Studentsstruggle in Turkey

[english at ozgurluk.xs4all.nl]

The following text is a backgroundstory about the struggle on the
universities in Turkey.
It was translated from the Revolutionary weekly Kurtulus

"PROVOCATIONS" CRUSHED THROUGH STRUGGLE

Following years of silence, student youth have since 1986 taken up and
raised the struggle for democratic rights and exposed themselves to
the action of the police and military. With the upturn in struggle,
repression and bans, arrests, torture, imprisonment, disappearances
and massacres have increased. Schools and universities were turned
into police and military barracks. But despite everything the struggle
of the student youth could not be halted. Even if there were setbacks
from time to time, the struggle spread from the big cities to Anatolia
and from the universities to the secondary schools. The attacks by
fascists using knives and sometimes guns also increased in scope in
certain schools and districts. Since the boycott on November 6 last
year, these attacks have increased and taken an organised form,
spreading from Istanbul to Ankara, Bursa, Budur, Kocaeli, Canakkale,
Malatya, Adana, Antalya and Sivas and have occurred as far away as
Kars. The fascist attacks have been specifically targeted against
revolutionary-democratic students and have caught the youth in a web
spun with the aid of police terror and the bourgeois media. It was
obvious that these attacks were planned and centrally directed.

THE STATE IS THE AGGRESSOR

This must be recognised by everyone. Neither the fascists'
organisations themselves nor their attacks are independent of the
state and the MGK (National Security Council).Since the foundation of
the MHP (Nationalist Action Party) and its Idealist Hearth offshoot,
these organisations have been directed by contra-guerrillas and used
in attacks on the people. From the 1960s until the September 12, 1980
putsch they carried out hundreds of massacres. They killed thousands
of revolutionary, democratic and progressive people. They tortured and
murdered people and put their bodies in sacks before dumping
them. They occupied schools and denied the right to live to
revolutionary and democratic students, to all who were not on their
side and refused to do what they said. They attacked and bombed
schools and halls of residence.

All this was done under the protection of the state, with the help of
contra-guerrillas and the police. First the fascists would attack and
kill, followed by the police and military who did the
same. Revolutionaries, democrats and patriotic students were arrested,
tortured and detained. The fascist attackers on the other hand were
able to walk around unhindered. What we are experiencing today is no
different from the period before the September 12, 1908 military
coup. In addition to the MHP and the Idealist Hearth there is also the
BBP (Great Unity Party), founded by a former MHP chairman, Muhsin
Yazicioglu, one of the main organisers of contra-guerrilla massacres
who spearheaded the BBP split from its parent organisation. There is
also the Nizam-i Alem Hearth organisation.

It is clear enough from what we have already experienced what the role
of the state has been in the attacks experienced since 1990. While
revolutionary-democratic students are unable to enter educational
establishments without police identity checks and painfully thorough
searches, as well as being followed around in the schools and campuses
by civil police who sometimes arrest and detain them, the fascists are
able to go around the same establishments armed with knives and even
firearms. While the fascists attack, the police merely look on or else
launch attacks on revolutionary-democratic students themselves. Under
police protection, the fascists can leave the scene of fighting as if
nothing had happened and prepare to launch new attacks.

At this point, observing fascist support for police attacks and
concluding from this that the fascists are merely police informers is
an error. To think that, in the light of all that has been revealed
since the Susurluk accident about the contra-guerrilla state and the
reality of fascism, would be to misinterpret and misunderstand what
has been witnessed.The attacks are carried out under the control and
direction of the state, the MGK itself. Interior Minister Basesgioglu
made this clear when he said that "the leftists have brought these
events about". Decoded, this statement was a message to the fascists
that "the state will continue to protect you and take you under its
care". This is quite apart from the fact that the interior minister
cannot change reality simply by attempting to disguise it. This is
because the forces which direct the state are not the interior
minister or even the government, but the contra-guerrillas of the
MGK. The interior minister's statement merely shows that he does not
bother to conceal his collaboration with the contra-guerrillas.

The bourgeois media have explained away police attacks as resulting
from "a lack of education", or "inability to maintain a stiff upper
lip", and have thus tried to avoid criticising the state itself. The
media also play a role in allowing the state's part in fascist attacks
to remain concealed, through headlines like "clashes between leftists
and rightists" and "provocations".

WHAT IS THE STATE SEEKING TO ACHIEVE?

The state has been driven into a corner, harried and unmasked by
Susurluk and the growing opposition of the people, but it is
collecting its strength and preparing new attacks on the people. Even
though they have been unmasked, the contra-guerrilla bands are being
released, murderers under contra-guerrilla control are being promoted
and in the Black Sea region there is practically a state of
emergency. Everywhere in the country democratic mass organisations are
repressed, their people arrested, their meetings are attacked by the
police, city neighbourhoods where they are strong are kept under
police terror. In Kurdistan, repression, arrests, murders and
disappearances, efforts to abduct revolutionaries and force them to
cooperate and commit betrayal are continuing and being stepped up. All
this shows that the Susurluk phase is coming to a close and being
succeeded by a new phase in which comprehensive contra-guerrilla
attacks are becoming the order of the day.

The fascist and police attacks on students at the time of the November
6 boycott were an aspect of this new wave of attacks on the
people. [Note: the November 6 boycott takes place every year in the
universities as a protest against YOK, the State Higher Education
Council. YOK was founded right after the 1980 military coup as a way
of bringing universities under state control. The content of lessons
is controlled, uncongenial teachers and students expelled and every
kind of political activity not favoured by the state is halted.] Their
aim is clear: to prevent the organising of the youth and inhibit their
capacity to wage a struggle.

Youth have not bowed their heads, have not given in, however, even
though the police and military have turned their schools into police
stations and army barracks. To achieve its aim, the state wants to
utilise the fascists in an even more effective manner. So the fascists
are trying to occupy the schools in the way they did in the
1970s. Under fascist occupation, revolutionary-democratic students
would be caught between the fascists inside the schools and
universities and the police and military outside, and would not be
able to gain access to the schools.They could only get in by bowing
their heads and surrendering. In other words, not to display any signs
of political personality, not to engage openly in any political or
organisational activity, not to organise any action or rally for even
the most basic democratic and academic rights. The state wants to
create a type of human being who does not think, does not deal either
with his or her own problems or those of the people, does what he or
she is told, and in short is no more than a robot of the system.

"DON'T FALL FOR PROVOCATIONS" MEANS IN FACT TO FALL FOR THEM

The attempts of the enemy and the bourgeois media to present fascist
attacks as "clashes between leftists and rightists" and fables about
"provocations" are designed to whitewash the state and also to break
the resistance of the youth towards fascist attacks and cloak their
struggle in silence. The headline "The leftists have brought these
events about" is one way to do this. This is meant to influence the
psychology of young people, to retard their consciousness, to silence
them and to make them think, in response to fascist attacks and
attempts at organisation, "Let's not fall for provocations", or "Oh,
clashes shouldn't be happening", "We don't want to be accused of
starting disturbances". In this way the fascists can get a firm
foothold in the universities, legitimise themselves and build up their
strength.

But there is also the fact that the left keeps falling into the enemy
trap with the theory of "let us not fall for provocations", as a way
of fleeing from the struggle. This theory already existed before the
September 12, 1980 military coup and was propagated by the
revisionists, reformists and opportunists, who thought that the
reacting to the fascist attacks was a diversion from the struggle with
the state, and that prolonged conflicts with the fascists would lead
the class struggle into a dead end.

In this remarkable logic two errors stand out: the fascists' struggle
and organisational methods are deemed to be independent of the
state. Before the military coup, the revisionist TKP (Communist Party
of Turkey), the reformist TIP (Workers' Party of Turkey) and other
organisations like the KSD (Kurtulus Sosyalist Dergisi, Liberation
Socialist Magazine) and DY (Devrimci Yol, Revolutionary Path) held
these viewpoints and acted accordingly. Instead of taking part in the
anti-fascist struggle and raising it to a higher level, they called on
the state to ban the fascist MHP. Their struggle with the MHP was not
simultaneously directed against the state but exclusively at the
MHP. The second mistake was to separate the anti-fascist struggle
completely from the class struggle. Both struggles were treated as
completely different and separate. Now, let us imagine the following:
the fascists attack and we fail to deliver any riposte, what will
happen then? Will the fascists stop attacking? No. What will happen is
clear. They will continue their attacks and try to either annihilate
young people or bring them under their control. Every step back, in
the name of "not falling for provocations" or every attempt to wage a
purely defensive struggle against fascist attacks will produce
nothing, but will pave the way to legitimise the fascist organisations
and make it possible for them to strengthen themselves. If this
happens the end result will be that the schools and universities fall
completely under fascist sway.

Now, what kind of class struggle is being waged by those who draw back
from fascist attacks and allow the schools bit by bit to fall under
fascist control? What ends will this struggle serve?  To see how
impossible it is to spread the class struggle without stepping up the
anti-fascist struggle and driving back the fascists scarcely requires
mastery of Marxism-Leninism. What was experienced earlier has yielded
clear results. On what basis is the current struggle of students and
school pupils growing? Ending undemocratic practices and repression,
achieving democratic rights, raising the struggle for educating the
people and so on...

All these are basic points and whoever opposes them has to be combated
by us. When we are confronted with fascist attacks, we cannot develop
the class struggle without removing this obstacle, the class struggle
will unite with the struggle against this obstacle.

Of course the state says, "Fight among yourselves rather than with
me", when it pushes the fascists to launch attacks. But to frustrate
this policy and expectation of the state does not mean remaining
silent and fleeing from the struggle, but renewing the struggle. In
this case it is necessary to step up the anti-fascist struggle, which
means it should be used as a way of organising the masses and getting
them to participate in the struggle.What is the aim of the state's
policies in relation to "provocations"? It is to divert the struggle
of the people and the youth from their objective. Before 1980, this
met with success against organisations which did not want to "fall for
provocations". But if the anti-fascist struggle is led in such a way
as to avoid deviating from its objective, if on the contrary it is
conducted in such a way as to unite the struggle against the state
with the struggle for people's power, then the tables will be turned
on the state and its games. And this is what must be done. If the
anti-fascist struggle is raised, it is possible that other demands may
recede into the background. But if we organise the masses on the basis
of the anti-fascist struggle and lead them in the struggle, if we can
show the masses the correct path, if young people realise that the
state is cooperating with those who launch fascist attacks, who are
simply one of the means the state possesses, and if the other demands
and problems of the masses are not lost sight of in the course of the
anti-fascist struggle, then all this will serve to develop the class
struggle and be of use to the revolution at the same time. And this
will have meant that the provocations have been destroyed.


-- 
Press Agency Ozgurluk
For justice, democracy and human rights in Turkey and Kurdistan!
Website: http://www.ozgurluk.org                          
mailto:ozgurluk at xs4all.nl / mailinglists: petidomo at ozgurluk.xs4all.nl
List info: english-request at ozgurluk.xs4all.nl