Li Yunpeng: A Preliminary Research on the 1961-1980 History of the Turkish Workers’ Party (TİP)
Author: Li Yunpeng is from the Chinese People’s Liberation Army School of Foreign Languages
Abstract
In the 1960s and 1970s, the socialist movement in Turkey reached its peak, with one of its core leadership groups being the Turkish Workers’ Party. The Workers’ Party primarily engaged in parliamentary struggles, workers’ and student movements, and made indelible contributions to safeguarding the interests of the broader working class, promoting the social democracy and legal process in Turkey, and upholding Turkish independence and sovereignty. The ideology it advocated, represented by the “National Democratic Front,” continues to have an impact on the Turkish social leftist political parties. Due to subjective historical limitations and severe objective struggle situations, the Turkey’s Workers’ Party did not successfully lead the country’s proletariat to seize power. However, Party’s rise and fall provided experiences and lessons from the “Turkish model” for the development of the socialist movement in the developing third world countries.
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, under the influence of Marxism and the Second International, the socialist movement began to emerge in Turkey. The October Revolution in Russia further promoted the development of the socialist movement in Turkey. In September 1920, the Turkish Communist Party was declared and established. However, due to ideological and geopolitical reasons, Marxist political parties in Turkey were consistently suppressed and even banned by the government. In the 1960s and 1970s, with the improvement of the socio-political environment, numerous socialist political parties emerged in Turkey, with the Turkish Workers’ Party being the most significant. The Workers’ Party allowed the Turkish people to truly encounter and understand Marxist-Leninism for the first time and once sparked vigorous workers’ and student movements in Turkey. Marxism-Leninism as a political trend has long been preserved in Turkish society.
The Rise of the Turkish Workers’ Party
The establishment of the Turkish Workers’ Party has profound historical connections and characteristics of the times. Its origins can be traced back to the Turkish Communist Party in the 1920s. Its birth was closely related to the profound changes in the international situation after World War II, and its development was closely linked to the favorable conditions that began to emerge in the domestic political situation in the early 1960s.
（1）The Early 20th Century Turkish Communist Party
At the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century, the once-dominant Ottoman Empire was facing internal and external challenges. Externally, under the encroachment of Western powers, it gradually became a semi-colonial and semi-feudal society. Internally, various ideologies and advocacies such as Pan-Islamism, Pan-Ottomanism, Pan-Turkism, Kemalism, constitutional monarchy, separation of powers, and anarchism clashed intensely.
National separatist movements continued to rise, with uprisings from Arab, Greek, and Armenian populations. The bourgeois revolution led by the Young Turks in 1909 failed to accomplish the task of a democratic revolution. During World War I, the empire joined the Allied Powers, lost large territories after defeat, and eventually disintegrated. The Republic of Turkey was established in October 1923.
It was in this context of intense changes at the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century that early socialist movements emerged in Turkey, first among Turks in Germany and Russia, and then within the Ottoman empire. The earliest socialist organization was the Armenian Revolutionary Hınchak Party, which advocated Marxism and socialism, and engaged in workers’ movements, but was severely suppressed by the government after 1913. The victory of the October Revolution in Russia in 1917 greatly inspired the Turkish people to resist imperialism and the decaying rule of the Sultan’s government. Some books and manuals advocating Marxism and the Russian October Revolution appeared in the Anatolian region of the empire. In 1920, Mustafa Suphi established the precursor of the Workers’ Party, the Turkish Communist Party, in Baku (now the capital of Azerbaijan), and began translating works by Marx, Engels, and Lenin into Turkish. Due to its geographical proximity to the Soviet Union, the party’s charter and organization were influenced by the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and led by the Communist International and Lenin.
From its inception, the Turkish Communist Party devoted itself to the anti-imperialist and anti-feudal revolution in their country. Party leaders believed that the primary task of the Turkish people was to defeat the invading imperialist forces from Britain, France, and Greece, and to overthrow the reactionary rule of the Sultan’s government. The party took a supportive attitude towards the Anatolian nationalist regime led by Kemal. The Communist International also supported the Turkish Communist Party’s actions. However, after the basic defeat of the imperialist invaders and the seizure of state power, Kemal turned against the Turkish Communist Party.
This was primarily due to ideological opposition. Although the stateism and revolutionarism in the “Six Principles of Kemalism” were clearly influenced by the Soviet system, Kemal was intending that Turkey should be a western oriented burjuva state, not a socialist state. Furthermore, it was also due to geopolitical considerations. Kemal was concerned that the Soviet Union would use the Turkish Communist Party as a wedge to incite socialist revolution in Turkey and even turn Turkey into a Soviet republic.
Consequently, severe measures were taken against the Turkish Communist Party, including pressure, repression, and even assassination. Its publications were banned. Puppet parties, such as the so-called “Turkish Communist Party,” were established to compete with the Turkish Communist Party, but were not recognized by the Communist International as they did not adhere to Marxist-Leninist ideology or prioritize class struggle.
In the late 1920s, the Soviet Union began to repair relations with the Kemalist regime, hoping that Turkey could resist Western expansion. The Communist International also shifted the main focus of its struggle from the Near East to Europe and the Far East, and Communist International had some illusions about Kemalist bourgeois reform activities.
These factors prevented the Turkish Communist Party from fully mobilizing the revolutionary enthusiasm of the country’s working class and peasants, resulting in the failure of the revolutionary struggle. Faced with government suppression in 1923, the party was unable to resist and was forced to go underground. However, during this period, the theoretical and practical experiences of the Turkish Communist Party accumulated valuable experiences for the struggle of Marxist political parties in Turkey and nurtured the backbone of the socialist movement that followed.
Some leaders of the Workers’ Party, such as Behice Boran, the chairman of the Workers’ Party, were directly involved in the activities of the Turkish Communist Party. Some members of the party also came into contact with Marxism-Leninism through the Turkish Communist Party. The party’s initial understanding of Marxism-Leninism, especially its views on national issues, to some extent inherited the thinking of the Turkish Communist Party. The later proposal of the “National Democratic Front” by the party actually also drew on the experiences and lessons of the Turkish Communist Party.
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