Y the Generals at Turkey's 'left' Union

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of un an mi fo: re] po gr( str WC ha an an tia DI fo1 Tu sta ber cla iali CO1 Jack Johnson veral hundred leaders of nions (DISK) marks a itical point in the regime's iti-working class strategy.

At the same time a martial w court is examining ways of epping legal attacks on ISK, already declared illegal ¡ the generals' coup.

For the Turkish working ass, the struggle to build and fend DISK has in many ways pified its own economic and ¡litical evolution over the last 1years.

The charges faced by the lion leaders of 'subversion' a attempting to establish a arking dictatorship irror the way in which DISK's ration and activities have peatedly taken an openly ¡litical form and reflected the owing consciousness and its iving for independence by the orking class.

That this process has just as ten been frustrated and trayed can only be explained political terms; the monolising of DISK's leadership by e reformist and petty bourois policies of the Communist Ity of Turkey (TKP), the irkish Workers Party and the publican Peoples Party.

Despite these forces, who ve continuously compromised d diverted the union's rank d file's revolutionary potenil, time and again it has been SK which has been in the refront of the fight against the irkish ruling class and the ite.

To bring out DISK's central portance to the Turkish irking class and, not least, • clarify the obvious consion which exists at the esent time about the real state the workers' movement der the Even dictatorship, Is for a brief outline of its story.

Generally speaking the devopment of trade unionism in irkey has been extremely conidictory, bound up as it inevibly been with the anging and uneven economic d political conditions which ve marked Turkey's growth as epublic.

As with democratic rights erall, the possibility of estabhing independent working Lss organisations emerged only mparatively recently, follow; the demise of the former e-party rule Kemal aturk's RPP in the immediate st-war years.

Though Ataturk had not en above mobilising working ss support in the anti-imperist national liberation wat, nsolidation of bourgeois rule Mass turnout at funeral led to the effective repression of all union activity to a state similar to that under the former Young Turk regime.

Under conditions of a backward, largely agricultural economy, Ataturk's 'Renewal of Tranquility' Law of 1925 outlawed trade unionism.

The Labour Code of 1936 went further, banning all strikes and giving the state virtually complete control over the working class.

These measures, with their systematic denial of basic rights, Ataturk borrowed straight from Mussolini's corporate state model in fascist Italy though they were also consistent with the Kemalist 'above classes' stance characteristic of such bonapartist forms of rule.

General Evren significantly dresses in the same clothes today. Further evidence of the Turkish bosses' fear of the working class was the passing of the Societies Law in 1938 which prohibited all organisations based on class'.

The ending of World War II brought enormous changes.

Externally, the Marshall Plan's western European reconstruction was complimented by of Kemal Turkler the cold war Truman Doctrine directed against the USSR.

And internally Turkey was opened up to a dollar-led influx of finance capital, bringing in its wake pressure for political reform.

Sections of the ruling class were forced into recognising the necessity to adapt.

The repeal of the Societies Act in 1946 allowed for the formation of some opposition parties, and meanwhile, especially in Istanbul and Ismir, the working class began forming trade unions.

Yet the Unions Law passed in 1947 had nothing in common with freeing labour from the state; strikes were still banned, there was no collective bargaining and arbitration through the courts remamned compulsory.

In addition, no politics were allowed into the unions, a phobia which has figured prominently in subsequent years.

The fifties and sixties changed the Turkish workers' movement irrevocably. The new situation created by rapid industrialisation, demanding wage labour be put on a new footing, led to the formation of the Turkish Labour Union's Confederation (TURK-IS) in 1952.

That this was also the year in which Turkey entered NATO is no coincidence, since a new relationship with imperialism, especially the USA, was to be a prominent feature in the development of TURK-IS.

A combination of Turkey's big business interests and the USA's Central Intelligence Agency ensured the newly formed unions were loyal to the needs of domestic and foreign capital.

On hand, providing finance and advice, were the gangster bureaucrats of America's AFL CIO who played a key role in tutoring their fledgling counterparts in the arts of free' trade unionism.

Continuing political upheavals led to the overthrow and hanging of Prime Minister Menderes in the coup of 1961.

Its aftermath brought limited and still heavily qualif ied reforms, most notably the right to strike.

Implementation was another matter and only after TURK-IS was forced into mass demonstrations (100,000 in Istanbul alone was it realised in practice.

This was the opening of a sustained period of intense economic and political struggle within which the industrial working class was to emerge as a qualitatively new force.

Union membership massively grew and mounted a challenge to the national industry-wide limits placed on collective barKemal Turkler Kemal Turkler of the metal workers union Maden-Is and Riza Kahuws of the rubber workers union Lastik-Is-joined with a group of intellectuals to establish the Party.

Though limited to a classically reformist Parliamentary perpective, this move was potenti Îly of enormous significance a it broke with the historic alliance between labour and the bourgeois and petty bourgeois parties and politicians.

This political turmoil continued and intensified peak in the mid-'60s. Big strikes oroke ouI ana mereas na y ler sharp clashes with the state forces turning point came 1966 vcals which wortl edo nrect DISK's formation month strike in an Istanbul glass factory, ostensibly ove separatt factory negotiations, posed all the questions had been conme lo ancau wiwml 1okk IS over its independence fron the bosses.

Relations inside TURK-IS, already polarisea oj orevols struggles, were forced to bursting point by confederation President Halil openly Siulng with the Justice Party government against strikers The most extreme class collaboration holding TURKbroken thether y the blows ol June oows o working class action.

Many of its affiliated unions declared for solidarity with the striking workers and were thrown out. From this came the setting up of DISK as a separate confe seating itself as an accomplished fact to a panic-stricken ruling class and pledged formally to oppose class collabmatiny and confidence in the oraton. marked a new development of the Turkish working class.

Class nature

Examining the emergence of DISK throws light on the class nature of TURK-IS, whose membership of well over one million was to remain considerably bigger than its rival.

As its origins confirm, TURK-IS came about as a response to the demands of Turkish capitalism at a particular stage of its development.

Its cravenly yellow character was consistent with an organisation which had been created from above and run with not even a nominal independence from the native and imperialist ruling class (between 1960 and 1970 it was reputed TACK *The Turkey Solidarity Campaign has just produced its latest Information Bulletin which includes material on DISK trials. Available from TSC, 178 Oxford Road, to have received as much cash in direct financial support from the USA as from the whole of its membership subscriptions).

But plumbing the depths of class collaboration is still not synonymous with being part of a corporate state-a view held by some to explain its continued legality under the present military regime and in particular the appointment of TURK-IS President Sadik Side to a post in the civilian cabinet.

To make such an elementary mistake requires an analysis based • at best merely on superficial appearances, ignoring the contradictions contained in its development.

Clearly, such tame imitations of genuine trade unions are of no use to the working class, but they are not the same thing as labour organisations which have been incorporated into the state as the result of an historic atomisation of the proletariat.

However partial, there have been many illustrations of these contradictions:

TURK-IS leader Halil Tunc, a dyed-in-the-wool spokesman of the big bourgeoisie during the '70s from time to time gave half-hearted support to the petty bourgeois liberal' leader Ecevit, disturbing the lengthy traditional relationship between TURK-IS and the big bourgeoisie's Justice Party.

More obviousiy, as recently as 1979, delegations from TURK-IS unions turned out in support of the DISK-organised May Day demonstration in Izmir.

which stands for a corporate state-the now closed down MISK, run by the fascist Nationalist Action Party.

Though never strong enough to impose itself on large numbers of workers, it was even occasions used against TURK-IS as well as DISK.

We should also remind ourselves of how the fascists solve the problem' of militant trade union leaders-not by torture and the feigned neutrality of General Evren's show trials but by bloody murder, such as that

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The preparations by urkey's September 12 ilitary junta to put on trial

le country's Confederation ¡ Revolutionary Workers

JO HE

Turkey's ruling class do have "trade union' organisation