There is no need to come up with a different name than "fascism" for the phenomenon we are describing. Because despite important differences from Fascist Italy, Nazi Germany etc., important similarities remain. Fascism is what capitalism and imperialism resort to when they are in crisis, desperate and needing to hang on at all costs, and it is a fact that their grip on events is far more precarious in a neo-colony such as Turkey than in, say, a developed bourgeois imperialist state like Britain. In Turkey, there is always a new earthquake, a new scandal, a new protest savagely suppressed, an inflation rate almost unimaginably high by the standards of bourgeois imperialist countries... All this in a country located right in the midst of hotspots or strategic regions - the Middle East, the Caucasus, the Balkans - and also a useful springboard to the markets and resources of Turkic Central Asia. Turkey is a prize for the imperialists, but one that can slip from their hands in a part of the world that is fraught with danger, and colonial-type fascism is the form of rule whereby they seek to hang on to it. Classical fascism failed to meet the needs of capitalism and imperialism in the end, and that is why 1945 is a watershed, but colonial-type fascism of the kind we are describing meets their needs in the neo-colonies - at least for the time being. So in Turkey there can be elections - they just close parties down if they threaten to upset the applecart. They let the TV channels contend - they just supervise them to ensure they play their role in the system's propaganda machine, and take them off the air if they actually broadcast something objectionable. Revolutionary newspapers and magazines can be published, until the police decide to raid the offices, smash or confiscate the equipment, beat, arrest and torture their staff and indeed brutalise anyone who happens to be in the office at the time. (It goes without saying that the MHP offices and the "Idealist Hearths" do not receive this treatment, but sometimes their people hang around outside left-wing establishments during raids and cheer the police on.) You can sell a revolutionary publication in the streets - all you have to worry about is that plainclothes policemen might shoot you down and then claim afterwards that you pulled a gun. And when the TV broadcasts pictures of demonstrations being broken up by police, enough footage is shown to send the message, "Protest, and you run the risk that this will happen to you." And this is the face of a neo-colony. Not synonymous with merely repressive rule, but the means by which capitalism and imperialism seek to hang on and maintain their domination where they might otherwise lose control. And ultimately, the puppet strings, from what the most important Turkish-language poet Nazim Hikmet called "this hell, this heaven", lead to the IMF, the World Bank, the Pentagon, NATO headquarters... Bourgeois rule is a continuum. The dividing line from one to the other need not be so sharp. Even Hitler took power in Germany through an Enabling Law, not a coup. But do not call it fascism if you do not want to. Use more calming, soothing words that don't suggest that the "West", NATO and the EU can accept and indeed nurture a system which has affinities with those who carried out Kristallnacht. If you are an American, don't think of the Sikorsky helicopters sold to Turkey to hunt down guerrillas; don't think of who actually supplied the tanks and armoured personnel carriers parked at nearly every city street corner when the 1980 coup took place. If you are a German, don't think of where the standard firearms used by the oligarchy's army and police were actually designed and manufactured. If you are a Briton, don't think about how much more effectively the army of the oligarchy can shell Kurdish villages during cross-border raids, now that their artillery systems have been upgraded with British help. If you are an Israeli, turn a blind eye to Israeli-Turkish cooperation and forget that the Nazis knew of what happened to the Armenians, thinking that because the Armenian genocide was not punished, then neither would the slaughter of the Jews be expiated. Also forget that the authorities in Turkey have never admitted to what happened in 1915, while in contrast denial of the Jewish Holocaust is actually a crime in some countries. We, the DHKC, are of course merely being hysterical when we call all this fascism. Fascism couldn't possibly have developed since 1945 in line with the requirements of those classes who need fascism. Could it? But we might make a final observation. A lot of "Marxist" erudition and effort on this list has gone into telling us that the system that tortures and kills our comrades is not fascist, while it is "terrorism" if our movement retaliates. Some are filled with loathing concerning our attitude to Stalin and Ceausescu, although conversely Mine seems to be trying to prove that the founder of our movement was a Trotskyist. Yet while these people are so diligent in their ideological labours, none have contacted us to ask how they can send a protest message when revolutionary prisoners are attacked in Turkey or when the offices of revolutionary publications are raided by the police. If some people want to pass judgement on the DHKC, it is possible for us to do the same concerning them. There is a gulf between much of the left from Turkey and Kurdistan on the one side, and the left from Europe and North America. In our view, the attitude displayed by certain list members does nothing to close the gulf. DHKC London Information Bureau _______________________________________________ Leninist-International mailing list [EMAIL PROTECTED] To change your options or unsubscribe go to: http://lists.wwpublish.com/mailman/listinfo/leninist-international
