experienced a continuous agitation marked by numerous strikes with occupations, university struggles (teachers and students) putting forward demands and agitating on anti-imperialist themes. Turkey's participation in NATO, the eco nomie and military implantation of the United States, and the sharpness of the Cypriot struggle have always been the mobilisation points of the Turkish The revolutionary upsurge in the Middle East marked by the appearance of the Palestinian resistance has inspired a movement of international solidarity which has transcended the Islamic framework. One of the factors has been the realisation that U.S. bases in Turkey can act at any time as the starting point for an intervention in the entire region against any development of the revolutionary movement, as the Jordan crisis in September 1970 showed quite clearly. In addition, through its common frontier with the USSR, Turkey has a strategic interest of fundamental importance for E.S. imperialism. The Ottoman Empire, known not so long ago as the "Sick Man of the Middle East", the object of a colonialist carve-up even before World War I, is today reduced to Turkey, one of the pawns of imperialism, gateway to the Arab world.
From Kemalism to imperialist dependance The rise of the Arab nationalist movement and the dismantling of the Ottoman Empire finished after the 1914-18 War, allowing the Army, which had been defeated on various fronts, to direct itself to the seizure of power at bome. The Kemalist Revolution" attained its ends in 1923 and started Turkey on the road of Westernisation, thus fonnalising imperialist penetralion. By an anti-working class policy (prohibition of the Communist Party in 1923, abolition of the right to strike, etc.) and by oppression of national minorities, it sought to promote the mortgaged birth of a national bourgeoisie and to diminish the strength of rellgtous conservatism. That was the meal meaning of the "six point." programme of Kemalism: nationalismpopulism-statism seculurism republlcanism reformisni. Power was concentraled into the hands of the Kemalist PRP (People's Republican Party), the only legal party.
After the Second World War, chrough its Strategic position, Turkey attracled the designs of the Soviet bumaucracy to complete its surrounding baaks.
This Stalinist polley allowed the bourgeoisie to "justify" to the masses its total Involvement in the imperialist camp, as the sending of Turkish troops to Korea demonstrated (the last soldiers stationed there returned only a month agol.
The beterogeneity of che PR.P which included soldiers of petit bourgeois origin, land owners and government bureaucrats, indicated the inevitability of a split. The Democratie Party founded by ex-leaders of the PRP took the pro-imperialiss policy to it extreme when it came to power in 1950, Participation in the part in the struggle against revolutionary movements. The leadership engaged in a policy of endless self-criticism and threw up the slogan of a "millionaire in each district".
The result of the Bundung Conference, the success of Nasserism after the natlon alisation of the Suez Canal, and the Syrian-Egyptian Unity project, the coup d'etat of Kassem in Iraq in 1958 rekindled the ambitions of those elements in the army nostalgic for Kemalism. The army as the only alternative political force to the ultra-conservatism of the PRP took power away from it on May 27th 1960, and put In Its place the Adnan Menderes dietatorship.
THE SHARPENING STRUGGLE TODAY (1960-70)
Imperialist penetration Today Turkey is one of the most important imperialist positions in the region. Of course, U.S. Imperialism is dominant, but it is associated with the economic presence of West Germany (pharmaceutical industry, Mercedes), and of Great Britain. The U.S. Army occupies bases in the Black Sea (Samsun, Trabzum), Aegean Sea and Mediterranean (Izmir, Adana and Karamursel near Istanbul).
The ruling party (Justice Party-AP) and all the right wing parties are in the pay of imperinlism. The CIA is one of the mechanisms by which the state rules Turkey. The foreign debt of Turkey increased in September 1967 to 1.8 thousand million dollars while foreign capital in Turkey grew from 65 million Turkish pounds in 1958 to 500,000 million in 1966.
Cultural repression is one of the bases of power too. Out of a total of 40% literates, 90% are peasants, and 13,000 villages are still and has linked itself with the student movement.
In June 1970 the Government wanted to pass through an anti-working class law banning DISK. The response was overwhelming: 100,000 wotkers demonstrated and clashed violently against the forces of bourgeois order. The workers' leaders were outflanked in the face of initiatives from the base (setting up of defence committees) which transcended their legalistic practice. The continuing deterioration of buying power (66.6% devalaation of the Turkish pound in August 1970), the banning of strikes by state employees, the mactionary policy aimed at creuting fascist groups, in assassinating workers and students' leaders, raises up an opposition today even inside the Army. Sixty-nine Turkish officers sent u statement to the newspupers in which they complain about the immunity which the fascists enjoy, condemning in severe lerms the acts of terrorism of the extreme right and openly defending the progressive student elements.
The countryside where three-quarters of the Turkish population lives (35 million) is not free from struggles. Some of the land of the latifundists has been occupled and clashes have taken place with the police and army, The deepness of the crisis and the absence of a zanguard party The reformism of the Turkish Workers Party. the weakness of the Turkish Communist Party solucion to a crisis which has lasted for nearly 10 years. Outside of this opposition there exist In Turkey some vanguard nuclei, some of whom snatch at the theory of the "bloc of four classes", Today, faced with the constant rise of cluss struggles, the construction of the revolutonary party is the task of prime importance for Turkish revolutionaries. Some comrades are engaged in this process.
The sharpness of the crisis and the inability of the government to deal with it increases the danger of u militury coup d'etat which would be a brake on the radicalisation of the masses. The strategic importance of the region may lead imperialism to intervene directly or indirectly to halt the revolutionary upsurge in Turkey, which through its particularity has suffered little from the setback to the revolutionary struggle in the region brought about by the defeat suffered by the Palestinian resistance in September 1970. But the present selback of the revolutionary forces in the Middle East could have serious consequences in Turkey as well, After the crisis of September 1970, U.S. imperialism has restarted its arms supplies to Turkey. Thus faced by the interationalisation of the struggle, revolutionaries must work at the junction of the contres of struggle in the region.
Dore with imperialism and its lackeys For the joining up of the different fronts of struggles in the Middle Bast!
Mayol-Erika