The party of love, revolution... and the
* Turkey After two years of activity, the Freedom and Solidarity Party (ODP) held its first regular congress in Ankara at the end of October. Masis Kürkçügil reports. In the 1970s Turkey had a very strong radical socialist movement, though racked by internal divisions and sectarianism. This left was unable to reorganise its forces after the 1980 coup d'état, and, throughout the 80s, radical left thinking was confined to limited circles.
The situation changed somewhat in
1994, when a number of groups fused to form the Unified Socialist Party (BSP). That project, which mobilised some 34,000 militants, had an electoral potential of about 1%. Meanwhile, the largest 70s group, Dev-Yol (Revolutionary Path) formed its own party, with about the same impact.
In January 1996, however, these two groups came together to form the ODP The presence of 15,000 supporters at the founding meeting testified to the new party's ability to reach beyond the traditional left, to the formerly organised and unorganised militants, and beyond.
At first, the internal problems of the various currents, and the delicate relations between them seemed to be the major obstacles facing the new party. Most observers felt it would be impossible to maintain such a heterogeneous party, which included the remnants of the four pro-Moscow parties of the 1970s, the two large "centrist" currents (Dev-Yol and Kurtulus) and the "Trotskyists."
Time showed, however, that each current had undergone a process of self-criticism and re-evaluation. There was a common consciousness of the need to go beyond the sectarian cleavage of the past, to regroup socialist forces, and to make up for lost time. The re-evaluation undertaken by the pro-Moscow Stalinist parties was
South Korean elections