TURKEY-POLITICS: Socialists Seek Unity After Decades of Strife

By IPS Correspondents Reprint | | Print |

Nadire Mater

ISTANBUL, Feb 3 1995 (IPS) - Turkish Socialist parties are seriously considering combining their movements in a bid to provide a strong political force in the face of increasing popularity for Islamic fundamentalist and extreme right-wing parties.

“The rise of Islamic fundamentalism and of the pro-fascist movement after the 1994 March local elections marked a turning point,” said economist Adnan Bostancioglu, one of the architects of the initiative to “build a mass party”.

The Islamic Welfare Party won 19 per cent of the vote in last March’s general elections while the extreme right-wing Nationalist Movement Party proved to be twice as popular as it was in 1989 by securing eight per cent of the vote last year.

The ruling conservative True Path Party secured the majority of the votes — 24 per cent while the junior partner the coalition government, the Social Democratic Populist Party (SHP) won 13 per cent — less than half of what it received six years previously.

The SHP is not involved in the present initiative although its grassroots organisations have shown an interest.

Another development which prompted this new socialist initiative is the growing popularity of the liberal New Democracy Movement (YDH). According to recent public opinion polls the YDH’s public support is around eight percent and support for the party’s leader Cem Boyner is twice as high.

“While we were considering the prevailing crisis of socialism in Turkey, this strong showing from liberals terribly provoked us,” Bostancioglu said.

“Why should we remain inactive and even behind the liberals?” he went on, stressing that more than ever now there is a need for a strong socialist voice.

“The Turkish economy shrunk by seven percent in 1994; one million people lost their jobs; the inflation rate has risen to 150 percent…investments have come to a halt.”

He also pointed to Turkey’s poor human rights record which he said needed to be addressed, particularly as it related to the treatment of its minority Kurdish population and the ongoing war against Kurdish guerrillas in the south-east of the country.

“Thus Turkey arrives at the threshold of restructuring,” Bostancioglu went on. “None of the original guidelines of the Republic of Turkey — such as a ‘single and indivisible Turkish nation’– is relevant any more.”

What was needed to guide the country through this period was a “missing actor”. That “actor”, he said is the socialist left which had “most seriously challenged the guidelines of the republic since its foundation in 1923, and which paid the dearest price for that.

“Therefore the socialists have to find an immediate tool to help find a way out the crisis — a mass political party.”

The roots of today’s socialist left groupings might be traced back to the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TIP) which collected five per cent of the vote in the 1965 elections. One year later, the party broke up following disagreement among its leaders over how best it could carry out its agenda.

Those which advocated extra-parliamentary tactics regrouped to form the Popular Liberation Party-Front of Turkey (THKP-C) and the Popular Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO) which were ruthlessly suppressed at the advent of military rule in Turkey in 1971.

Those who defended the parliamentary line remained with TIP, but they too were stamped on by the military regime.

Following a general amnesty in 1974 the there were more splits within the socialist ranks. There followed violent struggles against pro-fascist movements as Turkey disintegrated into almost full-scale civil war before a military coup in 1980.

That coup d’etat brought no respite for the socialists who were again suppressed by the military regime which outlawed the movement.

Between 1980 and 1983 when a new constitution was adopted heralding a period of political liberalisation, an estimated 650,000 followers of the socialist movement were tortured by the military while hundreds died during clashes.

Tens of thousands went into exile while thousands of academics and civil servants were put out of jobs.

Oguzhan Muftuoglu, leader of Revolutionary Path — Dev-Yol — said the socialist left could have survived “all this physical ruin” if “we had not suffered a second and far more destructive blow, the ideological collapse of socialism after the fall of the former Soviet Union”.

Having recruited more than 50 per cent of Turkey’s active socialists among its ranks before 1980, Dev-Yol once held major influence across Turkish society.

The movement’s mouthpiece “Dev-Yol” sold around 150,000 while the daily “Demokrat” –also backed by the movement — had a circulation of some 30,000 before it was banned in 1980.

Not surprisingly Muftuoglu supports the recent initiative aimed at unifying the socialist left.

“The socialists’ sphere of influence is not limited only to red- blood socialists, most of the social democrats too are very close to general socialist ideals, therefore a unity should be sought among the left grassroots but not at the top,” Muftuoglu said.

The initiators of the new movement recently held a meeting to map out strategy and according to Bostancioglu, “the great majority of socialists are for establishing a mass party, the centre of gravity of what hinges on trade unions”.

“We aimed at creating a platform for a wide array of the left from the left-social democrats to revolutionary socialists,” Bostancioglu told IPS.

The meeting was attended by some 200 people — most of whom were men in the thirties.

“Only five percent of those who attended were women. This is a major shortcoming,” Muftuoglu admits. “Yet we take over the heritage of a male-dominant past. This is inevitable,” he said.

“However, it is impossible to visualise a future social opposition what relies on men,” Muftuoglu acknowledged. “We cannot go on with the traditional division of labour — men at politics, women at housework.”