07.05.1996

Turkish powder keg

Three people were killed in clashes on May 1 in Istanbul. The trouble started when the police attempted to ‘screen’ May Day demonstrators. Turkish TV said people “carrying placards of an illegal organisation” refused to submit to searches by the security forces. Instead they fought.

In addition to attacking the police, demonstrators threw petrol bombs at the offices of rightwing parties, overturned telephone booths, attacked a post office, turned municipal buses into barricades and broke windows in banks and shops. A plainclothes policeman was identified by demonstrators because he was seen to have a pistol in his waistband. A total of 69 people were wounded, including many police, but all the dead were demonstrators, at least two of them killed when police opened fire.

Reports in the Turkish and international bourgeois media blamed illegal leftwing groups for the violence. Dev Sol (Revolutionary Left) and the Maoist Communist Party of Turkey (Marxist-Leninist) were the organisations most frequently mentioned. One rightwing politician complained afterwards that the violence was caused because “communists” were allowed to mark May Day. However, all sorts of things have been banned in Turkey (including entire languages) without making the place any more peaceful.

Some of the violence by demonstrators was driven by blind frustration and rage. But Turkey is a powder keg. There is a civil war in all but name in the Kurdish areas. There is tension between the islamic and western aspects of Turkish society, and there is a mounting gulf between rich and poor, not least in the cities where illegal leftwing groups have a base. And among the poor there is anger that leading politicians and officials can become enmeshed in corruption scandals and go unpunished. Many of the shops attacked in Istanbul sold goods that most Turkish workers and youth will never be able to afford.

If there is one country in the world well on the way to a revolution situation, that country is Turkey. Communists here must watch Turkish events and be prepared to support their comrades there. Communists in Turkey need a revolutionary programme that can turn the mounting anger into workers power.

John Craig