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The year 1960 marks a turning
point in modern Turkish history. The military coup d’état that took
place in that year would lead to two significant transformations in
Turkish politics: 1) the traditionalization (or institutionalization) of
the military’s role in politics and 2) the emergence of social
movement-based political movements and parties. |
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The work outlined below
focuses primarily upon this second characteristic of post-1960 Turkish
politics. In exploring the latter, the work analyzes four main political
movements or parties, each of which may be considered a social movement
in its own right: The leftist movement, the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP),
Political Islam, and the Kurdish national movement. |
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BOOK OUTLINE: |
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I - Introduction |
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II – The 1960s and the Rise of
the Leftist Movement (1961-1971) |
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III – Growing Pains of the
Left: Increasingly Fractured, Yet Gaining in Mass (1974-1980) |
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IV – The Rise of the Radical
Right: Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) (1969-1980) |
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V – Political Islam in a
Modernizing Turkey (1969-2002) |
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VI – Kurdish National Movement
(1969 - 1999) |
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VII - Conclusion |
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II |
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The 1960s and the Rise of the
Leftist Movement |
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The young soldiers who
overthrew the Democratic Party government on 27 May 1960 were probably
unaware that they were ushering in a new era in Turkish politics. Time,
however, would reveal this event to be one of the most important
breaking points in the political evolution of Turkey, with the new
constitution imposed by the military government that came to power
serving as the harbinger of a new era. |
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It was three developments that
took place after the subsequent transition to civilian rule, however,
which would serve as the harbinger of the rise of leftist and social
movements in Turkey over the following decade: 1) A group of leftist
intellectuals began publishing the magazine Yön (Direction) in
1961. A weekly periodical that would survive for six years, the magazine
would play a significant role in the spread of radical thoughts amongst
youth and intellectuals in Turkey. 2) In February of 1962, a group of
unionists founded the Workers Party of Turkey (Türkiye İşçi Partisi—TİP),
which would act as the core organization of the Turkish left for ten
years. 3) Finally, passage of the Unions Act and Law on Collective
Bargaining and Striking on 24 July 1963 would lead to the birth of a
union movement in the full sense of the word. |
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In the general elections of
1965, the only leftist party at the time, TİP, garnered fifteen seats in
Parliament, thereby seemingly successfully concluding the feud that had
been raging around the party’s claims to legitimacy since its inception.
Yet subsequent years would prove to be years of crisis for the Turkish
Left and TİP in particular. The party would be the stage for fierce
ideological clashes between the Stalinist “old left” and the radical
reformist TİP leadership. |
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The years 1968-1971 witnessed
an interesting paradox from the perspective of the Turkish Left and
social movements. On the one hand, these three years were a period of
decomposition for the left. However, the same period was also one of
significant growth in the country’s worker and student movements. An
original political youth organization, Dev-Genç, was a product of this
process. The union confederation (DİSK – Confederation of Workers’
Unions) founded by unionists of TİP in 1967 quickly became the unionist
organization of a generation of militant workers. The same confederation
spearheaded the huge worker demonstrations of 15 and 16 June 1970.
Meanwhile, during those same years, ideological and political struggles
raged within the army, and a radical coup d’état was expected to happen
at any moment. |
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On 9 March 1971, radical
soldiers suffer a sound defeat. On 12 March 1971, army commanders forced
the government to step down and seized control of the country’s
politics, but without disbanding the parliament. Under these new
conditions, the young revolutionary cadres undertook a guerilla movement
that was bound to be defeated. Within a few months time, several new
leftist organizations were formed. The left had become severely
splintered. The guerilla movement was violently suppressed. |
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However, the generals’ attacks
were aimed not only at the guerilla movement but at all leftist
intellectuals, TİP members, and directors and leaders of the workers’
movement. The sole party of the left, TİP, was then shut down in 1972.
Unionist activities were obstructed. Turkey would live under the rule of
a military dictatorship during which the parliament would continue its
so-called existence, until the general elections in October of 1973. |
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Turkey returned to civilian
rule following general elections in 1973. This date marked the end of an
era for the left and social movements as well. 1974 would mark the
beginning of a new era, different in many ways from that of the 1960s. |
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CHAPTER OUTLINE: |
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1-
27 May 1960
Military Coup d’état and the Onset of a New Era |
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2-
Two Major
Advancements for the Left: Yön (1961-1967) and TİP (1962-1971)
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3-
Emergence of
the Stalinist “Old Left” (1967) |
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4-
MDD (National
Democratic Revolution Movement): Kemalism or Stalinism? |
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5-
The new
Revolutionary Generation’s Organization: Dev-Genç (1969) |
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6-
The Rise of
Social Movements and Decomposition of the Left (1968-1971) |
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7-
The Coup d’état
of 12 March 1971: The Army Returns to the Stage of Turkish Politics
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8-
The Guerilla
Movement (1971-1972) |
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9-
Years of
Military Oppression and Conclusion of an Era (1971-1973)
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III |
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Growing Pains of the Left:
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Increasingly Fractured, Yet
Gaining in Mass (1974-1980) |
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The election of the new prime
minister in April of 1973 and the general elections held on 16 October
1973 were the milestones signifying Turkey’s return to civilian rule. As
an even further step, a coalition government of the central-leftist
party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi/Republican People’s Party—CHP) and the
political Islamist MSP was formed in January of 1974. This government
was then followed in April of 1975 by a coalition of right wing parties,
the Nationalist Front. The years 1974-1975 made it blatantly obvious
that what was at hand was the onset not just of civilian rule, but a
civilian rule in perpetual crisis. Even worse, the crisis would not be
restricted to the political sphere but impact the economic and social
spheres as well, as would become clear in a couple of years. |
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The left entered this new era
in a fractured state. Despite its fractured state, however, the left
still underwent swift growth, though this growth was accompanied by
increasingly violent ruptures within its ranks. This fractured state of
the left was three dimensional. First of all, the schisms of the late
1960s continued to impact the left for many years. Secondly, the
ideological clashes on the international level between the Soviet Union
and China reverberated intensely in the post-1974 Turkish Left. The
Albanian Labor Party that would emerge as a new ideological nucleus in
the international communist movement in a few years time would also be a
source of attraction for the Turkish Left. The third dimension of the
schisms within the Turkish Left meanwhile is of an ethnic nature. In the
post-1974 era, the Kurdish Left began to grow increasingly independent
of the Turkish Left, as socialists of Kurdish origin began splintering
off to form their own independent organizations, as if to mimic the
already fractured Turkish Left. |
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On the other hand, the left in
post-1974 Turkey spearheaded one of the most sophisticated unionist
movements in modern Turkish history. With over three hundred thousand
members, the country’s second confederation, DİSK (Confederation of
Revolutionary Worker Unions) comprised the nucleus of an intense
unionist struggle. Naturally this confederation also served as the
platform for competition amongst various leftist factions.
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Another weakness of the
Turkish Left during this period was the lack of intellectuals engaged in
the leftist movement, while the latter drowned in scholastic debate and
swiftly disintegrated. Intellectuals had tended towards radical politics
in the early 1960s, but with the dissolution of TİP and with
expectations of a radical military coup d’état coming to naught, they
eventually distanced themselves from politics. In the absence of a
strong intellectual presence, the left’s intellectual output during this
new era was predominantly on the shoulders of young militant leaders,
and therefore extremely insufficient and unproductive. |
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Another characteristic of the
Turkish Left during this period had to do with its organizational
structure. The most important leftist organizations of this period were
not really organizations in the real sense of the word. What we are
really talking about here are political movements formed around central
publications published by spontaneously formed (read: self-appointed)
leadership cadres. These movements are usually referred to by the names
of their publications (“Devrimci Yol”/“Revolutionary Path,” “Halkın
Kurtuluşu”/“The People’s Liberation,” “Kurtuluş”/“Liberation,” etc.).
None of them had any kind of constitution. The hierarchy within the
movement was completely arbitrary, the cadre of various levels was
always appointed from above, and occasionally those from lower echelons
rose to co-opt organs of the upper administration. Constitutional
structure, election of officials, accountability towards the base,
congresses… all of these concepts were absent from the vocabulary of a
leftist movement containing tens of thousands of militants and
sympathizers. On the other hand, nearly all leftist groups and their
circles spoke of the “formation of a proletariat party” that would lead
the revolution. Therefore, in each of these political movements an
evolution was taking place, albeit usually rather slowly, towards the
formation of an “organization” or “party.” |
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From a sociological
perspective, the left of this period is intriguing to say the least.
Very few groups or organizations were effectively active within the
working class. High school and university students and unemployed young
people from the villages and cities comprised the overwhelming majority
base of leftist organizations and movements. |
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The crises and schisms within
the left during the second half of the 1960s did not leave the left many
choices during this period of increasingly violent political struggles.
Violent (and armed) conflict between the left as a whole and extremist
right wing groups reached a stalemate as towards the close of the 1970s.
Only the formation of a real leftist political and organizational
alliance would make it possible for the left to successfully wage a
struggle against the extreme right while simultaneously leading the mass
movements on the rise at that time. However, at this point, the left was
basically devoid of potential in this regard, and so the 12 September
coup d’état, the oppression suffered by the left due to the coup d’état,
and the left’s consequent withdrawal from the country’s political stage
were virtually inevitable. |
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CHAPTER OUTLINE: |
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1- Rise of the Fractured Left
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2- Ideological Headquarters of
the Post-1974 Turkish Left: Moskova, Pekin, Tiran |
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3- The Emergence of an
Independent Kurdish Left |
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4- The Left and the Unionist
Movement: DİSK (Confederation of Revolutionary Worker Unions) |
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5- Withdrawal of Intellectuals
from Active Politics, or the Left’s Dearth of Intellectuals |
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6- Two Primary Organizational
Tendencies in the Post-1974 era: Party and “Movement” |
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7- Evolving from “Movements”
to “Parties”: The People’s Liberation (1975-1980), Liberation
(1976-1980) / The Revolutionary Path (1977-1980) / Turkish Communist
Party (1974-1980) |
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8- The Post-1974 Turkish Left
from a Sociological Perspective |
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9- 12 September 1980: The
Inevitable Coup d’état and Withdrawal of the Left from the Political
Stage in Turkey |
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IV |
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The Rise of the Radical Right:
Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) (1969-1980) |
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Before 1971, MHP (Nationalist
Movement Party) was a small political formation. The movement originally
made a name for itself with its armed militias –known as
“commandos”—that terrorized leftist university students in an effort to
break the latter’s dominance. MHP retreated from the political scene
during the semi-military rule of 1971-1973. A few years later, however,
they began what would be a swift political ascent, especially after
becoming a coalition partner to the “Nationalist Front” government in
April of 1975. |
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The mid-1970s saw the society
of Turkey entering a chronic socio-economic crisis. Ideological and
political polarization dominated in almost every sphere—except for the
armed forces. These conditions fostered growth not only in the radical
left, but in the radical right as well. |
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The MHP of 1974-1980 rose to
power as a fascist party similar to those of 1930s’ Europe. However, the
MHP of that particular era should also be considered within the
framework of cold war politics. The Turkey of the 1970s was a country in
which the left and workers’ party were on the rise and this phenomenon
was a source of concern not only for the bourgeoisie of Turkey, but for
the USA as well, determined as the latter was to impede the progress of
Soviet domination in the region. Taking these realities into
consideration, post-1975 MHP should be considered both an authentic
fascist movement on the rise under prevalent crisis conditions and a
product (and tool) of the conflict between the East and West blocs. And
keeping especially the latter in mind, it should not be forgotten that
the police forces, army, and state intelligence organizations not only
tolerated but also provided significant assistance to MHP and the
affiliated Idealist Associations (Ülkü Ocakları). The government
established by the central leftist party CHP in January 1978, and which
lasted until November 1979, weakened this tolerance and support to a
certain degree and therefore became one of the MHP militants’ main
targets. |
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MHP would go on to garner
three percent of the vote in the 1973 general elections, and then nearly
seven percent in the 1979 mid-term elections. However, the party’s
primary influence in the political atmosphere of the country lay not in
its election performance, but in its unique organizational structure,
which played a significant role in fomenting further violence in the
country. After 1974, the “commandos” of just a few years before had
become a huge network organization known as the “Idealist Associations.”
The “Idealist Associations,” which came to boast thousands of active
militants, can perhaps be best described as the MHP’s semi-militia. The
large majority of cases of violence resulting in the deaths of
approximately 5,000 people up until the coup d’état of 12 September 1980
can be traced back to this organization. |
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After 1974, MHP’s attacks
began targeting a much broader swath of society, for the left that MHP
had previously targeted with their terrorizing tactics was no longer
limited to militant leftist students, as had been the case before 1971.
The MHP militants’ targets were now not only leftist students at the
universities, but militants and sympathizers of local leftist
organizations in the ghettoes, members of various local organizations
controlled by leftists, and the militant unionist movement. |
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Unlike the coup d’état of 12
March 1971, the military coup d’état of 12 September 1980 declared its
intent to suppress only the radical left, but the radical right as well.
Thus following this coup d’état, a large number of MHP and Idealist
Associations militants and administrators were arrested, tried, and
imprisoned. There is no question, though, that the measures taken to
suppress the radical right are in no way comparable to the tremendous
oppression experienced by the left. However, the oppressive measures
taken by the 12 September 1980 putschists against the right wing
militants did lend weight to assertions that the generals assumed a
“Bonapartist” approach towards the left and the right. |
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MHP would not be squelched for
long though. Both the transition to civilian government in 1983 as well
as the Kurdish national movement, which gained in strength ad momentum
in the late 1980s, would pave the way for the MHP to rise again under
new conditions—conditions quite different from those of the 1970s. |
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CHAPTER OUTLINE: |
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1- Origins of MHP: The Radical
Right in Turkey |
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2- “Commando” Organizations as
Armed Militias and Their Activities (1969-1971) |
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3- The Military Coup d’état of
12 March 1971 and the (Temporary) Twilight of the Radical Right
(1971-1973) |
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4- MHP as a Coalition Partner
in the Nationalist Front Government (1975-1977) |
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5- Post-1974 MHP Politics:
Destabilization or “Civil War” Tactics? |
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6- The Sociological Base of
the MHP of the 1970s |
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7- MHP as a Product of the
Conflict between the East and West Bloc |
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8- The Military Coup d’état of
12 September 1980 and MHP |
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V |
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Political Islam in a
Modernizing Turkey (1969-2002) |
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Political Islam in Turkey
began playing a role in the political life of the country in the late
1960s. Necmettin Erbakan, historical leader of the Islamic movement,
spearheaded the founding of the National Order Party (Milli Nizam
Partisi—MNP) in 1969. Just as it may be considered the birth of
political Islam’s first legal organization, the establishment of this
party can also be viewed as a product of a fractured conservative or
dominant right wing political bloc in Turkey. |
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This initial organizing
venture on the part of political Islam would prove to be short-lived.
MNP would be shut down following the military coup d’état of 12 March
1971, sending Erbakan into self-imposed exile in Switzerland. Comrades
of Erbakan who remained in Turkey founded the National Salvation Party (Milli
Selamet Partisi—MSP) in October of 1972. Erbakan returned to Turkey
several months later and was made chairman of the MSP in October of
1973. |
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After trying out a short-lived
coalition with the central leftist CHP, the post-1975 MSP became
politically active predominantly as an element of the right wing in
Turkey. However, MSP’s relatively long-term coalition experiments with
right wing parties (AP and MHP) did not stop it from engaging in
important political competition with them as well. |
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Like all other political
parties, MSP was shut down by the military coup d’état of 12 September
1980 and its leaders were tried by a military tribunal. As with the
leaders of the other political parties, the leaders of MSP were
forbidden by law to engage in politics. However, despite such measures,
the Islamist movement can hardly be considered a significant target for
the 12 September 1980 regime. To the contrary, taking into consideration
developments following the military coup d’état, one could argue that
the coup d’état even worked to the Islamic movement’s advantage, playing
a positive role in its subsequent rise, for traditional right wing
parties lost respect due to the strict neo-liberal policies enforced by
the coup d’état, thus enabling the subsequent rise of political Islam in
Turkey. |
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Just as they had done ten
years earlier, in 1983 Erbakan’s comrades formed the Welfare Party (Refah
Partisi—RP) as a new Islamic party under Erbakan’s ideological
leadership. Erbakan would be made chairman of this party as well once
his political rights were reinstated in 1987. |
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In many respects, the rise of
political Islam after 1980 exhibits significant differences from the
evolution of this party in the 1960s and 1970s. The first difference is
in the character of the Islamic party. Whereas its predecessors the MNP
and MSP had each been a typical cadre party, RP would emerge as a
mass-based party in the true sense of the word, thus making it possible
for us to address political Islam as a bona fide social movement in
Turkey. The second important difference is that in this period, Islamic
thought came to possess a certain weight in the country’s intellectual
atmosphere which it had never possessed before (though it should be
noted that it would be wrong to describe this as the “intellectual
hegemony” of Islamic thought). |
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The years 1995-96 mark a high
point in the development of the Islamic movement in Turkey in every
respect. Refah emerged from the general elections of December 1995 as
the leading party and thus came to head the coalition government
established six months later. It would take a “post-modern” coup d’état
on 28 February 1997 to curtail any further ascent of the Islamic
movement. |
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The subsequent period
signifies the transformation of the Islamic movement from a mass-based
party and a social movement to a cadre-party. The first step of this
transformation was the expulsion of political Islam’s historical leader,
Necmettin Erbakan, from politics, and the split of the Welfare Party
into the Virtue Party/Fazilet Partisi (“traditionalist”/“orthodox”) and
the Justice and Development Party/Adalet Kalkınma Partisi
(“modernist”/“revisionist”). |
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The party that would come to
power with the elections of 2 December 2002, AKP, would therefore not be
a party of political Islam, but a product of that transformational
process. |
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CHAPTER OUTLINE: |
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1- Pioneer Party of Political
Islam in Turkey: MNP (1969-1971) |
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2- Political Islam Secures Its
Place in the Politics of Turkey: MSP (1972-1980) |
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3- From Cadre-Party to
Mass-Based Party: Refah Partisi/Welfare Party (1983) |
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4- Political Islam in Turkey
as a “Social Movement” |
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5- Islamic Intelligentsia:
Just How Hegemonic Is It? |
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6- Political Islam in Power:
The Welfare Party (RP) – True Path Party (DYP) Coalition (1996-1997) |
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7- A Post-Modern Coup d’état:
28 February 1997 |
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8- The Welfare Party Splits
into FP and AKP: Becoming an Institution, or the End of Political Islam
as a Social Movement |
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9- The General Elections of 2
December 2002: A New Phase in the Transformation of Political Islam
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VI |
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The Kurdish National Movement
(1969-1999) |
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The Kurdish question occupies
an important place in nearly every period of the modern history of the
Republic of Turkey. However, it should not be forgotten that the Kurdish
political movements of the 1920s and 1930s never went beyond local
uprisings in Eastern and Southeastern Anatolia. The Kurdish national
movement as a central element in the political life of the country is a
phenomenon that has come into being only over the last twenty years. And
that point was reached only via a long and grueling process that began
in the 1960s. |
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After 1960, Kurdish
intellectuals in Turkey faced two choices: The first choice was to
organize an independent Kurdish party in Turkey, inspired by the Barzani
movement that was putting forth an effective armed struggle in Northern
Iraq during those years. The Turkish Kurdistan Democrat Party (Türkiye
Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi—TKDP) illegally formed in 1965 was a product
of this preference. The second option meanwhile was to enter into
concrete cooperation with a Turkish socialist movement. Many leftist
Kurdish intellectuals chose this route and became part of the socialist
party of that time, TİP. |
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It was the disintegration of
TİP at the end of the decade that would pave the way for the formation
of an independent Kurdish left. Actually, the establishment of a network
of “Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Associations” (Devrimci
Doğu Kültür Ocakları)
in 1969 by the Young Kurdish socialists was already proof that a new era
was on the horizon in this regard. On the other hand, it should also be
added that the Kurdish left would grow increasingly independent of the
Turkish left in the 1970s, but that it would fail to become a holistic
political movement. Like the Turkish left of the same period, the
Kurdish left of these years was extremely splintered. |
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The coup d’état of 12
September 1980 was quite effective in dissipating the already fractured
left. Yet while the putchists succeeded in nearly obliterating the
Turkish left, they were not as successful when it came to squelching the
Kurdish national movement. The armed struggle initiated by the PKK in
1984 would usher the country into a state of “low intensity warfare”
that would continue for fifteen years. This period of armed struggle
simultaneously led to the establishment of new central organizations of
the Kurdish movement that would become active in the political plan: DEP,
HADEP, DEHAP, etc. are products of this process. Each Kurdish party
formed would be shut down within a few months or a few years time, but
by the time one was shut down, a new one would have been established,
thus ensuring continuity of the political struggle. The establishment
processes and evolutions of these legal parties are proof of the
stability of the Kurdish movement’s political unity. None of these
parties ever experienced any schisms. However, it should not be
forgotten that this ideological and organizational stability is not to
be equated with clarity in terms of a political program. A significant
lack of clarity is still characteristic of the political perspective of
the Kurdish movement today. |
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The armed struggle of the
Kurdish movement drew to a close when the leader of the movement,
Abdullah Öcalan, was handed over to Turkey by the USA. Though armed
struggle was occasionally employed thereafter, this event effectively
marked the end of the “low intensity warfare” that had characterized the
preceding period. |
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The struggle perpetuated by
legal Kurdish parties has made it possible for the Kurdish movement to
emerge as an important actor in local administrations, especially in
Eastern and Southeastern Turkey. Meanwhile, progress made in relations
with the European Union has presented new opportunities for the
effectiveness of the Kurdish movement in the political plan. On the
other hand, however, the topic of the European Union is also a tool of
the hegemonic struggle between the ruling AKP and the army. Therefore,
the opportunities in question are particularly fragile in nature. |
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The Iraq War marks a new phase
in the evolution of the Kurdish national movement in Turkey. The growing
autonomy of Kurds in Northern Iraq is inevitably influencing the Kurds
of Turkey, and has come to occupy an increasingly prominent place on the
latter’s agenda. However, it is still too early to speak of the
particular trajectory the currently unfolding process will take. We only
know for certain that the ultimate trajectory will be determined not
only by the future of Iraq, but by the outcome of the struggle between
the army and AKP for hegemony over the political plan of Turkey as well
as relations between Turkey and the EU. |
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CHAPTER OUTLINE: |
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1-
The Local
Uprisings of the 1920s and 1930s |
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2-
The Impact of
Barzani upon the Kurds of Turkey and the Turkish Kurdistan Democratic
Party (TKDP) (1965) |
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3-
Kurdish Leftist
Intellectuals Collaborate with the Turkish Left: TİP (1961-1971) |
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4-
Towards
Independence: DDKO (1969) |
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5-
Formation of an
Independent—but Fractured—Kurdish Left after 1974 |
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6-
Coup d’état
of 12 September 1980 and the Period Leading Up to Armed Struggle |
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7-
“Low Intensity
Warfare” (1990s) |
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8-
The USA’s New
Plans for the Middle East, the Capture of Abdullah Öcalan, and the End
of Kurdish Armed Struggle |
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9-
A New Phase in
Kurdish Political Struggle: The Occupation of Iraq and Its Aftermath
|
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About the Author: |
|
Ergun Aydınoğlu
(PhD, Strasbourg University) is a member of the faculty of the Yıldız
Teknik University Department of Political Science and International
Relations. His previous books are: |
|
Birlik mi Rekompozisyon mu?
(Together with
Demir Küçükaydın and Selçuk Eralp. Koral Yayınları, 1989)
|
|
Brezilya İşçi Partisi Deneyimi
(Interviews with leaders of the Brazilian Workers Party. Belge Yayınları,
1991) |
|
Türk Solu (1960-1971):
Eleştirel Bir Tarih Denemesi
(Belge Yayınları, 1992) |
|
Söylenmese de Olurdu
(Essays - Belge Yayınları, 1996) |
|
Türkiye Solu (1960-1980)
(forthcoming) |
