Thanks DHKC comrade for the clarification. I will raise a couple of points. I
wish I knew your name, so I could address you accordingly...
>dhkc wrote:
> >Mine asks us to clarify what we identify fascism with in Turkey - the
> >Kemalists or the MHP?
>
> >We do not see the system in Turkey as a Kemalist one. Whatever else >it was,
> >Turkey under Mustafa Kemal was not a neo-colony.
I agree:)
> >Fascism in Turkey is not
> >classical fascism, like Nazi Germany, but is neo-colonial fascism
> >dependent upon imperialism. So the key fascist institution in Turkey >is the
> >MGK (National Security Council). It is this body, dominated by the >armed
> >forces who are answerable to NATO and more broadly to imperialism, >which
> >rules
> >Turkey, not parliament.
National Security Council is evidently a militaristic institution. It is totally
undemocratic and indirectly rules the government acting on behalf of the
parliament and Turkish people. It is accountable to US imperialism and involved
in several organized crimes and contra- guerrilla movements against leftists and
Kurdish people in the Southern Part of Anatolia. I would *never and ever*
dispute the brutality and oppressiveness of military forces in Turkey, *and* the
civil/bourgeois establishment that serves to its interests.
My sense is that the left in Turkey has never understood Kemalism. Accordingly,
It has failed to understand the military. As you know comrade, Kemalism and
military has being sleeping in the same bed since the foundation of the Turkish
Republic. In a late developing country where the military is given the power to
modernize the country, that is what you get. Calling military *fascist* obscures
any serious historical understanding of this love relationship. It is no good
for a serious leftist struggle. Take the example of militant Deniz Gezmis
death's penalty in the 70s? What did the Kemalist party do (CHP) when our
"modern pashas" dictated their own terms on civilians and forced them to accept
the death penalty? The party ranks automatically compromised. The distinction
between progressive/left wing military (1960s) versus regressive
(reactionary/right wing, 1980s) military is a false distinction in the context
of Turkey. The ruling classes persistently refer to this distinction to divide
and rule the left. You implicitly make that distinction as well when you call
1980 military coup as fascist. So military was not fascist prior to 1980 and
suddenly become fascist in the 80s? Excuse me, but the big social democrat
businessmen like Ishak Alaton (who is also a committed Kemalist) and civil
society liberals refer to the same distinction in their denunciations of the
undemocratic regime in Turkey. Let's not let our own bourgeoisie of the hook,
comrade!
Yes, Turkey is a neo-colony. Its economy is largely dependent on the west.
However, it is also an *inter-imperialist* ally of the US, so it is not hundred
percent a victim of imperialism. Its ruling classes want to benefit from the
pie. From the beginning, Turkey has been committed to becoming like a western
bourgeois democracy. Technically speaking, Turkey stands somewhere between the
core and the periphery of the world system. It is not another Egypt or India
having massively suffered from a deep rooted establishment of imperialism. For
example, Turkey, to a certain extend, broke the chains of cultural imperialism.
This is evident in the education system where, for example, there is still a
strong commitment to principles of nationalism, official history, and Kemalism.
You can not pass the fifth grade in elementary school without memorizing the
national anthem. Period. Now, the former maoists like Dogu Perincek says in his
Aydinlik magazine "English is a language of hooligans". So what kind of a
country is this suffering from neo-colonialism comrade if the leftists make such
ultra-nationalist comments? Accordingly, it would be still better if you had
substantiated what you mean by neo-colonial fascism.
comradely,
Mine
> Ultimately we do not see fascism in Turkey as a
> home-grown product but rather as a form of imperialist control, so the
> anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggles are linked.
>
> The MHP are among the guard-dogs of the regime, and are the more open
> expression of its fascist face, but the system's fascism does not depend on
> them. Its essence would not change even if MHP leader Devlet Bahceli's
> recent call for the MHP to have total governmental power (rather than as
> part of a coalition) were to
> come true, because it is not parliament that rules Turkey. (By the way,
> and just as an amusing coincidence, "devlet" is the
> Turkish word for "state".) We mentioned the MHP earlier mainly because the
> climb of the butchers of Maras into a government coalition had passed almost
> unnoticed while
> everybody was screaming about Haider in Austria.
>
> Discussion about whether or not Turkey is fascist is not the point. Mine
> thinks calling the system fascist in Turkey harms the struggle. Yet the most
> militant part of Turkey's left (a large proportion of which is in jail, but
> the jails are merely another front in the struggle) does
> call the system fascist, and this is a significant fact. The CMK statement
> posted earlier is a good example
> of this. When prisoners like these were being attacked at Ulucanlar and
> Burdur, they did not have time to engage in the checklist approach, "Those
> gendarmes attacking us with guns and clubs can't be part of a fascist
> system, because a., b., c.,..." The prisoners did have time to shout
> "Kahrolsun
> fasizm! Yasasin mucadelemiz!" ("Down with fascism! Long live our struggle!).
>
> Our final point is this: if you think Turkey is a democracy which merely
> happens to have a few problems, and the people who reject the "fascist"
> description seem to us to tend in that direction, then you cannot fight the
> system there. In fact you might even be talked into thinking it is the
> prisoners like those who signed the CMK statement who are one of the
> problems, not the system itself.
>
> DHKC London Information Bureau
>
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--
Mine Aysen Doyran
PhD Student
Department of Political Science
SUNY at Albany
Nelson A. Rockefeller College
135 Western Ave.; Milne 102
Albany, NY 12222
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