Confusion on nature of new Turkish jun

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the march in London after the September 12 coup Mussolini: used fascist mass movement to atomise working class The coup d'etat last autumn in Turkey brought to power a junta, the nature of which has been a source organisations.

Characterisations range from the Communist Party of Turkey's "lesser evil" to the Albanian Stalinists ultra-left theory that nothing has changed -there was "fascism" before and there still is now.

Behind them all is a lack of scientific understanding of the different forms of capitalist class rule.

Challenged

In these articles we intend answering only the analysis of the junta advanced by the Iscinin Sesi (Workers' Voice)

group, an organisation recently split from the Communist Party of Turkey and represented in Britain by the Union of Turkish Progressives in Britain.

In their magazine Turkey Today and other publications they have challenged openly the Trotskyist characterisation of the coup as a bonapartist military dictatorship.

The UTPB argue that the regime is fascist, in the same mould as the Hitler and Mussolini dictatorships.

Iscinin Sesi's leading theoretician Yurukoglu devoted a large part of his report to the UTPB's Tenth Annual Conference to polemicising against the Trotskyist view.

What Marxist theory leads him to these conclusions? According to the text of the speech (reprinted in the Autumn issue of Turkey Today) the answer is very little.

In raising criticisms of the inadequacy of the Dmitrov/ Stalin definition of fascism as being "the most open dictatorship of the most reactionary, most chauvinistic section of finance capital" Yurukoglu is forced to admit that:

"Definitely a more complete definition is required. And there is no such definition in the world communist movement."

This illuminating statement confirms that Isinin Sesi continues to be dominated by Stalinist, not Marxist theory. In particular they have failed to draw on the rich tradition of Trotsky.

The rise of fascism in Europe corresponded with the degeneration of the Third Communist International whose leaders increasingly placed the reactionary policy of 'socialism in one country' of the Stalinist bureaucracy in Russia above the needs of the world proletariat.

Guide Only Trotsky stood out against this. His writings opposing the Comintern's criminally wrong policies-especially in Germany and Spain-alone provide a methodological guide to dealing with today's problems.

Iscinin Sesi pose the question 'What is fascism? What is the point of separating fascism from any military coup?" They admit they hake as yet 13 answer.

This does not prevent them from stridently declaring their IRKE analysis of General Evren and the National Security Council.

"He is a fascist and he is leading a fascist regime."

The judge from their published material the only reason for this conclusion is the brutal and systematic repression of democratic rights carried out by the junta-mass arrests, torture, suppression of trade unions, national minorities, etc.

But this line of argument carries great dangers. For Marxists it is not enough to reach political definitions on the similarity of methods used by varying forces.

Dissimilar

Otherwise it would be possible to make sweeping comparisons with quite dissimilar and distinct formations. Comparisons for instance between Sadat in Egypt, along with a whole host of regimes in South America today, and the 1919-23 counter-revolution in Germany or Kornilov's in the Russian Revolution; between Chiang Kai-Shek's slaughter of millions of communists in 1927 in China and Kemal Attaturk's one-party rule in Turkey with its genocidal policies against the Kurds, complete suppression of the working class and murder of the entire leadership of the young Communist Party.

Or even the no-jury courts and concentration camps in Northern Ireland, yet administered by a parliamentary democracy.

This does not daunt Iscinin Sesi. They say:

"The fact that fascism did not ascend to power as a mass movement from below like in Germany but is being established from above by means of the military junta poses the Generals with the difficult task of creating on a mass basis a mass movement now. This requires suitable ideology ... thus the revival of Kemalism Confused and an upsurge of Great Turkish nationalism were witnessed durino the last tun monthe Tha choice is an historically objective one."

"Historically objective?"

After all fascism in Turkey is not a new phenomenon! It was -if we accept the Iscinin Sesi propostion-in power from the 1920s to the 1950s! Poor Lenin! Poor Comintern! Poor Baku Congress in 1920! How foolish they were in not being able to see this fascist essence of Kemalism!

How stupid to allow the delegation from the Ankara government to attend the Baku congress! How counter-revolutionary were the Bolsheviks to give money and military aid to the Kemalist (fascist) movement in Turkey!

How perfidious of the Baku Congress to declare that "Mustafa Kemal's movement is a national liberation movement. We support it"!

The Iscinin Sesi comrades really should not try and make a monkey out of Lenin and Bolshevism.

Fascist party?

If they seriously believe what they say then why hold back from calling the Republican Peoples_ Party, the party formed by Kemal, on the basis of and to perpetuate Kemalist ideology, a fascist party?

And if they use to bolster their argument the fact that the anti-communist Articles 141 and 142 of the Penal Code were taken directly from Mussolini, why not simply declare the Republic's whole constitution, with its outlawing also of the class struggle, fascist too!

This oversimplified, superficial and subjective-idealist type of analysis comes through continuously. They say, in defining the relationship between fascism and capitalism that: uo suns.

"The essence of fascism is found not in Hitler and the Nazi party wnich were the agents of lascism, but in the terroristic dictatorship which they imposed and the corporate state which they constructed and administered for the benefit of monopoly capital."

Marxists recognise the state as essentially "bodies of armed men" and likewise every form of bourgeois rule as the dictatorship, through implicit and explicit violence of the bourgeoisie.

Lenin's view was that "political reaction all along the line is in the interests of imperialism". The Turkish National Security nci ta For capitalism in the imnerialist epoch all regimes, bour- TTT TANIT Arra geois democratic, military, fascist or any other are instruments of the rule of finance capital, the dictatorship of finance oligarchy. How could it be possible otherwise for a handful to rule millions of people?

Qualitative

For the bourgeoisie there need be no difference bel ween all these tactical forms. Fr r the working class qualitative distinctions exist.

When Iscinin JACK JOHNSON takes up an important discussion on the character of the military junta which rode to power in Turkey last September.

Hitler was not representing lascism but was an agent of fascism, what they really mean is that fascism is monopoly capital and Hitler was the agent of that interest.

But every government in the imperialist world also represents monopoly capital. Does that mean they are all agents of Corporate Not exactly, reply Iscinin Sesi, that requires a corporate state-and sure enough, that is What Even and the Generals have established.

Accordingly, they now declare Turk-Is, the yellow trade union federation set up in the 1950s to be "fascist" -a corporate state union-and announce that "fascist Labour discipline is being imposed everywhere."

But wait a moment: they then go on to say:

"the working class is not yet defeated and crushed in a way, say, as in the aftermath of the Spanish Civil War"!

So the corporate state has been established and "fascist labour discipline" introduced while the working class is still not defeated!

How can this be explained? Does the Turkish working class voluntarily accept this "fascist" discipline? In any historical example, Spain, Italy or Germany,-the corporate state could only be established after the workers' movement had been atomised by fascist mass movements.

Continued

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Wednesday 5 a80d Party, including its characterisation of the trade union and socialist leaders as : 'social fascist') served to divide worker from worker, to sow confusion and thus, ultimately, to open

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of continuing controversy within Turkish left-wing

RUNTLERE AYRLMA MAKKH

AKE SE STAH ASSAN HAXK!