04.03.2010

Dedicated to making revolution in Turkey

Mýgýrdýç Baylýk: June 18 1943-February 24 2010. Jack Conrad celebrates his life

Politically, morally and intellectually Mýgýrdýç Baylýk was forged in the white heat of the late 1960s and early 70s. Turbulent, forward-moving and inspiring years, with countless lessons, both positive and negative, for us today.

Born and raised in Turkey’s biggest city, Istanbul, Baylýk lived amongst the Greek-Armenian minority in the Kurtulus district. So in many ways Baylýk was an outsider in Turkey and as such he saw things which are often taken for granted or go unquestioned with a critical and acute eye. What commonly passes for normality he saw as strange.

An outstanding student at school, he went on to study civil engineering at university. His doctoral thesis was finished at Queen Mary College, London, in 1971. Here in London he met up again with Bedir Aydmir, a friend from his schooldays. Both involved themselves with the leftwing student movement in Britain.

Understandably, however, it was politics in Turkey that had the most profound and enduring impact. Mass discontent, working class militancy and a widespread belief in some kind of socialism produced what can only be called a revolutionary situation. May Day demonstrations in Turkey mobilised hundreds of thousands. There were frequent clashes with police and fascists. Revolution seemed imminent.

Baylýk was shaped by this extraordinarily heightened period of struggle. It gave him a glimpse of how a better world could be brought about and even what it might look like.

He joined the Turkish Students Federation in the UK and then the Union of Turkish Progressives in Britain. For him, becoming a member of the Communist Party of Turkey was inevitable after that.

The TKP arose as if from the ashes during the late 1960s and early 70s. Winning leadership over a wide swathe of the working class, it became something approaching a real mass party.

Of course, the TKP has been illegal almost from its inception. Turkey’s nationalist president, Mustafa Kemal Atatürk, ordered the execution of the entire TKP leadership in January 1921. Hence to ensure physical safety and to be politically effective many TKP cadre have been forced to go abroad over the years. Obviously that carries its own dangers. Exile life is notoriously fractious.

Baylýk was given responsibility for establishing a TKP printing business in London. Quitting a well paid engineering job, he became a full-time party worker.

After completing his military service in 1975 - which is compulsory for every male citizen in Turkey - he returned to Britain, where once again he took charge of the TKP printing business.

The TKP’s British organisation produced a whole range of books and publications, but, especially following the betrayals and collapse of the ‘official’ leadership headquartered in east Berlin, its paper, Isçinin Sesi (Workers’ Voice), a fiercely polemical fortnightly, assumed prime importance. Baylýk was central to ensuring that, although the TKP was illegal, its voice was free.

I can’t quite remember when I first met Baylýk, but it must have been some time in the mid-1970s. Maybe it was at a rally or demonstration in London. Of course, we got to know each other properly after I and a number of other British comrades joined the TKP.

Some of our comrades used their UK passports to do illegal work, such as smuggling TKP literature into Turkey. Others, including myself, fronted the Committee to Defend Democratic Rights in Turkey. We worked under the direction of comrade Bedir Aydmeir. There had been a counterrevolutionary military coup in September 1980, which necessitated a swift turn to defensive politics.

However, it was when we started to publish The Leninist that I really began to appreciate Baylýk’s qualities. We publicly launched our open, principled and disciplined rebellion against the opportunist leadership of the CPGB with the first edition in November 1981.

Anyone looking back at the early editions of The Leninist - the forerunner of the Weekly Worker - will instantly appreciate that politically we learnt a great deal from our short time in the ranks of the TKP. But we also came away with something else. We learnt the worth of comradeship, dedication and what single-minded hard work can achieve. In many ways comrade Baylýk embodied those qualities.

Baylýk was always friendly to his CPGB comrades ... and exceedingly helpful. He not only offered valuable technical advice and gave us generous terms and conditions when it came to printing costs and payments. Baylýk encouraged our comrades to work at the TKP printshop. That included one comrade doing sales. She proved highly successful and secured a whole string of commercial contracts worth many thousands of pounds.

Other comrades, such as myself, honed their manual skills by collating everything from Jewish Tribune to The Next Step - that was the paper of an ultra-leftist organisation called the Revolutionary Communist Party. Now this outfit has morphed into Spiked, the Institute of Ideas and the Manifesto Club. Believe it or not, its Munira Mirza is Boris Johnson’s director of policy for culture.

On one memorable occasion we humble collators got pages from those two rather different publications mixed up. Either the Jewish Tribune ended up with pages from The Next Step inside it or it was the other way round. I don’t know whose readers would have been more shocked and mortified. Luckily, at the last moment, the mistake was spotted. The pages were laboriously taken apart and then put together as their editors had intended. Baylýk, of course, saw the funny side of what could have been a commercial disaster.

Baylýk was always very close to the CPGB. We have had many joint meetings with the TKP. Baylýk and other TKP comrades attended our Communist Universities and a couple of years ago the two organisations even shared a single office space.

Baylýk took a keen interest in political developments in Britain and what the CPGB was doing and saying. However, I was for long frustrated that he and his other British-based comrades did not fully engage with the politics of their adopted country. And I told him so. After all, Baylýk lived most of his adult life in London. In my mind he was just as much a Londoner as I am. But, though an internationalist to his very marrow, Baylýk was fully committed to making revolution in Turkey. His road had been set in the 1960s and he devoted himself one hundred percent to that task.

The last time I met comrade Baylýk was during his stay at the Royal Free Hospital. Though he was very ill and clearly dying, he still had that twinkle in his eye and that wicked smile.

Living in exile in Britain must have changed Baylýk in countless ways. But he and other comrades from Turkey have also changed politics in Britain. Comrade Baylýk is dead, but his dedication, fighting spirit and humanity will live on here in Britain, not least in the CPGB.

I would like to extend our condolences to his wife Umran, his son Simon and all his TKP comrades. You are not alone in suffering a great loss.