Turkey: Fascists behind
'Religious' riots
Over the last month Turkey has been admitted "civil' regime assassinates, bombs, tortures and into the European Customs Union, and invaded censures Turks and Kurds who stand in its way.
Kurdish-controlled areas of Northern Iraq. As Cem Yildrim reports, the resurgence of urban
Western media portrays the regime as balancing violence in Turkey is neither religious nor between a savage East and the 'civilised West. communalist in origin. Turkish fascism is still
Western leaders say they 'understand' when the
International Viewpoint #256 April 1995
Turkey
ON MARCH 12 UNIDENTIFIED MURDERERS raided Gaziosmanpasa, a poor district of Istanbul, killing three local people only meters from an open police station. When local people protested police inaction," the cops started a massacre: firing from tanks and helicopters, killing 19 and wounding hundreds more. The protests spread around other poor districts of Istanbul and other big cities, met everywhere with police violence. The death toll rose.
The state authority in Gaziosmanpasa and other riot-torn neighbourhoods collapsed. Order was maintained by local anti-fascist committees until there were repressed by the brutal intervention of the army. The ordeal concluded with the funerals of over 30 people killed by the police. At least 50 people remained in police custody.
The international media reported these events as "sectarian violence" — since the victims were predominantly Alawi Moslems, in this predominantly Sunni Moslem country. The incident was falsely reported as the rebellion of an Islamic sect or, even worse, as violence between different Islamic sects. All very compatible with the West's nightmares about the East, but a long way from the truth.
The truth, which the country's urban poor and the people of Turkish Kurdistan know only too well is as follows:
* The Gaziosmanpasa and Umraniye massacres have nothing to do with religionmotivated sectarian violence; they were fascist attacks on progressive communities.
* Fascism is the best organized political force within the Turkish state: the two major center-right parties, DYP and ANAP, have strong far-right Ulkucu" factions — a name associated with the youth wing of the fascist National Movement Party, MHP.
* Fascists hold many key positions within the Turkish state; 70% of parliamentary deputies are of 'Ulkucu' origin; two thirds of the bloated police force are militants, members or supporters of the MHP, the rest including Islamic fanatics and the members of centre-right parties.
* While fascist 'entryism' in the state service has always been a phenomenon of 12 very much alive Turkish politics, the large scale "fascistisation' of the state began in full steam only after the military coup in 1980. This process accelerated with the beginning of the Kurdish guerilla movement in 1984. Militants armed with racist MHP discourse provided an excellent reservoir of recruitment for autonomous and unofficial counterinsurgency units operating mainly in Kurdistan alongside the army. These 'special forces" are responsible for the most ruthless atrocities in Kurdistan, including the systematic torture of civilians and the assassination of over 2,000 Kurdish and pro-Kurdish intellectuals.
In order to turn Turkish Kurdistan into a massive prison through a 'dirty war' the Turkish state needed to create an unprecedented machinery of violence dispersed among the police, army, and the special forces. This machinery is not merely employed for the suppression of the Kurdish revolt, but against any protest from those sectors of society which suffer most from ever-worsening life conditions — the working class and the urban poor in particular. In this sense Turkey has lived a counter-revolution for the last fifteen years.
Turkish and European liberals have preferred to see this same 15 years as a period of 'democratization'. They claim that the governing elite is the best defence not only against the fascist generals, but also against the spectre of a 'fundamentalist' takeover.
This argument is based on the illusion that there is a "dualism" between the prodemocratic, reformist coalition government and "hard liners" in the institutions of the state. In fact, not only do the generals have more say on state affairs than the prime minister of Turkey, but the fact is that this "liberal" government has done nothing to change the balance of forces and is still orchestrated by the "hard liners". There is no 'dualism' in Turkey's elite. The two wings share power in their common interest.
This article first appeared in the British publication Socialist Outlook
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