[Turkish junta in balancıng act Over one hundred…]

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Turkish junta in balancıng act Over one hundred members of the security forces of the Spanish state have been gunned down by the Basque national liberation fighters of ETA in 1980.

Prime Minister Adolfo Suarez has reacted to this shattering affront to the dignity and power of the Spanish state not by launching a political counterblast to militant Basque nationalists but by cowering in his Palace in Madrid.

Until last week Suarez had visited Euskadi (the Basque The incumbent President Ramalho Eanes, supported by the Socialist and Communist Parties, won the Portuguese. presidential election.

In a very heavy poll he received 56% of the votes to the 40% of the Democratic Alliance candidate General Soares Carneiro.

The former left wing idol Major Otelo Saraiva de Carvalho got a mere 1.5%, and the Trotskyist candidate Aires Rodriguez received only 12,000 votes (0.2%)-compared with a remarkable 140,000 votes won by Trotskyist candidates in the recent parliamentary elections.

Eanes' victory looks like a reversal of the parliametary elections. But on closer examination this is not so clear.

Though the ruling right-wing Democratic Alliance (Social Democrats and Christian Democrats) tried to brand Eanes as a Communist it was not so easy.

He was still remembered as the united anti-communist candidate (supported by the SP, the Social Democrats and Christian Democrats) in the last election.

Eanes himself repudiated the CP's support for him and during the campaign he came closer and closer to accepting the Democratic Alliance • programme.

This was one of the things which led a section of the Socialist Party (led by Mario Soares) to withdraw support for Eanes.

: During the campaign Soares temporarily resigned as SP General Secretary but-never one to stand on principle-he is now back again.

Soares political impotence was illustrated by the failure of his gesture to affect Eanes' campaign.

And Soares' return has not ended the split in the Socialist The party sent two separate delegations to the funeral of former Prime Minister Sa Carneiro, killed in an air crash two days before the election.

Sa Carneiro and the deputy premier Christian Democratic leader Freitas do Amaral, said they would not continue in office if Eanes was re-elected.

Do Amaral has carried out this threat personally and said he will no longer serve as a Minister.

But the existing government will carry on under the new leader of the Social Democrats, Pinto Balsemao.

Balsemao, like Sa Carneiro of whom he was a close associate, was a member of Caetano's fake fascist "parliament" but resigned just in time to have some anti-fascist credentials.

He clearly aims to continue, with Eanes' growing support, the right wing policies of his predecessor, including the dis mantling of the remaining gains of the 1974 revolution. provinces only twice since he became Prime Minister in 1976 -both times in secret : und only for internal meetings of his party, the Democratic Union.

Plunge

Last week in the end, under huge pressure from the nervous capitalists of Euskadi as well as the rest of Spain their 'leader' Suarez finally took the plunge.

The trip, designed to mobilise support against the. force of militant Basque nationalism, was political catastrophe.

First, Suarez was surrounded by a security net so tight that no one even saw him and he indictated that he was afraid to walk the streets of part of the country he claims to have nursed into democracy.

The disgrace of present and former leading Christian Democratic politicians in Italy is becoming an almost weekly event.

Last week it was the turn of Antonio Bisaglia, Minister of Industry who was stung into resignation by the conclusions of a "court of honour" set up by the president of the Senate.

Bisaglia is a big Venice financier who has for some time been the subject of publie suspicion of involvement in the ten million lire oil tax scandal which originated in Venice.

Siphoned off

This vast sum of money was siphoned off by civil servants and probably Ministers and others over the last ten years through the fiscal office responsible for taxation of the oil Despite frantic attempts by the Christian Democrats to cover up this scandal it is threatening to burst-drowning the reputations of several powerful leaders in the process.

It is even publicly alleged that the leader of the "left" of the Christian Democrats, former long time Premier Giulio Andreotti was in some way involved in the fraud.

Even it, as seems likely, the full truth of all these allegations s never known, the damage to the authority of the main ruling class political party is already being done.

Earthquake

Bisaglia's resignation comes hard on the heels of the offer of resignation from the Interior Minister after the monumental failure of the government to provide relief in the south after the earthquake.

Bisaglia himself was pushed to resign not over this or even directly due to the oil tax scandal but because of allegations that he was abusing his position as Minister of Industry to favour his vast Venetian insurance business.

His only pathetic defence was that he let decisions on Second, there were strikes and demonstrations in protest against the visit throughout the Basque provinces.

These were organised not only by the left and by radical nationalists of ETA but also by the conservative nationalists of the Basque Nationalist Party (PNV).

• The central government is so unpopular among the people of Euskadi that the PNV had to organise protests despite itself in order to preserve its credibility as a nationalist organisation.

The PNV president of the nearly powerless Basque "autonomous" government, Carlos Garaicoechea, refused to organise a banquet in Suarez' honour in the historic Basque capital, Guernica.

And in at least 104 municipalities the local councils themselves organised work stoppages and closing down of all council insurance be made his deputy ministers.

Although Bisaglia's resignation will have the effect of strengthening the Communist Party's current more rigorous ópposition to the Christian Democratic-dominated government, the accusations against him came from the far rightAfter three months in power, the Turkish military junta is still balanced uneasily between conflicting forces in Turkey and on a world scale.

handed stance as mean *that its vicious attacks on the working class have run alongside measures against the, fascist NAP. Fascist leader Turkes has NONA We.. business as a protest Suarez' visit!

So, far from asserting his authority, Suarez was forced to return to Madrid politically empty handed, snubbed and humiliated.

Impunity

It was not what the Spanish ruling class-and in particular the Francoist generals-were looking for as a response to the daily assaults on the security forces which ETA is still able to impose with virtual impunity.

One of the consequences of the visit. инететоте. increase the ease in tee alreail grave danger that the army generals will once again decide to exercise direct state power and stage a coup d'etat.

The Spanish Civil over yet. from the neo-fascist Social Movement (MSI).

This fact frighteningly illustrated the way in which in Italy, as in Spain, the crisis of authority of the "respectable' 'democratic' representatives of the ruling class is leading the far right to prepare to take over. been brought repeatedly before the courts. facing various charges, one of which-"inciting people to armed rebellion against the state"-carries a life sentence.

• Other NAP members are charged with financing armed thugs.

Charges against other politicians from the Justice Party, the RPP and the National Salvation Party include a charge Turkish troops on the streets of corruption and tax fraud against the brother of Justice Party leader Demirel.

This crackdown is designed to show that the army alone is able to crush "anarchy". Prime Minister Ulusu has boasted that political killings have dropped from 20 per day to an average of 1-2.

The junta is holding public meetings across the country, trying on this basis to win support of desperate and bankrupt middle class layers-who have been wooed by the junta's economic and tax reforms.

Main victims of these policies have been the working class. The Turkish lira has been devalued twice, while the price of basic commodities has risen by 100%.

The factories have been placed under virtually military discipline, with the sack for any worker who arrives late three times in a month.

Not paid " The promised 20% bonus for workers has never been paidbut independent unions" have been banned and strikes outlawed. There has been a savage crackdown on revolutionary organisations, with thousands of militants jailed.

: Suarez LS Andreotti (right): was he involved?

On the international level, the junta also continues to balance uneasily. A break in diplomatic relations with the Zionist state of Israel has helped pave the way for talks on trade with the oil-rich Libyan and Iraqi regimes. Turkish generals have sought to improve relations with the Soviet bureaucracy. A new trade deal is expected to be signed in Moscow in January.

Echoing this collaboration between the Moscow Stalinists and the junta chiefs, the illegal Turkish Communist Party is proclaiming the junta to be a "lesser evil" compared to a fascist government.

But of course the junta itself is completely linked to the NATO alliance and thus . imperialist strategy in the Despite the defeatism and collaboration of the Stalinists, and the real setback inflicted by the September 12 coup, the Turkish working class is still not completely defeated.

Key to its struggle is the building of a revolutionary leadership to unite the oppres sed masses on transitional and democratic demands in the fight to oust the bonapartist junta and establish a workers and peasants government.

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