Fascist rising in Turkey

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A fascist uprising took place last week in the city of Mulatya in Eastern Turkey, atte r the murder of a right wing Kurdish clan chief and three of his relatives by a letter bomb.

Thousands of fascists and right wingers occupied the city for two days, setting tire to houses, shops and offices or lett wing organisations and the liberal bourgeois Republican People's Party.

Three young left wingers were killed as the mob shouted slogans calling for the overthrow of the cevit government and the establishment of a religious-fascist state.

10.000 troops moved in while jets flew over the city. Armed battles broke out as the fascists moved into leftwing • minated Clly.

In order to maintain the tension, the fascists poisoned the city's water supplies. As fighting spread to other nearby towns and villages a full-scale curfew was introduced.

Though Ecevit's RPP has claimed that this is a last desperate attempt by the fascists to survive, the reality is that their strength is actualiy increasing-fed by the bankruptcy of working class leadership and the acute economic CrISIS within Turkey itself.

Bourgeois party

Ecevit's inability to combat fascism flows from the bourgeois nature of the RPP itself-which has set out to "solve" Turkey's economic crisis at the expense of the working class.

When the left-wing trade union confederation DISK called a 2-hour token strike against the fascists, Ecevit's government ensured that hundreds of strikers -most of them RPP members or supporters-were arrested.

As the loyal servant of the International Monetary Fund, Ecevit is obliged to combat any such demonstration of independence by Turkish workers-and in this way also prevent the mobilisation necessary to defeat the rascists.

And in these reactionary policies he is supported by the reformist and Stalinist bureaucrats within the trade union movement.

Disillusioned

Meanwhile the fascists press ruthlessly forward in a drive to extend their influence among disillusioned and bankrupt petty bourgeois forces and backward workers.

The bourgeois state will not crush fascism in Turkey or anywhere else. The only force that can stop the fascists is the independent mobilisation of the working class into armed defence squads.

This policy is now literally a question of life or death for Turkish workers. The fight must be taken up for every workers organisation-parties, trade unions and associations -to break from Ecevit and fight for armed self-defence.

The demand must be for a workers and peasants government based on the independent organisations of the working class.

In this struggle for a workers" united front against fascism a Trotskyist party must be built within the working class to raise the necessary programme at each point in the fight and lead the struggle for the overthrow of capitalism in Turkey. booked expenses for wagi negotiation meetings.

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Now the way is clear achieve full reinstatement.

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