01.08.1996

All-out war against militants

Turkish state mounts vicious crackdown

A hunger strike by hundreds of leftwing prisoners in Turkish jails has ended. It started on or around May 20, and was triggered off by an attempt by the authorities to introduce a new, harsher regime in prisons. They wanted to re-open Eskesehir, a prison containing what were termed “coffin cells”, which would greatly reduce inmates’ ability to associate with each other. Prisoners were also to be relocated around various jails, often far from families or lawyers. The protests also highlighted assaults on visiting family members by prison staff.

The strike attracted little attention at first, though supporters tried to hold demonstrations and organise actions both in Turkey and in Europe. At about the 45th day, many of the hunger strikers went over to a “death strike”, which involved not taking liquids. By the time July arrived, the prisoners were visibly becoming weaker, and their supporters were trying harder and harder to pressurise the authorities and draw attention to their plight internationally. In addition, some supporters went on hunger strike themselves in solidarity with the inmates. Riots broke out and barricades were set up in some of the shanty towns around Istanbul, most notably Gazi, scene of a major riot in March 1995 in which many local people lost their lives at the hands of the police.

Riots and the state of the hunger strikers became the lead items on Turkish television news bulletins, though Turkish TV tended to ignore the worst police violence against demonstrators (one TV channel was suspended for three days for showing a special programme on the strikers).

I visited Turkey for about a week as the tension in society over the hunger strikes reached a crescendo. The general impression it made on me was of a police state.  Demonstrations happened in various places, but were broken up with considerable brutality by the police. Many of the participants were arrested and taken to police stations, where ill treatment and sometimes torture was meted out. I had the opportunity to speak to some of the victims. The luckier ones would be held overnight and kicked or punched. The less fortunate would be taken to Vatan, a torture centre.

Not long after arriving in Turkey, I went to Gazi along with another man from Britain and a Turkish translator who belonged to the DHKC (Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front). This was a few hours after police had overrun the barricades there. When we arrived, there were still hundreds of police on the scene, resting. Several large white-painted armoured cars which had been used to destroy the barricades were in the street.

Gazi was a battered chunk of urban squalor of the kind that never makes it into the tourist brochures. Burned-out vehicles and the remains of exploded Molotov cocktails littered the streets. At one point, a council vehicle collected children’s toys and drove off with them. Apparently, the toys were imitations of police vehicles, and this was an affront to the dignity of the cops. Still, pettiness was hardly the worst vice of the Istanbul law-enforcement bodies.

A local youth told us that the police had used eight armoured cars to drive over the barricades, and had arrested 300 people. He was a supporter of the DHKC and he took a considerable risk in coming up to us, as uniformed and plainclothes police and pro-government Turkish media people were still hanging about. Later, he helped us leave the area.

I spoke to relatives of people who had disappeared while in police custody, or people who had experienced torture, or relations of leftwing guerrillas killed by the police. One shopkeeper, a DHKC supporter, had lost one son in a gun battle with the police and another son had done time in prison. The shopkeeper said that life in Turkey was terrible and he would leave the country if he could. He, like many of the people I spoke to, had an almost desperate desire for revolution, not as the fulfilment of a doctrine, but because living under an increasingly opprssive state ruled out any sort of compromise in the struggle for basic human rights and living conditions.

Another man spoke of the secret far right group within the police, on the pattern of the gladio, which operated within the Italian police and judiciary. It is central in organising the ‘disappearances’ of leftists in Turkey.

We visited another Istanbul shanty town, Kucukarmutlu, a stronghold of the DHKC. Since the police knew the politics of the area, they had installed a station on a hill overlooking the area. They did not welcome the presence of foreigners and observed us closely. The local people, a world removed from the affluent shoppers of central Istanbul, regarded the police as a kind of occupying army.

The day before leaving Turkey (July 23), we went off to a remote suburb of Istanbul, Sarigazi, on the Asian side of the Bosphorus. We knew that a demonstration by supporters of the hunger strikers was to take place. We bluffed our way past an armed and nervous soldier to get to the scene. When we arrived, there had already been scuffles between the demonstrators and military police (there was an army base nearby). We were told that a hundred demonstrators had been arrested and a bus set on fire.

About 80 demonstrators had holed up in a two-storey building, a kind of social centre. Eventually the demonstrators came out, unfurled a red banner, shouted slogans and marched towards Sarigazi’s main road. Many local people were clearly sympathetic towards them.

Suddenly, about 50 soldiers appeared on the road up ahead, running towards the demonstrators, who scattered. The soldiers carried rifles and machine guns slung across their backs, with riot shields and batons in their hands. They caught a few of the demonstrators and proceeded to beat them savagely, then loaded them into a vehicle where the beating went on. They forced their captives to keep their heads bowed. The other Briton with me was attacked by the soldiers for getting too close. A Turkish journalist yelled at us in broken English: “This is like Pinochet Chile, like Argentina. This is Turkey! Now go away!”

Three hunger strikers died while I was there, and nine later. The government conceded the demands of the hunger strikers, but many of the survivors will suffer permanent health damage and it is possible that the government will renege on its concessions. The savagery of the Turkish authorities is matched by the courage and spirit of Turkish revolutionaries, often under appalling circumstances.

At the moment however it is the state which has the upper hand. There is much sympathy for revolutionaries and militants in the poorest areas of Turkey, but this has not yet turned into organised and active support.

The Turkish state is fragile, but since the fundamentalist Welfare Party squeezed into power, everything indicates that it is going onto the offensive. Struggle in Turkey has forged a fighting, revolutionary tradition, which has many lessons for the sleepy politics of the left in Britain. But from what I have witnessed this tradition will have to spread to the masses, if its spirit is to survive the hammer blows of the state.

Andrew MacKay