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Title: The Roots of Turkish Fascism
Author: CrimethInc.
Date: 12th November 2019
Language: en
Topics: Turkey, kurdistan, fascism, history
Source: Retrieved on 12th October 2020 from https://crimethinc.com/2019/11/12/the-roots-of-turkish-fascism-and-the-threat-it-poses

CrimethInc.

The Roots of Turkish Fascism

Like the United States and many other countries, Turkey has been on a

trajectory towards escalating authoritarianism for a long time; it is

arguably further along this trajectory than most. How did an autocratic

government gain control in Turkey, forging an alliance between a

once-secular nationalism and fundamentalist Islam? Studying the roots of

present-day fascism in Turkey will help us to understand the origins of

the Turkish invasion of Rojava, identify potential comrades and fault

lines within Turkish society, and catch a glimpse of what the future may

look like everywhere if we don’t succeed in halting the rise of

autocracy.

The appendix includes an interview with a member of Revolutionary

Anarchist Action, an anarchist organization active in Turkey for ten

years.

---

Not long ago, Turkey was a darling of the Western world. A favorite

tourist destination of Europeans and Russians, home to the one of the

longest-standing US foreign military bases, and a top recipient of

IMF/World Bank loans, the country bridging Asia and Europe once had a

generally a favorable reputation among all from US military brass to

financial speculators. This image has been severely tarnished by the

Turkish military’s latest incursion into northern Syria, which elicited

widespread disapproval from various politicians as well as international

social movements.

Yet although the invasion took many people by surprise, Turkey itself

has always been shaped by a mix of fascisms—an ethno-state built upon

the slaughter of Armenians and the expulsion of Greeks as well as the

colonial assimilation of the local Kurdish population. At its

foundation, the national Turkish identity was conceived for the benefit

of the Muslim population, borrowed from the “nation system” by which the

Ottoman Empire divided the population according to religion.

For its first 27 years, starting in 1923, the Turkish State was run by a

one-party corporatist system that can properly be described as fascist.

After 1950, additional political parties were permitted to enter the

parliamentary system—at least until the military coup in 1960.

In the ensuing years, Turkey was influenced by the global revolutionary

leftist wave. This relatively inclusive period ended with the military

coup in 1980; the fascistic neoliberal regime that followed was very

similar to Pinochet’s Chile. The war against Kurdish movements

intensified during the 1990s alongside political instability, with one

coalition government disintegrating after another. The early 2000s, when

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan took the stage, appeared to represent a break with

classical Turkish politics, a liberal democratic turn—but the honeymoon

gradually ended as authoritarian neoliberalism blended with traditional

Turkish fascism. The latest iteration of Turkish fascism, embodied by

President Erdoğan, represents the melding of a deep-rooted nationalism

with more recent political Islam.

On the surface, this ideological merger is surprising, as the two

currents used to be at odds. The founding principles of the Turkish

state as articulated by Mustafa Kemal Atatürk emphasized that it was to

be a secular state. This secularism, while repressive in some ways—for

example, prohibiting the public display of religious garb—was also far

from complete. Since the founding of the state, its ministry of

religious affairs has repeatedly attempted to regulate and instill Sunni

Islam throughout Turkey. More importantly, amalgamations of state

forces, Sunni nationalist militias, and mobs have carried out periodic

massacres against Turkey’s Alevi population[1]— in 1938 in Dersim

against Alevi Kurds, 1978 in the cities of Maraş and Malatya, in Çorum

in 1980, in Sivas in 1993.

Despite the nationalist underpinnings of the state and the periodic

mobilization of Islam at the service of Turkish nationalism, this form

of hegemonic fascism chiefly emphasized the Turkic roots of the Central

Asian steppe, rather than the blend of the Ottoman imperialism and

Islamic fundamentalism Erdoğan peddles today. This form of fascism was

weaponized against the leftist student movement of the late 1960s and

’70s, in which the initial founders and cadres of the Kurdistan Workers’

Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê, PKK) also cut their teeth, including

the well-known leader Abdullah Öcalan himself. Both the state and

related fascist paramilitary formations committed massacres, such as the

infamous 1978 raid in Ankara in which seven young members of the Turkish

Workers Party were murdered. Some of the perpetuators of that particular

massacre later became agents in Operation Gladio, the CIA- and

NATO-directed international paramilitary organization that was

responsible for carrying out the Italian “strategy of tension”

(strategia della tensione) against the Autonomist movement of the 1970s.

Their exploits stretched over decades. These state operatives also

organized the counter-insurgency forces that targeted PKK members and

their Kurdish financiers across Turkey in the 1990s.

The Rise of Political Islam

Meanwhile, amid the violent turmoil between leftist students and

state-backed fascist paramilitaries, the founders of modern Turkish

political Islam were quietly organizing. Among them was Fetullah Gülen,

a Turkish Islamic cleric currently in exile in the Pocono Mountains of

Pennsylvania. Gülen‘s long relationship with the AKP and with Erdoğan

himself has been tumultuous to say the least. Starting out in the

eastern Turkish city of Erzurum as a member of a congregation following

the teachings of Said Nursi, Gülen became the cleric of a small number

of followers in the western city of Izmir in the late 1960s and ’70s.

(Said Nursi, an avid anti-communist, was also prosecuted by the Turkish

state until his death in 1960; his particular variant of Islam was

deemed a threat to the Kemalists because it incorporated capitalism and

modernity.)

Erdoğan’s roots can be traced to a rival Islamist movement, the National

Perspective Movement (Milli Görüş, a reference to the Ottoman link

between the Turkish Nation and Islam) founded by Necmettin Erbakan.

Gülen and Erbakan differed in strategy. Erbakan advocated for a

political movement to capture parliamentary seats and ultimately the

government, while Gülen pursued a more insidious approach that combined

business-building and the cadrefication of various organs of the state,

primarily the military and judicial ones, including the police forces.

Often competing, these two strands of Turkish political Islam rose to

prominence in the early 1980s following the military coup of September

12, 1980.The coup put the military government of Kenan Evren in power,

which arrested nearly 650,000 people—mostly leftist revolutionaries.

Behind cell doors, 171 were killed during torture and interrogation; 49

were executed outright. This brutal wave of repression paved the way for

the rise of political Islam, mostly as a counterforce to the leftist

wave sweeping through the Turkish youth and unionized workers. The

process was accelerated by President Turgut Özal, who folded the Turkish

economy into the global neoliberal system by limiting public investment,

taking measures to attract foreign capital, enacting sweeping

privatizations of public institutions, and transitioning to an

export-driven economy.

Öcalan had fled the country prior to the 1980 military coup. In the

1980s, from Syria, he started to organize the PKK more seriously,

organizing formal guerilla trainings and introducing his ideas into

Kurdish society in the villages and cities of southeastern Turkey.

Ultimately, both strands of political Islam—the Gülenist “Congregation”

and Erbakan’s “National Perspective Movement”—succeeded in their

respective strategies. The Congregation deeply infiltrated the military

and the judiciary, while Erbakan’s Welfare Party (Refah Partisi) became

a coalition partner in the 1996 general elections with its founder

serving as prime minister. Erdoğan’s initial rise in Turkish politics,

as mayor of Istanbul from 1994 to 1998, came about by way of his

membership in Erbakan’s Welfare Party. Following the suppression of the

Welfare Party by Turkey’s National Security Council and Erdoğan’s brief

fourth-month imprisonment for reciting an Islamist poem, the Justice and

Development Party (AKP) was formed in 2001.

The AKP came to power in the 2002 general elections with a sweeping

victory, forming a single-party government for the first time since

Özal’s reign in the 1980s. They succeeded in harnessing voter

frustration about the neoliberal response to the 2001 Turkish economic

crisis. An alliance with the Gülenist movement also contributed to their

rapid rise to power. The Congregation cadre played an essential role,

since until then Islamist parties and governments had always been shut

down by the courts or military. Supporting each other, the two

previously divergent currents within political Islam even took on the

longstanding nationalist military cadres of Turkey via various

conspiratorial operations and investigations.

However, this tenuous alliance broke apart around 2011. The causes of

the split were complex. On the surface, the catalyst was the peace

negotiations between the AKP and the PKK taking place in Norway. The

temporary rapprochement was a thorn in the side of the staunchly

anti-PKK Gülenists. The breakup was also precipitated by the divergence

between Turkish and US policy towards the Syrian conflict, as Gulen was

becoming a client of the US. More fundamentally, the rise of Erdoğan and

the AKP became an existential threat to the Gülenists, as the former

were able to hoard an increasingly large slice of the crony capitalist

pie for themselves. During the AKP years, the volume of

privatization—i.e., wealth transfer from the public sector to private

individuals—reached $60 billion, almost ten times as much as during the

prior administrations. The conflict between the two sides raged for five

years, ultimately culminating with the failed July 15, 2016 coup attempt

by Gülenist cadres in the military.

The Failed Coup

The coup attempt provided the perfect pretext for Erdoğan to consolidate

his power. He was able to purge his old Gülenist allies, who had become

a threat to his reign, and to unleash a storm of repression against all

opposition, including the Kurdish movement and various leftist groups

and activists. Erdoğan had once referred to Gülen respectfully as his

Hodja, or teacher; now he disparagingly refers to him by the location in

the US where Gülen lives in exile, “Pennsylvania.” Alongside his

practice of referring to the YPG by pronouncing the acronym in English,

this shows how Erdoğan intentionally presents himself to the Turkish

population and to the Muslim umma in general (all Muslims imagined as a

singular community bound by religion) as some sort of anti-imperialist.

The declaration of a state of emergency following the coup attempt gave

Erdoğan the power to issue emergency decrees. This led to the jailing of

more than 8000 members of the Kurdish-led Peoples Democratic Party

(HDP), the dismissal of more than 6000 academics from their universities

for opposition views, and a policy of zero tolerance for any public

demonstration critical of the AKP—even though none of these groups had

anything to do with the coup. In its scope, if not in its brutality, the

repression Erdoğan unleashed after the coup attempt compares with what

occurred after the successful military coup of 1980.

The failed coup also provided a renewed “origin story” for the AKP,

which had been on the ropes since the Gezi Uprising of 2013.

At the end of May 2013, riot police brutally evicted an occupation

defending Gezi Park in Taksim Square at the center of Istanbul. People

from many different struggles and demographics responded, forcing the

police out of the area and building barricades around the neighborhood.

For ten days, the subsequent occupation maintained a liberated

police-free zone in the heart of Istanbul, while hundreds of thousands

of people—including rival football clubs, various left groups, and

anarchists demonstrated against the government all around Turkey. In

retrospect, this was one of the last outbreaks of revolt in the wave of

movements that began with the Greek insurrection of December 2008 and

concluded with fascists gaining a foothold in the Ukrainian revolution

of 2014.

The Gezi uprising was the longest lasting, most widespread, and most

participatory street-level insurrection to date in Western (i.e.,

non-Kurdish) Turkey. The communal structures that emerged in the

encampment offered a glimpse of future revolutionary social relations.

After the occupation was evicted, the momentum of the movement

continued, albeit losing steam, for another year.

Yet in the end, the movement failed to reconstitute itself after the

police regained control of the streets. This was partly a matter of

fatigue. Likewise, the spontaneity of the movement—unquestionably one of

its greatest strengths—ultimately failed to offer a clear way to bring

the participants back together after they were dispersed from Taksim

Square; the various political factions once again withdrew into their

respective ideological ghettos. Still, the Gezi uprising remains alive

in many people’s memories, even if the constriction of public politics

following the coup attempt has made it difficult to speak about it

publicly.

After the failed coup, Erdoğan went so far as to paint the Gezi uprising

as another unsuccessful putsch. While it became impossible to organize

according to the ideals of the Gezi uprising, the coup attempt enabled

Erdoğan to fashion a new narrative in which he and his government were

protecting Turkey from threats, both internal and external. The public

displays glorifying citizen “martyrs” who died opposing the military and

the renaming of bridges, parks, avenues and many other public spaces to

reflect the events of July 15, 2016 keep the failed coup alive in the

psyche of Turks, creating a sense of national unity in the face of

“foreign enemies.”

The years since the coup attempt have seen Erdoğan tighten his political

stranglehold on the country. At the same time, this has made him more

isolated and vulnerable, compelling him to search for new political

allies—principally in the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party

(MHP), which now maintains a tenuous coalition with the AKP. This

coalition has come to embody the long-term effort to bring together a

synthesis of Turkish nationalism and Islam. This is the dominant

political ideology of the Erdoğan regime today; it is best exemplified

by the hand-sign insignias seen both at AKP rallies and amid the

jihadist proxies of Turkey operating in Rojava. On one side is the grey

wolf symbol of the fascist MHP; on the other, the four fingers of Rabia,

which was popularized by Erdoğan in solidarity with the Muslim

Brotherhood of Egypt. It represents the four pillars of AKP fascism: one

nation, one flag, one homeland, one state.

Prior to the invasion, Erdoğan’s grip on power was slipping. It was a

blow to the AKP that despite Erdoğan forcing a re-vote, the center-left

nationalist Republican People’s Party (CHP) candidate won the Istanbul

mayoral election—twice, and by a much higher margin the second

time—thanks in part to support from the hard nationalist Good Party

(IYI) and implicit support from the HDP. Meanwhile, some longtime AKP

members, including some of its founders, have split from Erdoğan and are

considering forming a new party or parties. The same kind of internal

fracture has been initiated by former members of the Nationalist

People’s Party (MHP).

Looking at all the autocrats around the world—Bolsonaro, Duterte, Trump,

Putin, Xi, Sisi, and Orban, not to mention the aspiring demagogues not

yet in power—one could say that Erdoğan was the original strongman, save

Putin. Erdoğan and the other despots make a point of glorifying each

other: Orban crows about how “Turkey has a leader with a strong

legitimacy,” while Trump remarks, in reference to Xi Jinping’s lifetime

appointment, “Maybe we’ll have to give it a shot one day.”

In the same way, revolutionaries from the US to the Philippines must

learn from what has happened in Turkey. We should analyze the alliances,

even if they are apparently fragile, within the nation’s right-wing

groups; we should examine the political ideologies of the various

factions that make up the state; most importantly, we must discover how

to drive wedges in the cracks between them in order to topple the

structure they comprise together. On the one hand, we have to understand

how nationalism and religious fundamentalism are mobilized to

reciprocally reinforce one another, so we can undermine those alliances

before they make it impossible for us to organize and act. On the other

hand, we have to communicate an alternative vision for society to the

segments of the population that are most susceptible to this blend of

nationalism and fundamentalism.

The Kurdish Struggle Perseveres

The Kurdish movement in Turkey and across the border in Syria has

repeatedly proven capable of reinventing itself in order to outmaneuver

its enemies. The most recent iteration of the movement’s legal political

party, the People’s Democracy Party (HDP), captured the imagination of

large swathes of the left throughout western Turkey, forging something

of a united front with progressive forces beyond traditionally Kurdish

regions of the country for the first time. Although limited, the

relative political success of the party presented serious challenges to

the AKP’s dominance. But the greatest gain made recently by the Kurdish

freedom movement has occurred amid the northern fronts of the Syrian

civil war in Rojava.

When the AKP first assumed power, there was initially a level of

misplaced hope from segments of the Kurdish movement as well as the

liberal left that it might finally chip away at the nationalist legacy

of the Turkish State. Erdoğan’s rise marked a departure from classical

Turkish politics; it was understandable that a historically oppressed

group like the Kurds, long denied basic freedoms under an official

policy of brutal nationalist assimilation, would be cautiously

optimistic. In addition, a peace process got underway that recognized

Abdullah Öcalan as a party to the process from the island prison where

he is held in complete isolation. These glimmers of optimism quickly

vanished as the AKP deemed the HDP a political threat to its hegemony

following their defeat in the June 2015 general election. In response to

this development, Erdoğan deployed combatants through a well-known

jihadi pipeline from Northern Syria to counteract the Kurdish movement

in Turkey.

The social revolution carried out by the Kurdish movement in Rojava has

been widely celebrated on various radical media outlets; more mainstream

and corporate outlets have commended its military prowess to such an

extent that it is not necessary to reexamine it here. The important

thing to understand is that Turkish politics are tightly linked with the

crisis in Syria. Not only did the revolution in Rojava inject lifeblood

into the Kurdish movement in Turkey, it also compelled the Turkish state

to intensify its repression. On one side of the border with Syria, the

Turkish state facilitated the flow of arms and recruits to ISIS. On the

other side, the dream of Kurdish autonomy in Turkey was reinvigorated;

the ideas given life in Rojava continue to inspire revolutionaries

across the world. This enthusiasm is best exemplified by the

international volunteers fighting alongside the YPG and YPJ and the

outpouring of international solidarity in response to the invasion of

Rojava.

Islamist ideology, first introduced into the Turkish military structure

via the Gülenist cadres, has further penetrated through newly forged

relationships with groups active in the Syrian war. The presence of

these groups was displayed for all to see during the months-long

incursions into Kurdish strongholds during the summer of 2015. The

Islamist graffiti left by the Turkish military should persuade anyone

who has doubts about this.

Suicide bombers specifically targeted those attempting to build

solidarity between Turks and Kurds experiencing Turkish military

occupation. The first such suicide bombing attack took place in July

2015 targeting a delegation of leftist youth in the city of Suruç who

were attempting to travel to Kobanê to take toys to the children of the

war-torn city. That attack killed 33 people. Despicably, the state used

it as an excuse to launch the previously mentioned full-scale assault of

summer 2015. Even more deadly was the bombing of a march protesting the

war in the Kurdish territories; this took place in the Turkish capital,

Ankara, on October 10, 2015, killing 109 people. In both cases, the

attackers were ISIS-affiliated Turkish cells well known to and at times

facilitated by the state. The police department of the city that the

bombers were from, Adıyaman, and the National Intelligence Agency (MIT),

maintained continuous surveillance on them—and didn’t arrest or detain

them despite there being warrants out for their arrest.

The AKP has tossed a few minor concessions to the Kurdish population,

such as a state-run Kurdish television station and a partial easing of

the restrictions on speaking and singing in Kurdish. But these crumbs

are scattered over the ashes of whatever political autonomy the Kurds

had been able to carve out for themselves. Even participation in

standard parliamentary or municipal politics has become practically

impossible. At least a dozen elected members of the parliament have been

imprisoned alongside dozens of co-chair mayors of municipalities. Since

the latest municipal elections in spring 2019, HDP co-chairs have been

forced out of office in 15 municipalities, replaced with new mayors

appointed from Ankara.

Turkish nationalists are quick to point to prominent Kurds who have

enjoyed privileged positions in Turkish society, just as their US

equivalents claimed that Obama’s presidency heralded the arrival of a

post-racial America. The prominence of a few individuals does not

diminish the fact that Kurds, as a people, have historically been an

internal colony of Turkey. In the Turkish economy, Kurdish people serve

as a cheap, hyper-exploited labor force for dangerous “unskilled”

jobs—for example, as precarious, seasonal agricultural workers in the

lowest rungs of the service sector and as expendable manual day-laborers

in industries such as construction. Environmentally and culturally

destructive large-scale development projects such as mega-dams have been

built in the Kurdish territories in the east to supply power and other

commodities to western Turkey. Public services and investment are

minimal in Kurdish areas. The Kurds have fought back fiercely over the

past several decades, but today, at least in Turkey, any autonomy they

have gained is eroding, coinciding with a recent spike in racist attacks

against Kurdish people across the country.

It should go without saying that Kurds have no hegemonic belief system:

some are more political than others, some more left-leaning, and, in

terms of religion, some are staunchly pious, while others are not. One

factor contributing to the electoral successes of the HDP is that they

have set aside some of the PKK’s national liberation and Marxist

rhetoric in order to attract a wider range of Kurdish voters. There are

Kurds who support the AKP, but a larger existential threat to the

Kurdish freedom movement is the growing segment of the Kurdish

population that is exhausted from what feels like a never-ending

conflict. Even if they do not support the AKP, they are weary of war

and, in some cases, heartbroken by or fed up with the PKK on account of

its strategic blunders.

The restructuring of the Turkish military following the coup attempt has

also contributed to the crisis besetting the Kurds. In fact, many of the

high-ranking commanders involved in the coup were also behind the brutal

military invasions and curfews imposed throughout the Kurdish regions of

Turkey in the summer and fall of 2015, which resulted in the slaughter

of more than 4000 people. The implication of these officials in the coup

allowed Erdoğan to wash his hands of responsibility for the massacres,

ironically placing the same Gülenist prosecutors and judges that had

just led the crackdowns against Kurdish and leftist activists on the

receiving end of state repression alongside their former opponents. For

all intents and purposes, the whole judicial and law enforcement

apparatus, which had been populated by Gülenist cadres, has been thrown

into disarray in the aftermath of the failed coup.

The military leadership roles occupied by Gülenists until 2015 are once

again in the hands of the old-school Turkish nationalist cadres that the

Gülenists had purged with the help of the AKP. These cadres are at least

as hostile to the Kurdish movement as their predecessors. In this

regard, it is highly plausible that the same Turkish nationalists who

just acceded to these military posts played a role in encouraging the

most recent invasion of Rojava.

The invasion of Rojava and the ensuing wartime mobilization has

effectively silenced any semblance of mainstream political opposition. A

recent parliamentary decision to green-light the invasion was approved

by all political parties except for the Kurdish led HDP. Lone

politicians from the CHP or other political figures who voice their

opposition to Erdoğan’s colonial ambitions are subject to a barrage of

attacks from the media and the judicial apparatus.

In his megalomania, Erdoğan often likens himself to some kind of

neo-Ottoman sultan with imperial ambitions for the region. This calls

for a certain degree of muscle flexing even if there is no long-term

strategy at play. But the strategy of transforming Northern Syria into a

kind of proxy dependent on Turkey provides certain advantages to

Erdoğan. For a long time, the Turkish economy and currency have been on

the brink of collapse. The war economy and construction and development

projects in Northern Syria might stave off the inevitable, at least

temporarily.

At the same time, Turkey is home to more than three million Syrian

refugees and unknown thousands of jihadists who are sheltered and

formally trained in camps run by the Turkish state in both Turkey and

Syria. All the mainstream political parties have been stoking racism

against Syrian refugees to solicit votes. The AKP has also been

scapegoating Syrian refugees for the declining economy—the latest

numbers show near 14% unemployment in Turkey. Repopulating Rojava with

refugees from other parts of Syria would not only displace the Kurdish

population, it would also pander to the racism against Syrians mounting

in the western cities of Turkey like Istanbul, a racism that the

opposition is also implicated in.

The fundamental cause of the invasion is the ingrained enmity between

the Turkish State—at its foundation, regardless of the ruling party—and

the Kurdish people fighting for autonomy and recognition as an ethnic

group. Having recently more or less neutralized the PKK within the

borders of Turkey, the time has come for Erdoğan to take the war where

the Kurdish freedom movement is the strongest, the liberated territories

of Rojava.

Opposition Politics in Turkey and Solidarity Today

The abrupt yet drawn-out withdrawal of the US has opened up space for

Russia to take almost full control of the situation in Syria on the

ground. If Turkey still wants to have a say, it is now beholden to

Russian imperialism. Erdoğan has already found himself trying to juggle

a contract for F-35 fighter jets from the US—now cancelled—with a

surface-to-air S-400 Russian missile defense system—in place but not

operational. Given that Turkey is still a NATO country, it finds itself

obliged to perform an ever-more precarious balancing act with its

Russian counterpart. The current shift of powers on the ground in Syria

only further complicates the matter.

Eventually, Turkey will have to re-recognize the Assad regime without

the Russian mediation currently allowing it to save face. On the other

side of the lines of conflict, the survival of the past five years of

revolutionary gains in Rojava will depend on how the Kurdish movement

manages to navigate a treacherous geopolitical terrain and at the same

time generate international solidarity. Up to this point, Kurdish groups

have demonstrated a shrewd understanding of the constantly shifting

geopolitical dynamics, surviving the ups and downs and gradually rising

to prominence on the international stage. In the short-term, the

situation is desperate, but perhaps the long game will not be as

catastrophic. Nevertheless, it is hard to make such predications with

our vision obscured by the fog of war.

How much potential is there for domestic opposition to Erdoğan? Combined

with the extraordinary powers concentrated in his presidency, the

post-coup political, social, and psychological environment has enabled

repression to reign supreme throughout Turkey. Even describing what is

happening in Syria as an “invasion” or a “war” can get you in trouble

with the authorities. Saying that you are against the latest invasion of

Rojava and for peace is sufficient to get you arrested. Freedom of

speech is non-existent; the internet is censored to a great degree.

Journalists with opposition viewpoints collect court cases by the

dozen—if they’re lucky. Just as often, they are imprisoned, sometime

even without charges.

Anarchists and radicals had recently been able to carve out some space

in Turkey, even organizing successful marches—for example, against

recent gold-mining projects. The women’s movement has remained steadfast

in organizing its mass annual March 8 demonstrations. There is still a

small degree of labor militancy. But any perceived “tolerance” from the

state goes out the window when it comes to expressing solidarity with

the Kurds. In fact, the state has recently released some bourgeois

journalists and intellectuals with opposition views from prison and

seemingly accepted the constitutional court’s decision to drop the cases

against nearly 1000 mostly non-Kurdish academics who had signed a

petition for peace during the 2015 occupation and military operations

against Kurdish cities. This “forgiveness” from the patriarch functions

as a warning to any potential opposition as he focuses on the Kurdish

threat.

Unfortunately, for now, all that is being done to oppose this war, and

still with great risk, is to express disapproval of the invasion of

Rojava. Direct actions and demonstrations have hardly taken place except

for at a small scale in mainly Kurdish provinces and in the rebellious

popular neighborhoods of the cities of western Turkey. These heroic acts

of resistance have been brutally repressed, almost instantaneously, by

the Turkish State.

According to one poll, 75% of the population supports the invasion of

Rojava—but that still leaves at least a quarter of the population

opposing it, many of whom remain in solidarity with the Kurdish struggle

and continue to participate in various other radical and revolutionary

projects however they can. Some segments of the Turkish left have joined

the SDF with their own fighting units. Still, most of those who oppose

the war are currently unable to act effectively within the borders of

Turkey due to overwhelming state repression. This creates the impression

that all of Turkey supports the war and opposes Kurdish autonomy.

The HDP was conceived partly as a means to bolster the Kurdish movement

by forging a common struggle with Turkish progressives concentrated in

western Turkey. As described above, this project has made some headway

towards achieving its goals, but the current situation illustrates why

the liberation of the Kurdish people depends above all on their own

organization and power.

Actions that target the organs of the Turkish state, such as their

embassies and state owned-businesses like Turkish Airlines, will keep

the pressure on while expressing vital solidarity with both the Kurds

and the other radical formations under attack in Turkey. Political

cronyism has filled the pockets of AKP politicians and their families in

the past decade and a half, and a large chunk of this money has been

harvested overseas due to the instability of the Turkish economy.

Research about where the personal wealth of AKP leaders and top cadres

is being invested could provide new targets for solidarity actions.

Some in the old left cling to their supposed anti-imperialism,

effectively supporting Turkish colonialism and Russian imperialism in

the name of opposing US imperialism. This position is increasingly

absurd in view of the desperate struggle for survival the Kurdish

movement is waging in one of the most difficult political terrains in

the world, in the face of multiple imperial powers’ ambitions, despite

being double-crossed by the US government and many others. Anarchists

should show serious yet critical solidarity, without becoming confused

by the tenuous alliances that Kurdish organized forces have had to make

with the enemies of their enemies, the friends of their enemies, and

even their actual enemies in hopes of staving off jihadist massacres and

averting Turkish-backed genocide. Solidarity with the Kurdish freedom

movement does not mean supporting the US military or US imperialism, it

means respecting the difficult decisions people make when they are

threatened with annihilation.

Lastly, many Turkish and Kurdish comrades have been exiled from Turkey,

but remain politically active. It is difficult to estimate how many

political refugees have fled Turkey, but migration trends in Germany,

the chief destination for such exiles, offer a good indication. Since

the 2015 coup attempt, Germany has seen a tenfold increase in annual

asylum applications from Turkish citizens, culminating in nearly 11,000

requests in 2018. Outside of countries such as Germany and the UK where

Turkish and Kurdish movements have historically been organized,

dissidents may find themselves isolated or unsure how to carry on the

struggle. Anarchists everywhere should take the initiative to create

space for those in exile. In working together on common projects,

international supporters will learn more about ideas and developments

from the region, while those in exile will gain new networks and means

by which to continue their struggles. Learning from the Kurdish

proposals of democratic confedaralism, autonomy, and jineoloji (women’s

science) and implementing whatever lessons are applicable locally is an

effective form of solidarity that goes beyond the current—albeit

necessary—emergency response to the Turkish aggression.

---

Appendix: A Brief Interview with Revolutionary Anarchist Action in

Turkey

In summer 2013, we interviewed the Turkish group Revolutionary Anarchist

Action (Devrimci Anarşist Faaliyet, or DAF) about the uprising that

began in Gezi Park. We spoke with them again in 2014 about the defense

of Kobanê and solidarity organizing between DAF and the autonomous

experiment then unfolding in Rojava. A great deal has transpired since

then. Following the Turkish invasion of Rojava, which is still in

progress despite a fake ceasefire, we interviewed a participant in DAF

once again to hear about what the conditions in Turkey are like for

anarchists today.

Historically, what has been the relationship between Turkish anarchists

and Kurdish organizations in Turkey?

First of all, “Turkish anarchist” is not a useful term to describe the

people living here who call themselves anarchists. In these lands—and

also in the organizations—there are people from different ethnicities.

Kurdish people have been struggling against the various tyrannies in

this region for decades, so the solidarity relation of DAF is the

solidarity relation with the liberation struggle of the people.

The Rojava Revolution and the defense of Kobanê put the issue of

“Kurdish Resistance” on the agenda of anarchists worldwide, but for DAF,

our relations of solidarity began much earlier. They date back to 2009,

when DAF was established. Moreover, it is not just a question of

solidarity. There has been a war in Kurdistan and a state political

strategy of assimilation for a long time. So an anarchist who is living

in this region needs to develop an analysis and take a side on this

matter. Our position has been clear: against the tyrannies of the

states, we take the side of the people who are resisting.

With this perspective, we have expressed our solidarity in protests and

by participating in clashes alongside the Kurdish Freedom Movement. We

have been in streets over and over to observe Newroz [the Kurdish new

year] and at the commemorations of the big massacres. Not just to

express solidarity, but also because this is part of our responsibility

to be and act as anarchists.

We also participate in organizing the Conscientious Objection movement

in Turkey. Being a conscientious objector is also important in reference

to this issue, because the war is made by militaries. Therefore, we are

trying to spread conscientious objection in the region.

What are the conditions for anarchists and other dissidents in Turkey

right now? What activities are anarchists still undertaking?

Especially after the coup trial and the State of Emergency, repression

of revolutionaries increased. The government has used the State of

Emergency politically to strengthen its power.

Right now, it is very easy to get sent to jail. Sharing something via

social media is enough to be put in jail. Repression of publications

remains a major problem. If the authorities don’t like an article, it is

easy to ban a magazine. Many writers and editors are in jail now for

things they have published.

Any kind of protest can only take place according to the wishes and

management of the police—and therefore, the wishes and management of the

state. No protest of any kind having to do with Kurdish issues is

permitted. No one can protest, write, or comment on the war.

These are the circumstances under which we are trying to organize and

spread the anarchist idea.

Our newspaper has been banned for a while because of charges of “making

terrorist propaganda.” Some of our writers and distributers have been

sentenced, and some comrades have been sentenced for participating in

protests. Two collective cafés, the main economic mainstay of our

organization, have faced difficulties because of police repression.

Comrades who are conscientious objectors also face difficulties.

Is there any open opposition to the invasion of Rojava in Turkey?

In general, the authorities forbid and attack any kind of protest

against the war.

Turkey carries out military conscription. Are there movements against

conscription and militarism in general?

I have described the political perspective of the movement for

conscientious objection. DAF is one of the establishers of the

Conscientious Objection Association. The anti-militarist movement is

really important, since we are acting in such a militaristic state.

Our participation in the anti-militarist movement is as old as our

movement. Men are forced to join the army at age 20. The association

organizes campaigns for conscientious objection, publicizes and

investigates the suspicious murders in the military, and supports

conscientious objectors through the judicial process.

From our perspective, there is a fundamental difference between the

militarist violence of the state and the people’s struggle for freedom.

We cannot compare the violence of states with any resistance struggle.

Moreover, unlike some socialist organizations that call themselves a red

army, Kurdish organizations call themselves self-defense units rather

than a military.

What is the situation for Kurdish people in Turkey right now?

It is harder than ever. It is impossible to take any kind of action. The

fascist propaganda of the state continues via its own media and also

from so-called opposition parties. The pressure towards cultural

assimilation and the political repression targeting Kurdish people are

intense.

What do you believe the immediate goals of Erdoğan’s invasion to be? And

how do you think he aims to achieve them?

When we are talking about this region of the Middle East, it is hard to

understand or predict strategies. They undertook the invasion against

the wishes of the US and other Western allies, but also, it is hard to

understand their strategy. It is obvious that the US are not allies to

the Kurdish people in Rojava. This is the reality of politics in Middle

East.

Concretely, the state is taking the advantage of the war to accomplish

interior political goals. So that is part of their strategy. The State

of Emergency established by Erdoğan and his government endangered their

political power. The only thing that legitimizes their power is the

elections, so they are trying to foster a nationalist, militarist wave

in order to maintain their “legitimacy.”

[1] The Alevi sect, in the Shia branch of Islam, is associated with the

leftist revolutionary tradition in Turkey. While many are practicing

Muslims, the ritual of singing and circular collective dancing (semah)

during a community ceremony (cem) at the house of cem (cem evi) is more

important than praying at the mosque. They have been persecuted and

massacred since the Ottoman Empire.