Backlash against military intervention, but the crisis continues

Sungur Savran

26 July 2007

A slap in the face of the partisans of military intervention and the self-appointed defenders of the republic against the alleged danger of the sharia! The outcome of the general elections held in Turkey on 22 July 2007 clearly shows that a majority of the people unambiguously refuse to support the line of the military and its civilian henchmen! In answer to the pronunciamiento of the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) of 27 April 2007, the vote for the semi-Islamist, semi-liberal AKP already in power for the last four and a half years rose from 34 % to 46 %. Add to this the approximately 5 % Kurdish vote and compare it with the vote of the pro-military parties, 21 % for the CHP, so-called "social democracy", and 14 % for the fascists, and it is easy to see that the popular vote was a resounding defeat for the coup supporters. The military pronunciamiento had aborted the presidential election that had already started and was surely going to hand the presidency to a leader of the AKP. It was, in effect, this brazen military intervention in political life that precipitated early elections as a solution to the crisis. But, as we pointed out earlier (see the article "The Fifth Military Intervention in Political Life in Turkey" of 28 April 2007), this "solution" only helped postpone the crisis and with the return of AKP into power Turkey is now back to square one. The bourgeois media try to hide the crisis lurking behind the clear-cut outcome of the election, the AKP has adopted a conciliatory stance toward the rest of bourgeois forces including the army, the left in general are overwhelmed and falsely comforted by this rejection of military intervention by the people. So on the face of it, everything seems to point to an end to the crisis. But an analysis of the objective situation shows that there are powerful contradictions that prepare the ground for the eruption of the crisis before long. A brief recapitulation of the contradictions that led to the earlier crisis will make this clear.

The struggle between the AKP government and the military, backed by the CHP and a host of state institutions, is the product of a deep-rooted division in the ranks of the Turkish ruling classes. The guiding fraction of the Turkish bourgeoisie has, from the foundation of the republic in 1923, wholly embraced integration with the imperialist West, the last avatar of this integration being the negotiations for Turkey's accession to the EU. Another fraction of the bourgeoisie came into being with the spread of capitalism to the countryside starting with the 70s and the penetration of Islamic finance capital into the country in the 80s. This found its political expression in the succession of parties that subscribed to an Islamic agenda under the historic leadership of Necmettin Erbakan, who finally came to power in 1996. He was toppled by the TSK, aided and abetted by the US and the pro-Western wing of the Turkish bourgeoisie, in a thinly-disguised military intervention in 1997. The AKP, under the leadership of Tayyip Erdogan, is an offshoot of that movement, but has constantly moved away from Islamism and into mainstream bourgeois liberalism. It is simply a Kemalist lie to call the AKP "fundamentalist" and to claim that it is working to install the rule of the sharia! The AKP government of the period 2002-2007 tried to ally with the US, the EU and the pro-Western wing of the Turkish bourgeoisie, as well as its more traditional constituency of the Islamic wing. Several contradictions hampered this project however. For one thing, the alliance between the US and the AKP foundered on the Iraq War, when Turkish parliament rejected, on 1 March 2003, a motion that stipulated the collaboration of the Turkish army with the US. The EU itself was confused by a pro-EU government party that had Islamist roots. The pro-Western Turkish bourgeoisie was itself torn between the advantages brought by a government that was decidedly working to push through an assault on the rights and gains of the working-class and the fears of a rise of Islamism. The powerful actor that stepped into this vacuum was the TSK, the traditional guardian of the "secular regime".

The ideological struggle between the TSK and the government started soon after the AKP came to power in 2002 and later matured into what Workers' Struggle has been calling the "political civil war of the bourgeoisie". The first battle was waged in August 2006 over the appointment of the present Chief of General Staff, general Büyükanit, known to be a hardliner. The presidential election of April 2007 was the second major battle. The presidency has traditionally been regarded as the prerogative of the forces that side with the army and the prospect of the AKP electing someone from its own ranks was unacceptable to the TSK. These two initial battles were both won by the army. But the third battle over the elections has changed the balance of forces once again in favour of the AKP. Now that the elections gave that party a landslide and ended in a resounding defeat for the self-styled social democracy of the CHP, the only force to stop the rise of the AKP seems to be military. So ironically, the electoral victory of the AKP has made the prospect of a military coup not weaker but stronger. Furthermore, the threat of a rise of the fascist movement has also been strengthened. There are already clear signals that the CHP as a party will go through a protracted period of internecine strife and paralysis. This leaves the MHP, the party of the so-called "grey wolves" as the major opposition force. All in all, contradictions have become more explosive, not less.

There is nothing abstract about this analysis. The contradiction between the AKP and the TSK will come concretely on the agenda in the near future when the new parliament turns to the election of the president. The AKP is now in a much more powerful position and can certainly insist on electing one of its leaders as president, which will set in motion another fierce fight between the two sides. And the bitterness of the fight will probably be augmented by a new factor, the presence of deputies in the new parliament representing the Kurdish struggle for national rights.

The Kurdish question at a crossroads

The second major contradiction behind the crisis in Turkey relates to the Kurdish question. On the agenda since 1984, when the PKK started a guerrilla war of national self-determination, the Kurdish question took a new turn since the imperialist war on Iraq. The Kurdish leadership of Barzani and Talabani in Northern Iraq collaborate closely with the US and this adds a new contradiction to US policy, as it is torn between its long-time NATO ally, Turkey, and its newly found Kurdish allies in Iraq. The PKK has its military headquarters in the Kurdish region of Iraq, which raises the tension between Turkey, on the one hand, and the US and its Kurdish allies, on the other. Turkish chauvinism has been deliberately pumped up by the military and the bourgeois establishment for the last three years and the prospect of a military incursion into Northern Iraq has been in the air for some time.

A new factor has now been infused into this explosive scene. The DTP, the legal arm of the Kurdish struggle, a kind of Kurdish Herri Batasuna, has finally managed after long years to have elected to parliament enough deputies to form a parliamentary group. During the electoral race, the DTP made it quite clear that it was willing to collaborate with the AKP over certain issues and even support an AKP government. For procedural reasons, the AKP does need the help of over 20 deputies from outside its own ranks in order to have one of its leaders elected president. The prospect of an AKP-DTP cooperation on this or other major matters implies an intertwining of the two major contradictions that beset Turkish politics. The pro-Western secular vs. Islamist rift will interpenetrate with the Kurdish question. The AKP is already accused by the other bourgeois camp for being too soft on the question of "terrorism", i.e. the Kurdish question. If it opts for cooperation with the DTP, this will almost certainly provoke the wrath of the military and its political henchmen. Once again and very ironically, the elections bring nearer the prospect of a crisis.

There is an alternative scenario, whose implications are of a different character, although no less ominous. Prime Minister Erdogan and Chief of Staff Büyükanit held a meeting behind closed doors in the aftermath of the pronunciamiento of the military. The details of that meeting have been kept strictly confidential between the two men. It is quite probable that one of the agreements reached was a modus vivendi between the two sides on the basis of the army renouncing a takeover and the AKP consenting to a military incursion into Northern Iraq. (In this case, the scenario relating to the presidential election will of course have to change accordingly.) Such a military operation will create an extremely poisonous atmosphere within the country and will, in all probability, lead to the eviction of the Kurdish deputies from parliament on charges of collaboration with the PKK. This happened back in 1994 and may be repeated in the differing circumstances of the day. It is of course a primary duty of Marxists to extend solidarity to the Kurdish deputies in the case of such an attack on their democratic rights.

The left in shambles

The Turkish left has definitely not been able to cope with the burning tasks of the day. A major section of the left has parroted the line of the military in its hostility against the AKP and even the Kurdish movement. Another section carried on with its traditional puerile policy of boycotting the elections. Finally, a third component missed the opportunity of using the elections as a step towards the formation of a front of the forces of the working class and the Kurdish movement by opting for a caricatured form of parliamentary cretinism.

For the last year or so, Workers' Struggle had been pointing out the twin threats of a military coup and the rise of the fascist movement. This prognosis was met with a conspiracy of silence on the part of the left. Developments have borne out both predictions. The 27 April pronunciamiento materialised the threat of a coup and the considerable rise in the votes polled by the fascist party showed that the ruling atmosphere of chauvinism plays into the hands of that movement. Major sections of the left woke up with the 27 April military proclamation and instantly took up the slogan of a "Third Front" of workers and the Kurds (in opposition to the pro-Western and Islamist bourgeois camps) propagated by Workers' Struggle. However, the bloc of forces that was ultimately formed as a result of negotiations between the DTP and some bigger socialist parties bore little promise for the formation of such a Third Front. The DTP put up its own candidates in the Kurdish regions, but allotted some positions to Turkish socialist in other parts of the country. Notable by its absence in this electoral pact was any kind of platform that addressed the needs and demands of the working class. This meant that these parties capitulated to the class collaborationist policies of the DTP in exchange for the election of one or two of their members to parliament on a wave of Kurdish votes.

After having fought to the end for a real bloc with an electoral platform addressing working class issues as well as the demands of the Kurds, Workers' Struggle opted to put up an independent candidate in Istanbul, in the heart of the Turkish working class. This candidacy was supported by three other groups. The message given to the whole of the left was very clear: No Third Front without the working class! A successful campaign provided us with opportunities of contacting rank and file workers. The highlights of the campaign were mobilisation in certain working-class communities and the visits paid to factories, strikes and other workers' actions. The purpose was not to poll a high number of votes, but to take the message of class independence to the heart of the working-class. In that specific sense, the campaign reached its objectives.

The indifference to class politics that has become a second nature of the Turkish left reached new heights during this electoral campaign. The call for the major demonstration of the bloc formed around the Kurdish party, a demonstration that was addressed by the leaders of three socialist parties, did not once allude, even distantly, to the cause of labour! In the end, even parliamentary cretinism did not pay: one single socialist on that slate was elected to parliament, the others failing to garner a major part of the Kurdish vote. This section of the Turkish left will probably continue to tail-end the Kurdish movement and/or enter into a close alliance with social democratic elements from outside the CHP in the near future.

This shows the urgent necessity of a revolutionary workers' party that will fight for the independence of the working class from all wings of the bourgeoisie. Workers' Struggle took a step towards the formation of such a party in June. We will resolutely fight to wake the waking giant. Only if the workers and toilers of Turkey enter the political scene will the political crisis of the country be resolved in a progressive manner.

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