Turkish Jun Junta Seeks Cash

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"Having Turkey as an ally is an expensive process. This cry of anguish from the Financial Times reflects the problems facing imperialism in its attempts to prop up the shattered Turkish economy.

Since the New Year the Turkish military junta has been seeking to reschedule over $3 billion of loans secured during 1979 from imperialist central banks, as well as seeking fresh funds from the private capital markets.

For there has been a marked reluctance on the part of the private market to risk any capital in Turkey.

The imperialist governments, principally the US and West Germany, have instructed their central banks to lend to Turkey not because of any expected return on the money advanced, but because of Turkey's strategic position on the Eastern flank of NATO.

Turkey's position Is centra. o imperialist strategy in connection with both the Middle East the the USSR.

But a simple merchant banker cannot entertain such grandiose ideas. The iron laws of proiit and loss must determine investment decisions, and the prospects in Turkey for capital are not yet certain.

The military junta are here caught in a dilemma. For in trying to bring about the conditions for profitable foreign investment, they have to resort to measures which do away with the minimum norms of bourgeois democracy.

In the nine months before the coup 7.8 million days were lost in strikes-over six times the number for any previous year, and mostly in the engineering sector.

This activity of the working class, combined with inflation and mass unemployment made Turkey a highly unfavourable country to invest in.

• The generals have posed as arbitrators between the workers and capitalists, but inevitably they have come down on the side whose interests they are there to protect-the capitalists.

And more and more it will be clear that it is not Turkish capitalists they will obey but imperialism itself.

For while General Evren and his colleagues present their balancing act as a continuation of the tradition of Mustapha Kemal, that is of relative independence, their open subservience to imperialist interests cuts across this ideology.

It is precisely for pointing this out that the editors of Cumhurriyet, a Turkish daily paper, were detained.

Similarly, the Governor of the Turkish central bank, Ismail Aydinoglo, was dismissed for expressing dissent with the monetarist policies of the junta.

These policies are the continuation of the economic package that Demirel agreed with the IMF.

Aydinoglu, who was appointed by former RPP Prime Minister Ecevit, has been replaced by a banker more in tune with the economic policy instituted by the Demirel These policies include opening the way for foreign investment. A new Foreign Investment Promotion Department under the personal supervision of the Prime Minister now processes in ten days applications that used to take seven years!

Nevertheless Deputy Prime Minister Turgut Ozal, in his meeting with private bankers in London, did not get an immediately favourable reply.

And when he travelled on to Bonn immediately afterwards his claim to further aid from central banks irritated the West German government.

This government, aware of both the 'human rights' offensive against the USSR and of the milion Turks in West Germany, cannot be seen to rush too eagerly to the aid of military dictatorships.

To overcome these legal niceties, General Even has announced the reassembly of Parliament in the Autumn. However, the old 'discredited' politicians will be excluded!

In trying to achieve the General's dream of politics without politicians, the junta will hope to create a body which both satisfies the sensitivity of imperialism to such an overtly repressive regime within NATO's free world' and also allows some room for disagreements within the Turkish bourgeoisie.

What the Bonapartist junta must ensure is that this Parliament operates within strict limits, those limits being imposed by the pressing need to eliminate the independence of the Turkish working class.

It is this task, the deteat oi the Turkish working class, that still faces the Generals. For the moment the ruling class in Turkey has chosen the military to carry out the task, repressing the fascists of the Nationalist iction Party, and seeking to ake over the NAP's support But should the attempts of te junta to discipline the working class by smashing the independent unions fall, then the fascists remain an organisation to be used as a last resort. , Whereas Turkes, the fascist leader, remains on trial, some of the second line leaders of the NAP have been freed.

This contrasts with the continued detehtion of over 2,000 leaders of the independent trade organisation DISK.

Should these unionists be put on trial a major confrontation between the junta and the working class could arise.

In these conditions the need for solidarity from the British working class is clear. For this purpose the Turkey Solidarity Campaign was founded.

The TSC was active before the coup, aware of the fascist threat, and the inevitability of military intervention, and today it is trying to organise effective action in solidarity with the working class in Turkey, faced as it is with Thatcherite policies administered by military dictatorship. support the rally of the TSC to HI. LUSE WIU Lau All thace wuhn ran chauld be held at the Conway Hall, London, on January 29.

Included among the speakers will be a member of the executive of the NUJ, a speaker from the CPGB, from the Assoclation of Kurdish Students Abroad, and from the Com-: mittee for the Defence of Democratic Rights in Turkey.

For more details of the activities and programme of the Turkey. Solidarity Campaign write to TSC, BM Box 5965, London WCIN 3XX.

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