Contribution of the Communist Party of Turkey

STRUGGLE AGAINST FASCISM IN TURKEY European Communist Action Conference

11th May 2024 - Madrid

In the history of the modern Turkey, the fascist movement and the anti-fascist struggle have particularly made a significant impact during the years of the Cold War. Fascism in Turkey was basically structured and used as a paramilitary force by the ruling class and imperialism against communists, revolutionaries and the working class.

The history of the beginning of the organization of fascist ideology in Turkey can be traced back to the years of World War II. In this period, when Turkist/racist ideas were combined with the general framework of international fascist ideology, Turkish fascists organized with the support of the Nazis. When the defeat of the Nazis became certain, The Turkish government rushed anxiously to conceal its covert support to the Nazis during the war and tried to intimidate the leaders of the Turkish fascist movement, which had been embroiled with Nazi support, through the so-called 1944 racism/Turanism trial. The repression and paralyzation of the communists, the deprivation of the working class of all possible organization since the first years of the Republic prevented the anti-fascist struggle from popularization under conditions where the one-party power avoided taking open sides in the war and remained officially “neutral”. Anti-fascism remained a political position that was largely represented by progressive intellectuals in this period.  During the war years, hostility against the Soviet Union, the epicenter of anti-fascist struggle, gained strength within the Turkish ruling class, who played a balancing game between Britain and Germany. As  soon as the war was over, Turkish bourgeoisie made collaboration with the United States and hostility towards the Soviets its official policy. Seizing upon this, Turkish fascists gave the first signals of their mission in the near future by assaulting the printing press of the Tan, a leftist and Soviet sympathizer newspaper, on December 4, 1945.

It is known that after Turkey’s accession to NATO in 1952, it has fully become an outpost of imperialist camp. The need for the fascist movement as an anti-communist striking force arose in the 1960s, when the working class movement and the leftist forces were on the rise.  In this period, Turkic fascism fortified itself through Islamism and that religious and nationalist propaganda tried to block the left with an anti-communist content. The National Turkish Students' Union (MTTB), a fascist organization in which Islamists are active, was used as a street force against revolutionary students in the period of 1969-1970 and carried out massacres such as Bloody Sunday. Considering that Bloody Sunday was organized against the youth protesting the visit of the U.S. 6th Fleet to Turkey, the mission of the organization becomes evident.

In the 1970s, we observe the institutionalization of fascism within the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) and the Grey Wolves, as a paramilitary structure. As the youth branch of the fascist movement, the Grey Wolves also took on the organization of drug and arms trafficking operations. In these years, the MHP, which became the key instrument of the United States and the Gladio against the revolutionary forces, carried out bloody massacres and political killings from 1977 onwards. In line with its mission, it rapidly expanded its base by aligning with Turkish right-wingers.  It organized especially the poor youth in the countryside. The MHP created a herd of murderers by using young people who were indoctrinated against communism, with religious and racist ideas. The massacres in Bahçelievler, Beyazıt, Çorum and Maraş which were organized against revolutionary youth, intellectuals and Alevi community between 1978-80 were a precursor for the change of political balances in Turkey in favor of capitalist system. The revolutionary movement was incapable of effectively intervening against the fascist movement, centrally organized and financed by the ruling class. This incapability was largely based on the strategy of “gradual transition to socialism” (i.e. prioritizing democratization and “completion of the bourgeois revolution” programmatically), which influenced all sections of the left. The support given by the DISK (Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions of Turkey) and various revolutionary forces to CHP (Republican People’s Party) against the Nationalist Front governments in the 1977 general elections was a result of this stagist strategy.

Moreover, the detachment of the united front discussions of the Comintern from its historical context also created a weakness in the struggle against the fascist movement. During a period when the working class was most organized, the left gained overwhelming legitimacy in the society, and a revolutionary crisis in modern history was closest, the revolutionaries in Turkey have wasted time and distanced themselves from their main tasks by focusing on a field war against the street power of the system instead of strategies aimed at overthrowing the capitalist system as a whole. Due to these weaknesses of the left, when the 1980 coup d'état came, large sections of the society acknowledged it as a proper intervention for “stopping the brotherly fight”.

The 1980 fascist coup d'état also meant a partial blow to the fascist movement, but civil fascist movement continued to remain in reserve, ready to be utilized for the capitalist system’s nefarious schemes. On the other hand, the Turkish bourgeoisie was preparing for a massive attack and therefore the organizations of the left and working class had to be completely destroyed. Knowing that repression and violence would not be enough for this, the junta made the so-called Turkish-Islamic synthesis an official ideology.  By opening space for Islamism and nationalism, they prepared the ground for the organization of religious sects and the nationalist mafia in the area emptied by the left.  From this period, Fethullah Gülen Sect, which was the most powerful religious sect, rapidly expanded both its organization within the state and its means for accumulating wealth. By the 1990s, fascist militants of the 1970s were not only running the state's drug and arms trafficking as the nationalist mafia, but they were also being hailed as heroes for assassinating Kurdish intellectuals on behalf of the state.  

By the end of the 1990s, the crimes of fascist organization within the state had reached a level that could not be hidden from the public. In the face of the policy shift needed by Turkish capitalists towards the 2000s, the existing structure of the fascist movement was a hindrance. This policy shift, which labeled as “restoration” by TKP at the time, had dimensions such as the pruning of the fascist movement accompanied by the political interventions of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK), which historically had organic ties to the fascist movement.  It also involved reducing anti-fascism in society to a liberal 'anti-state' stance and civil society activism, as well as privatizations carried by the MHP which was claimed to be 'statist'.

The AKP, which received overt support from imperialist centers, came to power as the subject of this policy shift. And once again, during the AKP rule, the anti-fascist reflexes of society were crippled by the liberal influence on the left. The groups within the TSK, judiciary, and bureaucracy that posed obstacles to the Islamist and neoliberal Turkey that the AKP aimed to establish were purged by political trials called Ergenekon, a historical symbol identified with the Turkish racism. Meanwhile, the liberal left and the Kurdish movement supported the AKP in the name of purging fascist elements within the state. The liberal left, with its support formulated as “not enough but yes” to the 2010 constitutional referendum paved the way for AKP’s authoritarianism, which started in 2015 and reached its peak with the 2018 presidential regime. But apart from TKP, no one has been able to identify the symbiotic relationship between fascism and liberalism.  The Turkish left fails to see a simple fact: The former liberal supporters of AKP now label it ‘fascist’ because the Turkish bourgeoisie needs a new policy. Turkish left unfortunately does not hesitate to take the side of the liberals against the “Palace” and the “one-man regime”.

To ensure that the Turkish bourgeoisie is able to plunder resources of the society and increase the exploitation of labor without limits, the AKP continues to suppress the opposition and take fascistic measures today. However, the approach that simply views the AKP through just these fascistic practices marks the AKP and Tayyip Erdoğan as the source of all the major problems in Turkey, while obscuring the capitalist hegemony and the role that the AKP has assumed in strengthening and maintaining it. By following social democracy, the Turkish left tells the people that it is necessary to get rid of the AKP and Tayyip Erdoğan first, and for this, it justifies participation in all kinds of unprincipled alliances.  From the very beginning, TKP claims that AKP is a well-designed counter-revolutionary force backed by imperialism, aiming to rid the capitalist class of the burdens of the Republic's historical accumulation such as statism and secularism. Moreover we claim that it is impossible to evaluate this party  independently from survival concerns, profit ambitions and international calculations of the capitalist class. And TKP struggle against the AKP from the very beginning with this holistic approach.

Under the crisis conditions we are going through in Turkey, we see that two kinds of nationalism are on the rise while the working people are rapidly becoming impoverished and losing their hopes for the future. As TKP, we see the nationalist rise as an effective tool for the ruling class against the possibility of weakening of the working people’s ties with the capitalist system, and of turning their faces to left options. The Victory Party (Zafer Partisi), which manifests itself as an anti-immigrant platform and has become popular among certain sections of the youth, stands out as one of the symptoms of this picture. The rise of anti-Kurdish hostility and anti-immigrant sentiment among Turkish workers, engagement of Kurdish workers with the ideology and program of Kurdish nationalism while breaking their ties with Turkey lead division of working class and weaken its revolutionary potential. TKP consider its duty to carry out an effective struggle against the attacks of capital towards working class that create the basis for the rise of nationalism. Against the rising influence of nationalism on the working class and the emerging conditions, which can go up to an ethnically based slaughter, TKP is doing its best to strengthen class politics and to legitimize communism within the working class. In this context, the two most important developments of the recent period are the expansion and strengthening of the organizations of the TKP, especially after the February 6 earthquake, in the cities where mainly Kurdish workers live and its rapidly increasing ability to enter and organize in working-class neighborhoods, which are referred to as nationalist-conservative and are typically seen as the ballot tank of right-wing parties. TKP observes that beyond a severe economic crisis in Turkey, there is an erosion in the ideological pillars of the capitalist system. The bourgeois parties are perceived by an important part of the working class as unreliable, unprincipled entities, lacking clear direction and they reluctantly vote for these parties. In the spiral of poverty and exclusion, it is observed that the workers whose feelings of national belonging are exploited by fascist parties are especially turning towards to the TKP. The increase in the number of people who describe themselves as former MHP supporters and who are in the ranks of the party today is an interesting and meaningful data.

With the initiative of TKP, the People's Representatives Assembly of Turkey (THTM) started out last January as a platform where socialists and those who identified themselves as Kemalists came together. It functions as a mean of intervention to Kemalist sections of the society to make them understand and  accept the reality of class struggles. The assembly which included well-known intellectuals, journalists and artists of Turkey, welcomed with interest by public. THTM, which is now being organized in various localities, gives hope as an organization that will break nationalist attitudes such as antipathy towards Kurdish people, to which left-Kemalist intellectual circles in Turkey also are not immune, and strengthen class politics.

In response to the liberal initiative currently emerging with the consensus between the government and the opposition, TKP is intervening two segments with different political sensitivities: On one hand, it seeks to dull Turkish nationalist reflexes within the Republican, patriotic, and secular segments who lean towards socialism. On the other hand, it endeavors to revive the Republican and socialist elements in the reactions of Kurdish workers and youth against state oppression, reactionism, and impoverishment. Recognizing that the influence of fascist ideology on different social segments can increase because of the today’s heavy capitalist attacks, TKP is making intense efforts to bring these social sensitivities to a class basis and to turn them into a revolutionary energy.