen from Anatolia! The worker is first-generation, from the same region as the soldier, and is obviously not a "communist" from over the hill.
‘After martial law was imposed we heard that many workers were fighting a rearguard action by sitting at machines and refusing to work. Unfortunately it is difficult to assess how widespread resistance is, but there is a runour that D.I.S.K. is pushing for a general strike. However, with the principal organisers either on trial or in prison awaiting trial before a military court it is probably a rumour without possibilities of realisation at the present time. (The military authorities argue that they have jurisdiction to try the leaders of D.I.8.K. because the riot which made martial law necessary was obviously the fault of the D.I.S.K. organisers. They are particularly concerned thet the workers should not be tried before a sivil judge, since the judiciary in Turkey is notoriously independent!)
Turkey's estimated population is about 32,000,000. Of these about five or six million are workers. Of these only 1,300,000 are in trade unions and now D.1.S.K. members will either have to belong to a union in TURK-I§ ~ the "pudding club" Confederation = or no union at all.
The overwhelming majority of the population are peasants. They are apathetic, live in incredible poverty and are very conservative, supplying the main electoral support of the ruling Adalet Party (Justice Party). They are fanatical believers in Mahomet, and fanatical opponents of
"communism",
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For at least 20 years now there has been some sort of agreement between America and Turkey regarding Turkey's strategic proximity to the Soviet Union. Turkey's bourgeoisie (maybe without good reason) fears the nearness of the Soviet Union as a threat to its existence and until recently has been only too pleased to permit American military presence on some scale here. But within the last two or three years this American presence has become _ very unpopular, not only with the working class but with significant numbers of the middle and upper classes who have a love~hate relationship. with America, {as do other European powers).
Turkey, however, cannot entirely do without American help in guarding . against the "communist menace" from without and WITHIN. Turkey has had massive American aid for military appropriations, most of the jeeps, lorries, guns and tanks are American supplied or bought with American "loans",
The Turkish government would like to be able to man the bases now operated by the Americans, but the backward economy of Turkey cannot support this transition. Thus when the Turkish government echoes popular feeling publicly in naming a date for American withdrawal from commitment in Turkey, in private they are only too anxious to point out to the Americans that they cannot possibly afford to keep up the sophisticated apparatus which the Americans have evolved to "protect" Turkey's borders.
The Turkish Army is conscripted and most of the adult male population has been, will be, or are in the Army or on reserve from the Army. Again since the majority of the population ere still peasants, the Army is largely & peasant-conscript Army, having little or no sympathy for the sophisticated ideas expressed by militant workers who want to organise their om : trade unions {an incomprehensible idea to a peasant) and who earn far more than the farmers and peasants of Anatolia.
However, nany officers are thinking about the excessively narrow and repressive society they find themselves helping to bolster and there are junior officers ~ how many is hard to say - who have great sympathy for the workers involved in the recent demonstration and are concerned about the government's attack on constitutional rights. Up till now it has beon legel to join a union of your choice, to form your own union and to organise your own Federation.
Most people in Istanbul sre surprised when asked what the ordinary soldier thinks. “The ordinary soldier doesn't think" they say.
Until last week the same people would have told us: "The ordinary — worker doesn't think". In faot many of them still believe the workers are being led astray by subversive elements, and, in flagrant contradiction of that theory, by "gangsters" who operate unions like the American “protection” unions.
It is inevitable that people with various revolutionary political. convictions are involved in trying to influence the workers. It is possible that some people have attempted to, or succeeded in organising wnions by terrorising some workers, but it is difficult to believe that 100,000 workers in Istanbul alone (and, according to reports, smaller numbers in Ankara and other industrial cities and towns) will face up to troops and
tanks bocause they are "threatened" by "gangsters".
The anomaly of a membership of 50,000 workers in D,I.8.K. and the fer greater numbers who demonstrated against the proposed repressive legislation is explained by right-wingers as "fear of the gangsters who threatened workers who were members of TURK-I§ and people who weren't in trade unions at all that if they didn't demonstrate they would be beaten up," and by sympathisers of the demonstrators by the fact that many workers who weren't in trade unions or were members of TURK-I§ were so incensed by the government's proposals that they came out in sympathy.
One factory-owner when asked if his workers were in a union said: "Oh, my workers aren*t in a trade union; we believe there must be only one authority in a factory," but he admitted that his workers “went home" on the day of the demonstration, The majority of non-union firms were closed on the Tuesday of the protest. Many workers joined the demonstration,. many went home. A lot of menbers of TURK~I§ ~- the "pudding club" Confederation
In Istanbul at present - the largest industrial camplex in Turkey and a city which attracts many tourists ~ there is martial lew, and no doubt under cover of military rule the authorities are doing their best to weed out any elements likely to cause "trouble,"
4 curfew which was in force at 9 p.m. for two days, ten p.m. for another, 12 midnight for two more, and finally one p.m. was finally lifted when it was found to be more inoonvenient to the night-life of the bourgeoisie and tourists than it was effective in keeping workers behind-closed doors. So many people wandered about after the curfew thinking it didn't apply to themselves that the military must have despaired.
When martial law is declared revolutionaries kmow that workers have pushed the bourgeoisie beyond the usual liberal "checks and balances",
By a series of decrees in the 'twenties and 'thirties Kemal Ataturk, the despotic benevolent dictator of modern Turkey established a remarkable hotch-potch embodied in the present law and constitution, which the Demirel government is now accused by many of attempting to circumvent. Among other things, Ataturk established the legal system basing it upon the French legal code, the judiciary became an independent body and has recently been a thorn in the flesh of the government, often refusing to condemn political demonstrators on legal technicalities. The Constitution also, apparently, contains written guarantees of the right to organise trade unions, the right to free speech and freedom of association, all ideas borrowed from the West and, in Turkey, imposed by Ataturk in a series of decrees, a remarkable example of victory without struggle. But, of course, the workers are just beginning to test the viability in reality of a constitution embodying ideas which were foreign to this backward agricultural country just recovering from the collapse of the Ottoman Empire. In fact, Turkey's economic development depends decisively on outside help; it is impossible for the country to. develop rapidly without help. At present Turkey is strangled with trade agreements of a disadvantageous nature. os ,
It is possible that the Denirel goverment, seeing the growing organised power of the workers here, decided to force the issue once and for all. But. it is just as likely that they have not yet learned the lesson that Western European governments have now learned by heart, especially in Britain and Sweden, that they must learn to live with workers organisations, espe~ cially trade unions, and attempt at all costs to take them over and use them to control the workers. This idea is not working in Turkey et present because the Demirel government have been too crude, perhaps because they still feel contemptuous of the workers' real ability to "oome-back" and retaliate. . .
The thoroughness and naked force used, first by the police and then by the Army to put down this demonstration compares with Peterloo and 1905 in Russia. That it has not been noticed throughout the world is an indication of the over-faniliarisation of jaded tele-palates with continuous global violence. Unlike Peterloo and 1905; the recent demonstration in Turkey was a case of workers demonstrating to retain rights alrea:
anted by law and threatened by new legislation (an interesting parallel orth recent suggested legislation in Britain).
Modern industrial technology is coming to Turkey, imported by some wealthy Turkish businessmen, but more often exported by American~European combines. Forced by modern technological innovation to organise faster than their fore-runners in Europe and America, the members of the Revolu~ tionary Workers’ Trade Union Confederation have rapidly acquired as
sophisticated an understanding of tactics in modern industrial warfare as any workers in the world with the added advantage that they do not suffer from the *hang-ups' of modern industrial workers in Western Burope,
especially Britein. They have less to lose, in their own eyes. They do not easily identify their interests as the ‘state’ interests or ‘bourgeois’ interests. They have not been brainwashed by centuries of "democracy", of trade union affiliation to reformist "sell-out" politics, They are ready to struggle and struggle bitterly. When they grow strong enough may we hope that they will find their Western European counterparts as ready, willing and as eager - as clear headed as they already show signs of being?
Tuesday 16th June was no idle skirmish in Turkey. Not only Istanbul but Ankara, Izmir and every industrial city was involved. Bitter feelings have been aroused. People who are working from dawn to dusk for incredibly low wages by Western standards and who have just become aware of their power through trade union organisation are threatered with the reality of the power of the bourgeoisie invested in the government and executed by the police, and when they fail, the military.
Banners displayed during the demonstration included the following: "We are protesting for our freedom and we are powerfull", "We are against those who are taking trade union freedom from us and our constitutional rights".
Now the military rule effectively prevents a ccherent report of workers reactions to this defeat. The leaders of D.I.8.K. are in prison or on trial. at this moment we are not certain of the charges and to some extent what these charges are is an academic question. The reality is that D.I.5.K. is beheaded and the question is - now that D.I.5.K. has effectively been out-
lawed, how many workers will be prepared to risk imprisonment and possibly Geath in joining an illegal, underground organisation ~ as is almost certain to spring up among the hard-core survivors of the revolutionary Confederation.
No clear answers to these questions are available at present but it is very clear that the ruling class in Turkey fears the power of a working class which is only about one-fifth of the total population, because of a minority ° of that class who have begun to demonstrate their ability and understanding in organising effectively against the Turkish boss class, showing signs of posing clearly~defined revolutionary objectives.
These objectives include worker's power (workers control through Workers Councils). It can be argued that this would not happen in an “edvanced” country like Britain. That the ruling class is’much more subtle and infinitely more sophisticated.
But there have been occasions even in the comparatively recent past | when the British ruling class has either let the mask slip or had it, albeit momentarily, torn from its grisly face. Troops are in Northern Ireland in some numbers and although the British papers never tire of telling us that the "background" to these "troubles" is religious bigotry we know that the - objective factor is economic and political discrimination.
If an independent revolutionary organisation were begun by workers in . Britain and other European countries with clearly«defined revolutionary ains, rooted in working class organisations and with working class procedures and traditions of democratic control and concensus clearly embodied in its. constitutional procedures and practice; independent of all bourgeois and petit-bourgeois influences; who could be sure that such an organisation could continue long in the climate of the Britain of "In Place of Strife" and proposed Tory~government anti-trade union legislation without a confronta~ tion with the last resort of the repressive state?
Obviously there is a crying need for such a workers revolutionary organisation, across Europe; across the World, But in the absence of a revolutionary international workers-controlled organisation to co-ordinate and clarify such struggles they will always be defeated in isolation by the "last resort", the Army of the particular state involved in a "dispute" with its working class. Until that "last resort" can be subverted or overcome by greater fluidity and subtler tactics on an international scale.
Events like the recent workers massive demonstration and riots in Turkey are not divorced from the frantic attempts by Western capitalist governnents to attempt to "tame" their unions, nor from periodic clashes 7 in Russia and China (of which news seeps out in distorted form from time to time).
We always tend to end our articles with an exhortation to revolutionary endeavour, but in all seriousness we should consider carefully where our efforts are leading us and whether we are yet on the right path, without a significant section of the Western working class convinced of their vital need to abolish their oppression by the boss class in the only possible way.
The reason the movement in Turkey is so important is just that the Turkish working class ~ or an important element in it - have no illusions
about the need to overthrow the power of the ruling class by revolution. But in isolation their efforts are doomed to either complete failure or stagnation in a stillborn effort + a kind of “halfway” revolution which might successfully overthrow the present ruling class but would most likely lead to stratification into another bourgoois coutralised Stalinist-type set up, all too familiar in Eastern Burope, Russia and China.
Yet the possibilities if such a revolution were linked to outside endeavours (even as close as Greece) would become very exciting and not at all ridiculous.
For many years grcece has been staving off revolution. She was ably assisted as far back as the Yalta agreement when Churchill and Stalin (Roosevelt didn't count!) carved up the world between the two power blocs - East and West. Greece was agreed to be in the Western sphere of influence, specifically the British sphere of influence, and so Stalin smiled while Greek communists were slaughtered with British military assistance. Revolution in Greece - since the struggle was isolated - was effectively defeated. Similar revolutionary possibilities were contained and defeated in France and Italy.
Now, however, and once again, the ruling class throughout Europe and in America is on the defensive. (How many times this century?) ‘The only reason they can continue to outflank their respective working classes is the lack of an effectively co-ordinated and imaginatively~dynamic revolu= tionary international workers organisation, with ideas radically rethought in the light of the stultifying experience of the last 50-odd years.
Until we seriously work for and get this new genuine international of workers with reel revolutionary intentions, such struggles as those of the Greek workers and the Turkish workers will continue indefinitely without hope, for they will always be crushed with the help of powerful Western Capitalist nations, particularly Britain and America, and with the indifference of the Eastern bureaucracies of Russia and China.
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