U.S. policy weighs on Turkish workers

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SOCIALIST ACTION NOVEMBER 1985 By D.

On Sept. 12, 1980, the tanks rolled into the streets of Turkey for the third time in 20 years. The takeover by the military was expected.

The coup resulted from the failure of the major capitalist parties to carry out their program within the parliamentary system at a time of severe economic and political chaos.

The working class did not have the political program nor the revolutionary organizations that could have enabled it to take state power, even though it had shown its capacity for strugglé. Nonetheless, the ruling class resorted to the military because of its fear of social upheaval or a possible civil war.

Since 1980, the military dictatorship has systematically organized terrorism against the working class, its organizations and political parties, as well as against the poor peasantry and the liberal political currents.

To day, the military junta claims to be making a "transition to democracy" because it instituted elections in 1983.

When the elections were announced, 17 political parties were formed. But the military soon closed them down using the National Security Council, which is composed of Gen. Kenan Evren and commanders of the army, navy, airforce and gendarmerie. It retained the power to veto any founding member of a new party-and only new parties would be allowed to run in the upcoming elections.

Gen. Evren, who had become presi D. Arman is a member of the Solidarity Committee with the People of Turkey based in San Francisco.

Africa

(continued fr page 20) tion-the unions and the community groups-complement each other. The latter groups stem from the existence of masses of unemployed and from youth outside the ranks of the unions.

But the unions have provided the organizing ability and power to make these ad-hoc actions most effective. Auto workers and mineworkers played an important role, for example, in publicizing and enforcing the consumer boycott of white-owned businesses that began in July.

The Transvaal coalition The trade unions' ability to lead mass political action was tested by the two-day general strike in the Transvaal, which took place Nov. 5-6, 1984.

Planning for the action began in a meeting originally called by the Congress of South African Students at which a broad coalition of trade union, student, women's, and community groups was set up. Their demands included the withdrawal of police from the Black townships, the suspension of increases in rents and bus fares, the release of political prisoners, and the reinstatement of workers who had been fired.

About one million workers and students participated in the action-despite severe repression by the government. About 30 people were killed and hundreds were arrested. Close to 90 percent of the 6,500 Black workers in the SASOL gasoline refinery were fired for taking part in the strike.

In the words of Joe Foster, general secretary of the Federation of South African Trade Unionists (FOSATU), such repression has served only to dent along with a new constitution in 1982, threatened the population by saying that if voters didn't choose the "right people,, the armed forces would intervene again.

Right after the 1983 elections, martial law was again reinstituted until April 1984. And as of June 1985, 24 provinces are still under martial law, including such large cities as Istanbul, Ankara, and Izmir.

Attacks against working class During the first three years of military dictatorship, over 130,000 political prisoners were thrown into Turkey's infamous prisons, where many perished through torture and brutality, including 30 hunger strikers. Dozens were sent to the gallows, and the streets were turned into a bloody shooting ground.

The age-old repression against the Kurdish people in Eastern Anatolia was also sharply increased. This area is where the U.S. government has been given the right to build three military bases. This also happens to be near the border of the Soviet Union, Iran, Iraq, and Syria. Plans are underway to set up seven more U.S. bases.

The trade unions were banned along with the right to collective bargaining and the right to strike. The Supreme Arbitration Board, which is under the direct control of the military, took over. Wages dropped sharply.

The Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK) was destroyed. This confederation, which represented a third of all unionized workers, was formed in February 1967 with the metal workers, printers, food handlers, bank workers, and construction workers unions. These unions had been suspended from the official government confederation, Turk-Is, because they supported the militant strikes of the Kozlu coal miners in 1965 and the glass "inflame the situation a little more and increase the polarization" throughout the country.

"Liberated zones"

Some of the participants in the Transvaal strike came to rather one-sided conclusions, however.

Thami Mali, chairperson of the strike coalition and Soweto local leader of the dan Milling workers on strike during 1950s.

United Democratic Front, told the Rand Daily Mail, "Our task is to intensify the resistance, to create an ungovernable situation, and to really force the state to declare certain regions or zones liberated."

It is doubtful that such a scenario— which brings to mind Vietnam, Nicaragua, and other predominately rural societies-will be decisive in industrial South Africa. factory workers a year later.

The Turkish workers in the DISK had a militant trade-union and political life. But now, with the destruction of DISK, sections of the rank and file have gone back to the Turk-Is confederation, which is politically on the right. The DISK union leaders face long prison sentences and the death penalty.

At least half of the leadership of the pre-coup organizations live in the prisons of Turkey. These prisons used to be called "red-universities." But now the prisoners are kept in isolation and are forced to march while singing nationalistic songs.

Turkey's dictator, Gen. Kenan Evren As a recent Amnesty International report on Turkey indicates, torture is still widespread, and any attempt to investigate the fate of some of the prisoners is impossible. The authorities have not yet disclosed, for example, what caused the death of Fikri Sonmez, the mayor of the town of Fatsa, in Corum prison in June of this year.

All universities and broadcasting institutions have been "cleared out" and brought under direct governmental control. Every single piece of news has to pass through censorship, and newspapers are still being closed.

The left-wing organizations once claiming over a million members in more than 30 political groupings have been completely wiped off the political map.

As Cyril Ramaphosa of the mineworkers points out, "If any change is to take place in the apartheid system, it is the working class that will have to be in the leadership." And, in South Africa, the power of the working class is concentrated in truly massive organizations-the trade unions.

The workers' organizations will have to undertake self-defense—ultimately by force of arms—as the political struggle deepens and pro-capitalist former "allies" fall away. But to be effective, self-defense must be an integral component of a strategy that seeks to mobilize the masses around their own interests.

The unions are stressing the issue of unemployment, for example, to reach out to the unemployed (white and Black) as well as to their own members. The metal industry has lost 80,000 jobs in the last three years. Motor-assembly plants have lost 30,000 jobs in 18 months.

The National Automobile and Allied Workers Union and the Metal and Allied Workers Union call for a 40-hour week with no loss of pay to help share the work with the unemployed.

Two stages?

The National Forum, a mass coalition that began in 1983, states, in its manifesto: "The struggle against apartheid is no more than the point of departure for our liberation efforts. Apartheid will be eradicated with the system of racial capitalism. The Black working class, inspired by revolutionary consciousness, is the driving force of our struggle."

Such ideas have engendered controversy among the leaderships of some anti-apartheid organizations. "Here we see an attempt to impose working-class leadership" the South African Commuand direct military aid to the Evren dictatorship has increased considerably, while the share of European capital is in steady decline.

The Turkish ruling class has ventured into the shaky Middle East and North African market as an exporter of goods and capital. Iran and Iraq are the two major importers of Turkish goods.

The IMF But the radical change in the Turkish economy has already brought certain difficulties. The number of businesses and banks that have been bailed out by the government is extremely high. The availability of long-and short-term credit will only help the government postpone the problem. Enter the IMF.

The program of the new military regime fits neatly within the dictates of the International Monetary Fund (IMF). Its program calls for an end to deficit spending, the institution of price and wage controls, an end to subsidies to state-run enterprises, and a 33-percent devaluation of the currency.

With these goals, the IMF, in June of 1980, released 625 percent of Turkey's quota of IMF funds. Along with this, a ceiling was placed on interest rates to encourage "private initiative and more efficient industry."

The government said it needed to "stabilize the economy and discipline the working class." This, of course, is the bosses' language for unemployment, speed-up, and government cutbacks for the workers and peasants.

And to accomplish these goals, the ruling class used the military and state-sponsored terrorism.

The U.S. government's role in supporting the Turkish military has been financial as well as political. A "Memorandum of Understanding" between Turkey and the United States states that "you can't pick a better place than Turkey for defending the Persian Gulf."

And to this end, the United States has increased military aid to the Turkish military dictatorship from $402.7 million to $759 million. This has enabled the Turkish government to increase repression and safeguard capitalism in the Middle East.

nist Party (SACP) writes in reply to the National Forum. "The attempt to merge the working-class struggle with the national-liberation struggle is sectarianism par excellence."

"According to this sectarian view" the SACP continues, "the stages of our revolution are negated and the working class is being mobilized, not to spearhead the struggle for national liberation against national oppression, but to spearhead the struggle for a 'Socialist Azania.' "

Actions like last year's general strike in the Transvaal demonstrate how the trade unions and other organizations of the working class can embrace and lead the struggle for democratic rights and Black majority rule. But Black people will only achieve full national liberation through the struggle for socialism.

Socialism is not simply the nationalization of banks and factories. Socialism will be built in South Africa after Black workers (and white workers who support their struggle) take power into their own hands.

Liberal capitalists, although they may speak of "power sharing" today, will turn against a mass mobilization that endangers their profits. The Communist Party's illusionary goal of a non-socialist "national-liberation stage" will do nothing to halt the capitalists from undertaking counterrevolutionary activities.

The idea of socialism will become more understandable to Black and white South African workers as they participate in organizations that come out of the struggle. Leaders of FOSATU have put forth the idea of building a labor party based on the trade unions. And the National Forum has called for a constituent assembly around the demand for "one person, one vote." •

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Chris AVERIOR and suffering from "delusions of self-grandeur."

The evidence strongly indicates that in attempting to assassinate the pope he was acting in behalf of the Gray Wolves, an ultra-nationalistic, fascistic Turkish organization.

He wrote a letter to the slain editor's paper threatening to kill the pope if he visited Turkey at a time before Solidarity was even in existence. The Times edițorial which threw in the sponge on the theory of the Bulgarian connection, to whose reputability it had contributed greatly, belatedly referred to this letter in acknowledging that the trial 'has given weight" to the idea that "the roots of this plot were in Turkey"' not Bulgaria.

"The 'Bulgarian Connection' Revisited" also pointed out that Agca had changed his story in pre-trial testimony literally hundreds of times, his evershifting story often being adjusted to take into account new facts brought up by the Italian press and TV, to which he had access. The same point was made about his shifting testimony in the trial by Tagliaube.

Moreover, the article it by Claire Stering. He then sold his material to NBC-News, Newsweek, and The New York Times, and wrote an article himself for The Wall Street Journal.

"Having helped generate the Connection," conclude Brodhead, Friel, and Sherman, "Henze was then used by the media to confirm the truth of e plot. of es the plot.... While he was acting the role of expert and reporter, the U.S. media almost never mentioned his former CIA connection."

Another key figure was Michael Ledeen. Ledeen worked as a journalist for a right-wing Italian newspaper and was closely associated with Francesco Pazienza, an intelligence official with connections to General Santovito, the head of SISMI.

Santovito was subsequently forced to resign when he was found to be a member of a secret right-wing organization. A few days after the pope was wounded, SISMI put out a story that the attempted assassination was hatched by the Russian defense minister.

Ledeen became a senior fel-