390

THE PROCESS OF THE POLITICIZATION OF THE KURDISH

An abstract of the Thesis of Ahmet Alıs for the degree of Master of Arts from the
Ataturk Institute for Modern Turkish History of Boğaziçi University to be
taken in September 2009
Title: The Process of the Politicization of the Kurdish Identity in Turkey: the Kurds
and the Turkish Labor Party (1961–1971)
This thesis examines a much-misunderstood period of mobilization and politicization
of Kurds in Turkey, a period that has often been assumed to have been an era of
revival for Kurdish nationalism. It rejects the idea of revival of Kurdish nationalism
during the 1960s. It postulates that what happened during this period can be seen only
as formative years for the next generation of Kurdish nationalist who inherited so
much from the interaction between Kurdish ethnicity and socialist terminology of
those years. It examines the role and impact of new generation of Kurdish
intellectuals on the politicization of the Kurdish identity in the 1960s and the
affiliation between the Turkish Labor Party and Kurdish political entrepreneurs
between 1960 and 1971.
One of the main points is to examine the relationship between Kurdish nationalism
(or Kurdish ethnic awareness) and Turkish Socialism. In addition to the TLP’s
documents and publications, several publications from the time and interviews with
former Kurdish activists were used in the preparation of this thesis. Theoretically, it is
based on the concept of an ethnoregional movement which is an amalgamation of
ethnic and economic demands, and most of the time attracts relatively a young
generation of intellectuals of ethnic minority groups who do not have the same
resources as their counterparts and who strive to find new channels to obtain them.
Finally, it asserts that the shift from the “Eastern Question,” which was regarded as
an issue of economic backwardness and that would be swept away once socialism
came to power, to the “Kurdish Question,” which drew attention mainly to ethnic
reasons for the economic backwardness of the East and Southeast regions of Turkey,
was a result of the closed doors of the Turkish political system and intra-TLP
conflicts as well as intra-Kurdish elite conflicts.
iv
Boğaziçi Üniversitesi Atatürk Đlkeleri ve Đnkılap Tarihi Enstitüsü’nde Yüksek Lisans
derecesi için Ahmet Alıs tarafından Eylül 2009’da teslim edilen tezin kısa özeti
Baslık: Kürt Kimliğinin Türkiye’deki Politiklesme Süreci: Kürtler ve Türkiye Đsçi
Partisi (1961–1971)
Bu tez, Kürtlerin mobilizasyonunda ve politiklesmesi sürecinde yanlıs anlatılagelmis
ve Kürt milliyetçiliğinin yeniden dirilmesi olarak kabul edilen bir zaman aralığına
ısık tutmak için yapılan bir tesebbüstür. Kürt milliyetçiliğinin yeniden canlanması
fikrini reddedip, altmıslarda cereyan eden seyin ancak o yıllarda Kürt etnisitesi ile
sosyalist terminoloji arasındaki etkilesimden çok fazla miras alan bir sonraki Kürt
milliyetçi kusağının biçimlendirici yılları olarak görülebileceğini iddia etmektedir.
Türkiye Đsçi Partisi ile Kürt siyaset girisimcilerinin 1961 ile 1971 arasındaki
yakınlasması dikkatle incelenmekte, temel ilgi Kürt milliyetçiliği ile Türk sosyalizmi
arasındaki etkilesime verilmektedir. Türkiye Đsçi Partisi belge ve yayınlarına ek
olarak, dönemle ilgili değisik yayınlar, bu harekette yer almıs kisilerle yapılan
mülakatlar bu tezin hazırlanmasında kullanılmıstır. Teorik açıdan, etnik ve iktisadi
taleplerin bir karısımı olan ve genelde etnik grupların, akranları gibi benzer
kaynaklara sahip olmayan, bunları elde etmek için yeni kanallar için çabalayan,
nispeten genç entelektüellerini cezbeden etno-bölgesel hareketlere dayanmaktadır.
Son olarak, iktisadi bir gerikalmıslık sorunu olarak görülen ve sosyalizmin basa
geçmesiyle silinip gideceği iddia edilen ‘Doğu Sorunu’ndan, Türkiye’nin Doğu ve
Güneydoğu bölgelerindeki bu iktisadi gerikalmıslığın etnik nedenlerine ana ilgiyi
çeken ‘Kürt Sorunu’na geçisin Türkiye’nin yasal sisteminin kapalı olması ile Türkiye
Đsçi Partisi içi çatısmaların ve Kürt münevverleri arasındaki uyusmazlıkların bir
neticesi olduğunu iddia etmektedir.
v
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
First of all, I would like to thank my parents, my father Hüsnü Alıs and my
mother Sükriye (Uygur) Alıs, who have always been my real friends and have
indulged me in my own decisions throughout my life. Both of them are (actually used
to be) illiterate and do not speak any language but Kurdish. I still cannot understand
how they got the idea of sending us to school and supporting us at any rate while they
were suffering. No word can express my gratitude to them. My brothers Siyar,
Séxmus, Đbrahim and Weysel Alıs and my sisters Perixan, Filiz, Felek, Melek, Tuba
and Hilal Alıs also deserve special thanks.
I owe special thanks to Assoc. Prof. Duygu Köksal, my thesis adviser. She
supported me for almost two years. Each time I went to her office, I was relieved and
encouraged. I would also like to thank Assoc. Prof. M. Asım Karaömerlioğlu for his
guidance and advice throughout the thesis year and for his presence on my jury. I
want to thank Prof. Ayse Buğra both for her presence on my jury and for her valuable
comments. I would like to thank Tracy Lord for her support and stimulating
questions. I want to thank Kathryn Kranzler for editing my thesis.
I am grateful to Dr. Yücel Demirer, my professor and mentor, who
encouraged me to apply to the Ataturk Institute. He has always been ready when I
need his help and guidance. I would like to thank Ahmet Kuyas, from whom I learned
much. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Taha Parla and Assist. Prof. Đsmal Kaplan for
sharing their thoughts and knowledge with me.
I would also like to thank Bülent Erdem from TÜSTAV for letting me use
their archives and providing me so many materials. I would like to thank all of the
people who shared their memories with me. I want to thank Delal Aydın and Azad
Zana Gündoğan who kindly shared their interviews with me.
I am also grateful to TÜBITAK for their generous financial support which
made this stressful process bearable.
My friends Zack Barnett- Howell and Djene Bajalan have been very supportive
since I first met them. They deserve special thanks. I also thank my friends Bahadır
(Uğur) Bayraktar, Aygul Özdemir and Sevecen Tunç. I would like to thank all of the
people who helped me and shared their experiences and documents with me again.
Porseva min is the person whose support has kept me strong for a long time, I thank
her.
vi
"This work is dedicated to those who have been tortured and killed anywhere
in the world for having different political views from their torturers."
vii
CONTENTS
Preface
I. INTRODUCTION: THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: ETHNOREGIONAL
MOVEMENTS VS. NATION-STATES’ NATIONALISM………………………1
Literature Survey…………………………………………………………...1
Ethnoregional Movements………………………………………………….14
Nation-States and Ethnoregional Movements………………………………29
Political Parties, the Left and Ethnoregional Movements……………..……36
II. A POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE KURDISH
ETHNOREGIONAL MOVEMENT…………………………………………….…41
The Kurds and Their Aspiration: A Historical Background…………………41
The Multi-Party Era….………………………………………………………52
The End of a New Beginning: The Event of the 49s in 1959…………..…...56
The Military Coup d’état and the Politics: “Tutelage Democracy……..……59
What is Kürtçülük?..........................................................................................65
III. THE KURDISH ETHNOREGIONAL MOVEMENT AND THE PROCESS OF
THE POLITICIZATION OF THE KURDISH IDENTITY IN THE 1960S………....68
Kurdish Students; the Role of Student Dormitories…………..……………..68
The Reemergence of Kurdish Literature and Historiography………….…….72
The Source of the Kurdish Ethnoregional Movement in the 1960s………….82
The first Phase of the Politicization of Kurdish Ethnicity………...…………85
Turkish Socialism in the 1960s…………...………………………………….89
The Affiliation between Kurds and the Leftists or the Second Phase of
Politicization of Kurdish Ethnicity…………………………………………..95
IV. THE TURKISH LABOR PARTY AND THE KURDS; THE “DOĞU
MESELESI” 1961-1971……………………………………………………………..99
The Turkish Labor Party……………………………………………………..99
Formation of the Party Identity……………………………………………..103
Intra-Party Conflicts and the Party Congresses; an End to Discussions……109
Easterners, the Turkish Labor Party, and the Eastern Question……………112
The Turkish Labor Party and the Formation of Doğu Meselesi………..…..117
The Elections, the Turkish Labor Party and the Region………………..…..123
From The Eastern Meetings to the DDKO (Revolutionary Eastern Cultural
Hearths) or the End of the TLP……………………………………………..135
V. CONCLUSION: RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE………………….145
APPENDICES…………………………………………………………...…………155
BIBLIOGRAPHY…………………………………………………………………..160
viii
Tables
1. Minority-Group Objectives…………………………………………………….27
2. Regional Distribution of Turkish Labor Party's Members……………………115
3. Result of the General Election of Representatives 1961-1969………………..124
4. Turkish Labor Party’s Votes in the Fifteen Provinces………………………...128
5. Results of the Election of Provincial General Council Members
and the senate………………………………………………………..……...155
6. Results of the General Elections of Representatives in Three Big Cities
(1961-1969)………………………………………………………………...155
7. Results of the General Elections of Representatives in Fifteen Provinces,
(1961-1969 )…………………………………………………………….....156
8. The Turkish Labor Party’s Votes by Province..……………………………....157
Figures
1. Ethnoregional Movements……………………………………………………22
2. Nation-States and Ethnoregional Demands…………………………………..32
3. The Source of the Kurdish Ethnoregional Movement in the 1960s……….....82
4. Composition of the Turkish Labor Party……………………………………102
5. The Parties' Votes in the Fifteen Provinces in the East and Southeast….…..125
6. The Family Tree of The Kurdish Movement (1945-1980)………………….159
ix
PREFACE
This thesis examines the politicization and ethnicization of the Kurdish
identity in Turkey. First of all, this is an attempt to clarify exactly how it happened.
For anyone acquainted with the subject, the very first explanation is that Kurds are
Kurds, and they have been so from the beginning of their existence. Furthermore, the
Kurdish movement has always been viewed internally as a struggle against
oppression, as is often the case in many nationalist movements. Yet the questions
remain why so many have struggled for the good of an unborn nation. And
specifically why has the greatest effort been made by intellectuals, those who are
relatively well-off? Why have the ordinary people, peasants and proletariat, been
absent from this movement? Moreover, how can such a narrow movement have
become so factionalized and polarized by internal struggles?
The answer to these questions also account for the politicization of the
Kurdish identity too. Although there are quite sophisticated answers outside the limits
of contemporary political science and history, i.e., human nature, the theory of
evolution, etc. which basically argue that reciprocity and expectation of future
benefits are the reasons for it, this thesis seeks to answer these questions by
scrutinizing the political history of the leading cadres of the Kurdish movement and
the affiliation with the Socialist movement in the 1960s.
One of the first explanations is related to the changing and declining living
standards and loss of influence that Kurdish intellectuals and notables had in society
following the 1960s. A small minority of Kurds were able to strengthen their power
by allying with the central authorities. This power came at the cost of maintaining the
status quo in regions with large Kurdish populations. As a result, when a more
x
radical generation of Kurdish students emerged during the 1950s, their greatest
opposition was found in the entrenched interests of the established Kurdish leaders.
This new generation of Kurdish intellectuals was forced to find new channels from
which to acquire power and influence. Following the military coup in 1960, junior
Kurdish intellectuals did not have access to the same resources that their predecessors
had. This pre-coup generation is called the 58ler (58ers, who held leading positions
in the political movements in the late 1950s and during the 1960s). Although the
second generation of Kurdish intellectuals was highly influenced by the work and
struggle of the 58ers cohort, by the late 1960s they would adopt a new course of
action. This second wave is termed the 68ler (68ers), eventually followed by the
78ler (78ers), which was even more radical than the two waves preceding it. These
generations came into extreme conflict with one another over the proper ideology and
path to national liberation.
These three waves of Kurdish activists grew up in markedly different material
circumstances. Principally, the 58ers enjoyed a much higher degree of wealth and
social prestige than the 68 and 78ers, who were drawn from much poorer segments of
society. There is the example of Musa Anter, who was assassinated in 1992 and had
been an indefatigable contributor to Kurdish culture, and for whom many Kurds had
great respect. His memoirs capture the changing features of Kurdish intellectuals and
elites in the 1950s and 60s. At the beginning of his memoirs he wrote,
Recaizade Ercument Ekrem Talu describes and introduces the place where he
was born and his family home as such; ‘the Marmara region is the most
civilized region in Turkey; Istanbul is the most beautiful city in the region of
Marmara; the Bosphorus is the most elegant neighborhood of Istanbul; Sarıyer
is the most lovely district in Istanbul; Yen McHale is the most distinguished
quarter of the Sarıyer and the mansion of the Recaizades is the most
wonderful mansion in Yeni Mahalle. .. .here is where I was born.
xi
Of course, Anter writes, he was Recaizade Ekrem’s son. Now, let us look at
me:
Kurdistan is the most backward region in Turkey; Mardin is the most
backward province in Kurdistan; Nusaybin is the most distressed district in
Mardin; Stilile (Akarsu) is the poorest rural community in Nusaybin; Zivinge
(Eski Magara) is the most backward village in Akarsu, and here I, according
to state register of persons, was born in Cave Number 2 of this village.1
If one does not read the rest of the book his story seems very sad. Anter also
mentions that the tribe he belonged to consisted of approximately 20–25 villages and
he had as much as 1000 donum of land, and other properties and was the son of a
landowner and got married to a prominent sheik’s daughter. During his election
campaign in 1965, he mentioned that his relatives had presented a jeep to him, an
extraordinary luxury at the time.2 Anter’s approach epitomizes the split in Kurdish
thinking at the time. Although this generation enjoyed a high level of material
wealth, they still claimed to be part of the poorest of the poor. In their minds,
compared to the extremely wealthy Turkish elites they were still poor.
When I was studying in the TÜSTAV’s archives, I came across a picture of
Mehmet Ali Aybar, studying in his villa in Kuzguncuk. I also came across some
stories about the village of Sıkevta (which literally means cavernous) in Batman.
Aybar and socialists and Kurdish intellectuals often condemned the fact that people
were still living in such conditions and declared that socialism would improve their
1 “Recaizade Ercüment Ekrem Talu, yasantısını anlatırken doğum yeri ve baba ocağını
söyle tanıtır; “Marmara Bölgesi Türkiye’nin en uygar bölgesidir; Đstanbul, Marmara’nın en
güzel sehridir; Boğaziçi, Đstanbul’un en latif semtidir. Sarıyer, Đstanbul’un en sirin
kazasıdır. Yeni Mahalle Sarıyer’in en üstün mahallesidir ve Recaizadelerin köskü Yeni
mahallenin en harika kösküdür… Đste ben burada doğdum.”
Tabii, O, Recaizade Ekrem’in oğlu idi. Simdi bir de bana bakalım:
“Kürdistan, Türkiye’nin en geri bölgesidir; Mardin, Kürdistan’ın en geri ilidir; Nusaybin,
Mardin’in en dertli ilçesidir; Stililé (Akarsu), Nusaybin’in en fakir nahiyesidir; Zivingé
(Eski Mağara), Stililé’nin en geri kalmıs köyüdür ve iste ben, bu köyün, nüfus kütüğüne
göre, 2 numaralı mağarasında doğmusum.” Musa Anter, Hatiralarim 1-2 (Đstanbul: Avesta,
1999) p.17.
2 Ibid., p.214.
xii
livelihoods. A crucial difference between the pioneering 58ers and the following
68ers is their backgrounds. Both Kurdish and Turkish students and intellectuals came
into conflict with their predecessors over the solution to the poverty and ethnic
divisions in Turkey. The 58ers took a more moderate approach to societal change
while the 68ers, who came from poorer backgrounds and in a great uncertainty about
their futures, were radical in regards to their demand for immediate social and
economic revolution.
Overall, this thesis, which comprises five main chapters including a
conclusion endeavors to understand the political history of the 1958 and 1968
generations in general and the affiliation between Kurdish intellectuals and the
Turkish Labor Party (TLP) in particular and the way they transformed Kurdish
identity. It is far beyond the scope of this study to elaborate on all actors and the
matters; this thesis instead is focused on the leading cadre of Kurdish intellectuals
who both reconstituted the politics in the East and Southeast regions and changed the
meaning of the Kurdish identity by adding a new terminology during the1960s.
The first chapter starts with a literature survey and argues that the process of
the politicization of the Kurdish identity cannot wholly be explained by both the
nationalist and historicist approach. Therefore, an alternative approach is used to take
the Kurdish movement out of its contentious political and historical context and view
it as an ethnoregional movement. The crucial difference between seeing the Kurdish
movement as an ethnoregional and nationalist one is to distance what was really a
struggle to improve the material and cultural conditions in the region from attempts to
paint this period as a struggle for national independence.
While the Kurdish ethnoregional movement of the 1950s to 1960s did not
display a high degree of Kurdish separatism, the historical record strongly indicates
xiii
that the aims of both generations were to improve the lives of Kurds inside of Turkey
and to fully integrate themselves into Turkish society and the political system. Since
then the Kurdish movement has become far more nationalist than socialist in
character and much of the work and writings of the past generation have been coopted
to this end. I will attempt to separate fact from fiction in this regard and
definitively examine the true aims and goals of the Kurdish movement and leaders at
the time.
In the second chapter, I provide a historical background of what is called
Kurdish nationalism and the transformation of Turkey’s social and political life.
Then, I elaborate more on political change in the late 1950s and 1960s regarding
Kurds. The second chapter also includes a discussion of the infamous arrest of 49
prominent Kurds and the banning of periodicals and journals published by Kurds in
the 1960s.
In the third chapter, I examine the Kurdish ethnoregional movement, which
blended Kurdish ethnicity and language with developmentalism and was used in an
attempt to garner popular support by the TLP. This attempt to fuse economic
development with cultural pride was not specific to Turkey, but also can be viewed
occurring simultaneously in Europe.
For this study, I used several interviews with the most prominent figures of
the Kurdish movement, including Mehmet Ali Aslan, Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Mehdi Zana,
and Ömer Ağın. Journals and dailies published by the Kurds during the 1960s such as
Dicle-Fırat, Deng, Yeni Akıs, as well as mainstream Turkish newspapers and
periodicals such as Cumhuriyet and Yön were used in this thesis. Memoirs play an
important role in this study (almost all of Kurdish activists have written memoirs), as
well as a literature survey of a wide range of secondary sources related to the Kurds
xiv
and the Turkish Left in Kurdish, Turkish and English languages. The Turkish Labor
Party (TLP) is an important unit of analysis, and so the party programmes, statutes
and publications were collected from the archive of TÜSTAV (Türkiye Sosyal Tarih
Arastırma Vakfı) and fully analyzed. Finally, the statistical data used in this study was
collected from Devlet Đstatistik Kurumu’s (State Statistical Institute) publications.
According to my theoretical conceptualization, the Kurdish ethnoregional
movement during the 1960s was created not by one single actor, but existed as a
dynamic process espoused by many people and factions at the time. The main actors
were the New Turkey Party, the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (clandestine
Kurdish nationalist party, founded in 1965, TKDP), the Kurdistan Democratic Party
in Turkey (clandestine party, T’de KDP), the TLP, Kurdish students in general and
the Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths (DDKO in its Turkish acronym). The
third chapter ends with a final analysis of the three most prominent Kurdish actors of
this period, the NTP, the TKDP, and the T de KDP.
The fourth chapter, which constitutes the bulk of this study, deals with the
TLP and the Kurdish socialist or Doğulu (Easterners). This chapter scrutinizes the
affiliation between Turkish socialist and Kurdish groups. It reveals how this
affiliation was constructed and how it changed the politics in the south and southeast
of Turkey. By focusing on the election results at the regional level, and the
demonstrated support by the constituency there, it gives a detailed analysis of the
political experience of the TLP and its militants in the region.
The fourth chapter also brings our attention to the conflict that occurred
between the different Kurdish groups in an attempt to strengthen their own positions
at the expense of those of the other groups. In addition to analyzing the elections, this
chapter also goes on to look at the Eastern Meetings, massive protests that were
xv
organized and directed by the TLP and the TKDP militants. The DDKOs, which
served as the umbrella organization under which disaffected Kurdish students
gathered across the country, proved to have the greatest affect on the ethnoregional
Kurdish movement. Unlike the TLP and other 58ers, who viewed the Kurdish
question primarily as an economic one, the DDKOs were instrumental in
transforming this question into an ethnic and nationalist one. The final chapter
concludes my arguments and makes some comments on the similarity between the
1960s and the contemporary situation in terms of party politics in the region.
1
CHAPTER ONE
THEORETICAL BACKGROUND: ETHNOREGIONAL MOVEMENTS VS.
NATION-STATES’ NATIONALISM
The first part of this chapter focuses on the existing literature and analyzes
how authors approach the subject of this thesis, the Kurdish movement and the
affiliation between the Turkish Labor Party (1961-1971) and Kurdish intellectuals.
After doing that, the theory of nationalism and the ethnoregional movement, which
employed as the theoretical approach, will be scrutinized.
Literature Survey
The Kurdish movement in Turkey has been analyzed in the context of
nationalism and regarded as a reaction to the dominant Turkish nationalism. There are
numerous studies which tend to portray Kurdish movement as a continuous process
the aim of which has been to obtain independence or separation from the Turkish
Republic. These studies generally do not give any weight to the particular activities of
the Kurds in Turkey in the 1960s. Rather, they either focus on the single-party era
rebellions or on the Partiya Karkerê Kurdistan (the PKK, in its Kurdish acronym)
after 1980. Whether academic or not, they suppose that Kurds’ awareness of their
distinct identity and the Kurdish ambition to control their own destiny have been
there since the advent of nationalism in the Ottoman Empire, that is to say from the
nineteenth century. Martin van Bruinessen, for example, argues that Kurdish ethnicity
is much older than Kurdish nationalism, which, according to him, is as old as other
2
nationalisms that flourished during the last days of the Ottoman Empire.3 It is true
that Kurdish ethnicity is quite old; its politicization, however, still is not. The bulk of
Kurdish intellectuals as well as Kurdish society became politicized after the 1960s,
along with the ethnicization of Kurdish identity.
Another problem existing in the literature about the Kurds and the Kurdish
movement is that while they employ theories of nationalism to explain the
suppression of other ethnic identities within the Turkish nation-state, they do not
problematize the development of Kurdish self-awareness in any serious way. They
simply regard Kurdish nationalism as a natural response to the Turkish state
discourse. Moreover, their approach seems to be mostly partial in general since they
do not criticize, but rather justify how Kurdish identity has been politicized or, to
some extent, created.
Almost all of the great works of Kurdish history in Turkey seem to have a
primordialist approach to Kurdish nationalism. It is therefore unsurprising that the
question of how the Kurdish identity developed and what it has meant in different
periods in time is not tackled. Abbas Vali’s article, in which he compares both
primordialist and ethnicist approaches and three major nationalist attempts to
construct Kurdish history and identity, is an exception.4 Vali points out that Kurdish
ethnicity and Kurdish nationalism are regarded as the same thing by the nationalist
reading of Kurdish history. Ali Kemal Özcan, for example, while arguing, “the new
Turkish state, with its new, solid Turkish nationalism, invented a Turkish nation
precisely according to the generalizations of Gellner, Hobsbawn and many other
3 Martin Van Bruinessen, “Kurdish Society, Ethnicity, Nationalism and Refugee Problems,”
in The Kurds; A Contemporary Overview, eds. Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Stefan Sperl
(London and New York: Routledge, 1992),p.47.
4 Abbas Vali, “Genealogies of the Kurds: Constructions of Nation and National Identity in
Kurdish Historical Writing,” in Essays on the Origins of Kurdish Nationalism, ed. Abbas
Vali (California: Mazda Publishers, 2003), pp. 58-105.
3
scholars.” 5 However, throughout his book, he does not discuss how Kurdish
nationalism was created or how it affected Kurdish self-awareness. Bruinessen
argues in the same vain that “Kurdish nationalism had developed largely in reaction
to political and cultural domination by Turks, Persians and Arabs and to their
attempts at assimilation.”6 Again, a detailed discussion is absent.
The Islamist view that Kurdish nationalism was a product of the collapse of
the Ottoman Empire and the shift between systems of identities based on religion to
one based on race and ethnicity has also been influential.7 As such, the Kurdism of
the pre-republican period expressed in journals such as Kürdistan and Jîn was
completely different to the movement that developed in the 1960s.
Although domestic and international environment are quite important, among
the factors which led to the above-mentioned change in Kurdish ethnonationalism is
the role of the Kurdish elite. As Hamit Bozarslan accurately demonstrates, early
Kurdish nationalism was an intellectual creation which failed to pass beyond the
existing social structure and give Kurds a united and single identity.8
That in the post-Ottoman world the rebellions of the 1920s and 1930s
indicated that Kurdish nationalism played a unifying role in Kurdish society is not
convincing in many respects. For instance, as Bozarslan argues, the bulk of the
5 Ali Kemal Özcan, Turkey’s Kurds; A Theoretical Analysis of the PKK and Abdullah
Öcalan (London and New York: Routledge, 2006), p.83.
6 Martin Van Bruinessen, “Kurdish Society and the Modern State: Ethnic Nationalism
versus Nation-Building” p.44.
7 Mustafa Akyol’s thesis is a good example of this approach. See Mustafa Akyol, The
Origin of Turkey's Kurdish Question: An Outcome of The Breakdown of The Ottoman
Ancien Regime, M.A. Thesis, Boğaziçi University, The Ataturk Institute of Modern Turkish
History, 2006.
8 Hamit Bozarslan, “Political Aspects of the Kurdish Problem in Contemporary Turkey,” in
The Kurds; A Contemporary Overview, ed. Philip G. Kreyenbroek and Stefan Sperl
(London and New York: Routledge, 1992), p.100.
4
participants in the Kurdish insurrections of the 1920s and 1930s took part in the name
of tribes and religion. They were not provoked by the fact that the state was Turkish
per se, but because the state was perceived as an outsider. 9
Many scholars who have studied the Kurdish issue in Turkey have focused on
the hostility of Kemalism toward opposition and claimed that the Kemalist reforms
aimed to suppress only the Kurds in Turkey. However, this thesis dwells on the
argument that the Kemalist establishment was against any sort of opposition and was
not just against Kurds but all manifestations of opposition to the state’s ideology.
Walter F. Weiker, in his remarkable book, argues that the Second Group of 1922-3
and the Progressive Republican Party (PRP) of 1924-5 had to be suppressed on two
grounds; first that they challenged Mustafa Kemal’s personal leadership; second, they
sympathized with a public that desired a significantly slower pace of reform.10 What
is missing in the existing literature is that most works do not make any distinction
between the forces breaking away from Kemalist ideology. As Anthony Giddens
argues, the development of an absolutist state was undoubtedly associated with major
advances in internal pacification, 11 which is in the Turkish case was a consolidation
of powers by the Kemalist movement.
Especially while dealing with Kurds after the single-party era (1925-1945) the
issues are generally linked to the Turkish nation-state’s policies, most of which aimed
to assimilate Kurds, and deny the very existence of Kurds within its boundaries. As
9Hamit Bozarslan,. “Why the Armed Struggle?” Understanding the Violence in Kurdistan of
Turkey,” In The Kurdish Conflict in Turkey, eds. Ferhad Ibrahim and Gülistan Gürbey.
(New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2000), p.17.
10 Walter F. Weiker, Political Tutelage and Democracy in Turkey (Leiden, E. J. Brill, 1973),
p.44.
11 Anthony Giddens, The Nation-state and Violence, (Berkeley: University of California
press, 1984), p.89.
5
will be shown, the Turkish state’s policies towards the Kurds evidently were the
strictest of all the states in which Kurds lived.
Yet, the transformation of Kurdish masses cannot be explained in line with
what Azad Zana Gündoğan argues in his important thesis on the Eastern Meetings in
the mid-1960s. Gündoğan claims that the main reason or force behind the popular
support of the Democrat Party (DP, ruling party between 1950 and 1960) among the
Kurds was the repressive policies over the Kurdish population during single-party
regime.12 Nader Entessar shares this approach, arguing that the Kurds voted
overwhelmingly for the DP in reaction to the suppression of the Kurds by Kemalist
policies.13
However, Kurdish support was only won when the traditional Kurdish
notables who had been exiled from the region were allowed to return. The lower
orders of Kurdish society most likely swung behind the DP because of the influence
of these very narrow elite not because they were alienated from Kemalism.
Furthermore, without mentioning the DP’s populist policies, which generally favored
landed interests, any attempt to explain why Kurds preferred the DP rather than the
RPP seems to be incomplete. As Sabri Sayarı pointed out, in the regions where Kurds
predominantly lived, “the differential between the combined Justice Party, (successor
of the DP)-RPP vote in 1969 and DP-RPP vote in 1950 is nearly 49 per cent in the
southeast.”14
12 Azat Zana Gündoğan, The Kurdish Political Mobilization in the 1960s: The Case of “the
Eastern Meetings” M.A Thesis, Middle East Technical University, Political Science and
Public Administration, 2005, p.80.
13 Nader Entessar, Kurdish Ethnonationalism (London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1992),
p.87.
14 Sabri Mustafa Sayarı, Party Politics in Turkey: Dimensions of Competition and
Organization, Columbia University, 1972, Ph.D. dissertation, p.75-76.
6
What did the DP do in terms of easing the Kurdish issue? The main
contribution was the relaxation of religious restrictions. Otherwise, the DP’s policies
towards Kurds and Kurdish identity were the same as those of the RPP. Although it is
true that the DP won the majority of the seats in the general elections of 1954 and
1957, this particular explanation does not explain why it gained in more or less the
same proportion in the other regions as well. Nor does it tell us why Kurds did not
vote for the JP in the 1960s as they did for the DP in the 1950s.
With regard to the 1960s and the affiliation between the left and the new
Kurdish elite and intellectuals, most existing literature follows the same explanation.
First of all, the “Eastern question,” “Kurdish issue” and “Kurdish nationalism” are
read as the same thing and used interchangeably. It is true that especially after 1908,
sophisticated Kurdish nationalist groups and organizations, such as Kurdistan Teali
Cemiyeti (Association for the Advancement of Kurdistan-1919), Azadi
(Independence-1923) or Xoybun (Stay origin-1927) were established. However, it is
not correct to argue that the Kurdish movement in the 1960s too was primarily
nationalist-cum-separatist15
As Bruinessen emphasizes, in the 1960s, political and socio-economic
developments along with migration from the villages to the big cities in western
Turkey caused many Kurds to become aware of both the cultural differences between
eastern and western Turkey and of the highly unequal economic development.16
Emrullah Uslu claims that the transformations in the economy, the political space and
education were the primary causes for the revival of the Kurdish nationalist
Nor is it correct to see the Kurdish groups that formed between 1908 and 1914 as primarily
nationalist. See, Djene Bajalan, Kurds for the Empire: “the Young Kurds,” M.A Thesis,
Bilgi University, 2009.
16 Martin van Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State: the Social and Political Structures of
Kurdistan, (London and New Jersey: Zed Books Ltd, 1992), p.32.
7
movement.17 First of all, I would like to argue that there was no revival of the Kurdish
nationalist movement. By contrast, during the 1960s, what prevailed was Doğuculuk
(Eastism). It was only after the failure of Doğuculuk that the Kurdish movement
opted for a nationalist solution to the Kurdish issue. Furthermore, even if it were
assumed that there was a revival of Kurdish nationalism this cannot be explained
merely by socio-political structural transformations. Hence, I argue that Kurdish
nationalist movement was a response to the failure of Doğuculuk and that the later
revival of Kurdish nationalism cannot be explained merely by sociopolitical
explanations.
In terms of the co-operation between Leftists and a new generation of Kurdish
elites and intellectuals, the following approach seems to be the best example of how
the literature on the Kurdish movement views the 1960s. According to Barkey and
Fuller, “it was a period of left-wing mobilization, and many politically active Kurds
threw their lot in with the Turkish Left in search of their ‘national rights’.”18 As will
be elaborated in the following chapters this argument is not accurate either. Again,
there is no mention of the role of the new elites, most of who could not fight with the
existing elites (both Turkish and Kurdish) and therefore started to seek different ways
to obtain power.
Another striking example is David Romano’s book. All of his information
about this period relies on David McDowall’s book. What he argues is that “not
surprisingly, Kurds joined the new leftist movements in disproportionate numbers,
and the experience they garnered in the Turkish Left would later help provide the
17 Emrullah Uslu, The Transformation of Kurdish Political Identity in Turkey: Impact of
Modernization, Democratization and Globalization, Ph.D. dissertation, Middle East
Studies/Political Science, University of Utah, 2009, p.119.
18 Henri J. Barkey and Graham E.Fuller, Turkey’s Kurdish Question, foreword by Morton
Abramowitz, Lanham (Boulder, New York and Oxford, Rowman and Littefield Publisher,
inc. 1998), p.15.
8
foundations for the emergence of a non-traditional, Kurdish intellectual and
revolutionary elite.”19 He does not give any statistics on how many Kurds joined the
leftist movement or why they joined. Although McDowall’s book is one of the most
important books in the field, the way he describes the result of the new Kurdish elite
joining the Turkish Labor Party (TLP) and the subsequent process of this affiliation
are confusing. He argues that:
Frustrated with the TLP’s reticence over the Kurdish question, [Tarık Ziya]
Ekinci and other colleagues formed autonomous cells within the party from
1966. After he had become party secretary-general in 1968, and a fellow
Kurd, Mehmet Ali Aslan, had become party president the following year, a
major effort was made to persuade the party to address the Kurdish question
head on. Aslan had made a reputation for himself as the editor of Yeni Akıs
which openly advocated recognition of national rights for the Kurds. At the
TLP’s Fourth Congress in October 1970 the party affirmed: there is a Kurdish
people in the East of Turkey… the fascist authorities representing the ruling
classes have subjected the Kurdish people to a policy of assimilation and
intimidation which has often become a bloody repression.20
As will be seen in the following chapters, McDowall not only overlooks the
split among those Kurds who were members or supporters of the party (generally
known as Doğulu or Easterners), but also misrepresents the fact that when the party
affirmed the above-mentioned resolution, Tarık Ziya Ekinci and Kemal Burkay, two
of the most influential members, abstained from voting and did not support the
resolution. Moreover, Mehmet Ali Aslan argues that he himself tried to persuade the
party not to affirm it since it would provoke the government into closing the party.21
In other words, they did not support the resolution which McDowall depicts as a
result of their pressure upon the party.
19 David Romano, The Kurdish Nationalist Movements; Opportunity, Mobilization, and
Identity (Cambridge University Press, 2006), p.41.
20 David McDowall, A Modern History of the Kurds (London; New York: I.B. Tauris,
1996), p.407.
21 Mehmet Ali Aslan, interview by the author, tape recording, Istanbul, Turkey, 31 January
2009.
9
Another controversial issue is Doğuculuk or Eastism, a movement which put
great emphasis on the region’s underdevelopment and to a certain extent, on Kurdish
cultural and political rights, all of which, according to its advocates, were in
accordance with the Constitution of 1961. This thesis argues that Doğuculuk was the
beginning of what can be called the “Kurdish ethnoregional movement.” The existing
literature mainly argues that Doğuculuk was a transitory period in the rebirth of the
Kurdish national movement.22 According to Bruinessen, “the East” meant
“Kurdistan,” as everyone knew, but in order to maintain legality no open reference to
Kurdistan or Kurds could be made.23
However, I argue that the East, for Doğucus, meant a constituency, which
would bring them political privileges. Therefore, they not only used the socialist
rhetoric, but also linked it with the existing situation in the region, that is to say, to the
economic backwardness and suppression of the Kurdish ethnicity and identity. I agree
with Ebru Erdem when she compares Tajiks and Kurds and argues that “ethnicity
becomes salient under conditions where new ethnic elites find it possible and
profitable to compete politically and where a potential constituency prefers them over
the existing elites.”24
Finally, the separation of Doğuculuk from the leftist or socialist movement,
especially in the late 1960s is worth mentioning here. According to Mesut Yeğen, in
addition to the nature of the Kurdish issue, the insistence of Kurdish leftists on
22 Nezan Kendal, “Kurdistan in Turkey” in A People Without a Country; The Kurds&
Kurdistan, ed. Gerard Chaliand (New York: Olive Branch Press, 1993), p.67.
23 Martin Van Bruinessen, “The Kurds in Turkey,” in Martin Van Bruinessen, Kurdish
Ethno-Nationalism versus Nation-Building States: Collected Essays, (Istanbul: the Isis
Press, 2000), p.229.
24 Ebru Erdem, Political Salience of Ethnic Identities: A Comparative Study of Tajiks in
Uzbekistan and Kurds in Turkey, Ph.D. Dissertation, Stanford University, Political Science,
September 2006, p.iv.
10
organizing apart from their Turkish counterparts was a decisive factor behind the
separation from Turkish socialists, who did not deny the existence of the Kurdish
question but, however, did not prioritize it.25 On the contrary, Erdem mentions it as a
decision made by those Kurds who had been active in leftist organizations and then
somehow broke away from the leftist movement.26 The disagreement between leftists
and Kurds in terms of the Kurdish issue, especially for the Doğulus, was not salient
initially. However, with respect to how to attain power or solve the question, both
sides, Kurdish leftists and Turkish leftists, became more clear, especially after a
younger generation of Kurdish intellectuals, such as students or young graduates
entered the debate.
Alice Marcus, in her excellent book Blood and Belief, the PKK and the
Kurdish Fight for Independence, in one of the most thorough studies on the matter,
gives us many insights into the personality of PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan and a
deep analysis of his leadership, as well as the organization and the way it deals with
Kurdish people. Öcalan, as the leader of the biggest Kurdish organization, ordered the
murders of several people in order to secure his leadership, among them some
founders of the organization.27 In our case, the issue of leadership is of key
importance as well. The authoritarianism of the PKK has to be seen in the context of
the importance that the leadership issue had played during the 1960s and 1970s.
To sum up, the existing literature on the Kurdish movement about the 1960s
in general and its affiliation with the Turkish socialist and leftist movement does not
do justice to the complexity of the situation. Seeing Kurdish nationalism as starting
25 Mesut Yeğen, “Türkiye Solu ve Kürt Sorunu,” in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düsünce,
Cilt.8, Sol, ed. Murat Gültekingil (Đstanbul: Đletisim Yayınları, 2007), p.1231.
26 Erdem, p.50.
27 Alice Marcus, Blood and Belief, the PKK and the Kurdish Fight for Independence, (New
York University Press, 2007), p.134–135.
11
from the early nineteenth century and defeated by the Turkish nation-state by the late
1930s, going through a revival in the 1960s due to the relatively more liberal political
atmosphere, does not give us a plausible explanation of why the politics in general
and in the region in particular changed its direction during and after the 1960s. The
existing literature does not give a convincing answer to the question of how the
contemporary Kurdish identity, which inherited much from the discussions of the
1960s, was created and how many Kurds became politicized.
It is remarkable that during the 1977 elections the constituents of many
provinces in the east voted for those who publicly declared that they were, to some
extent, Kurdish nationalists. This pattern has more or less remained a constant feature
of eastern politics with those seen as sympathizers with Kurdish nationalism forming
one of the most important political blocs in the region. The voting pattern in this
region has shown a drastic change in the last forty years, more so than any other
region in Turkey. In the 2009 local elections, more than 40 per cent of votes in the
region were won by those who either committed themselves to Kurdish nationalism,
as a means of identity seeking or to at least pay more attention to the region’s
socioeconomic situation. In my opinion, this is not because Kurds, by nature, have
voted for Kurdish nationalists, but because they have voted for those political parties
whose policies have focused on the region in terms of both culture and economy.
As a departure point, the transformation can be linked with the subject of this
study, the shift from a national perspective to a regional one. As early publications of
Kurdish nationalism such as Kürdistan, the first Kurdish newspaper published
between 1897 and 1909, and Jin (Life), a bilingual journal published in Kurdish and
Turkish between 1918 and 1919 clearly show that Kurds were initially quite eager to
integrate with the central state in many respects. This was the same even in the early
12
Republican era. However, their approach changed in the 1960s when many young
Kurdish intellectuals endeavored to both regionalize the politics and politicize the
constituents of the region, in accordance with a regionalized politics which put great
emphasis on the ethnic distinctiveness of the people and economic backwardness of
the region. The shift from a national perspective to a regional one also led to the split
with Turkish socialists, who did not prioritize the region in the first place.
I argue that the period under investigation in this thesis is pivotal for our
understanding of the process in which the modern Kurdish identity in Turkey has
been shaped. It can be claimed that what we observe during the 1960s and the early
1970s diverges from the historicist narratives on the rise of Kurdish nationalism. First
of all, during this period, most Kurdish organizations and actors, including Kurdistan
Democrat Party of Turkey, a clandestine organization established in 1965 in the
region, were in the stage of building their perspectives and ideological tendencies.
They, contrary to common assumption, were not nationalist in the modern sense of
the term that they advocated a political solution based on the creation of a Kurdish
nation-state (or even a Kurdish autonomous homeland). They were seeking nothing
more than integration with the Turkish public sphere. In this way, the demands were
more concerned with integration than with separation.28 However, they were not
willing to abandon what they had inherited from their families and previous
generations, which can be called “ethnicity.” My analysis led me to conclude that in
advance, they were quite eager to participate and become visible in the Turkish public
sphere, especially through national politics.
In order to achieve this goal, the Kurdish intelligentsia was quite pragmatic
and ambitious in many respects. As I will deal with it more specifically in the next
28 Hamit Bozarslan, “Political Aspects of the Kurdish Problem in Contemporary Turkey,”
p.100.
13
chapters, they would try to participate in national politics through major parties, such
as the Republican People’s Party (RPP) or the Democrat Party (DP). It was after the
foundation of the Turkish Labor Party (TLP) that many of the new Kurdish elites
changed their direction from a national perspective to a regional one. Without
understanding this, one cannot analyze properly the post-1960s developments in
Turkish politics in general and Kurdish politics in particular. The Kurdish
ethnoregional movement of the 1960s, by putting its entire emphasis on the region’s
economic situation and social and cultural problems, also paved the way to a regional
perception in terms of politics. Prior to this, socialists and Kurdish activists had not
seen the region as separate from other parts of Turkey. To be sure, Kurdish activists
and leftists prior to the 1960s had seen that there were some specificities to the east,
but generally they felt that these were linked to the problems of Turkey in general.
Contrary the experiences of other ethnoregional movements in the world, the
Kurdish ethnoregional movement of the 1960s did not pave the way to autonomy or
independence but rather for the emergence of ethnoregional political parties and
organizations, as I specify in the following section. Moreover, it led to the
politicization of the constituents of the region as well as ethnicization of the region’s
votes. All those movements that formed after the 1970s that declared that their main
aim was the solution of the Kurdish issue or at the very least the promotion of
Kurdish interests in Turkey can be seen as products of both the successes and failures
of the movement of the 1960s.
In addition to the role of elite politics and power struggles, it is also important
to see how these elites changed their views vis-à-vis the Kurdish problem. For
example, by the late 1960s, it became clear that the constitution per se and the
economic development could neither solve the question nor give them any prominent
14
role. This can be seen as the trigger behind why the Kurdish elites opted to play the
ethnic card. As Erdem points out:
where ethnic groups have a regional base, political entrepreneurs can benefit
most by playing the “ethnic card” because it allows them to mobilize as many
people as possible in the region…the new elites position themselves against
the state-local elite alliance, claim to be the true representatives of the ethnic
group, and use the threat of secession to strengthen their hand in bargaining.29
With regard to my theoretical arguments, I will argue that since playing the
socialist card above the ethnic card during the 1960s failed to win the Kurdish elite a
greater role in Turkish politics, and did not bring any results, conditions encouraged
them to take a greater risk by focusing on the ethnic card or discourage them from
any attempts to attain power in general and from politics in particular. Those who
chose to take another risk, in the 1970s, as a result of the previous failure, focused
mainly on ethnicity and esteemed only Kurdish nationalism. As a combination of
what they experienced during the 1960s with the socialist movement and heritage of
the single-party era Kurdish rebellions, modern Kurdish nationalism and its discourse
overshadow what can be seen as not having been in the same line with it.
Consequently, what we have seen in the previous pages with respect to the literature
on the Kurdish movement, especially about 1960s, is a good example of this shift,
which reconstitutes the past in accordance with how they want to see it now.
Ethnoregional Movements
The most important characteristic of the 1960s was, undoubtedly, the
politicization and the polarization of politics in many countries. In addition to the
29 Erdem, p.18.
15
socio-economic transformation of almost every society,30 there was a revitalization of
cultural and ethnic communities as well. It was an era of new nation-states as well as
unprecedented socio-political transformation in many respects. Meanwhile, as
Edward Shills indicates, “the separation of the uneducated masses immersed in their
traditional culture from their rural backgrounds and the intellectuals who had modern
educations were the factors causing changes in the social structure of practically all
the new states.”31The message in both new states and old European nation-states as
well as the United States, was that “if it was beautiful to be black, Chicano, Puerto
Rican, or Indian, then it has to be more beautiful still to be Irish, Italian, Jewish,
Polish, Ukrainian, Slovak, Greek, Armenian, or whatever your origins indicated that
you could now be proud to know that you were.”32
Along with the above-mentioned transformation, from the 1960s and
particularly from the 1970s, a growing disenchantment with “explaining everything in
economic and social terms” also led to the creation of another type of historiography,
which is called new cultural historiography.33 However, it was not until the mid-
1970s that the omnipotent place of economic and social terms of theories, such as
Marxism, and to certain extent Dependency Theory, which I will be briefly touching
on in the following section, was challenged by ethnic and cultural terms. In the 1960s,
30 See Eric Hobsbawn, Kısa 20. Yüzyıl: 1914- 1991 Asırılıklar Çağı, trans.Yavuz Alogan
(Đstanbul: Everest Yayınları, 2006).
31 Edward Shills, “on the Comparative Study if the New States,” in Old Societies and New
States: The Quest for Modernity in Asia and Africa, ed. Clifford Geertz (London: The Free
Press of Glencoe, 1963), pp.1-16.
32 Harold, R. Isaacs, Idols of the Tribe (New York, Evanston, London: Harper& Row
Publishers, 1975), p.210.
33 S. H. Rigby, “History, Discourse, and the Postsocial Paradigm; A Revolution in
Historiography,” History and Theory 45 (February 2006), pp. 110–123.
16
it was slowly being realized, ethnic identities survived through several generations far
from drowning in the confluence of assimilation and acculturation.34
Ethnic identity is important in understanding an ethnoregional movement
because not only does ethnic identity, or ethnicity, serve as one of the two dimensions
of an ethnoregional movement along with the regional economic situation, but also it
serves as a catalyst in it. The other dimension of an ethnoregional movement is the
regional economic deprivation or backwardness, which is usually associated with
their distinct ethnic identity by the participants of the movement. To many of their
followers, ethnicity and regional economic situation are closely interrelated, and in
the Kurdish case in particular. Herein, I shall first briefly look at what ethnicity means
and what I understand about an ethnic community.
It is important to stress at the outset, as Miroslav Hroch also argues, that we
are very far from being able to explain all the major problems posed by the formation
of modern nations.35It is also important to keep in mind that there is no commonly
agreed definition for ethnicity or nationalism. As J. Milton Yinger notes, ethnicity,
nationality, and country or origin are often used as synonyms.36 Therefore, ethnicity,
nationality and culture are generally used interchangeably. This pattern seems to be
similar in terms of the ethnoregional movements, too.
Ethnicity can be defined as “a cultural phenomenon based on biological and
social heritage; but it includes elements of class and territory as well.”37 On the other
34 Gregory Jusdanis, “Beyond National Culture?” Boundary, 2, no.1 (spring, 1995), pp.23–
60.
35 Miroslav Hroch “From National Movement to the Fully-formed Nation,” New Left Review
I/198 ( Mar-Apr 1993), pp. 3–20.
36 J. Milton Yinger, “Ethnicity,”Annual Review of Sociology, no. 11 (1985), pp. 151–180.
37 Charles R. Foster, “Political Culture and Regional Ethnic Minorities,” The Journal of
Politics, 44, no. 2 (May, 1982), pp. 560–568.
17
hand, Horowitz argues that ethnicity is connected to birth and blood; group origins
count, but exceptions are made. It is based on a myth of collective ancestry.38 Since
his definition of ethnicity does not include “culture which is transmitted socially
across generations within a group, resulting in patterns of within-group similarity and
between group differences,”39 it fails to explain why some members of a ethnically
conscious group, although they were born and have the same blood as the rest, do not
express their identities in terms of ethnicity as the rest do.
In the broadest sense of the term, an ethnic group or ethnies as Anthony D.
Smith uses, is supposed to be a cultural category, “distinguished by both members
and outsiders as possessing the attributes of: an identifying name or emblem; a myth
of common ancestry; shared historical memories and traditions; one or more elements
of common culture; a link with and historic territory or ‘homeland’; a measure of
solidarity, at least among elites.”40
From this angle, ethnicity is much more a cultural phenomenon than birth and
blood, or so-called biological heritage, which is based on someone’s own decision to
accept his or her distinct culture no matter if it is based upon religion, race, language,
and so on. In other words, “while the choice is clearly constrained by objective
indicators of common ancestry - appearance, language, culture or territory - one
cannot overlook the influence of rational considerations of costs and benefits or social
38 Donald L Horowitz, Ethnic Groups in Conflict (Berkeley; Los Angeles, London:
University of California Press, 2000), pp.52–3.
39 David Buss, “Human Nature and Culture, An Evolutionary Psychological Perspective,”
Journal of Personality, 60, no. 6 (December, 2001), pp.955-956.
40 Anthony D. Smith, Myths and Memories of the Nation, (New York: Oxford University
Press, 1999), p.13.
18
conditioning on an individual's identification with either the dominant culture, an
ethnic group within it or, in certain circumstances, with both.”41
Until recently, ethnicity, as well as nationalism, has often been studied in the
context of modernization. An important proposition of modernization theories is that
the “various processes of modernization—industrialization, urbanization, increases in
transportation and communication, the growth of mass education, and so on—lead to
national integration and to the fading away of ethnic plurality in particular.”42As
Horowitz points out, there are three ways of relating ethnic conflict to the
modernization process. “The first is to view ethnic conflict as a mere relic of an
outmoded traditionalism, doomed to be overtaken by the incursions of modernity.
The second is to regard ethnic conflict as a traditional but unusually stubborn
impediment to modernization. The third is to interpret ethnic conflict as an integral
part—even a product—of the process of modernization itself.”43 Nonetheless, as
Connor argues, as the ethnic demands of those whose ethnic identity had been
considered nonexistent or excluded from political analysis, scholars feel compelled to
proffer a pile of theories to explain this unanticipated social phenomenon. 44
Of course, reduced the costs of travel along with effective communications
have accelerated social mobilization in general and ethnoregional movements in
particular. These developments have made it possible for ethnic communities to
41 Foster, p.564.
42 Arend Lijphart, “Political Theories and the Explanation of Ethnic Conflict in the Western
World: Falsified Predictions and Plausible Postdictions,”in Ethnic Conflict in the Western
World, ed. Milton, J. Esman (Ithaca and London: Cornell University Pres, 1977 ), p.48.
43 Horowitz, pp.96-97.
44 Walker Connor, “Ethnonationalism in the First World: The Present in Historical
Perspective,” in Ethnic Conflict in the Western World, ed, Milton, J. Esman (Ithaca and
London: Cornell University Pres, 1977) p.23.
19
become much more aware of their distinctiveness than ever. Modernization also has
another effect, called the “demonstration effect,” which has had a very discernible,
chain-reaction impact upon the evolution of ethnic awareness.45 Furthermore, as
McCarty and Zald emphasize, means of communication, transportation, political
freedoms affect the costs for any individual or organization allocating resources to the
social movements.46
Concerning the regional aspect, which is the second dimension of an
ethnoregional movement, Milton Esman argues that modernization gives a chance to
regional people to observe the differences in conditions firsthand, and their
impressions are confirmed or accentuated by what they observe of people visiting
their regions as well.47 Due mainly to mirroring their region’s deprivation in terms of
both economy and culture, these developments encourage ethnoregional activists.
Finally, development as well as underdevelopment leads to a rise rather than a decline
in ethnic mobilization, because it provides resources to ethnic groups increasing their
bargaining position and organizational capacity for action. 48
What many of those who are involved in an ethnoregional movement would
want to understand is the chasm between their states or regions and their ethnic
groups. One of the first explanations of this was Dependency theory, which dates
back to the late 1950s and claims that the underdevelopment of countries, mainly
45 Connor, p.29-30.
46 John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, “Resource Mobilization and Social Movements: A
Partial Theory,” The American Journal of Sociology, 82, no. 6 (May, 1977), p.1224.
47 Milton J. Esman, “Perspectives on Ethnic Conflict in Industrialized Societies,” in Ethnic
Conflict in the Western World, ed. Milton, J. Esman (Ithaca and London: Cornell University
Pres, 1977), p.374.
48 Rita Jalali and Seymour Martin Lipset, “Racial and Ethnic Conflicts: A Global
Perspective,” in Political Science Quarterly, 107, no. 4 (Winter, 1992–1993), pp.596.
20
Third World countries, was a result of unequal relationships among states.
Dependency is the source of underdevelopment.49 The only way of avoiding
dependency is creating an alternative system of production, a non-capitalist system of
production, in one way or another as will be seen in the following sections, socialism
was proposed as an alternative.50 To recapitulate, the economic underdevelopment
and deprivation had to be overcome not with the same path that prosperous countries
or regions within a country achieved, but rather with socialism. In the following
sections, I will be dealing with this particular emphasis on socialism in detail.
An ethnoregional movement, as mentioned above, is twofold. First, it is based
on the ethnic distinctiveness of the population based upon ethnicity, religion, race,
and language and so on and so forth, in a region; and second, it is based on the
region’s economic underdevelopment. It has been argued that ethnic elites’
aspirations are governed by various factors such as leadership, the central
government’s responses, economic circumstances, the degree of distinctiveness, and
majority-group attitudes, which can influence the intensity of collective ambitions.51
This is the case in Kurdish ethnoregional movement, too. An ethnoregional
movement differs from social movements in a number of ways. First, although it is
itself a social movement, using McCarty and Zald’s term, it also undertakes resource
mobilization, which has a number of strategic tasks such as “mobilizing supporters,
49 Thomas, Martin, ‘ Marxism and Imperialism’ Workers’ Liberty 28 — available online at:
http://216.239.59.104/search?q=cache:04sPvohDIsIJ:archive.workersliberty.org/publication
s/readings/2001/empire.html+dependency+theory+workers%27+liberty+28&hl=tr&ct=clnk
&cd=7
50 See also Harriet Friedmann, Jack Wayne. “Dependency Theory: A Critique”. Canadian
Journal of Sociology, 2, no. 4 (Autumn, 1997), pp.399–416.
51 Marvin W. Mikesell and Alexander B. Murphy, “A Framework for Comparative Study of
Minority-Group Aspirations,” Annals of the Association of American Geographers, 81, no. 4
(December 1991), p.584.
21
neutralizing and/or transforming mass and elite publics into sympathizers, achieving
change in targets.”52
Figure1, which was drawn by me based on Esman’s and Mikesell and
Murphy’s studies, shows how an ethnoregional movement operates and what
conditions are needed. In other words, it tries to answer the following question asked
by Esman: “What techniques of mobilization and politicization are employed by
various ethnic movements, and what new forms of social and political organization
have appeared to spearhead these movements?”53
Although Esman does not include what I call “the refusal of assimilation or
being a subordinate group,” five conditions are offered by him in order to explain the
politicization of ethnic groups, which are applicable to the subject of this thesis as
well. According to him, the five conditions seem necessary and sufficient to explain
and predict the politicization of ethnic solidarities in the First World are as displayed
in Figure 1:
52 McCarty and Zald make a distinction between traditional and resource mobilization which
is quite important to see what kind of similarities as well as differences exists between two.
See John D. McCarthy and Mayer N. Zald, p.1217.
53 Esman, pp.371–372.
22
Figure 1 Ethnoregional movements
Source: It is drawn by the author on Milton J. Esman, “Perspectives on Ethnic Conflict in
Industrialized Societies,”; and Marvin W. Mikesell and Alexander B. Murphy, “A
Framework for Comparative Study of Minority-Group Aspirations,”
In addition to the above-mentioned conditions, the ethnoregional movements
may politicize and socialize their members differently from each other. It is also true
that they all have some common features, which are more or less the same for each
movement. For instance, institutional structures and state policies play a major role in
shaping and conditioning the emergence of such movements.54 Accordingly, a deep
crisis of the old order, with the breakdown of its legitimacy, and of the values and
sentiments that sustained it is the precondition for the rise of almost every
ethnoregional movements. It also is generally accepted that current ethnoregional
movements are related to the rising discontent among the ethnic elites. Therefore, it is
54 Jalali and Lipset, pp.596–597.
Group identity based on
shared properties
Grievances based on
political, cultural and
economic deprivations
Rising expectations
Declining authority and
effectiveness of the
political centre
Political organization to
articulate ethnoregional
goals and group interests
Refusal of assimilation
or subordinate status
The
Ethnoregional
Movements Criticism of the system and
institutions
Highlighting of economic,
political, cultural grievances
Persuasion of individuals
Self-determination
Autonomy
Attention by Masses
Independence
Mass demonstrations
Peaceful electoral
politics
23
observed that “a substantial component of the ethnoregional movements consists of
relatively well educated persons, including teachers and technicians, whose economic
rewards, social recognition, or opportunities for the exercise of power and influence
fall short of their expectations.”55
As Figure 1 depicts, an ethnoregional movement, first of all, is based on
existing grievances such as economic, political, and cultural ones. An ethnoregional
movement employs the past as a defining element in the concept of ethnic identity of
that population which it endeavors to influence. Therefore, the past, or history,
deliberately is reread and hence historical myths as well as legends become more
visible than ever. Of course, there is always a gap between the history which they
learn from the previous generations, including reading materials, and the dominant
one which national history claims to be the sole truth. 56 Now, however, history is
utilized in order to not only bridge that gap but also to give an impetus to the
movement per se.
The ethnoregional movements virtually lack an ideological form. Initially,
they borrow from present ideologies to articulate their grievances. Thus, they use a
vague language at the beginning and it is observed that many of the activists oscillate
between nationalism, which is seen as a panacea to the cultural and political
grievances, and a socialist rhetoric which is regarded as the sole solution to the
backwardness of the region’s economy. Despite the fact that there is a different
agenda peculiar to every ethnoregional movement, the whole system in general and
institutions in particular are judged increasingly by many educated young people in
terms of new aspirations for economic equality, group participation, political and
55 Esman, p.375.
56 Joseph B. Gittler (ed), Understanding Minority Groups (New York, John Wiley& sons,
inc. 1956), p.129.
24
cultural rights. 57 In a similar manner, Esman rightfully argues that in addition to
economic grievances which emerge in the regions, and the assistance seen as
insufficient to meet rising expectations, cultural grievances are invoked frequently by
ethnic activists to demonstrate the injustices perpetrated by an indifferent or hostile
central government.58
Persuasion of individuals, according to figure 1 is the next step that follows.
The crux of the issue is that individuals must be persuaded that their interests are
linked with the power of his ethnic group and his region.59 Hence, they must be
persuaded that their interests are linked with the power of the group representatives,
that is to say, the elites who are now at the head of the movement who want to be
elected or regarded as the avant-garde of the movement. 60 This process of shifting
loyalties from religious and tribal ones to an ethnoregional one is worth taking into
consideration since it changes peoples’ allegiances so drastically that the entire
society, both the country and the region will be affected by these changes afterwards.
Not surprisingly, as Karl W. Deutsch points out, socio-economic expectations
of the people would change especially in such a way that the existing state machinery
will not be able to compensate them. Deutsch sums up what is called the social
mobilization process in the following words:
As people are uprooted from their physical and intellectual isolation in their
immediate localities, from their old habits and traditions, and often from their
old patterns of occupation… they experience drastic changes in their needs.
They may now come to need provisions for housing and employment, for
social security against illness… for medical care… They may need succor
against the risks of cyclical or seasonal unemployment, against oppressive
charges of rent or interest, and against sharp fluctuations in the prices of the
57 Esman, p.375.
58 Ibid., p.373.
59 Ibid., p.378.
60 Hroch, p.16.
25
main commodities which they must sell or buy. They need instruction for
themselves and education for their children. They need, in short, a wide range
and large amounts of new government services. These needs ordinarily cannot
be met by traditional types of government.61
In order to draw a general conclusion about ethnoregional movements, as
Hroch argues, we need to know more about the ethnically unconcerned or assimilated
intelligentsias as well as ordinary people. However, it is not so easy to make a
distinction between those who publicly support ethnoregional demands and those who
neither support nor share the same concerns with them.62 Leaving aside the
assimilated or unconcerned parts of the ethnic groups, it is important to briefly
comment on what sort of factors play a role in both the socialization and politicization
of an individual.
The home, as the place where socialization and politicization take place in
their most basic and enduring forms, is obviously the origin of ethnic identity’s most
important carriers, such as language and religion. 63As David Kamens points out,
“efforts to politicize, or nationalize, the socialization of children as a state
responsibility was one mode of both articulating the claims of the state over future
citizens and linking the interests of children with those of the state.”64 As to their
ultimate objectives, the ethnoregional movements pursue the same goal as well.
More or less simultaneously, when the ethnoregional movement gains impetus
and attracts attention from the masses, social mobilization increases, too. One of the
61 Karl W. Deutsch, “Social Mobilization and Political Development,” The American
Political Science Review, 55, no. 3 (September, 1961), p.498.
62 Hroch, p.12.
63 Foster, p.568.
64 David H. Kamens, “"Statist" Ideology, National Political Control of Education, and Youth
Protest: A Comparative Analysis,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution,27, no. 4 (December,
1983), p.570.
26
reasons behind this could be because the elites of the ethnoregional movements
succeed in gathering the early socialization and politicization of individuals which
used to take place at home around a publicly announced one, which provides new
patterns of socialization and behavior.
In pursuit of the goal sensitizing and politicizing the population of the region
in order to expand and draw additional support, an ethnoregional movement may
focus its attention on some intermediate goals, such as amelioration in terms of
economy, or fulfillment of citizenship. As Esman emphasizes, the leaders of the
movement who agree on the ultimate goals of self-determination, which is either
autonomy or independence in many cases, must decide whether to use violence or
peaceful electoral politics, and whether to place an emphasis on cultural, economic,
or political issues. 65 Another point which deserves attention is timing. Timing is
crucial because they have to decide, as mentioned above, what sort of tactics and
intermediate goals will be used and when they would shift from those to the ultimate
goals.
Mikesell and Murphy provide some important insights into the dynamics of
interaction between minority groups and governments by using the formula, rap
SAI,
where the numerator is the combination of letters of “recognition,” “access” and
“participation,” the denominator is of “separation,” “autonomy” and
“independence”.66 As is seen in Table 1, there are essentially two types of policy,
concessional and structural, respectively, which ethnoregional movements seek to
accomplish. Recognition, access and participation are categorized as concessional,
which does not require any structural change in state structure whereas separation,
65 Esman, p.377.
66 Mikesell and Murphy, p.582.
27
autonomy, and independence are structural policies which require some changes in
the nation-state’s structure.
Table 1. Nation-States and Minority-Group Objectives 67
Types of Associated Types of Cultural- Political
Aspirations Policy Demands Arrangements Sought
Recognition
Acknowledgment of
group’s existence, respect
for group’s special
attributes
Official language or religion, special
cultural institutions
Access
No discrimination,
employment opportunities,
advancement opportunities
Affirmative action, anti-discrimination
laws, economic development assistance
Participation
Power sharing, input into
policy making
Proportional representation, ethnic
quotas in government, legislative
special majorities
Seperation
Exemption from societal
forms
Community autonomism
Autonomy
Control of minority region,
devolution, regional
unilingualism
Confederalism, federalism, regional
autonomism, regional administration,
decentralization
Independence
New state transfer to
neighboring state
Recognized secession
In addition, assimilation is the major policy which is virtually seen in every
state as an alternative to these two models and the most used one as well. Among the
aspirations and responses displayed in Table 1, I shall briefly mention two of the most
striking facets of the ethnoregional movements, the activists, who generally consist of
a young educated elite, and intra-elites conflicts. Regarding the former, I have already
mentioned that the activists of the ethnoregional movements, especially at the
beginning, are relatively well-educated young generation of the population. This trait
of ethnoregional movements is also common in the Kurdish movement of the 1960s.
Young generations of educated people, as Esman argues, initially take the
greatest risk in shaping ethnoregional movements and in building organizations
67 Source: Marvin W. Mikesell and Alexander B. Murphy.
28
designed to promote their objectives.68 Another point is that an ethnoregional
movement consists of different people from different occupations and classes as well.
I use the term “activists of the movements” in a different sense from adherents or
supporters of the movement. As McCarty and Zald reveal, cadre, constituent,
conscience constituent, adherent, and supporter all may be components of a social
movement69 as well as an ethnoregional movement.
As soon as they, the elites or cadres of the movement, “experience some
success in mobilization within their region, they become a counter-elite to the
established ethnic elites, who are linked to the political and economic structures of the
centralized state.”70 Politicizing and mobilizing the region’s people would pave the
way to destruction of old allegiances from which the established ethnic elites mainly
profited. The established ethnic elites in the Kurdish movement referred to those who
already had been affiliated with mainstream political parties and not the TLP.
Therefore, this move would not only change the latter’s attitude but also would make
the former much more aggressive. That is why some established political groups find
it expedient to embrace some ethnically based symbols and demands in order to coopt
some parts of these movements’ growing constituencies.71 That is also why some
early activists of ethnoregional movements, due mainly to the scarcity of benefits of
the movement from the beginning, become uncompromising in many respects.
As a matter of fact, this explains exactly why the Turkish Labor Party in
Turkey, although not willing to get involved in the Kurdish movement initially, gave
a lot of attention to what they called Doğu Sorunu soon after some Kurdish
68 Esman, p.376.
69 See McCarty and Zald, p.1221.
70 Esman, p. 377.
71 Ibid.
29
intellectuals joined the party in the mid-1960s. On the other hand, politicized and
mobilized constituencies would lead to splits in a united movement. This is crucial in
understanding what happened in the Kurdish case in the 1960s. It also a
demonstration of intra-elite conflicts, some of which later turned into personal
conflicts as well. Leading positions, candidacy for the parliament and so on, can lead
to these conflicts more than anything else and threaten the movement as a whole.
Nation-States and Ethnoregional Movements
In this section, first I will be concerned with the following question; “What
are the methods by which the governmental and political elites of established states
attempt to respond to, and manage the claims of, emergent and dissident ethnic
minorities?”72 Therefore, the ground in which the nationalism, the ideology of nationstates
to provide an alternative to the citizens or people of the states, was rooted needs
to be articulated. Secondly, I will try to elaborate the policies of nation-states offered
to the ethnoregional movements mentioned above.
As in the concept of “ethnicity,” there is no consensus among scholars on the
definition of nationalism. As is well known, nationalism is one of the most hotly
debated issues in the social sciences. First of all, we can argue that nationalism is an
outcome of modern, industrial society, which Eric Hobsbawn calls the “social
engineering” process between 1879 and 1914.73 According to Smith, nationalism is
defined as an ideological movement for attaining and maintaining identity, unity and
autonomy of a social group some of whose members deem it to constitute an actual or
72 Esman, pp.371-372.
73 Eric, J. Hobsbawn, Milletler ve Milliyetçilik; Program, Mit, Gerçekçilik, trans. Osman
Akinhay (Đstanbul: Ayrıntı Yayınları, 2006), p.125-133.
30
potential nation.74Yet, as Roger Friedland argues, nationalism is not merely an
ideology; “it is also a set of discursive practices by which the territorial identity of a
state and the cultural identity of the people whose collective representation it claims
are constituted as a singular fact.” 75
Benedict Anderson argues that nationalism and nations are imagined. He also
claims that this is a gradual process of forgetting. According to Anderson, it is the
sense of fraternity which keeps people together by imagining a certain kind of bond
among them.76 Hobsbawn argues in the same vein that as has frequently been
observed in the case of nationalism, the past is either invented or re-invented.77
Accordingly, Renan argues that ‘getting history wrong’ is the precondition of
nationalist history because it requires not only collective remembering but also
collective forgetting.78 “The overall objective of all ‘types’ of nationalism is a
statehood that is territorially unified, socially re-identified, ethnically re-forged or reformed.”
79
Generally, the state as the central actor in national politics dominates every
kind of ideology. In order to remain the sole actor, its ideology usually borrows from
the political ideologies of a given period, such as socialism. In order to vindicate this
role perceived by the state elites, several policies have been used. It is well known
74 Smith, p.18.
75Roger Friedland, “Money, Sex, and God: The Erotic Logic of Religious Nationalism,” in
Sociological Theory, Vol. 20, No. 3 (November, 2002), p.383.
76 Benedict Anderson, Hayali Cemaatler; Milliyetçiliğin Kökenleri ve Yayılması, trans.
Đskender Savasır (Đstanbul: Metis Yayinlari, 4th edition, 2007), p.20 and p.215.
77 Hobsbawn, p.9.
78 Quoted in Hobsbawn, p.27.
79 Özcan, p.37.
31
that nation-state tends to pacify any sources of ideological challenge within its
boundaries. As Giddens indicates, “internal pacification without means of violence
depends instead on reciprocity between those who are governed and those who
govern, and that is only possible with some measure of political democracy.”80
At the same time, as figure 2 sets out, soon after securing its power over its
territory nation-states, in order to deal with minority groups or ethnoregional
movements, two kinds of policies are mainly chosen ; “assimilation” and
“accommodation”. It is the ultimate goal of any nation-states to homogenize its
people in accordance with nationalist mottos such as unity of language, culture, and
territory.
Assimilation can be seen in several different ways and forms. Some of the
policies used are exclusion of a group’s language and culture from the public sphere,
resettlement, imprisonment of a group’s leaders and activists, banning publications,
outlawing the activities of political or cultural organizations of the group, and
refusing to legitimate the use of language. Gordon outlines seven variables of
assimilation: “absence of prejudice, absence of discrimination, absence of value and
power conflict, integration, acculturation, identification, and amalgamation.”81
According to Yinger, the first three variables can better be seen as causes and
consequences of the extent of assimilation, rather than as types of assimilation
whereas the last four can be seen as structural, cultural, psychological, and biological
aspects of assimilation.82
80 Giddens, p.201.
81 Yinger, p.154.
82 For further discussion about Gordon’s classification, see Yinger, pp.154–156.
32
Figure 2 Nation-States and ethnoregional demands
Source: drawn by the author on Milton J. Esman, and Marvin W. Mikesell and
Alexander B. Murphy,
It must be noted that assimilation is a multidimensional process, the various
aspects of which, although highly interactive, can occur independently at different
rates and different sequences.83 When an ethnoregional movement starts to express
ethnoregional demands, the response is well summarized by Esman as follows:
The first response to this unwelcome challenge is usually studied, neglect,
denial of official recognition, and a refusal to take ethnoregional demands
seriously, in the hope that they will die down or go away. If ethnoregional
demands survive the pain of neglect, they next evoke ridicule from the center
and its political and intellectual allies. The objectives of ridicule are to
discredit ethnic spokesman as crackpots or fanatics, to define ethnic claims as
nonissues, to forecast the disastrous economic consequences of separation,
and to undermine confidence in the movement by depicting its language and
culture as backward, unable to survive on its own, and unworthy of
international recognition. This form of ridicule can be both sophisticated and
83 Yinger, p.154.
Neglect
To sensitize the
majority of society
Denial of official
recognition
Ridicule
Repression
A
C
C
O
M
M
O
D
A
T
I
O
N
N
O
N
S
T
R
U
C
T
U
R
A
L
S
T
R
U
C
T
U
R
A
L
Separation
Autonomy
Recognition
Access
Participation
A
S
S
I
M
I
L
A
T
I
O
N
Independence
33
effective… the eventual consequence, however, is to sensitize members of the
dominated ethnic community to their identity and their grievances.84
Since the nationalism of established states is the dominant ideology, the ethnic
particularism, which is embraced by the participants of the ethnoregional movements,
is considered backward and even subversive.85Therefore, it is generally regarded as a
threat to its national ideology. Also, when ethnoregional demands focus more on
economic issues, the central state, as Esman mentions, prefers not to take any
initiatives in order to not change its centralist economic policy, since this will be seen
as a weakness against the ethnoregional movement. With regard to assimilation,
repression is finally used, different from the pacification of the early stage of nationbuilding
process which was mentioned above.
Seen as a remedial policy, repression usually involves outlawing or limiting
the activities of political or even cultural organizations, banning publications,
harassing or imprisoning, ethnoregional leaders and activities, refusing to legitimate
the use of local languages, and excluding minority representatives from positions of
political authority.86 As will be seen in the next chapters, assimilation, according to
our categorization in Figure 2, as a combination of neglect, denial, ridicule,
sensitization of the population and finally, repression was used in the 1960s in terms
of Kurdish ethnoregional demands.
Robert Dahl rightfully argues that when hegemonic regimes are suddenly
displaced by regimes that provide greater opportunities for opposition, “the political
preferences and latent oppositions that have been dammed up spout forth like water
84 Esman, p381.
85 Ibid., p387.
86 Ibid., p.381-382.
34
through a collapsing dam.”87 Correspondingly, a relatively more democratic
atmosphere and greater opportunities not only pave the way to many ethnoregional
movements, like the Kurdish ethnoregional movement in Turkey, but also encourage
them for further political and social changes.
Accommodation, unlike assimilation, is a policy which pays more attention to
easing ethnoregional discontents. In terms of the central states’ response to minority
group aspirations, Mikesell and Murphy argue that, in fact, desire for recognition
alone, described as the most benign expression of minority-group aspiration, may also
entail conflict if such recognition is denied.88 Especially, after assimilation has been
used for many years it becomes quite hard to adapt any of above-mentioned policies
such as recognition or access and so on. However, as Esman argues, when the central
elites are unwilling to pay the price in conflict and violence that enforced assimilation
may bring, accommodation is tolerated. 89
Accommodation, as Table 1 has shown, requires a pile of policies for each
possible step. First, concessional methods involve the recognition of regional claims
of economic deprivation and provision of subsidies or financial assistance to foster
economic development on the one hand, involve recognition of group language and
special cultural institutions along with anti-discrimination laws on the other.90 As
Esman points out, where grievances are more cultural than economic, central
governments may accept the use of ethnoregional languages in public schools, in
87 Robert A. Dahl, “Introduction,” in Regimes and Oppositions, ed. Robert A. Dahl, (New
haven and London: Yale university Press, 1973), p.10.
88 Mikesell and Murphy, p.58.
89 Esman, p.380.
90 See Table-1.
35
local and regional governments, and, for limited purposes, even in the structures of
the political center. 91
Such concessional forms of accommodation do not require any structural
changes or the distribution forms of power within unitary states. Concessional
methods, recognition, access and participation can also be seen as what Habermas
calls “shared political space,” or “public sphere” which enables every part of society,
or all components of a nation-state to participate into politics and articulate their
wishes.92
Finally, since the defense of the integrity of the territorial space, as in all
nationalist projects, is the medium through which the coherence, identity, and power
of the collective subject is known and narrated,93 structural methods are, of course,
the most troubled phase of accommodation. Structural forms of accommodation,
although they might differ depending on the situation, separation, autonomy and
independence in general, need structural adjustments that allow confederalism,
federalism, regional autonomism, regional administration or decentralization. As
Esman stresses, “regimes usually with great reluctance, are compelled to resort to
these adjustments.” 94 Since it is beyond the scope of this study and was not the case
in the 1960s in Turkey, I do not go in detail with each of the aforementioned
adjustments. However, one point worth mentioning here is that structural forms of
91 Esman, pp.381-382.
92 Jürgen Habermas, “Citizenship and National Identity,” in The Condition of Citizenship,
ed. Bart van Steenbergen (London: Sage, 1994), pp.290–291.
93 Friedland, p.396.
94 Esman, pp.381-382.
36
accommodation are usually determined by the intensity of the movement, to wit, by
the power and ability of the ethnoregional movement rather than states’ preferences.95
Political Parties, the Left and Ethnoregional Movements
My purpose in this section is to examine political parties as “essential
agencies of mobilization,” having a historical role in shaping states in ethnoregional
movements.96 In his pioneering study, Duverger argues that “a party is not a
community but a collection of communities, a union of small groups dispersed
throughout the country and linked by coordinating institutions.”97 This definition, as
we will see in the next chapters, seems to be appropriate in the Turkish case in terms
of political parties, especially in the Turkish Labor Party.
In many countries that have multiethnic populations, political parties address
constituencies comprised of more than one ethnicity. Ethnicity-based parties, argue
Gunter and Diamond, instead of focusing on society as a whole, goals and strategies
are narrower “to promote the interests of a particular ethnic group, or coalition of
groups. And unlike national parties, they are content using existing state structures to
channel benefits towards their particularistically defined electoral clientele.”98
95 This has been studied as irredentism, which includes a claim of the territory of an
independent state. For this discussions see, David Carment and Patrick James, “Internal
Constraints and Interstate Ethnic Conflict: Toward a Crisis-Based Assessment of
Irredentism,” The Journal of Conflict Resolution, 39, no. 1 (Mar., 1995), pp. 82–109.
96 G. Bingham Powell, Jr., p.863.
97 Maurice Duverger, Political Parties; Their Organization and Activity in the Modern State,
trans. Barbara and Robert North, (London: University Paperback, 1964), p.17.
98 Gunter and Diamond, p.186.
37
In the Turkish case, unless the particular emphasize is given to ethnicity,
Turkish ethnicity is mentioned in party policies and as the leitmotif of the Turkish
party system, it seems to be almost impossible to understand why the Left in general,
and the TLP in particular, was unwilling to affiliated with the Kurds initially or,
although it is different from the former, with the Alevis in Turkey. Horowitz states
that in an ethnic party system, the choice for a Left party is to adopt and become
essentially an ethnic party or to wither and die.99 If they do not become essentially an
ethnic party, leftist parties usually show much interest in ethnic conflicts on the one
hand, and regional underdevelopment of a region or a country as a whole on the
other.
As is well known, there is no theory of nationalism in Marxism. 100 According
to Marx and Engels, national differences among peoples will gradually die out as
economic intercourse among nations grows. 101 Moreover, they view nationalism as a
fading phenomenon, while they urge the proletariat to establish itself as the nation.102
In its battle to become the national class, the proletariat will have to win over the
"intermediate elements" of society the peasants, small businessmen, the intellectuals
and assimilate them into a single class, the proletariat.103 While class struggle is the
main concern of Marxism, nationalism and ethnicity generally are seen as follows:
Until recently, there was considerable consensus among many Marxist and
non-Marxist scholars that ethnicity reflected the conditions of traditional
society, in which people lived in small communities isolated from one another
99 Horowitz, p.338.
100 Umut Özkırımlı, Milliyetçilik Kuramları (Đstanbul: Sarmal Yayınları, 1999), p.41-42.
101 Neil A. Martin, “Marxism, Nationalism, and Russia,” Journal of the History of Ideas, 29,
no. 2 (Apr. - Jun., 1968), p.231.
102 Ibid., p. 252.
103 Ibid., p.234.
38
and in which mass communications and transportation were limited. Many
expected that industrialization, urbanization, and the spread of education
would reduce ethnic consciousness, and that universalism would replace
particularism. Marxists were certain that socialism would mean the end of the
ethnic tension and consciousness that exited in pre-socialist societies.104
In agreement with the Communist Manifesto’s mottos, the ultimate goal of
communism seems to be internationalist only on the surface. Anti-imperialism was
the notion seemed to get many communists around one plan which was indicated in
Manifesto; Proletariats of all lands unite!105 Lenin writes,
The proletariat of the oppressor nations must not confine themselves to
general stereotyped phrases against annexation and in favor of the equality of
nations in general, such as any pacifist bourgeois will repeat. The proletariat
cannot remain silent on the question of the frontiers of a state founded on
national oppression, a question so ‘unpleasant’ for the imperialist bourgeoisie.
The proletariat must struggle against the enforced retention of oppressed
nations within the bounds of the given state, which means that they must fight
for the right to self-determination. The proletariat must demand freedom of
political separation for the colonies and nations oppressed by ‘their own’
nation. Otherwise, the internationalism of the proletariat would be nothing but
empty words; neither confidence nor class solidarity would be possible
between the workers of the oppressed and oppressed nations…106
In spite of Lenin’s clarion message for fighting by the side of oppressed
nations, meaning national minorities, it must be noted that the aim is the proletariat
nation, rather than prioritizing national self-determination. The idea of selfdetermination
was embraced by many movements even those not socialist in essence.
However, as Hobsbawn asserts, although anti-imperialist revolutionaries were
internationalist in rhetoric, actually they were not interested in anything but the
liberation of their countries.107 In other words, the abstract formulations on
104 Jalali and Lipset, p. 585.
105 Bertram D. Wolfe, “Nationalism and Internationalism in Marx and Engels,”American
Slavic and East European Review, Vol. 17, No. 4 (December, 1958), p.404.
106 Lenin, Selected Works, quoted in Özcan, p.49.
107 Hobsbawn, p.177.
39
internationalism are forgotten as soon as it comes to the concrete questions of day-today
national policy.108 As can be clearly observed in the TLP and other socialist and
communist groups’ case of the 1960s in Turkey, their internationalism and to a
certain extent, anti-imperialist rhetoric were confined to national issues, such as
criticism of foreign credits or full independence of Turkey. In fact, anti-imperialist
rhetoric of socialism and communism, that is to say to govern its own destiny along
with the emphasis on development in terms of economy were the features of
socialism and communism of the 1960s that seemed most attractive for the
ethnoregional movements.
Activists of ethnoregional movements, as Esman emphasizes, mainly in the
Western World, have demonstrated a leftist strain in their rhetoric. “The struggle for
socialism, they proclaim, is an essential complement to the struggle for national
liberation.”109 This approach is in agreement with Marxism’s approach to
nationalism. Socialism alone, by putting its emphasis mostly on class lines, did not
virtually meet ethnoregional demands. Thus, when socialist parties which are
organized to do battle on class lines get involved into the ethnoregional movements
would be compelled to change their policy and to some extent, the identity of the
enemy in some cases. 110 In other words, so long as ethnic grievances are more
prominent than economic ones in the ethnoregional movements, if a socialist party
wants to benefit from the movement, it cannot advocate bridging ethnic grievances by
building alliances across only class lines. 111
108 Wolfe, p.15.
109 Esman, p.379.
110 Horowitz, p.334.
111 Ibid., p.337.
40
It can be concluded that both the ethnoregional movements and socialist
parties are likely to change their discourses depending on the circumstances. In time,
ethnoregional movements may see socialism as the only way to obtain ethnic and
cultural demands, while socialist parties may opt to include ethnicity and ethnic
demands into their rhetoric. When it is deemed to invest in the affiliation between
socialist parties and ethnoregional movements, as been pointed out above, after
ethnoregional movements experience some success, become more conspicuous. This
affiliation which can be termed “ethnosocialist,” blends the ethnic demands of the
ethnoregional movements and the socialist rhetoric of economic development.
41
CHAPTER TWO
A POLITICAL AND HISTORICAL BACKGROUND FOR THE KURDISH
ETHNOREGIONAL MOVEMENT
In this chapter, the historical evolution of Kurdish nationalism and the Turkish
nation-state are analyzed. After touching on the single-party era developments, the
emphasis is put on multi-party era developments in general and its effects on the
Kurds’ self-awareness and their way of life. The historical arrest of 49 prominent
Kurdish intellectuals and students is examined and an evaluation of the state policy
on Kurdish and Eastern issue is questioned.
The Kurds and Their Aspiration; A Historical Background
Recently it has been argued that there has been no dramatic break in the
continuity of Turkish history. The legacy of the 1908 movement, it is argued, is
crucial to understanding the subsequent reforms of the Kemalist single-party era, just
as the latter period is pivotal to understanding the multi-party Turkey.112 The Young
Turk movement, composed of all those who were against Abdulhamid II, through
their organization, the Committee of Union and Progress (CUP), took over in July
1908 and remained in power until 1918. Although the movement promised equality to
all Ottoman subjects without distinction of religion and race, 113these promises were
never carried out. Initially Ottomanist, namely a patriotism based on the Ottoman
112 Feroz Ahmad, The Making of Modern Turkey (London and New York: Routledge, 1993),
p.48.
113 Uriel Heyd, Foundation of Turkish Nationalism; the Life and Teachings of Ziya Gökalp,
(London: Luzac& Company LTD and the Harvill Press LTD, 1950), p.130.
42
millet system as soon after the Unionist take over, they began to pursue an intensive
policy of cultural and economic Turkification.114 In this sense, the Young Turk era
can be seen as the initiator of the Turkification process and the background to the
Kemalist ideology.
The transformation of connotations of the term “Türk” is a history of the
nation-building process in Turkey. In the millet system of the Ottoman Empire, the
term “Türk” used to have “derogatory reference to the ignorant peasant or nomad of
Anatolia.”115 First emerging as an intellectual movement, Turkish nationalism which
not only glorified the past but also promised a better future to its followers, invented
the modern term “Türk”. Contrary to the multi-ethnic and multi-religious structure of
the Ottoman Empire, in which identity was not formulated on ethnic foundations, was
politicized, especially after 1908 when Turkist-nationalist thinkers moved out of the
academic realm in order to articulate political ideas and to systematize them into an
ideology.116 The conversion from Ottomanism to Turkism paved the way to a
politicized perception of the term ‘Turk’. It also should be mentioned that nationalism
was the key idea for other millets (nations) even earlier than for Turks. In other
words, the Empire went through a “nationalist wave” and Turkish nationalism was
quite late among other nationalisms such as Greek and Arab nationalisms.
Kurdish nationalism, as an attempt to politicize and bring all Kurds together
under a broader sense of belonging, can be traced back to the early twentieth century.
Initially, it was cherished by a tiny group of Kurdish intellectuals whose objectives
114 For the early Turkist periodicals and associations, see Heyd, p.109–110.
115 David Kushner, “Self-Perception and Identity in Contemporary Turkey,” Journal of
Contemporary History, 32, no. 2 (April, 1997), p.219.
116 Mehmet Ali Ağaoğulları, “The Ultranationalist Right,” In Turkey in Transition; New
Perspectives. eds. Irvin C. Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987), p.178.
43
did not deviate much from those of their Turkish counterparts. The Kurdish
intelligentsia, using the press as a crucial instrument in spreading their ideas in
auspices of awakening the Kurdish people as their Turkish counterparts,117 could not
go beyond small circles. Traditionally, as it was soldiers who were prominent in
Turkish politics starting from the late nineteenth century, Bruinessen points out that
in virtually all Kurdish parties and organizations the traditional leading stratum, aghas
and sheiks played leading roles.118 It is striking that in Kurdistan, the first Kurdish
journal, most of the time the writings started with “O, Aghas and Sheiks of the
Kurds”119 and the main purpose seemed to deal with them rather than the Kurdish
society. The nationalism prompted by them was, to a large extent a sort of
Ottomanism by which they endeavored to integrate with the center rather than
separate.120
This approach, however, especially after the Young Turks took over and
began a Turkification process, changed. For instance, in Roji Kurd (Kurdish Days),
monthly the journal of the Hevi (Hope) association published in 1913, great attention
was put on Kurdish society. Their objective was to educate and enlighten the Kurdish
people in contrast to Kurdistan.121 Since both those who were associated with
117 Martin Strohmeir, Crucial Images in the Presentation of a Kurdish National Identity:
Heroes and Patriots, Traitors and Foes, (Leiden: Koninklijke Brill NV, 2003), p.ix.
118 Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State; the Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan,
p.316.
119Mehmet Emin Bozarslan, (trans.), Kurdistan: Rojnama Kurdi ya Pesin (Ilk Kürd
Gazetesi,)1898-1902, Cild I, (n.p, n.d.)
120 Kürt Teavun Cemiyeti, for example, the first association that was established by the
Kurds in 1909, was a very good example of it. See Tarık Zafer Tunaya Türkiye’de Siyasi
Partiler, (Đstanbul: n.p. 1952), p.429.
121 For example, in the second issue, they introduced Latin alphabet and showed how to use
it. For Latin transcription see, “Belgeyén Kurdi:1/3,” Kovara Roji Kurd/1913,” Wesanen
WAR, Istanbul: 2002.
44
Kurdistan and Roji Kurd did not have to deal with the existence of the Kurds, they
were preoccupied with how they could bring the Kurdish people to the same level of
civilization. Lütfi Fikri, who was not Kurdish, wrote, “Today no one questions who is
a Kurd, an Arab or an Albanian. The acknowledgement of existence of those nations
was a requirement of social laws.” 122
However, Kurdish nationalism as well as Turkish nationalism cannot be
thought of without mentioning the role of Islam. As Friedland points out, religion and
nationalism partake of a common symbolic order and that religious nationalism is
therefore not an oxymoron.123 Furthermore, as Hobsbawn argues, that religion
paradoxically serves as cement for nationalisms. 124 As Martin Strohmeir points out,
the Kurds were first Muslims, then Ottomans; their Kurdish identity was subordinated
to the other two.125 It is quite apparent in both above-mentioned journals and in Jin
(Life), published between 1918 and 1919. Jin, a bilingual Kurdish and Turkish
journal, is important not only because it represents an amalgamation of ethnicity and
religion, but also conjures up the preliminary effects of the process of denial of
Kurdish ethnicity as a distinct from that of the Turks. In the seventh issue, in
response to the question that “are city dwellers in Kurdistan Turks? (Kürdistan’daki
Sehirler Sekenesi Türk müdür?), it is argued that even there were no Turks in
122 “Bugün kimse Arap nedir, Arnavut nedir, Kürd nedir, demiyor ve bunlarin neler demek
olduklarini pek guzel anliyor....er geç o milliyetlerin varlığını kabul etmek mecburiyetinin
zorunlu olusu, sosyal kanunların gereği idi.” Lütfi Fikri, “Kürd Milliyeti”, Roji Kurd,
Hejmar-4 in Wesanen WAR, Belgeyén Kurdi:1/3, Kovara Roji Kurd/1913, (Istanbul: War,
2002), p.98.
123 Roger Friedland, “Money, Sex, and God: The Erotic Logic of Religious Nationalism,”
Sociological Theory, 20, no. 3 (November, 2002), p. 381.
124 Hobsbawn, Milletler ve Milliyetçilik, p.83.
125 Strohmeir, p.39.
45
Kurdistan.126 The Kurdish language and history are glorified, and a call for working
only for their nation is made.
It is a widely held view that Kurdish nationalism developed in reaction to
dominant nationalisms of the Turks, Persians and Arabs and their nation-states and
has been both stimulated by their development and restricted by their hegemony.
Also, as Entessar argues, the formation of the modern nation-state system in the
Middle East in the aftermath of collapse of the Ottoman Empire led the growth of the
politicization of Kurdish ethnicity.127 This early politicization of the Kurdish ethnicity
was mainly confined to a small circle of Kurdish intelligentsia. And the bulk of the
population, just like the Turks, did not identify themselves with the wishes advocated
in the above-mentioned journals.
The transformation of the multi-ethnic and multi-cultural Ottoman Empire
into nation-states, where identities were based on ethnicities did not affect the
majority of the Kurds, yet it led to the politicization of the Kurdish intellectuals’
identity.128 Nevertheless, it did not lead them to think of themselves as apart from the
Ottoman realm. In other words, as opposed to what is commonly believed, their
aspirations were to remain within the Ottoman system in general. Having defeated
external forces, the Kemalists turned their faces to any kind of internal opposition to
their nation-state project. In order to not only to unite the scattered dimensions of
national identity around the ideology of a nation-state, but also to enforce the rule of
the elites, as Renan stressed, both the possession of rich remembrances and a shared
126 M. Emin Bozarslan, (trans.), Jin: Kovara Kurdi-Tirki (Kürtçe-Türkçe Dergi), 1918-1919,
Cild 2, (Uppsala: Deng Yayınevi, 1985), pp.332-339.
127 Entessar, p.1.
128 M. Hakan Yavuz, “Five Stages of the Construction of Kurdish Nationalism in Turkey”
Nationalism and Ethnic Politics, 7, no.3, (Autumn 2001), p.1.
46
amnesia, a collective forgetfulness129 were utilized to create the new man or citizen of
the state. Using the judiciary machinery of the state, in the new Turkish republic
many laws and regulations, including the Constitution, aimed at accomplishing
national unity. Kemalism, as Stephane Yerasimos pointed out, as the official ideology
of the Turkish nation-state, was presented as the only possible path, justifying every
action by the past not only during the single-party era, but it became as the
ideological model and framework for the state.130
The ambiguity of Republican Turkey in terms of its identity perception,
demonstrates that the nationalism of nation-states requires some imagination some
forgetting on the past of the people who do not identify themselves with the national
identity. One of the most important features of Turkish nationalism of the Republican
era was that it endeavored to break away from the Turanist and Islamist aspirations of
the Ottoman Era. On the other hand, what the Kemalist elites and intellectuals of the
Republic aimed to do was not the awakening of Turks to national consciousness, 131
but rather to create a new man whose identity would be consonant with the
Republic’s objectives of reaching contemporary Western models of life and
development. This approach required cultural assimilation, which was seen as the
only remedy to bring together the heterogeneous population inherited by the new
nation-state.
129 As a striking example, in the provinces of Mardin 91 percent, in Bitlis, Siirt, Bingöl,
Hakkari, Mus and Van, all with a proportion of over 75 percent of new place names were
replaced with Turkish ones. See. Kerem Öktem, 'The Nation’s Imprint: Demographic
Engineering and the Change of Toponymes in Republican Turkey', European Journal of
Turkish Studies, Thematic Issue, no. 7 ( n.d.)| Demographic Engineering - Part I.
130 Stephane Yerasimos, “The Monoparty Period,” in Turkey in Transition; New
Perspectives, eds. Irvin C. Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987), pp.66–100.
131 Ayse Kadıoğlu, “The Paradox of Turkish Nationalism and the Construction of Official
Identity.” Middle Eastern Studies, 32, no.2. (April 1996) pp.177–193.
47
In addition to the abolition of Türk Ocağı (Turkish Hearth) in 1931 and
establishment of Halk Evi (People’s Houses) and Halk Odaları (People’s Rooms) in
1932, (closed down in 1951 by the DP) with the affirmation of the Turkish History
Thesis, the state elites aimed to channel its ideology and to reach the people, to urban
areas generally, in such a manner that under full control of the center a new view of
Turkishness was propagandized. The History Thesis, which puts its great emphasis on
the long glorious history of the Turkish race and ethnicity, along with the Sun
Language Theory which claimed that Turkish was the language from which all other
languages stemmed, were just two of the attempts to provide the base for at least,
educated people to be proud of their identity. 132 However, as Serif Mardin points out,
those policies did not attempt to alter the place of the peasant in the system nor did
the nationalist elite do much to establish contact with the rural masses.133
As Kirisçi and Winrow stress, the endeavor of the state elites to melt the
territorial nationality and ethnic nationality of the people into a united notion of
citizenship, in simultaneous nation-building and state-building process made it almost
impossible to draw the boundaries of Turkishness.134 Soner Çagaptay, in his
important book, summarizes the boundaries of Turkishness, or as he puts it, three
zones of Kemalism as follows:
-the first was territorial; this definition, the most inclusive of the three, was
embodied in the 1924 constitution.
132 Soner Çagaptay, Islam, Secularism, and Nationalism in Modern Turkey; who is a Turk,(
London: Routledge, 2006), p.52
133 Serif Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” in Political
Participation in Turkey; Historical Background and Present Problems, ed. Engin D. Akarlı
with Gabriel Ben-Dor, (Đstanbul: Boğaziçi University Publications, 1975), pp.7-32
134 Kemal Kirisçi and Gareth Winrow, The Kurdish Question and Turkey: An Example of a
Trans-State Ethnic Conflict, (London: Frank Cass, 1997), p.12.
48
-the second definition, less inclusive than the first, was religious. Due to the
legacy of the millet system, the Kemalists saw nominal Islam as an avenue
toward Turkishness; all Muslims in Turkey were potential Turks.
-the third, and the least inclusive, definition of Turkishness under High
Kemalism was ethno-religious.135
Assimilation, as a means of creating a homogenous society, was the main
objective of Kemalist in terms of culture. This was, to a large extent, limited to urban
areas. During the single party era (1925-1945), the state had almost absolute power
over the press, individuals, associations, etc; moreover, this was granted by newly
adopted laws.136Along with the abolition of both the Sultanate (November 1, 1922)
and the Caliphate (March 1, 1924), the proclamation of republic (November 29,
1923), one of the most important laws passed by the assembly in 1925 worth
mentioning is the Law for the maintenance of order. This law gave the legal authority
to deal not with only with the Kurdish rebellion in the east, but also all political
opponents.137
The Kemalists, like their predecessors, the Young Turks, especially after the
consolidation of their power or the internal pacification, embarked on an intensive
policy of assimilation. In the meantime, in order to achieve this many people who
previously had been a part of the state machinery and were members of the assembly
were excluded from power. This attitude also had a great impact on subsequent
resistance to the center. In my opinion, this was after the suppression of the first
major Kurdish rebellion in 1925, in which for the mass of participants, as Bruinessen
135 Çagaptay, p.159.
136 Bülent Tanör, Osmanlı ve Türk Anayasal Gelismeleri (Đstanbul: Cogito, 3rd edition,
1999), pp.318-319.
137 Bernard Lewis, The Emergence of Modern Turkey (London: Oxford University Press,
1968), p.275.
49
argues, religious and nationalist loyalties were not separated from each other. 138
During this period, as Mesut Yeğen stresses, any attempt to resist the policy of the
consolidation of power by the Kemalist elites would have been labeled reactionary. 139
During the single-party era, according to a military source, 18 uprisings,
except for one that took place in Menemen, took place against the center by the
Kurds.140 Though most of them were small scale, three of them are worth mentioning:
the Sheik Said Rebellion (1925), the Ağrı Rebellion, (1926-1927-1930) and the
Dersim Rebellion (1937-39). There were, to a large extent, no coherent nationalist
sentiments, but rather local and tribal unrests. Except for Azadi (Independence)
established in 1921, both organized and took part in Sheik Said Rebellion in 1925 and
Xoybun (stay origin) established in 1927, took part in Ağrı Rebellion 1930. These
rebellions lacked of a united front, the way that they expressed their aspiration was
somehow ambivalent. In addition to the Kemalists’ hostility to any Kurdish
organization, the use of leading positions among the Kurdish elites, the state’s
approach to Islam, to wit the abolition of the Caliphate, which had connected the two
peoples together were the major reasons for those rebellions in insurgents’ view. 141
The reaction of the Kemalist center to the rebellions would influence how
other groups, such as Communists, viewed them, too. Equally significant is the way
138 Bruinessen, Agha, Shaikh and State; the Social and Political Structures of Kurdistan,
p.299.
139 Mesut Yeğen, Devlet Söyleminde Kürt Sorunu (Đstanbul: Đletisim Yayınları, 2006), p.141.
140 Em. Kurmay Albay Resat Halli, Türkiye Cumhuriyetinde Ayaklanmalar 1924-1938
(Ankara: Genelkurmay Harp Dairesi Yayinlari, 1972) quoted in Mete Tunçay, Türkiye
Cumhuriyeti’nde Tek Parti Yönetiminin Kurulması, 1923-1931 (Đstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt
Yayınları, 4th edition, 2005), p.134.
141 For an excellent analysis of these rebellions, see Hamit Bozarslan, “Kurdish Nationalism
in Turkey: From Tacit Contract to Rebellion (1919-1925),” in Essays on the Origins of
Kurdish Nationalism, ed. Abbas Vali (California: Mazda Publishers, 2003), pp. 163–190.
50
in which the state presented the Kurdish rebellions and sought to legitimize the state’s
claims and justify its domination and absolute use of power. 142 They, the rebellions,
were framed as having been instigated by foreign powers and as threats to the
national integrity of the Turkish Republic and a counter-revolution to Kemalism. As
Horowits rightly argues, ethnic conflict was often treated as if it were a manifestation
of something else rather than any references to the ethnicity itself. 143 The part that
was missing in the presentation of these rebellions by the Kemalist was the ethnic
characteristics, albeit not prominent, which I mentioned earlier that were interwoven
with religion.
After each rebellion, the government used massive deportation144 and banned
anything that might be associated with Kurdishness, regarding it as feudal and
reactionary.145 As already mentioned, it led to the third and the least inclusive
definition of Turkishness, the ethno-religious definition of Turkishness. Gradually,
the Turkish public sphere was cleared both of Islam and of Kurds. Those who
participated in Turkish politics no longer had to advocate for either of them. All those
efforts and emphasis put on centralization and secularization of the public sphere, as
Kirisçi and Winrow argue, contributed to the spread of Kurdish ethnic awareness.146
However, due to the success of the center in suppressing those rebellions and by not
142 Yavuz, p.8.
143 Horowitz, p.13.
144 Resettlement Laws, especially one in 1934, which divided the country into four regions
and aimed to disperse those Kurds who either participated in rebellions or did not show clear
obedience to the center into first two regions where Turkish culture was dominant is worth
mentioning here. See 2510 sayili Iskan Kanunu, quoted in Celadet Ali Bedirxan (1933), Bir
Kürt Aydınından Mustafa Kemal’e Mektup, (Đstanbul. Doz Yayıncılık, 1992), p.81.
145 Özcan, p.85.
146 Kirisçi and Winrow, p.101.
51
allowing any kind of articulation and expression of resisting ideas while rewarding
those who collaborated with the center, Kurdish ethnic awareness did not become
politicized at large scale until the 1960s.
As Strohmeir points out, the main problem between Kurds and the Turkish
Republic derived from the state’s perception of Kurds and their way of life.147 The
very existence of the Kurds would not be acknowledged since they were seen as
“pure Turks” who had somehow forgotten their Turkishness and thought of
themselves as Kurds. As a matter of fact, despite all, the state elite did not do much in
order to make Kurds believe that argument. The Kurdish region, excepting some
developments, was governed by special methods.148 Furthermore, the “tacit
agreement” which was the main policy of the Ottoman center over the Kurdish areas,
was continued. On the other hand, the question of security and control seemed to be
more important than anything else. For instance, as Donald Everett Webster wrote in
1939, “after three rather serious revolts in the Kurdish region, the government is still
talking about reforms for these people, and a part of the reforms is the building of
karakols (gendarme stations).” 149
To sum up, what is true is that except for those rebellions, the majority of the
Kurdish population remained aloof from politics in general and from nationalistic
discourse in terms of both Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms. It is also important that
even the party branches of the ruling single party, the Republican People’s Party were
147 Strohmeir, p.3.
148 Inspectorate Generals for example, which were decided to be established throughout the
country, “in practice, however, the Inspectorates were created only in regions that were
considered strategic or turbulent areas by Ankara, or had witnessed Kurdish uprisings.”
Çagaptay, p.47.
149 Donald Everett Webster, The Turkey of Atatürk; Social Process in the Turkish
Reformation (Philadelphia: The American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1939),
p.282.
52
set up in almost none of provinces where the Kurds overwhelmingly lived. Kurdish
nationalism, on the other hand, even during those rebellions could not reach the
masses and did not have a coherent discourse in many respects. The Kemalists
succeeded in eliminating the last segment of Kurdish nationalists either by executing
them or having them exiled to other countries such as Syria.
Moreover, Kurdish reactions also paved the way of getting rid of any
opposition in Turkey for almost two decades, that is to say until 1940s, when the new
opposition came from within the state elite and demanded further relaxations in terms
of political and economic liberalism. Equally significant is that the countryside would
continue to be suspected as separatist and reactionary.150 With respect to subsequent
developments, it is also worth mentioning that these rebellions and their suppression
would give the Kurds a strong sense of a shared past which would also be used in the
1960s when the new Kurdish generation, rediscovered the past.
The Multi-Party Era
After two decades of single-party rule, due to a number of reasons, such as
international pressures, social structural changes, the personal belief system and
leadership of Đsmet Đnönü (successor of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk and the president of
the republic after 1938),151 the Turkish Republic adopted a multi-party political
system in 1945. As Asım Kararömerlioğlu points out, the willingness and enthusiasm
150 Serif Mardin, “Center-Periphery Relations: A Key to Turkish Politics?” in Political
Participation in Turkey; Historical Background and Present Problems, ed. Engin D. Akarlı
with Gabriel Ben-Dor (Istanbul: Boğaziçi University Publications, 1975), pp.7-32.
151 Cemil Koçak, “Parliament Membership during the Single-Party System in Turkey,
(1925-45)” European Journal of Turkish Studies, Thematic Issue No 3, available online at:
http://www.ejts.org/document497.html
53
of the ruling elites, especially of Đnönü, for a multi-party system was mainly because
the ruling elites envisaged keeping such a “development in a controlled, limited, topdown
manner by which he and his entourage could still maintain their privileged
position in a new and different political manner.”152
However, the 1950 general elections that brought the Democrat Party (DP) to
power marked the beginning of the emergence of new social groups in the political
arena and the end of the unity of the state elite. The DP was the predominant political
party in all three general elections that were held in 1950, 1954 and in 1957. The
secret of the DP success at the polls during the 1950-1960 period came from its
constant attention to the benefits of the peasantry.153 As Çağlar Keyder writes, “for
the first time in Turkey’s politics, the peasantry became an active force that had to be
won over.” 154 Another point worth mentioning is that the party itself, by establishing
local branches, was an effective instrument in introducing the masses to politics. For
instance, until the decision of the DP to open branches in the east provinces, the RPP
had virtually no organizations in the eight provinces overwhelmingly inhabited by
Kurds.155
The most significant outcome of the initial multi-party period was the
integration of the peasantry, more than 70 per cent of the population, and urban
masses into the political and economic life of the country. Meanwhile, in terms of
152 Asım Karaömerlioğlu, “Turkey’s “return” to multi-party politics: a social interpretation,”
East European Quarterly, March 22, 2006, pp. 89–107.
153 Szyliowicz, Joseph S, “The Political Dynamics of Rural Turkey,” Middle East Journal
16, no.4 (1962), p.430.
154 Çağlar Keyder, “The Political Economy of Turkish Democracy,” in Turkey in Transition;
New Perspectives, eds. Irvin C. Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak (New York: Oxford
University Press,1987), pp. 27–65.
155 Webster, p.177.
54
demography, mass migration from countryside to towns and rapid urbanization
accelerated the transformation of society into a much more mobile one. Meanwhile,
the economy as a whole grew at a rapid rate of between 11 and 13 per cent during the
DP rule.156As a result of the liberal economic policies, the rural areas became
increasingly market-oriented.
Frederick Frey, in his important study about the Turkish political elite,
brings our attention to the “the new man in Turkish politics” whose main focus was
concentrated to local considerations, free enterprise and religious freedom rather a
man who prioritized the national problems and a forced top-down reforms. 157 In
addition to above-mentioned social, political and economic developments, Frey’s
emphasis on the shift of the new actors in Turkish politics is relevant in the Kurdish
case too. For instance, politicians visited small towns and villages and attempted to
persuade the local people that they had political importance. As for the Kurds, as
Abdulmelik Firat, Sheik Said’s grandson and who became a member of parliament,
notes in his memoirs, during the 1950s some candidates spoke Kurdish to the people
when they went to villages.158
What changed during the DP era in terms of the Kurds was not the
state’s standpoint or policies but rather the entry of a new group of Kurdish aghas and
sheiks into politics, which meant a great challenge to those local notables who had
not previously faced any competition in order to gain parliamentary seats. It is
generally agreed that local notables from the region did not have any loyalty to the
156 Eric Jan Zürcher, Turkey: A Modern History (London; New York: I.B. Tauris, 1994),
p.235.
157 Frederick Frey, The Turkish Political Elite (Cambridge: Massachusetts: The M.I.T Press,
1965), p.197.
158 Abdülmelik Fırat, Fırat Mahzun Akar (Đstanbul: Avesta, 1996), p.51.
55
parties and they changed parties easily or ran against the parties as independents.
Therefore, the idea that the DP was preferred because of its policy on the Kurds, as
already mentioned in the previous chapter, does not seem conceivable since the party
policies did not have a great influence on the political alignments in the region up
until the mid-1960s.
Equally significant is that during the DP era, the dominance of Islam was
reinforced in the region. For example, after 1950, within a year, 250,000 Quran and
thousands of religious books, many of which aimed to lessen Kurdish nationalism,
were sold in the region. 159 On the other hand, as already mentioned, the Turkish
republic as a whole became more market-oriented and a new network of railroads as
well as mechanization of agriculture not only stimulated the emergence of new social
groups but also changed the social and economic structure of the country.
Finally, communism and socialism was declared illegal and in January 1951,
the largest campaign of arrests of communists, known as 1951 Tevkifati (the arrest of
1951), attested that there was no room for the Left in multi-party politics in Turkey.
160Meanwhile, several new Turkist organizations such as Türk Kültür Ocağı (Hearth
of Turkish Culture), Türk Gençlik Teskilatı (Turkish Youth Organization), Türk
Kültür Derneği (Turkish Cultural Association), Milliyetçiler Birliği Federasyonu
(Federation of Union of Nationalists) were permitted to appear.161 Although the
political spectrum would be partly open to the Left after the May 27, 1960 coup
159 Kemal H. Karpat, Türk Demokrasi Tarihi; Sosyal, Ekonomik, Kültürel Temeller
(Đstanbul: Đstanbul Matbaası, 1967), p.244.
160 Cem Eroğul, “The Establishment of Multiparty Rule: 1945–71,” in Turkey in Transition;
New Perspectives, eds. Irvin C. Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1987), p.109.
161 Ayse Neviye Çağlar, “The Greywolves as Metaphor,” in Turkish State, Turkish Society,
eds. Andrew Finkel and Nukhet Sirman (London and New York: Routledge, 1990), p.84
56
d’état, in addition to the above-mentioned organizations, rightist politics would be
encouraged by new association, such as Komünizmle Mücadele Dernekleri (the
Struggle with the Communism Associations), too.
Especially after the 1954 election, factors such as the oppressive press laws,
the anti-Greek riot in Istanbul (6-7 September 1955), the increase of prices and cost
of living, and the government’s inability or unwillingness to contain the deteriorating
economic and financial position162 led to discomfort among the people. For instance,
inflation increased to 40 percent by 1958. All those developments led to the
crumbling of support among city-dwellers and intellectuals and affected especially
wage earner civil servants and army officers, who as we will see, would be very
angry to the DP rule and paved the way toward the 1960 military intervention.
The End of a New Beginning: the Event of 49s in 1959
In December1959, five months before the military coup d’état, 52 Kurdish
intellectuals, almost half of them students, were arrested for being involved in
separatist, and communist activities. Since two of those arrested were not put in jail
and a student, Emin Batu, died, the number was reduced to 49, the number by which
this pivotal event would be remembered. 163 Despite the controversies about why it
162 Richard D. Robinson, The First Turkish Republic – A Case Study in National
Development (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1965), p.190.
163 They were: “Sevket Turan, Naci Kutlay, Ali Karahan, Koço Elbistan, Yavuz Çamlıbel,
Mehmet Ali Dinler, Yusuf Kaçar, Nurettin Yılmaz, Ziya Serefhanoğlu, Medet Serhat, Hasan
Akkus, Örfi Akkoyunlu, Selim Kılıçoğlu, Sahabettin Septioğlu, Said Elçi, Said
Kırmızıtoprak, Yasar Kaya, Faik Savas, Haydar Aksu, Ziya Acar, Fadıl Budak, Halil
Demirel, Esat Cemiloğlu, Ferit Bilen, Mustafa Nuri Direkçigil, Fevzi Avsar, Necati
Siyahkan, Hasan Ulus, Nazmi Balkas, Hüseyin Oğuz Üçok, Mehmet Nazım Çiğdem, Fevzi
Kartal, Mehmet Aydemir, Abdurrahman Efem Dolak, Musa Anter, Canip Yıldırım, Emin
Kotan, Ökkes Karadağ, Muhsin Savata, Turgut Akın, Sıtkı Elbistan, Serafettin Elçi, Mustafa
Ramanlı, Mehmet Özer, Feyzullah Demirtas, Cezmi Balkas, Halil Yokus, Đsmet Balkas,
57
happened, it is obvious that the arrest of the 49ers was a milestone in the modern
Kurdish movement. According to Abdülmelik Fırat, grandson of Sheik Said, a deputy
in the assembly at that time, in a meeting in which prime minister Adnan Menderes,
president Celal Bayar, and some generals were present, the Commander of the Army
presented a secret report about the East which claimed that Kurds were about to rebel
against the state. Although most of politicians did not agree with that allegation, they
decided to arrest at least some of those Kurdish activists who stood out. 164
In the same period, Turkey, as a result of its close relations with the United
States after the end of World War II, became ever more oppressive towards the
communist and socialist movements. According to Naci Kutlay, both one of the 49s
and later a prominent figure in the TLP, the main reason behind the arrest was the
intention of the government to present it to the United States and the Western public
opinion as a “Communist Kurdish” movement in order to get the aid it needed from
the United States. The “Red” aspect of the arrests, rather than its “Kurdist” (Kürtçü)
face was the side that was presented in the media to the people of Turkey. 165 In
making the arrests, as Gündoğan correctly points out, the government planned to kill
two birds with one stone. It would force the USA to grant the country a loan and at
the same time put a break on the development of Kurdish activism, which was seen as
Said Bingöl, Mehmet Bilgin, Fethullah Kakioğlu.” Naci Kutlay, 49’lar Dosyası, (Đstanbul:
Fırat, 1994), p.11; and Yavuz Çamlıbel, 49’lar Davası: Bir Ülkenin Đdamlık Kürtleri,
(Ankara: Algıyayın, 2007), p.109–235. In Çamlıbel’s book, there are many pictures and
detailed information too.
163 Çağlar Keyder, “The Political Economy of Turkish Democracy,” In Turkey in Transition;
New Perspectives, eds. Irvin C. Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak. (New York: Oxford
University Press,) 1987: 27–65.
164 Fırat, p.71.
165 Naci Kutlay, 21.Yüzyıla Girerken Kürtler (Đstanbul: Peri Yayınları, 2002), pp.533-34.
58
a threat to the discourse of Turkish nationalism by wiping out Kurdish activities in
Istanbul, Ankara and Diyarbakir.166
Although after the 1960 coup most of the political convicts were given a
pardon, the military junta moved ahead with the trials, which began in January 1961.
Defendants were accused of segregation, secession and communism.167 Their trial
lasted almost six years and they were in the end acquitted due to lack of evidence. As
for those who were arrested on the grounds that they had been attempting to create an
independent Kurdish state, the disseminating communist ideas, and according to
Sadillili Vedat, and Cumhuriyet newspaper,168for founding a clandestine party called
the “ Kurdish independence Party,” not only did they deny all accusations, but also
showed no sign of unity.
Musa Anter, who was one of the most influential writers in the 1950s and
1960s, argues in his memoirs that they did not demand anything directly associated
with Kurdishness such as Kurdish cultural rights.169 However, some of them such as
Sait Elçi hinted at the reality of a distinct Kurdish culture. According to Derk
Kinnane during the trial of the 49ers, demonstrations took place in “Mardin, Derik (a
town in Mardin), Siverek (a town in Sanlıurfa), Diyarbekir, Bitlis and Van and the
marching Kurds carried signs which read ‘We are not Turks, we are Kurds’, ‘Down
with Gürsel, Menderes, Inönü—All Tyrants’, ‘The Turkish Government must
166 Azad Zana Gündoğan, p.87.
167 Milliyet, January 1, 1961, quoted in Malmisanij, p.124.
168 Sadillili Vedat, Türkiye’de Kürtçülük Hareketleri ve Đsyanlar 1, (Ankara: Kon Yayınları,
1980), p.231; and Cumhuriyet, May 22, 1966.
169 Anter, Hatıralarım, 1–2, p.172.
59
recognize our national rights’.”170 Yet, as Mehmet Ali Aslan argues, this does not
seem to be accurate, since many families did not know how to react or what to do
with respect to their children’s arrest. In addition, I have not come across this event
anywhere else.
What is striking is the ideological split, on which almost everybody agrees in
the literature and which divided the 49ers roughly into rightists and leftists. During
the time in the jail, although it was not as evident as a right and left conflict, the way
the activists looked at Kurdish society and its religious and tribal structure also paved
the way to a separate action. Those who considered themselves leftists or Socialists
were Canip Yıldırım, Naci Kutlay, Sait Kırmızıtoprak, Musa Anter, Örfi Akkoyunlu,
Nazmi Balkas and Hasan Akkus.171 Subsequently, they would not only play a very
crucial role in the TLP, but also persons such as Sait Kırmızıtoprak, known as Dr.
Sivan, would change the course of the Kurdish movement. The class background of
the 49ers will be touched on in the next chapter. For now, the discussion will take a
closer look at the political developments after the military coup.
The Military Coup d’état and the Politics: “Tutelage Democracy”
The DP followed a relatively different path from that of Kemalism, as
discussed before, by putting its emphasis on the masses and also by relaxing pressures
on religion. In addition to a socioeconomic decline in young officers’ living standards,
the change in the ruling political elites and the consequences of this shift were
prominent reasons for the military intervention, although it was not mentioned by the
170 Derk Kinnane, The Kurds and Kurdistan (London, New York: Oxford University Press,
1964), p.33.
171 Naci Kutlay, Anılarım (Đstanbul: Avesta, 1998), p.95.
60
army.172 Protecting the country from degenerated politicians and safeguarding
Kemalist principles were some of the reasons put forth by those who overthrew the
government, the National Unity Committee (NUC).
The military coup of 27 May 1960 against the DP and the group they
represented symbolized the particular role of the army as the guardians of Kemalist
principles, of “tutelage democracy.”173 It is worth mentioning that the first military
intervention in politics after Mustafa Kemal’s success at keeping the army officers under
his control in the mid-1920s, affected especially the new generations of what Ernest
Gellner calls the Kemalist Ulema and bulk of the Leftists up until the late 1960s.174
As Tanel Demirel emphasizes, even though the army was willing to return to
multi-party politics, they never wanted to return to pre-coup conditions.175
Henceforth, in order to prevent their exclusion by a rural majority, a constitution was
designed with the help of prominent political scientists. Despite its progressive
character, especially in terms of civil rights and liberties, the new Constitution
contained elaborate systems of checks and balances which would allow the ruling
elite to repress its opposition.176 The establishment of the Senate and the
Constitutional Court aimed to strengthen this system of checks and balances by
overseeing the legislation and the assembly.
172 Semih Vaner, “The Army,” in Turkey in Transition; New Perspectives, eds. Irvin C.
Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987), p.237.
173 Zvi Yehuda Hershlag, The Contemporary Turkish Economy (London; New York:
Routledge, 1988) p.21.
174 Ernest Gellner, “The Turkish Option in Comparative Perspective,” in Rethinking
Modernity and National Identity in Turkey, eds. Resat Kasaba and Sibel Bozdoğan (Seattle:
University of Washington Press, 1997), pp.233-244.
175 Tanel demirel, Adalet Partisi, Đdeolojisi ve Politika (Đstanbul: Đletisim Yayınları, 2004),
p. 27.
176 Doğu Ergil, “Class Conflict and Turkish Transformation (1950-1975),” Studia Islamica,
no. 41 (1975), p. 144.
61
The new Constitution, contrary to previous one, put a great amount of
emphasis on individuals and democracy. Article 12 states that “all individuals are
equal before the law, irrespective of language, race, sex, political opinion,
philosophical views, or religion or religious sect. No privileges shall be granted to
any individual, family, group or class.”177 It is also concerned with economic issues
such as land reform. Article 37, for example, states that “the State shall adopt the
measures needed to achieve efficient utilization of land and to provide land for those
farmers who either have no land, own insufficient land.” 178 The other major reform
was a return to economic planning, with the establishment of the State Planning
Organization in 1960 that was to prepare the new Five-Year Development Plans, the
first of which was initiated in 1963. Another article worth mentioning is Article 57,
which defines the conditions for the closure of political parties. Political parties,
which were for the first time regarded apart from other associations, would “conform
to the principals of a democratic and secular republic, based on human rights and
liberties, and the fundamental principle of the State’s territorial and national integrity.
Parties failing to conform to the provisions would be permanently dissolved.” 179
When talking about Turkey with regard to its social and political changes in
the first two decades of the multi-party system, first of all, one should emphasize the
politicization of the whole country. For instance, the number of non-religious
associations and clubs jumped from less than 1,000 to 27,000 while religious one
177 Constitution of Turkish Republic, Ankara, 1961 trans. Sadık Balkan, Ahmet E. Uysal and
Kemal H. Karpat, available online at www.anayasa.gen.tr/1961constitution-text.pdf
178 Ibid.,
179 Ibid.,
62
increased from less than 1,000 to about 10,000. 180 Between 1960 and 1970, urban
population increased by 5 million, reaching 39 percent of the total whereas,
unionization increased from 296,000 in 1963 to 1.2 million in 1971 (30 percent of
wage earners), following the liberal clauses of the new constitution.181 Furthermore,
towards the beginning of the 1960s the proletariat of the country numbered about two
million, of whom 600,000 were agriculture workers. After 1960, the Turkish workers
succeeded for the first time in the country’s history at achieving official recognition
of their right to form trade unions and also strike.182
Despite the above-mentioned changes, the most important sector of society
was peasantry since they made up more than 60 per cent of the population. 183 In
terms of party politics, with the adoption in 1961 of a system of proportional
representation, parliament better represented small parties and differences within
society as well.184In addition to the RPP, the four new parties that stood out on the
political scene in the early 1960’s were the Justice Party (JP), the New Turkey Party
(NTP), the Turkish Labor Party (TLP), and the re-founded Nation Party (NP).
As Ahmad indicates, despite the coup, neo-Democrats returned. Since the
socio-economic basis of power remained unaltered, the old political forces were
180 Ahmet N. Yücekök, Türkiye’de Örgütlenmis Dinin Sosyo-Ekonomik Tabanı (1946-1968)
(Ankara: Sevinç Matbaası, 1971), p.132.
181 Keyder, “The Political Economy of Turkish Democracy,” pp. 48-49.
182 Landau, p.11.
183 Demirel, p.81.
184 William Hale, . “The Turkish Army in Politics, 1960-73.” In Turkish State, Turkish
Society, eds. Andrew Finkel and Nukhet Sirman, (London; New York: Routledge, 1990),
p.65.
63
bound to come to the front.185 The electoral results between 1961 and 1969 show that
if we add the NTP to the JP, the successors of the DP, the “neo-Democrats” were
most successful in the elections even during the period between the two military
interventions.
Turkey, between 1960 and 1971, experienced an unprecedented plurality in
terms of participation in politics and the visibility of different kind of social
movements. Although the constitution and other judicial reforms aimed to create a
democratic country, for anyone even remotely acquainted with the 1960s, the
dominance of the military over civil politics as well as the arrest of numerous
publishers and authors, especially those who were involved in socialist and
communist movements, stand out. It is also important that the “others” of the state
and the regime, namely, anything associated with Kurdish nationalism or the socialist
and communist movements, despite a relative relaxation, were still excluded from
political life.
Keyder, like many other scholars, purports that “the 1960s provided an
atmosphere of unusual freedom in Turkey with an almost complete freedom of
expression.”186 This argument seems to be untenable in many respects. First of all, the
expression of Kurdish rights was out of the question and the socialist movement,
though not illegal, was under strict control. For instance, several journals and books
about the Kurdish question were either banned or seized and their publishers were
arrested. Likewise, many socialist publications, books, articles etc. cost their authors
185 Feroz Ahmad, The Turkish Experiment in Democracy 1950–1975, (Boulder: Westview
Press, 1977), p.186.
186 Keyder, “The Political Economy of Turkish Democracy,” p.52.
64
some times more than six years in prison for violating the penal code, especially the
laws numbered 141 and 142, which prohibited any propaganda of communism.187
As the Barzani movement was gaining momentum, the Turkish authorities
were already alarmed by it. As such, one of the main fears behind the arrest of the
49ers was the return of Mulla Mustafa Barzani to Iraq after many years in the Soviet
Union. In addition to this international development, the authorities, by no means,
wanted to debate the “red lines” of the regime, that is to say, to face another challenge
by Kurds or socialists to their nation-state project.
Regarding the Kurds in Turkey, the constitution clearly stated that, except for
individual rights, no one could propose any national or cultural demands.
Furthermore, the law on political parties, which was the first law concerning political
parties in Turkey, explicitly banned any claims for any minority groups.188 This was
in agreement with the state discourse that on the Turkish territory there was no other
national or cultural group but Turks. The Turkish Labor Party, as will be seen at
length in the next chapters, was closed down just for having claimed that there were
other cultural and ethnic groups.
In addition, the NUC had started to change the Kurdish and Armenian names
of villages and towns into Turkish ones. Law 1587 states that those “names which
hurt public opinion and are not suitable for our national culture, moral values,
traditions and customs shall be changed into Turkish ones.”189 Meanwhile, 485
187 There are plenty of examples of such arrests. see Feroz Ahmad and Bedia Turgay
Ahmad, Türkiye’de Çok Partili Politikanın Açıklamalı Kronolojisi (1945–1971) (Ankara:
Bilgi Yayınları, 1976), pp. 312-323.
188 Before this law, the political parties, as any other association, were under the Cemiyetler
Kanunu, which had been changed a few times and had a very limited place for political
parties. See Resmi Gazete, No: 12050, 16.7.1965, Siyasi Partiler Kanunu, No.648, approved
on 3. 7,1965.
189 Quoted in McDowall, p.403.
65
Kurdish intellectuals and notables, mainly pro-Democrat party, were held in custody
in Sivas. Furthermore, the president of the Republic, Cemal Gürsel summarized the
policy on the Kurds as follows:
If the mountain Turks do not keep quite, the army will not hesitate to bomb
their towns and villages into the ground. There will be such a bloodbath that
they and their country will be washed away.190
This is important because not only was it the President of the republic who
spoke, but also a closer look would summarize the general policy of the 1960s
regarding the Kurds. The terms Kurd or Kurdish were taboo. In the same line with the
state ideology, the Kurds in Turkey were also regarded as Turks, or “Mountain
Turks,” who were of pure Turkish stock, but had somehow, forgot their Turkishness
and used a broken language that was a mixture of Persian and Turkish. The
Commando operations in the east and southeast regions in the late 1960s under the
guise of collecting illegal guns and capturing bandits would be a bitter example of
this approach. Finally, although the state did not recognize the Kurds and Kurdish in
the country, a decree passed in 1967 displays the concern of the authorities with
Kurdish. According to the decree, “it is illegal and prohibited to enter or distribute in
the country, any materials in Kurdish in any form of published, recorded, taped or
such.” 191
What is Kürtçülük?
Kürtçülük, or Kurdism, first, can be described as any attempt to argue or claim
that the “Mountain Turks” are Kurds or have a distinct ethnicity, language and culture
190 Quoted in Özcan, p.86.
191 T.C. Resmi Gazete, 24 Subat 1967 sayı: 12527 Karar sayısı: 6/7635.
66
from those of the Turks. Since the existence of the Kurds as a separate group was
denied any argument in disagreement with that would be labeled as Kürtçülük.
Second, any specific emphasis on the Kurdish region in terms of economic
backwardness and underdevelopment was part of Kürtçülük. However, Kürtçülük
also was a way for the state authorities to validate their anxiety about Kurdish
mobilization. Kürtçü or Kurdist, on the other hand, was any group or person
advocated Kürtçülük, that is to say, would put forward the above-mentioned issues.
In a letter to the journal Yön (direction), a teacher from the Kurdish region
wrote that “in the region there was a development in Kurdist activities. The reason, he
argues, was that eastern people did not know that they were actually Turkish. If only
we teach them that they are pure Turks, then they would not be deceived by separatist
propaganda. It was our duty, village teachers and civil servants, to do that...yet the
situation is getting worse than ever.” 192 In this case, Kürtçülük means the existing
situation of the region’s people, still speaking Kurdish and listening Kurdish radio
broadcasting.
According to the 1965 Census of Population, more than two and a half
million people, which were 8.43 % of the total, indicated their language as Kurdish.
In 10 provinces Turkish was the second most spoken language after Kurdish. They
were Adıyaman, Ağrı, Bingol, Bitlis, Diyarbakır, Hakkari, Mardin, Siirt, Urfa, and
Van.193 These data brought about great concern in the national media. Many
192 “Doğu bölgemizde gizli bir Kürtçülük faaliyeti vardır. Bunun sebebi de, Doğu halkının
Türk soyundan geldiklerini bilmemeleridir. Eğer Kürtçe konusan ve propagandalara
kendini kaptıran vatandaslara Türk soyundan geldikleri öğretilirse, vatandas da bu bölücü
propagandalara kendini kaptırmayacaktır.’ Bu görevi de köy öğretmenleri ile memurlar
yapacaktı ve bizler, bu görevi yaptık… bu görev yapılmıstır, ama yara kangren olmaya
devam etmektedir.”Yön, no. 204, (24 February, 1967).
193 T.C. Basbakanlık Devlet Đstatistik Enstitusu, Genel Nüfus Sayımı: Nüfusun Sosyal ve
Ekonomik Nitelikleri, 24.10.1965, Yayın No: 568, (Ankara, 1969), p.184-186.
67
commentators regarded it as a scandal that such a large population had yet to be
integrated into the fold of Turkish culture and language.
A number of the 258,907 persons born in the region were residents of other
regions in Turkey.194 Due to the lack of data about those who migrated to the city for
reasons other than for educational purposes, we cannot be sure of how they became
integrated to city life. Yet, since this thesis is mainly preoccupied with those Kurds
who were students and then became leading figures in politics in general and in the
Leftist movement in particular, I shall make some remarks on those who were
assumed to be Kürtçü in the 1960s.
194 These figures probably include those who were exiled during the single-party era. See
Majeed R. Jafar, Under-Underdevelopment; A Regional Case Study of the Kurdish Area in
Turkey (Helsinki: Social Policy Association, 1976), p.87.
68
CHAPTER THREE
THE KURDISH ETHNOREGIONAL MOVEMENT AND THE PROCESS
OF THE POLITICIZATION OF KURDISH IDENTITY IN THE 1960S
This chapter examines the class nature and ideological orientation of the first
generation of Kurdish activists that came to political maturity during the 1940s and
1950s. It will discuss their role in the “so-called Kurdish revival of the late 1950s”. It
will also attempt to define what their political objectives were. It will go on to discuss
the shift in the ideological orientation of the second generation of Kurdish activists
that came of age during the 1960s and the impact of Turkish socialism and socialist
discourse on approaches to the Kurdish question.
Kurdish Students, the Role of Student Dormitories
Obtaining a higher education was a privilege of the notable and wealthy of
Kurdish society up until the late 1950s. In a very minor way, boarding schools and
the Village Institutes partly change this pattern.195 The difference between those who
obtained higher education before the 1950s and after 1960s, particularly in the mid-
1960s, in terms of socioeconomic background is a fact that needs to be underlined. As
will be seen, the leading positions in the 1960s would be held by those who got their
education prior to 1960s. Meanwhile, those who were students or who had graduated
during the 1960s, that is to say, the new generation of Kurdish intellectuals either
would follow the path set out by the earlier generation or as it became evident in the
195 Virtually all Kurdish students at that time went boarding schools. For example, see Naci
Kutlay, Anılarım.
69
fractionalization of the DDKOs (Turkish acronym for Devrimci Doğu Kültür
Ocakları, Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths) would try to organize separately.
The Dicle Talebe Yurdu (Dicle Student Dormitory) founded in 1943 by Musa
Anter, is the first association that brought together a significant number of Kurdish
students.196 Mustafa Remzi Bucak, who was a deputy from the DP in the 1950s and
left the country in the early 1960s, was the head of the dormitory. Yusuf Azizoğlu,
Mustafa Ekinci, Faik Bucak, Musa Anter, Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Ali Karahan, Edip
Karahan, Ziya Serefhanoğlu, Edip Altınakar, Necat Cemiloğlu, Enver Aytekin and
many other persons who would become very important figures in politics also stayed
there.197
Yusuf Azizoğlu, who became Minister of Health in the early 1960s and leader
of the New Turkey Party, was accused of being “Kurdist” due to the attention he paid
to the development of the Eastern regions. Tarık Ziya Ekinci was the most influential
Doğulu in the Turkish Labor Party, was elected to the parliament from Diyarbakir in
1965, and was party general secretary in the TLP. Faik Bucak was also active in
politics during the 1950s and was head of the Republican Peasant’s Nationalist Party
branch in Urfa. In the general elections in 1965, his candidacy was turned down by
the Justice Party. Although he campaigned independently, he lost the election. 198 He
was also founder of the clandestine Kurdistan Democrat Party in 1965. Ziya
Serefhanoğlu was elected to the senate from Bitlis. Ali Karahan, too, was elected to
the parliament.
196 See Musa Anter, Hatıralarım, 1-2.
197 Mustafa Remzi Bucak, Bir Kürt Aydınından Đsmet Đnönü’ye Mektup (Đstanbul: Doz
Yayıncılık, 1991), p.8.
198 Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi, Vol.7 “Sosyalizm ve
Kürtler”(Đstanbul: Đletisim Yayınları,1988) p.2129.
70
To sum up, almost everyone who stayed in the Dicle Student Dormitory later
became influential in politics. Although many of those figures did not deny their
political allegiances, that is to say affiliation with any political parties that would lead
them to the parliament, they considered that as the only option they had during that
time and used this argument to explain why they did not pay much attention to the
Kurdish issue at that time. It is commonly argued that the importance of the Dicle
Student Dormitory comes from its role and place in shaping modern Kurdish
nationalism. Also, it is argued that the dormitory functioned, in the 1940s, as a
Kurdish university; however, as noted above, the importance of the dormitory was
that it provided a suitable environment for those Kurdish students to form networks.
This first generation of Kurdish students, most of whom were from the
leading stratum of society in the 1940s, and to some extent, in the early 1950s, for a
number of reasons chose not to play the ethnic card in politics. It is true that with their
Kurdish backgrounds, they would have been unable to reach high office had they
emphasized their ethnic identity. It seems that their main interest was to become a
part of national political life through the existing channels and to use the existing
discourses. Moreover, as Bozarslan points out, the new generation, due to the success
of Kemalism in terms of pacifying the earlier generation of Kurdish nationalists,
based its references in accordance with Turkish political culture. 199
Many, however, would recognize that their ethnic and cultural identity was
dissimilar to the places in western Anatolia where they studied. For almost every
student during this period was confronted with a different culture. While the first
generation of Kurdish students say that they were not even aware that they were
Kurds, the next generation would, on the other hand, emphasize how they were
199 Bozarslan, “Kürd Milliyetçiliği,” p.850.
71
stunned when they first saw the discrepancy between their region and the western part
of the country. This is very important for our understanding of the subsequent
developments in the Kurdish movement. First, as noted above, those who mentioned
the ethnic and cultural differences came from relatively wealthy families. However,
many of those who were most struck by the economic gap between eastern and
western Turkey came from poorer backgrounds.
Tarık Ziya Ekinci in an interview pointed out that he had had no idea about
the Kurdish identity since in Diyarbakır, his hometown, there was virtually nothing to
remind him of anything of the sort. Like many other examples, he stated that he
recognized his Kurdishness only when he was accused of being a Kurd. 200 Musa
Anter tells a similar story about how he distinguished himself from the rest of the
class in Adana where he was a student.201 Another significant example is of Kemal
Burkay, who also was very influential in the TLP in the 1960s. In his memoirs,
Burkay states that he used to believe that there were no difference between the Kurds
and the Turks; “even I assumed that there were no Kurds except for those who lived
around their village.”202
However, the next generation, that is to say, the one in the late 1950s and
early 1960s, were astonished by the regional inequalities, which encourage their
leftward drift. Rusen Aslan, an activist in the leftist movement in the 1960s, as well as
Kemal Burkay and Mehmet Ali Aslan, who also became the TLP leader in 1969,
stated that their first observation was the chasm between eastern and western parts of
200 Interview with Tarık Ziya Ekinci, in Amidalilar; Sürgündeki Diyarbekirliler, Compl.
Seyhmus Diken (Đstanbul: Đletisim Yayınları, 2007) pp.44-46.
201 Anter, Hatıralarım, p.43.
202 Kemal Burkay, Anılar, Belgeler, Vol.I. (Đstanbul: Deng Yayınları, 2002), p.66.
72
Turkey.203 This observation, in addition to a new environment, in which socialists
started to voice their demands more than ever, would lead many Kurds to encounter
socialism. Contrary to the previous generation, the new generation of Kurdish
students who migrated to big cities, faced new economic and cultural problems.
Student dormitories remained one of the most secure places for many Kurds in
Istanbul and Ankara. What is interesting is that, hemsericilik (fellow townsmenship)
was more decisive than Kurdishness. For instance, the Diyarbakır Ögrenci Yurdu,
(Diyarbakır Student Dormitory) in Istanbul was the first stop for many students from
Diyarbakır.204 In addition, many eastern cultural organizations or hemseri
associations not only gathered around Kurdishness, but also strengthened their
cohesion in terms of their local identities. As will be seen later, prior to the Eastern
Meetings in 1967, nineteen of these associations signed a joint paper and condemned
Turkist writers who assaulted Kurds. However, hemsericilik turned into Doğulu (from
the East), a relatively broader identity but narrower than the Kurdish one owing to its
emphasis on only the economically deprived segments of the Kurds, which was
anyway out of question due to the political atmosphere in the 1960s.
In addition to the increasing number of Kurdish students in the 1960s, there
was another important phenomenon, the emergence of Kurdish literature and the
eruption of debates concerned with a solution to the Eastern question in the Turkish
media. I will take a closer look at the journals, which were regarded as Kurdists by
the authorities and many of which were closed down after just a few issues.
The Reemergence of Kurdish Literature and Historiography
203 Rusen Aslan, Interview by Delal Aydın, Ankara, Turkey, March, 2005.
204 Ömer Ağın, Alev, Duvar ve TKP, (Đstanbul: Gendas A.S, 2003), p.15.
73
The prevailing idea of proving that the Kurds were Turks, too, had been
cherished by the authorities long before the multi-party era. However, it took on a
new form in the 1950s and 1960s. Kurdism was seen as a threat to the state’s
discourse and was brought to the public attention mainly by the ultra nationalist
media, such as Milli Yol, (National Path) in the late 1950s, and Ötüken, in the 1960s.
Avni Doğan, inspector of the First General Inspectorate in the 1940s, published a
serial in daily Vatan (Motherland) in 1958 in which he warned the authorities about
recent developments in neighboring countries, especially about Iraq. There he called
for “a common national atmosphere to defend national unity” which was under great
threat from rising Kurdism.205
Another example was the book titled Doğu Vilayetleri ve Varto Tarihi (The
Eastern Provinces and the History of Varto), written by Mehmet Serif Fırat who was
a Kurd himself. The book was reprinted in 1961 and claimed that the Kurds in fact
were Turks. Cemal Gürsel wrote a foreword for the book in which he reiterated this
view by arguing that the citizens in eastern Anatolia, despite the fact that they thought
that they were distinct from Turks and had a unique language, were of pure Turkish
stock.206 It is necessary to give a brief account of what Kurds wrote starting from the
late 1950s but especially in the 1960s.
Musa Anter, one of the most prominent Kurdish writers of the time, published
a journal entitled Dicle Kaynağı (Tigris Spring) along with three other friends from
Dicle Student Dormitory in 1948. According to Anter, for the first time, they learned
about and discussed the massacres of the Kurds, such as the Zilan massacre of 1930,
205 Avni Doğan, “Tehlike Çanı,” Vatan, 19-23 November 1958, quoted in Azad Zana
Gündoğan, p.84
206 Mehmet Serif Fırat, Doğu illeri ve Varto Tarihi (Ankara: Milli Egitim Basımevi, 1961).
74
Dersim in 1938 or Otuzüçler (33s).207 In the late 1950s, Anter again published a daily
Kurdish oriented journal under the title Đleri Yurt, (Advanced Country). The journal
was based in Diyarbakir and founded in 1958. To mark its 500th issue, on September
31, 1959, Anter published a poem called Kımıl (insect pest) in Kurdish. The poem
was one of the first attempts to voice the economic grievances of the region. He
ended his poem saying “wait sister, your brothers are coming to save you from what
you suffer.”208 As a result, Musa Anter along with the journal’s editor, Canip Yıldırım
and owner, Abdurrahman Efhem Dolak were arrested in September 1959.209
Although they were accused of offending public sensitivities and damaging the state’s
image, the expert opinion of the court was that publishing a Kurdish poem did not
constitute an attack on the unity of Kurds and Turks.210
Musa Anter’s subsequent writings attracted not only the attention of the
Turkish state, but also of the new generations of Kurdish intellectuals. In 1962, in a
liberal Turkish journal called Barıs Dünyası (world of peace), Anter proposed a full
solution to the Eastern Question. After noting that they did not aim at the
establishment of any Kurdish state or separate from Turkey, he declared that,
“development of the East is the development of Turkey. The East can be a sun for our
nation. Why do not we open schools which would teach our citizens whose mother
tongue is Kurdish and who do not speak any other language except Kurdish? Why
does the university in the region not study literature and philology of this language?
207 33 Kurdish villagers were executed arbitrary by General Mustafa Muğlalı in Van in 1943.
208 Bekle Bacı, seni çektiğin bu zulümlerden kurtaracak kardeslerin yetisiyor.”
209For the poem and the reactions, see Musa Anter, Kımıl (Đstanbul: Yeni Matbaa, 1962).
210 Çamlıbel, 49’lar Davası: Bir Ülkenin Đdamlık Kürtleri, p.34.
75
Why are Kurdish newspapers not published? Why does not a local radio station
broadcast in Kurdish?”211
He underlined the fact that Kurdish radio broadcasts from abroad were already
popular among Kurds. In addition, he added that teaching in Kurdish in primary
education would be helpful for getting a good education in Turkish afterward.
However, in another Turkish weekly, Yön (direction), 15 Kurdish intellectuals
responded to Barıs Dünyası in a way that seem to give the first signals of the split
among the Kurds with regard to the approach with which they sought to deal with the
Eastern Question. In the article titled “Eastern Youngsters Respond to “Barıs
Dünyası”: Our Eastern Matter,”( Doğulu Gençler “Barıs Dünyası”na cevap veriyor:
Doğu Davamız), although they did not disagree with what had been argued in Barıs
Dünyası, it was argued that the remedies and solutions which had been put forth by
the article were insufficient to solve the question. 212
In another article, Sait Kırmızıtoprak responded to Avni Doğan’s serial
published in daily Dünya (the World) according to a socialist model. However, he
also put great emphasis on the systematic denial of Kurdish ethnicity. According to
Kırmızıtoprak, Kurdish people, as Avni Doğan had agreed a few years earlier, had a
distinct ethnicity, literature, poetry and culture. Yet, people like Avni Doğan and
Sevket Süreyya Aydemir had backtracked from an acceptance of the Kurdish ethnic
identity. They had adopted a line based on the book Doğu Vilayetleri ve Varto Tarihi
(Eastern provinces and the History of Varto), which denied the existence of a separate
Kurdish identity. However, denying the existence of Kurdish people did not halt
211 Anter, Kımıl, pp.74-76.
212 “Doğulu Gençler “Barıs Dünyası”na cevap veriyor: Doğu Davamız” Yön, no 26, 13 June
1962, pp.12-13. They were listed as follows: Sait Kırmızıtoprak, Selahattin Kemaloğlu,
Kahraman Aytaç, Sait Kelekçi, Gıyasettin Eroğlu, Hasan Kocademir, Mehmet Ali Aslan,
Yusuf Karagül, Vefa Alpaslan, Mehmet Ali Dinler, Tahsin Bilici, Ali Ekber Eren, Hamdi
Turanlı, Süleyman Bayramoğlu, Haydar Kova,
76
interest in the Kurdish identity and if anything, helped promote conflict between
Kurdish and Turkish thinkers. Despite conflicts, socialism was still seen as the main
framework for the solution of the Eastern Question. Sait Kırmızıtoprak argued that
“We, Doğulus, with our entire strength, claim that only an organization which is
populist [Halkçı], democratic and based on labor, through effort and with knowledge
of Turkey’s people could ensure the development of the East.” 213
In the early 1960s, the influence of Socialism can be discerned easily. Starting
from the early1960s, writings concerning the region and the Kurds were published
both in the mainstream media and in journals founded by Kurds. The debate revolved
around the socialist rhetoric of development and justifications for greater cultural and
political freedom based on adherence to form the ideological basis of both Doğuculuk
(Eastism) and the emerging Kurdish nationalism among new generations.
The new Constitution promulgated after the 1960 coup, in contrast to the precoup
one, allowed people to form associations and publish without permission
notification.214 This gave rise to independent, bilingual Kurdish and Turkish journals.
Among them, Dicle-Firat (Tigris and Euphrates, 1962), Deng (Voice, 1963), Roja
Newe (New Day, 1963), Yeni Akıs (New Current, 1966), Doğu (East, 1969), DDKO
Haber Bülteni, (DDKO’s monthly bulletin, 1970) were the most important.215 All of
them, as noted above, had two features. They attempted to solve the
213 “Biz Doğu’lular bütün kuvvetimizle sunu diyoruz: “Halkçı, demokratik, sosyal Türkiye
insanının emek, bilgi ve çabasına dayanan bir organizasyon içerisinde Doğu kalkınması
tahakkuk edebilir ancak.” Dr. S. Kırmızıtoprak “Kimler için çan çalıyorlar?...” Yön, no. 40,
(19 September 1962), pp.14-15.
214 Republic of Turkey, Constitution of Turkish Republic, Article 23 and 29, Ankara, 1961.
215 For a full list, see Malmisanij and Mahmud Levendi, Li Kurdistana Bakur u li Tirkiyé
Rojnamegeriya Kurdi (1908−1992) (Ankara: Özge Yayıncılık, 1992).
77
underdevelopment of the East with socialism, and considered the constitution as a
safeguard for Kurdish cultural and political rights.
Edip Karahan, the owner of the Dicle-Firat under the pseudonym of Edip
Osmanoğlu, in the first issue declared, “The East has been neglected for centuries and
as a result of this became a land of deprivation. This neglect continued during the
Republican era. No matter what political parties they belonged to, all of the
politicians, in order to assimilate and pacify the people in the East and its intellectuals
deliberately introduced the East as a land of ignorance and barbarity to the Turkish
and the world public.” 216 Although it only published eight issues, it made a great
contribution to the reemergence of the old Kurdish masterpieces. There were fruitful
debates about present issues such as the issue of 55 aghas who had been sent into
exile or other Turkish publications especially those that provoked Kurdish feeling. 217
Deng, (the Voice) a bilingual Kurdish and Turkish journal, owned by Ergün
Koyuncu could only publish two issues. 218 Deng, too, put a great emphasis on
negligence of the East and welcomed the new political atmosphere.219 In Deng, Kurds
such as Kemal Badilli and Faik Bucak wrote and published Kurdish poems.220 Roja
216 “Doğu, yüzyıllardan beri ihmal edilmis, bu ihmal neticesinde bir mahrumiyet bölgesi
haline gelmistir. Bu ihmal, Cumhuriyet devrinde de devam etmistir. Hangi partiye mensup
olursa olsun gelmis geçmis bütün politikacılar, Doğu halkını ve aydınlarını sindirmek için
Doğu’yu, sistemli ve maksatlı olarak Türk ve Dünya efkarına taassup, cehalet ve medeniyet
düsmanı bir yer gibi göstermislerdir.” Edip Osmanoğlu, (Karahan) “Neden Çıkıyoruz?”
Dicle-Fırat, Yıl:1, no 1, 1 November 1962. online at http://www.edipkarahan.com/
217 For example, See.Edip Karahan, “Kırılan Potlar,” Dicle-Fırat, , no.8 available online
at http://www.edipkarahan.com/
218 Malmisanij and Lewendi,
219 Azad Zana Gündoğan, p.109.
220 Kutlay, Anılarım, p.102.
78
Newe, (the New Day) bilingual monthly newspaper, was closed down like other
journals on account of having separatist aims.221
In June 1963, 23 prominent Kurdish writers and students who wrote for Dicle-
Firat, Deng, and Roja Newe were arrested.222 They were accused of being
Communist Kurdist and attempting to establish an independent Kurdish state in
Turkish territory.223 All of the above-mentioned publications were banned. As a
result, they earned a negative image in the eye of the Turkish public.
Despite the threat of being arrested, writings on the East and the Kurdish issue
continued. A striking example is the publication of Yeni Akıs (the New Current) in
1966. The journal ran for six issues and continued the tradition of writing about the
east, and amalgamation of socialism and Kurdish ethnic pride. Socialism and
compliance with the constitution proposed a solution to both the economic
backwardness of the region and emancipation of Kurdishness. For example, one
article proclaimed that “there exists a Kurdish people who have their unique
language, culture, custom and tradition in the eastern part of Turkey.” 224 However,
the journal did not advocate Kurdish independence. In an article entitled Socialism
and the Kurds, it is argued that socialism allowed ethnic groups to enrich their
221 Malmisanij and Lewendi, p.159.
222 These included Edip Karahan of Dicle-Fırat, Doğan Kılıç Sıhhesenanlı and Hasan Bulus
of Roja Newé, Musa Anter, Mehmet Serhat, Ergün Koyuncu and Yasar Kaya of Deng,, Ziya
Serefhanoğlu of Reya Rast, Ali Anagür, Kemal Bingöllü, Fetullah Kakioğlu, Mehmet
Bilgin, Enver Aytekin and nine persons from Iraq and Iran who were mainly students in
Turkey. See Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi, vol.7 “Sosyalizm ve
Kürtler,” p.2126.
223 Cumhuriyet, 29 July, 1963.
224 “Sosyalizm ve Kürtler” Yeni Akıs, no.3 October 1966. Available online at
http://www.mehmetaliaslan.com
79
national culture and ethnic characteristics and its language. 225 The journal also
published some Kurdish poems by Faik Bucak, Kemal Badilli and Ihsan Aksoy.226
However, Yeni Akıs also was banned and Kemal Burkay and Mehmet Ali Aslan were
put in the jail for six months.227
Another journal, Doğu (the East) followed the same line as above-mentioned
publications, but was able to publish only two issues. According to Musa Anter, who
also wrote for the journal, the Eastern Question was analyzed within the framework
of scientific socialism. 228 For example, Mihri Belli in an article entitled Millet
Gerçeği (the reality of the nation), argued that for a genuine unity between Kurds and
Turks, as well as for the greater good of the country, the state policy of suppression
and assimilation of the Kurds should be put to an end.229
Alongside the journals, there were also a number of publications on the
Kurdish language. Kemal Badilli, for example, published a Kurdish grammar book,
Musa Anter published a Kurdish-Turkish dictionary and Mehmet Emin Bozarslan
translated and published Ahmede Xani’s Mem u Zin (Mem and Zin) the classic of
Kurdish literature. 230
To recapitulate, starting with the late 1950s, the Kurdish question was
discussed both by Turkish and Kurdish intellectuals as Eastern Question. Initially,
225 “Türkiye’nin doğusunda yasayan, kendisine has dili, kültürü, örfü, adeti olan bir Kürt
Halkı vardır.” Ibid.,
226 “Kürt Halkının Yeri” Yeni Akıs, no. 4, November 1966.
227 Mehmet Ali Aslan, interview by the author, tape recording, Istanbul, Turkey, 31 January
2009.
228 Anter, Hatıralarım, 1-2, p.216.
229 Malmisanij and Lewendi, p.197; and Mihri Belli, Milli Demokratik Devrim (Ankara:
Aydınlık Yayınları, 1970)
230 For an excellent analysis of Bozarslan’s personal and intellectual evolution, see Metin
Yüksel, “A "Revolutionary" Kurdish Mullah from Turkey: Mehmed Emin Bozarslan and
His Intellectual Evolution,” The Muslim World 99, 2: (April 2009) pp.356–380.
80
they seemed to use a vague language with regard to the ethnic aspect of the question,
focusing more on economic development and the need for a socialist solution.
Undoubtedly, their arguments were shaped by a myriad of social and political
developments of the 1960s. As will be seen in the next chapter, many Kurdish
activists’ affiliation with the Leftist movement would be central to how they viewed
the issue. Kurdish ethnicity, which encountered both Turkish nationalism and
Socialism in the 1960s, would be cherished by Kurdish intelligentsia. However, the
general political atmosphere of the 1960s, as well as Kurdish intelligentsia’s
confusion and fear with respect to ethnicity would prevent them from prioritizing
ethnicity in their discourse.
Yet, although the early Kurdish activists would define their problems in
primarily economic terms, this led to new questions, such as why and how it was so.
The answers that each group and person would give to those questions also would
determine the path they would follow. Given the fact that most Kurdish activists were
attracted to leftist ideas during the 1960s, socialism was seen as the panacea to both
inequality and economic backwardness. This would lead to an affiliation with
socialist ideas in general and with the Turkish Labor Party in particular. This facet of
the Kurdish movement will be examined in greater detail in the next chapter.
Both those Kurds who inhabited in the region and those who had migrated to
the big cities were not immune from Turkey’s economic, political and demographic
transformation. These transformations provided part of the inspiration for all of the
above-mentioned publications. Yet, one should not exaggerate their influence. During
this period, nearly 70 percent of Kurds were illiterate. What is important though is the
fact that they made a great contribution to the intellectual development of many
young Kurdish students and intellectuals.
81
As Mikesell and Murphy argue, when dominant nationalism generates
feelings of xenophobia or megalomania, the other linguistic and religious groups,
especially if it is thought that they are disloyal and inferior, are more likely to express
keen feelings of resentment. 231 This point is evident from the above-mentioned
journals. However, the increased visibility of Kurdish ethnicity did not go unnoticed.
Not only did the state authorities have to deal with the new sense of Kurdish ethnic
pride, but these developments also elicited a response from non-state actors. The
socialists were one such group. Turkish nationalists as well paid increasing attention
to the Kurdish movement. Turkish nationalists in particular engaged in bellicose
discourse against the Kurds. The following paragraph is an example of such vulgar
discourse:
If they [the Kurds] want to carry on speaking a primitive language with
vocabularies of only four or five thousand words, if they want to create their
own state and publish what they like, let them go and do it somewhere else.
We Turks have shed rivers of blood to take possession of these lands; we had
to uproot Georgians, Armenians and Byzantine Greeks…Let them go off
wherever they want, to Iran, to Pakistan, to India, or to join Barzani. Let them
ask the United Nations to find them a homeland in Africa. The Turkish race is
very patient, but when it is really angered, it is like a roaring lion and nothing
can stop it. Let them ask the Armenians who we are, and let them draw the
appropriate conclusions. 232
Nihal Atsız, an ultra-nationalist writer, and Đsmet Tümtürk, another radical
Turkish nationalist suggested ethnic cleansing if the Kurds did not except
assimilating.233 The anti-Kurdism of the ultra-nationalist Turkish right would provide
part of the impetus behind the Eastern Meetings in 1967, a point that will be looked at
in greater depth in Chapter Four.
231 Mikesell and Murphy, p. 600.
232 Quoted in Kendal, p.77.
233 For what they wrote in Ötuken and Milli Yol, see Uslu, pp.127-128.
82
One final point needs to be mentioned, the constitution and references to it.
Mehmet Emin Bozarslan, in his influential book Doğunun Sorunları only started with
an article from the constitution, but also argued that unless the constitution was put in
practice, the problems of the East would not be solved.234 To give another example, in
Yeni Akıs’s second issue there was an attempt to legitimize the journal’s publication
along constitutional lines. 235 It was not only Kurds who paid attention to the
constitution but also Turkish writers who tackled the subject. Although his real
influence came after his arrest with the TLP and DDKOs activists in 1971, Đsmail
Besikçi, an assistant at Erzurum University, began to publish books on the Kurds and
argued that the constitution was an important part of the solution.236 Furthermore,
Đbrahim Yasa, a professor at Ankara University, in his book Türkiye’nin Toplumsal
Yapısı ve Temel Sorunları, (Turkey’s Social Structure and Fundamental Problems),
discussed the situation of the Kurds and the East concluding with the articles from the
constitution.237
The Source of the Kurdish Ethnoregional Movement in the 1960s
The Kurdish ethnoregional movement in the 1960s was made up a number of
actors and groups (see Figure 3). The TKDP and the T’de KDP were non-socialist
234 Mehmed Emin Bozarslan, Doğunun Sorunları (Diyarbakır: Safak Kitabevi, 1966), p.7.
235 Yeni Akıs no.2 September, 1966 (back cover).
236 Đsmail Besikçi, Doğuda değisim ve yapısal sorunlar: Göçebe Alikan Asireti ( Ankara :
Doğan Yayınevi, 1969); Doğu Anadolu'nun düzeni : Sosyo-ekonomik ve Etnik Temeller,
(Ankara : E Yayınları, 1969) were among his first publications on the Kurdish issue.
237 Đbrahim Yasa, Türkiye’nin Toplumsal Yapısı ve Temel Sorunları (Turkiye ve Orta Dogu
Amme Idaresi Enstitusu Yayinlari, no.119 (Ankara: Sevinc Matbaasi, 1970), p.174.
83
sources of the movement. This section addresses the three actors of the movement,
except for the TLP and Kurdish students.
Figure 3. The sources of the Kurdish ethnoregional movement in the 1960s.
The general socialist posture of the Kurdish intellectual classes had a great
impact on the Kurdish ethnoregionalist movement. This aspect of the development of
Kurdish politics will be looked at in greater detail in the following chapter. However,
before looking at the socialist parties and their impact, it is important to look at other
non-socialist groups that influenced the development of Kurdish politics: the New
Turkey Party (Yeni Türkiye Partisi, NTP) and two clandestine parties, respectively,
the Kurdistan Democratic Party of Turkey (Türkiye Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi,
TKDP) and the Kurdistan Democratic Party in Turkey (Türkiye’de Kürdistan
Demokrat Partisi, T’de KDP).
The NTP was founded in wake of the military coup in 1961 when the ban on
political parties was lifted. Like the Justice Party, the NTP claimed to be a
continuation of the DP and attempted to gain the former DP votes. The NTP was
unsuccessful in the end and it was JP that gained the former DP voters.
The Kurdish
Ethnoregional movement
in the 1960s
The Kurdistan Democratic
Party of Turkey (TKDPSait
Elçi)
The New Turkey
Party(YTP-Yusuf
Azizoglu)
The Kurdistan Democratic
Party in Turkey (T’de KDPSait
Kırmızıtoprak)
Kurdish Students
(FKF» Dev-
Genç» DDKO)
The Turkish Labor Party
(Doğulus; Kurdish
Socialists in the TLP)
84
Ekrem Alican, the chairman of the party, and Yusuf Azizoglu who became
party leader in the late 1960s were both Kurds. In fact, Azizoğlu was one of the exiled
aghas allowed to return to the East by the Democrats in the 1940s and had left the DP
to set up Freedom Party (FP) in 1955.238 Many politically active Kurds in the 1960s
had supported the FP until it was closed down in 1958, after which they turned to the
RPP. This support was part of an attempt by the Kurdish elite to achieve the
maximum amount of political influence and is in fact contrary to what they claimed
later. For instance, Musa Anter, Niyazi Usta and Canip Yıldırım239 turned to the
RPP.
The NTP got the bulk of its support from the Kurds due to Yusuf Azizoglu’s
personal contacts and the local notables influence in the party.240 The NTP took part
in three short coalitions between 1961 and 1965 and obtained some ministerial
positions as well. For instance, Yusuf Azizoglu became Minister of Health and paid
great emphasis on Kurdish cities and cultural associations. 241 During his ministry, he
was accused of not working for the national interest, but for local and separatist ones.
When Hıfzı Oğuz Bekata, the RPP Minister of the Interior resigned, he claimed that
some individuals in the coalition were not working for the whole nation, which was a
veiled reference to Azizoğlu. 242
238 McDowall, p.406.
239 Orhan Miroğlu, Canip Yıldırım’la Söylesi: Hevsel Bahçesinden Bir Dut Ağacı (Đstanbul:
Đletisim Yayınları, 2005), p.165.
240 For example, the 55 Aghas who had been exiled in the wake of the coup were allowed to
return their land while the NTP was in coalition. Furthermore, they, the 55s were welcomed
with drums and clarions by the NTP and the JP. See Ahmad and Ahmad, p.252.
241 Rusen Arslan, Cim Karnında Nokta: Anılar (Đstanbul: Doz, 2006), p.85.
242 Cumhuriyet, 5 October 1963.
85
Losing its strength in the western part of Turkey, NTP concentrated on
the Eastern region especially after 1965, utilizing Doğuculuk in its propaganda and
trying to form an alliance with the local notables and aghas. Although the NTP was
unsuccessful, its approach demonstrates as striking example of the shift in terms of
political propaganda in the region. The Party Program, in addition to its network
among local notables and alike, paid great attention to the economic development of
the region, while rejecting any form of separatism.243 For example, Yusuf Azizoglu,
as the party chairman, claimed that their sole concern was the development of the
East. He also denied any connections with Kürtçülük and such ideologies. 244
The First Phase of Politicization of the Kurdish Ethnicity
As noted, the Kurdish ethnicity and language gained an increasingly high
profile during the 1960s. Although economics was the main lens through which
Kurds saw the Eastern Question, increasing ethnic awareness also had a subtle effect
on politics. Part of this was an endeavor to prove that their ethnicity and cultural
identity were real when faced with the denial of the Kurdish and the opposition of the
political right. Bozarslan argues, in addition to a collective memory of the past events
243 Article 4 of party programme states that “Our understanding of nationalism reflects a
moral solidarity based on our citizens’ who regard s/himself as a nation within the Turkish
language and culture, common desires and refuses the separator currents born of race,
religion, culture and local customs.” In Turkish, “Milliyetçilik anlayısımız, vatandaslar
arasında, irk, din, kültür ve mahalli gelenek farklarından doğan ayırıcı cereyanları
reddeden, Türk dili ve kültürü içinde kendisini bir millet olarak kabul eden vatandasların
müsterek arzularına dayanan, manevi tesanüdü ifade etmektir.”In Ferruh Bozbeyli,
Türkiye’de Siyasi Partilerin Ekonomik ve Sosyal Görüsleri-Belgeler; Parti
Programlari,(Đstanbul: Ak Yayınları, 1970), p.376.
244 Yusuf Azizoğlu, in Abdi Đpekçi, Liderler Diyor ki; Röportajlar (Đstanbul: Ant Yayınları,
1969), pp.80-82.
86
and the new Kurdish intelligentsia, the Barzani revolt in Iraq also promoted
politicized expressions of the Kurdish ethnicity. 245
The Barzani Revolt,246 between 1961 and 1970, was confined to Iraq and
involved only with a small proportion of the Kurds. 247 However, it caused great
anxiety amongst the Turkish authorities and at the same time encouraged some
Kurdish nationalists in Turkey. Although people who had been to Iraq during that
time and had seen Barzani personally claimed that Barzani would never support a
Kurdish movement in Turkey,248 it has been argued that the clandestine Kurdistan
Democrat Party of Turkey (TKDP) was directly founded by him. Whatever the truth,
given the party’s name, it is beyond doubt that at the very least the KDP of Iraq
provided the inspiration for the organization.
According to Bozarslan, the TKDP, which was founded by Faik Bucak
and Sait Elçi in 1965, was the first Kurdish organization established after Xoybun in
the 1930s.249 Along with the TLP, the TKDP was the most important channel through
245 Hamit Bozarslan, “Political Aspects of the Kurdish Problem in Contemporary Turkey,”
pp.96–97.
246 The Kurdistan Democrat Party in Iraq (KDP) was founded after its Iranian counterpart,
under the direct influence of communism. In 1958, the party issued a resolution which can
also be seen as its ultimate purpose: “1-recogniton in principle of the rights of the Kurdish
people, including the right to self-determination. 2- Fighting separatist thought and
movements, and striving to solidify solidarity between the Arab and Kurdish nationalities.
3- Upholding Article 3 of the Provisional Constitution of the Republic of Iraq and working
to implement it by legislating laws guaranteeing Kurdish national rights. 4- Caring for the
interests of the Kurdish people with regard to industrialization and raising agricultural
production and living standards, as well as social, educational, and health standards. 5-
Strengthening fraternity between the Kurdish people and the minorities living in Kurdistan,
and guaranteeing their ability to exercise their rights.” See, Massoud Barzani, Mustafa
Barzani and the Kurdish Liberation Movement (New York: Palgrave, MacMillan, 2003),
p.203
247 Edgar O’Ballance, The Kurdish Revolt, 1961-1970 (London: Faber and Faber Limited,
1973), p.164.
248 Orhan Miroğlu, Canip Yıldırım’la Söylesi, p.180.
249 Bozarslan, Hamit, “Kürd Milliyetçiliği ve Kürd Hareketi (1898–2000)” p.854.
87
which Kurdish issue could be discussed. 250 It was established initially in Diyarbakir,
and then in Silvan, Batman, Sason, Garzan, Hazzo, Baykan, Bitlis, Siirt, Tatvan, Mus,
Bulanık, Lice, Patnos, Van, Hizan, Siverek, Cizre, Nusaybin and Kızıltepe.251 It
participated in the Eastern Meetings in 1967 and most of the time its members
collaborated with the Easterners in the TLP.
The party was culturally nationalist and put great emphasis on the political
and cultural rights of the Kurds in Turkey. However, their ultimate purpose,
according to the platform, was not separation, but rather integration with a united
Turkey. Interestingly, its discourse was influenced by developmentalism and leftism.
Although McDowall argues that the party was unwilling to examine the inherent
tensions between ethnic nationalism, social traditionalism and social development, 252
the party platform, in the part entitled economic rights, explicitly called for a
resolution to regional underdevelopment. 253 Moreover, the Party program was
influenced by the all-pervasive constitutionalism of the era. In fact, the TKDP cited
from the constitution and argued that their goals did not oppose adherence to the 1961
Constitution.
One of the first explanations for their approach might be made in accordance
to our theoretical approach. The Kurdish movement in the 1960s was turning into an
ethnoregional movement. Ethnicity was one of the two catalysts of the movement.
250 Seref Yıldız, Fırtınada Yürüyüs (Đstanbul: Sarı Defter9, 2008), p.48.
251 Sakir Epözdemir’ s study is one of the rare studies on the TKDP. The author himself was
the party member and arrested in 1968 along with other members of the party and stood trial
in Antalya. See Sakir Epözdemir Türkiye Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi: 1968/235 Antalya
Davası Savunması (Đstanbul: Peri Yayınları, 2005), p.9.
252 McDowall, p.406.
253 Epözdemir, , p.24.
88
The new elite, in order to cooperate with the rest of their community, needed to
accept at least some of the present conditions and would try to highlight the existing
grievances as much as they could. Therefore, whereas the Easterners dealt with the
economic part of the movement, the Kurdish nationalist elite focused on ethnicity and
culture. Both borrowed from each other. In the case of the TKDP, it is also evident
that while they tried to extend their influence within the region they would sometimes
have to challenge not only the existing elite, but also the new generation of socialist
Kurds. This promoted a leftward shift in the party’s discourse.
The TKDP furnishes a striking example of personal conflict as well. Whereas
the first party leader, Faik Bucak was killed in 1965, Sait Elçi and a friend of his were
assassinated by Sait Kırmızıtoprak while in Iraq. Sait Kırmızıtoprak then was killed
by the Barzanis.254 Sait Elçi was very influential among Kurdish intelligentsia in the
1960s. Both Elçi and Kırmzıtoprak were involved in the TLP and on many occasions,
they were as influential as the Easterners. After the arrest of members of the TKDP in
1968, the party was dissolved and Sait Kırmızıtoprak, known as Dr. Sivan, formed
Türkiye’de Kürdistan Demokrat Partisi, (T’de KDP, with the only difference in its
name, de, means in Turkey). By contrast, T’de KDP was a communist party whose
regulations were a copy of those of communist parties. 255 Although it was not so
successful in the late 1960s, pro- Sivan groups developed in the 1970s.
To sum up, starting in the mid-1950s, the Kurdish movement was dominated
by a tiny number of people consisting of the traditional leading stratum of Kurdish
society, sheiks and aghas and their relatives, and an emerging generation of Kurdish
intellectuals from poorer backgrounds most of whom had a higher educations. Those
254 interview with Sakir .Epözdemir: “Dr. Siwan Olayı-23’ler ve 55’ler olayı ile ilgili bir
söylesi” Ankara, 2006. available online at:
http://www.kurdinfo.com/s_epozdemir_soylesi_c_yilmaz.pdf
255 Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları, Dava Dosyası 1, (Ankara: Komal, 1975), p.386.
89
who stayed in Dicle Student Dormitory formed the backbone of the Kurdish
intellectual class. After their arrest in the 49’lar Olayı they were joined by a new
generation of intellectuals. Those who were in active politics, again, until the late
1960s would consist of more or less the same people. No matter which party they
joined, their ultimate purpose was to integrate with the political system.
As for the Kurdish nationalism and Kurdish ethnoregional movement, many
activists did as much as they could to secure their positions within the Turkish
political system. Although it was culture for the first generation that provided the
basis for the critique of Turkish society, for the newer generations it was economics
and underdevelopment. Therefore, it is important to examine Turkish socialism in
general in order to provide a better context for the development of the Kurdish
movement in the 1960s and 1970s.
Turkish Socialism in the 1960s
Socialism, as an ideology, is as old as Turkish and Kurdish nationalisms in
Turkey. The first socialist party, Osmanlı Sosyalist Fırkası (Ottoman Socialist Party)
goes back to 1910, two years after the establishment of the first ever legal Kurdish
organization.256 Just like Kurdish nationalism, socialism and Marxism were banned
after the Kemalists managed to consolidate power. The Kemalist movement, as it did
with some Kurdish notables in the 1920s, not only put an end to any further
communist movements in Turkey, but also included and embraced some communists
such as Vedat Nedim Tör, Sevket Süreyya Aydemir, who in the early 1930s were
256 Tarık Zafer Tunaya, Türkiye’de Siyasi Partiler (Đstanbul: Đstanbul Üniversitesi, 1952), p.
303
90
allowed to publish the journal Kadro (Cadre). 257 As Harris points out, they were
provided opportunities to use their talents in government service and, indeed, to play
important roles in the ideological development of Kemalism.258
In 1946, two Socialist parties, Türkiye Sosyalist Đsçi Partisi (Socialist Workers
Party of Turkey) and Türkiye Sosyalist Emekçi ve Köylü Partisi (Socialist Proletarian
Peasants’ Party of Turkey) were founded but were soon closed down. As already
noted, socialism and Marxism were suppressed even more harshly by the DP.
Kemalism’s success and legacy, upon socialist and Marxist ideology, especially in
terms of radical progressive policies imposed from above, would be discernible in the
1960s. 259 Parallel to the worldwide developments, socialism and Marxism gained
increasing currency amongst the intellectual classes.
To nearly all Turkish socialist groups, the two-stage revolution theory
developed by the Stalinist regime in the 1920s and 1930s became the de facto
ideology. This formulation claimed that although Turkey was not ready for a full
socialist revolution, it was ripe for a national democratic revolution which would
open the way for state-led development and provide complete national independence.
It would also allow for the elimination of the political power of the big bourgeoisie,
the feudal landowners and corrupt politicians who relied on the ignorant peasants.260
257 Cem Erogul, p.104.
258 George S. Harris, The Origins of Communism in Turkey (Standford, California; Hoover
Institution Publications, 1967), pp.129-130.
259 Ahmet Samim (Murat Belge) “ Turkish Left,” in Turkey in Transition; New Perspectives,
ed. Irvin C. Schick and Ertuğrul Ahmet Tonak (New York: Oxford University Press, 1987),
p. 151.
260 Erkan, Oktay, A Comparative Study of National Democratic Revolution Movement in
Turkey, M.A. Thesis, POL,Bogazici University, 1998, p.10.
91
Equally important was that the fact that Kemalist ideology in general and
Mustafa Kemal Ataturk in particular also provided an ideological base for Marxism
and socialism in Turkey. Since Marxism and communism were still banned in the
1960s, socialism as a means of rapid development and elimination of poverty and
inequality attracted many Neo-Kemalists who brought together the radical statism of
Kemalism and socialism in the ideology of Türk Sosyalizmi (Turkish Socialism).
Therefore, the Turkish style of socialism was constructed on four ideological points,
Kemalism (Kemalist nationalism and anti-imperialism), socialism, developmentalism,
and finally Social democracy.261
For example, Mahir Çayan, a student leader in the late 1960s, to most Turkish
leftist students at the time, argued that Mustafa Kemal had raised the banner of
national liberation against imperialism and occupation and as such, he had been a
leftist.262 Doğan Avcıoğlu, one of the most influential Kemalist intellectuals in the
1960s, maintained that the path of national revolutionary development as a means of
catching up the modern civilization and rapid development was nothing but the
continuation of Ataturk’s reforms and the Kemalist thesis.263 Mehmet Ali Aybar, the
leader of the Turkish Labor Party, made the same points by arguing that
independence, populism and a national platform where all revolutionary
intelligentsia, workers and other progressive powers were the main features of the
Turkish socialism. 264
261 Sabiha Sertel, Türkiye’de Đlerici Akımlar (Đstanbul: Ant Yayınları, 1969), pp.217-218.
262 Mahir Çayan: “Kesintisiz Devrim 2-3” in Turhan Feyizoğlu, Mahir; On’ların Öyküsü
(Đstanbul: Ozan Yayıncılık, 11th edition, 2007), p.636.
263 Doğan Avcıoğlu, Türkiye’nin Düzeni; Dün-Bugün-Yarın (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi,1968),
p.526.
264 Mehmet Ali Aybar, Bağımsızlık, Demokrasi, Sosyalizm; Seçmeler 1945-1967 (Đstanbul:
Gerçek Yayınevi, 1968), p.494.
92
The weekly Yön (published between 1961-1967),265 the Socialist
Cultural Associations, (established in 1962), the students clubs, especially the Fikir
Kulüpleri Federasyonu (Federations of Idea Clubs) and Dev-Genç (Turkish acronym
for Revolutionary Youth), Mihri Belli’s National Democratic Revolution group and
finally the Turkish Labor Party, as the most important manifestations of Turkish
socialism in the 1960s, sought to harmonize the relations between individuals and
society in a new social order. 266 Shocked by the economic conditions of Turkey, they
combined Kemalist principles with the existing situation’s problems.267 In the view of
these radicals, the entire history of the Republic as well as the present time was to be
examined through Kemalism and socialism. The statist policy of the single-party era
was translated as Kapitalist Olmayan Yol or the non-capitalist path and was regarded
as the only road to rapid development.
The above-mentioned parties, especially Yön and the TLP, played pivotal
roles in spreading socialist ideas. 268 Instead of questioning the system as a whole,
they sought to gain the allegiances of some segments of the existing order such as the
army. According to the communiqué of the Socialist Cultural Association, which was
signed by hundreds of intellectuals and published in Yön, both the Kemalist
265 Among its regular contributors were Doğan Avcıoğlu, Cahit Tanyol, Niyasi Berkes,
Sevket Süreyya Aydemir, Đlhan Selçuk, Mümtaz Soysal, Turan Günes, Taner Timur, Sırrı
Hocaoğlu, Ahmet Taner Kıslalı, Fethi Naci, Sadun Aren, Cetin Altan and also some Kurds,
as quoted in the previous chapter, such as Sait Kirmizitoprak. For a comprehensive study of
Yön, see Hikmet Özdemir, Kalkınmada Bir Strateji Arayısı: YÖN Hareketi, (Ankara: Bilgi
Yayınevi, 1986).
266 For a good example, see Sevket Süreyya Aydemir: “Türk Sosyalizminin ilkeleri
(Sosyalist Kültür Derneğine sunulan özel muhtıra)” Yön, no.56, (9 January 1963).
267 Stefanos Yerasimos, Az Gelismislik Sürecinde Türkiye (Đstanbul: Gözlem Yayınları,
1971), p.1670.
268 Sadun Aren, TĐP Olayı, 1961–1971 (Đstanbul: Cem Yayınevi,1993), p. 209.
93
movement and the May 27 coup endeavored to remove social and economic
dependence of the population and their exploitation.269
As with the early Kemalist elite, who viewed themselves as men of progress
who brought development to the people despite the people, the leftists looked down
on the democratic process. Elections and the democratic progress would always result
in bringing dominant-conservative groups to government. From their point of view,
“speedy economic development, progress and social justice could be achieved only
by a strong government headed by progressive intellectuals.” 270 Murat Belge points
out that the misreading of the events in the 1950s and 1960 led the Turkish Left to
wrongly expect an alliance between working masses and so-called “progressive”
forces, that is to say, the intelligentsia, students and the army. 271
The Turkish socialist movement, especially after the second half of the 1960s,
struggled over the way they would achieve political power. The split was between the
Socialist Revolutionists (SR), who aimed to take political power through peaceful
elections, and the National Democratic Revolutionists (NDR), who sought a coalition
of vigorous powers, intelligentsia, army and students.272 As Belge underlines, the
question of power became an obsession for the left. Indeed, the power question
became so pervasive that the left spent more time on it than on other social issues
such as the impact of urbanization, factory condition and healthcare.273
269 Sosyalizm ve Toplumsal Mücadeleler Ansiklopedisi,6 (Đletisim yayınları,1988), pp. 471-
472.
270 Karpat, Recent Developments, p.320.
271 Samim, p.154.
272 Although it called for a coalition of all progressive forces, it envisaged these three forces
as avant-garde. See Belli.
273 Samim, p. 170.
94
To the Turkish left, the Kurdish question was regarded as a natural outcome of
social and economic exploitation of the people in the region and one that would be
solved without any major effort after socialism had been achieved. Indeed, Turkish
socialists would repeat many of the same points made by the Kemalists as to the
reactionary and feudal nature of Kurdish nationalism. 274 Historically, the communist
and socialist movements did not only shy away from a discussion of the national
oppression of the Kurds, but did not make any ideological concessions to the Kurds
until the 1970s. The Turkish Communist party (TCP), for example, as early as 1930,
interpreted the Kurdish rebellions as the result of British imperialism and their
collaborators. 275 Although the party recognized theoretically the right of selfdetermination
for the Kurds, this was seen conditional upon working together with
Turkish proletarian. As such, Kurdish rights were only accepted at the most abstract
level. In practice, they saw Kurdish people as reactionary and hostile to
modernization, a view they bequeathed to socialists and Marxists of the 1960s.
Hikmet Kıvılcımlı, one of the rare communists who got into touch with the
Kurds while he was in prison in Elazığ, argued that the Eastern Question was in
general a nationality question and Kurdish nationality in particular.276 By contrast, he
argued that the question of Kurdish nationality had remained as a tool for reaction in
the hands of imperialism. 277 This standpoint was common to many other figures too.
What had changed by the 1960s was that for the first time, the party, for it own sake,
274 Hamit Bozarslan, “Some Remarks on Kurdish Historiographical Discourse in Turkey
(1919-1980)”, p.29.
275 Đnkilap Yolu Temmuz-Ağustos 1930 in Mete Tunçay, Türkiye’de Sol Akımlar-II (1925–
1936), (Đstanbul: BDS Yayınları, 1991), pp.185-205.
276 Hikmet Kıvılcımlı, Uyarmak Đçin Uyanmalı (Đstanbul: Tarihsel Maddecilik Yayınları,
1970), p.28.
277 Ibid., p.210.
95
would seek an alliance with Kurdish activists in order to strengthen the “common
struggle” against imperialism or “common enemy”. 278 However, although there was
no change in their reading of the past events until the 1960s, the TCP declared that it
supported Turkey’s Kurds’ demands for recognition of their national existence and
democratic rights within Turkish borders. 279
In general, the Turkish socialists and neo-Kemalists in the 1960s invoked a
form of orientalist discourse. They denied that the Kurds had any independent agency
and regarded them as the tools of imperialism. According to socialists, aghas and
sheiks in the Kurdish regions all belonged to the same group of feudal reactionaries.
However, as Besikçi rightly points out, both the Turkish left and Turkish socialists
could not distinguish between the two types of sheiks and aghas, the one who
collaborated with the system and imperialism and the one who devoted himself to the
Kurdish nationalism and Kurdish culture.280
The Affiliation between Kurds and the Leftists or the Second Phase of
Politicization of Kurdish Ethnicity
Socialism affected many Kurds in many ways. Foremost is the fact that
until the mid-1960s, the great emphasis on development had a positive effect on many
Kurds who also strove for the same ends. From the very onset of the second half of
1960s, although it was not the issue for the 1960s, when they, the Kurdish
intellectuals and students, began to voice cultural and political rights, they
278 “Zeki Bastımar’ın Raporu,” in, TKP MK Dıs Bürosu 1965 Tartısmaları (Đstanbul:
TÜSTAV 2004), p.80.
279 “Yakup Demir’in Bilal Sen’in Grupçu ve Fraksiyoncu Faaliyeti Üzerine Raporu-26
Nisan 1965,” in TKP MK Dıs Bürosu 1965 Tartısmaları (Đstanbul: TÜSTAV 2004), p.96.
280 Đsmail Besikçi, Cumhuriyet Halk Fırkası’nın Tüzüğü (1927) ve Kürt Sorunu (Đstanbul:
Komal, 1978), p.249.
96
rediscovered the right of self-determination with which justified their demands. At the
same time, as mentioned above, socialism in Turkey in the 1960s had undergone
some changes in terms of its attitude towards the Kurdish question and the struggle of
young Kurdish intelligentsia. While it remained in alignment with the Soviet policies
of supporting the Kemalist “progressive movement against the reactionary Kurds”, in
the 1960s, not only communists but also Turkish socialists, including some of neo-
Kemalists, due to increasing interaction with the Kurdish activists changed their
attitude.281 Indeed, Ömer Ağın, who was active in the TLP in the 1960s and joined the
TCP in the 1970s pointed out the Communist movement, did not have a serious
organization base in the East until the 1970s. 282
Marxism (or perhaps more accurately Marxist-Leninism) as an ideology, in
contrast to Turkish nationalism, not only recognized the national struggle but also
provided a relatively much more inclusive identity one based on class. Moreover,
Marxists and socialists in the 1960s opposed to the political right, which underlined
the unity of nation-state and its citizens, but legitimized national struggle on a class
base. 283 However, Kurdish nationalists, socialists and Marxists’ concept of “common
enemy” and their ultimate goals and priorities did not come to together. For instance,
when Kurdish activists began to insist on the existence of Kurdish ethnicity and
language in addition to struggle against underdevelopment and inequality, Turkish
281 For instance, Doğan Avcıoğlu furnishes a striking example of this interaction. Even
though he remained loyal to his Kemalist vision, he himself wrote an article titled “Kürt
Meselesi.” See Doğan Avcıoğlu, “Kürt Meselesi,” Yön, no. 194, (1966).
282 Ömer Ağın, interview by the author, tape recording, Istanbul, Turkey, 7 April 2009.
283Hamit Bozarslan,”Türkiye’de Kürt Sol Hareketi,”in Modern Türkiye’de Siyasi Düsünce,
Cilt. 8 Sol,ed. Murat Gültekingil (Đstanbul: Đletisim Yayınları, 2007) pp. 1170-1171.
97
socialists considered it petty bourgeois nationalism and detrimental to the socialist
movement.284
In the relatively liberal atmosphere of the 1960s, Marxist and socialist
literature appeared and drew the attention of students and intellectuals. Many young
Kurds also followed leftist journals and read Marxist classics (which had often been
deliberately mistranslated into Turkish). Most of the Kurds who later joined the TLP
joined the Socialist Culture Association (SCA). Naci Kutlay and Tarik Ziya Ekinci,
for example, were active in the SCA. 285 As Ekinci points out, those who found the
TLP branch in Diyarbakir in 1963 were the offspring of the SCA. 286 In addition, the
election of Mehmet Ali Aybar to the TLP leadership encouraged some other Kurds,
such as Canip Yildirim, to join the socialist movement.287
However, the Turkish socialists’ shift towards supporting Kemalism and
the army as agents of progress accelerated the split between the Kurdish activists and
Turkish socialists.288 As many of those affiliated with the socialist movement in the
1960s would confess later, although the Turkish socialists seemed to be against any
kind of nationalism, they were quite nationalist and did not even question their
attitude. Yet the Kurds were accused of being chauvinist and divisive since they did
not focus on the economic aspects of their common enemy. As Mehdi Zana, one of
the most important figures both in the 1960s and in 1970s, writes, their relationship
284 Yeni Akıs for example, was regarded so. Mehmet Ali Aslan interview.
285 Kutlay, Anılarım, p.102.
286 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, “Kürt sorunu ve Aybar” Cumhuriyet, Mehmet Ali Aybar Özel Eki, 21
July 1995, p.14.
287 Miroğlu, p.242.
288 Tarik Ziya Ekinci, Sol Siyaset Sorunları; Türkiye Đsçi Partisi ve Kürt Aydınlanması
(Đstanbul: Cem Yayıncılık, 2004), p.313.
98
with the Turkish socialists in the 60s was a unilateral one, especially in terms of the
national question. He argues that since the Kurds had not decided what to do, they
were expected to follow socialists and support whatsoever the Turkish socialists
decided to do. 289
All in all, whereas initially both the Kurdish and Turkish socialist shared the
same concerns such as the development of the country and the region and eliminating
social injustice, starting from the mid-1960s when the Turkish Socialist movement as
a whole witnessed a fundamental split in terms of ideology and personal conflicts, the
Kurds, too, although they remained loyal to the TLP until the late 1960s, deviated
from mainstream Turkish socialist thought.
289 Mehdi Zana, Sevgili Leyla; Uzun Bir Sürgündü O Gece (Đstanbul: Belge yayınları, 1995),
p.56.
99
CHAPTER FOUR
THE TURKISH LABOR PARTY AND THE KURDS;
THE “DOĞU MESELESĐ” 1961-1971
This chapter deals with the relationship between the new generations of
Kurdish intellectuals and the Turkish Labor Party. This relationship is essential to
understand, given that the TLP was the organization in which many Kurds got their
first taste of politics. It is also important to consider because of the importance the
Kurdish activists played in the Turkish socialist movement in general. During this
period, it is still not possible to talk about a fully developed Kurdish movement.
Kurdism, or rather Eastism, was still very much tied to the general socialist struggle
in Turkey. However, many of the experiences of Kurdish activists during the 1960s
would prove central in the development of a more defined Kurdish movement during
the 1970s and 1980s.
The Turkish Labor Party
In 1960, there was already a Socialist Party operating under the name of the
Turkish Socialist Party. Cemal Gürsel, who became president after the coup, gave an
interview to the daily Vatan and commented on the existence of the socialist party.
He stated that, “There exists a socialist party in Turkey. I tolerate their activities. A
socialist party is not a danger for the country unless it involves itself in malign goals.
However, it seems that it is still not strong enough to enter onto the political stage.”290
290“Türkiye’de bir sosyalist partisi vardır. Onların faaliyetine müsamaha ettim. Sosyalist bir
parti Türkiye için zararlı değildir. Belki de faydalı olacağı kanaatindeyim; isin içine kötü
maksatlar girmedikçe…ama görünüse göre bu parti sahneye çıkacak kadar kuvvetli
100
However, the older Turkish Socialist Party was subsumed into the TLP in the next
year, just after newer party’s establishment. In early 1961, twelve trade unionists
combined to support the foundation of a party to promote workers’ rights in 1961.
The result was that on 13 February 1961 the Turkish Labor Party was officially
registered.291 In the following day, the party founders stated, “The party was founded
in order to protect the rights of the working class. Hitherto worker have been melted
into various parties’ cadre, however, now there exists a party which represents the
working class per se.” 292
However, due to a number of factors, perhaps most significantly the lack of
experience of the party’s founders, the TLP was unable to gain much attention. In
January 1962, when the idea of establishing another party, Çalısanlar Partisi
(Workers’ Party) supported by Türk-Đs, was announced, the trade unionists started to
search for a party leader who would both secure their party and promote its
expansion. The proposed candidate was Mehmet Ali Aybar, a Marxist intellectual
who had been active in socialist and leftist movement since the1940s293 and with
değildir.” Vatan , 10 October. 1960, quoted in Aybar, TĐP Tarihi, (Đstanbul: BDS yayınları,
1988), p.74.
291 Founders were Avni Erakalın (chairman) Kemal Türkler (vice-chairman),Saban Yıldız,
Đbrahim Güzelce, Kemal Nebioğlu, Salih Özkarabay, Rıza Kuas, Đbrahim Denizciler, Adnan
Arkın, Ahmet Muslu, Hüseyin Uslubas, Saffet Göksüzoğlu.
292 “Ezilen isçi sınıfının haklarını korumak için kurulduğunu, simdiye kadar isçilerin, çesitli
partilerin kadroları içinde eriyip gittiğini, ama artık isçi sınıfını temsil eden bir parti
bulunduğunu” Vatan 14 February 1961. Quoted in Uğur Mumcu, Aybar ile Söylesi;
Sosyalizm ve Bağımsızlık (Ankara: Tekin Yayınevi, 1990), p.27.
293 According to Kemal Sülker, following names were among those whom the founders
thought to propose the party leadership, Prof. Z.F. Fındıkoğlu, Ali Rıza Arı, Dr. Ekmel
Zadil, Mehmet Ali Aybar, Orhan Arsal, Sabahattin Zaim, Sedat Erbil, Yasar Kemal, Prof.
Sabri Esat Siyavusgil, Esat Tekeli, Nadir Nadi, Esat Çağa. See, Kemal Sülker, 100 Soruda
Türkiye’de Đsçi Hareketi (Đstanbul: Gerçek Yayınevi, 1973), p.151.
101
some of his comrades had also attempted to found another socialist party after the
1960 military coup. 294
As Sabri Mustafa Sayarı argues in his important book on political parties,
personal leadership is a salient feature of all Turkish parties.295 Aybar became the
party leader on May 12, 1962. Together with Aybar, many other socialist and
Marxist intellectuals joined the party, too. This included even those Marxists and
socialists who had been banned from politics due to their violation of Laws 141 and
142 of the Turkish penal code. Indeed, not only did they support Aybar but also were
affiliated with the party. 296
In addition, Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Naci Kutlay and Kemal Burkay, all of whom
were involved in Socialist Culture Associations, joined the party. This group, along
with Mehdi Zana, his colleague Niyazi Usta (Tatlıcı), Mehmet Ali Aslan, Canip
Yıldırım and Tahsin Ekinci, was the first and to large extent the most important
section of the Kurdish intelligentsia to join the party and were responsible for the
establishment of almost all of its local branches in Kurdish Anatolia. They together
formed a group that earned the name the Doğulular (Easterners). As such, the party
became a platform for trade unions, leftist intellectuals and Kurds (See figure 4).
294 Mehmet Ali Aybar, TĐP Tarihi;1, pp.111-112.
295 Sayarı, p.135.
296 Çetin Yetkin, Türkiye’de Soldaki Bölünmeler, 1960–1970: Tartısmalar-Nedenler- Çözüm
Önerileri (Ankara: Toplum Yayınevi, 1970), p.232.
102
Figure 4. Composition of the Turkish Labor Party.
Under the leadership of Aybar, the party managed to bring together all
socialist groups, including students, under the rubric of non-capitalist development
and anti-imperialism. This unity, despite some minor clashes, survived until 1965
when the party also proved its success in the general elections and sent fifteen
deputies to the assembly. However, each group in the party, specifically, the trade
unionists, the intelligentsia, consisting of members of the pro-Turkish Communist
Party, pro-National Democratic Revolution (also known as pro-Mihri Belli), and pro-
Socialist Revolution as well as the Doğulus, sought to strengthen their position. This
led to serious conflicts especially after 1965, which will be discussed in the following
pages.
Shortly after Aybar’s participation, the Turkish Socialist Party merged with
the TLP. Aybar then embarked on an extensive tour of the East after he assumed the
leadership of the party. In 1963, the TLP received a further boost when Niyazi
Trade Unionists Doğulu (Kurds)
The Turkish Labor
Party, 1961-1971
Pro-National Democratic
Revolution
Intelligentsia
Pro-Turkish Communist
Party
Pro-Socialist Revolution
Emek Students Group Aybar Group
103
Ağırnaslı, a senator from Ankara, also joined the party. All above-mentioned
developments strengthened the party and increased its public profile. 297 Moreover,
some popular figures such as the journalist Çetin Altan also contributed to the party’s
expansion. The students, who played a major role in creating the pre-coup
atmosphere, and who had become increasingly politicized and prone to bouts of civil
disorder 298 also took great interest in the TLP.
Formation of the Party Identity
Although the party is known as having been the first and most important
socialist and Marxist party in Turkey in the 1960s, as is evident from its program and
regulations, the TLP’s socialist and Marxist identity was constituted gradually. Indeed
the party leader, Aybar, did not even use the term “socialist” until 1966. According to
its first regulations, “the TLP is a party of all citizens irrespective of race, religion,
sect, complexion, sex or class who adopts party program and regulations.” 299
However, the party regulations after the election of Aybar declared:
the TLP is a political organization marching to power by legal means, and is
of the Turkish working class and all strata and classes of proletariats (of
laborer and of small peasants, of salaried employees and wage earners, of
artisans, of small tradesmen and self-employed persons of small income, and
of progressive youth and toplumcu300 intellectuals) which gather around its
leadership. 301
297 Aren, TĐP Olayı, 1961–1971, pp.90-91.
298 Landau, Radical Politics in Modern Turkey, (Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1974), pp.29-30.
299 “TĐP, ırk, din, mezhep, deri rengi, kadın-erkek ayrımı gözetmeden ve hangi sınıftan
gelirse gelsin, parti program ve tüzüğünü benimsemis, emekten yana olan bütün yurttaslara
saflarını açık tutar.’ Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Tüzüğü 19
Nisan 1962, (Đstanbul: Đstanbul Matbaası), p.5.
300 The term Toplumcu is translated to English as ‘Socialist’. However, in Turkish and the
way the party used this term does not mean Socialist. The party would use the term Sosyalist
in 1966.
104
The party programme, which was accepted in 1964, states that,
The Turkish Labor Party is a political organization of toplumcu intellectuals,
of laborers, of landless peasants and of peasants in need of land, of artisans, of
small tradesmen, of salaried and wage earners, of self-employed persons of
small income, in short, of all citizens who live on their labor, and who have
gathered around the Turkish working class and its historical and democratic
leadership which is based on science.302
At the same time, the TLP placed much hope in the 1961 Constitution.
According to the party leadership, once entirely fulfilled, the constitution would lead
them to solve many of the problems they faced. Behice Boran, a TLP deputy elected
in the 1965 elections and who would go on to become party leader in 1970, declared
that the TLP’s mottos were “a precise and complete fulfillment of the Constitution
with its economic and social content…[they called for] full national
independence…the abolition of bilateral agreements between Turkey and the United
States and the shutting down of all American bases…[and posited that]a second
national liberation war was in motion under the leadership of the working class.” 303
The TLP was not the only party to adopt this form of leftist anti-imperialist discourse.
301Türkiye isçi partisi, Türk isçi sınıfının ve onun demokratik öncülüğü etrafında toplanmıs
bütün emekçi sınıf ve tabakalara (ırgat ve küçük köylülerin, aylıklı ve ücretlilerin,
zanaatkarların, küçük esnaf ve dar gelirli serbest meslek sahipleri ile ilerici gençliğin ve
toplumcu aydınların) kanun yolundan iktidara yürüyen, siyasi teskilatıdır.” Türkiye Đsçi
Partisi Genel Merkezi, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Tüzüğü, (Ankara. Ankara Basım ve Ciltevi,
1967)
302 “Türkiye Đsçi Partisi, Türk isçi sınıfının ve onun tarihi, bilime dayanan demokratik
öncülüğü etrafında toplanmıs, onunla kader birliğinin bilinç ve mutluluğuna varmıs
toplumcu aydınlarla ırgatların, topraksız ve az topraklı köylülerin, zanaatkârların, küçük
esnafın, aylıklı ve ücretlilerin, dargelirli serbest meslek sahiplerinin, kısacası, emeğiyle
yasıyan bütün yurttasların kanun yolundan iktidara yürüyen siyasi teskilatıdır.” TĐP,
Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Programı (Đstanbul: Eser Matbaacılık, 1964), p.14.
303 “Ekonomik-sosyal muhtevasıyla ‘anayasanın eksiksiz ve tastamam uygulanması’, ‘tam milli
bağımsızlık’, ‘ikili antlasmaların, Amerikan üstlerinin kaldırılması, Nato’dan çıkılması’, ‘emekçi
sınıfların öncülüğünde 2. Milli Kurtulus Savası’ TĐP’in basta gelen sloganlarıdır.” Behice Boran,
Türkiye ve Sosyalizm Sorunları (Đstanbul: Gün Yayınları, 1968), p.274.
105
From the mid-1960s onwards, the concept of a second national liberation struggle
against US imperialism was an integral party of Turkish leftist discourse. Much like
the Yön Declaration of 1961, which hundreds of intellectuals signed, Aybar’s call for
the formation of a National Front, a common stage for all progressive forces to
protect country from more corruption and dependency and from which to launch the
struggle for the rights, liberties and interests of laborers also is worth mentioning.
Atatürkçülük, or Ataturkism, a new way of romanticizing Atatürk’s persona
and his period, also constituted one of cornerstones of the TLP’s discourse. Barıs
Ünlü argues that this was a tactical move and that the party and Aybar deliberately
overemphasized Ataturkism to avoid accusations. 304 However, Artun Ünsal claims
that they, the TLP leadership as well as the rest of the socialist movement, sincerely
believed in Ataturkism.305 It is quite striking that both Aybar and Boran, the two most
influential figures in the party, evaluated the single-party era and Mustafa Kemal
[Atatürk] from a socialist perspective, and neither of them criticized the single-party
era or Mustafa Kemal’s policies.
Aybar argued that Kemalism, the ideology of unconditional independence,
was Leftist. 306 Boran stated that “the single-party government, took its most severe
shape after the death of Ataturk, suppressed the working class movements and left
political activities much more than the irtica307 (meaning the DP) did. 308 The party
304 Barıs Ünlü, . Bir Siyasal Düsünür Olarak Mehmet Ali Aybar ve Dönemi, (Đstanbul:
Đletisim Yayınları, 2002), p.205.
305 Artun Ünsal, “TĐP’in Ulusal Bağımsızlık Anlayısı,” in, Gündüz Vassaf, Mehmet Ali
Aybar Sempozyumları, 1997-2002; Özgürlesme Sorunları, (Đstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları,
2003), p.249.
306 Mehmet Ali Aybar, TĐP Tarihi;1, pp.126–130.
307 Irtica lit. objector is used as a synonym for conservative and reactionary political
movement.
106
program also confirmed this stance by stating that after Atatürk’s death, free thought
increasingly was more and more suppressed and toplumcu publication was banned. 309
Also, the party viewed itself as the true Ataturkist movement since it was a hundredpercent
indigenous doctrine and acted in accordance with Ataturkism although it was
inspired by contemporary realities. 310
The TLP as well as all other socialist groups in the 1960s evaluated the precoup
era DP government as having been a deviation from the independent Turkish
policy and as an irtica (reaction). Therefore, the party and all other socialist groups
cherished the military coup and on many occasions were eager to show their
appreciations for the “revolutionary” army. When Muzaffer Karan, a military officer
who had been exiled along with his 13 fellows from the National Unity Committee
joined the party (and was elected to the assembly from Denizli in 1965), Aybar gave
a statement to the press declaring that a connection had been made between the TLP
and the 27 May movement. There was a connection already; however, it was
consummated in a very real way. 311 In addition, 28 other officers from various ranks
joined the party before the 1965 general elections. 312
It is important to mention the TLP’s stance on issues such as land reform,
urbanization, and peasantry. Although the party always insisted on being the political
organization of the working class, except for the DISK (Revolutionary Workers’
308 “Atatürk’ün ölümünden sonra… en sert seklini alan tek parti yönetimi irtica kadar, hatta
ondan da fazla, sol siyasi hareketleri, isçi hareketlerini bastırdı.” Behice Boran, Türkiye ve
Sosyalizm Sorunları, p.30.
309 Türkiye Đsçi Partisi II. Büyük Kongresi (20–24 Kasım 1966 Malatya), (Đstanbul: Okur
Matbaası, 1966), p.3.
310 Mehmet Ali Aybar, Bağımsızlık, Demokrasi, Sosyalizm; Seçmeler 1945-1967, p.222.
311 Cumhuriyet, 28-29 May, 1965, also quoted in Ahmad and Ahmad. p.291.
312 Cumhuriyet, 11-May July,1965, Ahmad and Ahmad, , p.293.
107
Confederation) established in 1967 by those who broke away with the Türk-Đs, it
could not build strong ties with the working classes.313 For example, Aybar stated that
they had become acquainted with the workers by the help of the workers who had
founded the party. 314 Even when the historical strike broke out on June 15, 1970 the
TLP as well as all other socialist movement groups, especially the pro-NDR students,
were not even aware of what was happening..315
Since the peasantry consisted of more than sixty percent of the population, the
party soon realized that without their support it could not attain power. Therefore, the
peasantry was one of main concerns of the party. Boran declared that the road to
socialist government ran through the villages. Without their votes, it would be
impossible for the party to achieve an electoral breakthrough ever. 316 As will be
mentioned later, especially during the election campaigns the party paid great
attention to the peasantry, promising that if it came to power, it would ameliorate
their living conditions, expropriate more than 500 dönüm owned by individuals and
distribute the rest of the land free to those who either did not have any land or who
had insufficient amounts of land. 317
Regarding leftist students, who were among one of the most dynamic
segments of the society, the TLP seemed to be a progressive organization. The TLP
313 Even though trade unions were allowed in 1952, and the recognition of the right to strike
came in 1963. It is true that the number of workers was increasing. However, Türk-is, the
biggest and the only confederation until 1967, for example would declare that it would not
support the TLP in the general elections in 1965. On the other hand, the Turkish working
class was quite nationalized and it did not seem that it would gather around class bases.
314 Mehmet Ali Aybar, TĐP Tarihi;1,p.217.
315 Sadun Aren, TĐP Olayı, 1961–1971,p.113.
316 Behice Boran, Türkiye ve Sosyalizm Sorunları, p.159.
317 Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, Çalısma Raporu (Üçüncü Büyük Kongre 9-12 Kasım
1968, Ankara), (Đstanbul: Latin Matbaası, 1968).
108
promised both to open up new universities across the country and a new curriculum
which would meet the country’s needs. Although the students generally supported the
party up until the late 1960s, they broke away from the party due mainly to their
increasing radicalization. Prior to the 1960 coup, the objective of the leftist students
had been to protect the Kemalist legacy against the perceived Islamist reaction
represented by the election of the DP. However, in the post-coup era, the TLP
discourse of anti-imperialism and of a second national war of liberation gained
popular currency amongst students.318
Finally, one of the most important documents produced by the party apart
from the party’s regulations and program was a small booklet entitled TĐP.li’nin El
Kitabı (the manual for party members), which dealt with various questions such as
migration and religion. In this booklet, the party’s final transformation in terms of its
identity can be distinguished. 319 The party sought a holistic worldview and tried to
tackle the major issues Turkey faced during that time. For instance, the TLP put
forward a solution to the Cyprus issue, which had become a major concern during the
mid-1960s. The party suggested a federative solution and advocated the island’s full
independence. 320
Although the party engaged in a wide range of issues, from the agrarian
question to the students to Cyprus to, one of the most important issues to the party
was the economy. State led development and the nationalization of the commanding
heights of the economy were seen as formulas what would ensure not only rapid
318 Igor Lipovsky, The Socialist Movements in Turkey 1960–1980 (Leiden: E.J Brill, 1992),
p.118.
319 For the party’s stand on other issues see Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, TĐP.li’nin El
Kitabı (Ankara: Çınar Matbaası, 1969).
320 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Sol Siyaset Sorunları, p.230.
109
economic growth and a “non-capitalist way of development,” but also full national
independence. 321 However, it should be pointed out that the It should be that the
TLP always was in favor of remaining within the framework of the constitution and
pledged to come to power through the peaceful electoral process.
The impact of the TLP was much greater than its electoral success. It provided
a new set of ideas not only for the Kurdish militants and young activists, but also for
the mainstream political parties, most notably the RPP. In fact, the bulk of votes of
the TLP came from well off workers, intellectuals and students, groups which had
previously supported the RPP. As mentioned earlier, one of the reasons that the term
socialist was favored instead of toplumcu was that in 1966 the RPP had started to use
similar language. In fact, the RPP’s slide to the center left (Ortanın solu) had resulted
in a serious factional struggle within the party.322 Moreover, the TLP discourse
greatly affected the student movements of 1968.
Intra-Party Conflicts and the Party Congresses an End to Discussions
The TLP, which had started out as an interest group for the trade union
movement, under Aybar’s leadership broadened into an umbrella group
encompassing all areas of the leftist movement and influencing even those groups
which were not tied to the party. The TLP radically developed a holistic critique of
Turkey’s political establishment and developed an ideology which combined
elements of neo-Kemalism, neo-statism and socialism. The party managed to bring
together almost all leftist discontent against the country’s situation. Gün Zileli, in his
321 TĐP, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Programı, pp.64-66.
322 Yunus Emre’s MA thesis is focused on this subject. See Yunus Emre, The Genesis of the
Left of Center in Turkey: 1965-1967, M.A. Thesis, the Atatürk Đnstitute, Boğaziçi
University, 2007.
110
noteworthy book, argues that the all schisms that occurred among student movements
and among other socialist groups, essentially derived from intra party strives of
leaders for the power. 323 Zileli’s remark is pertinent to the TLP’s case.
However, starting from 1962, when the party announced its view that the
working class was the vanguard of the movement, splits began to appear. Tensions
exploded after the 1964 Party Congress in Đzmir, when Aybar was reelected and his
program was accepted. The ensuing incident, known as 13ler Olayı (incident of 13s)
resulted in the expulsion and resignation of 13 members of the party. 324
The second Congress, which was held in Malatya between 20-24 November
1966, witnessed further division within the party. In the Congress, the pro-National
Democratic Revolution group (NDR) led by Mihri Belli, a former Communist who
opposed the Socialist Revolution (SR) faction. The NDR faction envisaged a twophase
revolution on the way to socialism and as such focused on peaceful electoral
process which was the party official strategy. However, it soon became apparent that
they would be unable to take over the party. It is significant that this split occurred
after the great success of the party in the general elections in 1965 when it sent 15
deputies to the assembly. Thereafter, the pro-NDR group would not only act as a
party within the party but also would severely criticize party policy and leadership.
Furthermore, after 1968, Belli’s ideas started to become influential among students.
This prompted the majority of students to break away from the party. Even the most
influential leftist student organization, Dev-Genç (Revolutionary Youth), successor of
the FKF (Federation of Idea Clubs) declared that it would not support the TLP.
323 Gün Zileli, Yarılma (1954-1972) (Đstanbul: Đletisim, 2004), p.395.
324 Rasih Nuri Đleri, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi’nde Oportünist Merkeziyetçilik (1966-1968)
(Đstanbul: Yalçın Yayınları, 1987), pp.8-9.
111
In 1968, however, the most stunning conflict occurred among pro-SR
(Socialist Revolution) intellectuals. The proposal of five, known as the 5’li Önerge,
signed by Sadun Aren, Nihat Sargın, Minnetullah Haydaroğlu, Saban Erik and Behice
Boran stated that the party was not responsible for Aybar’s statements. The
signatories claimed that Aybar had deviated from socialism and he wanted to
establish his own personal administration, which was against the party regulations. 325
This fiver’s group was also known as the Emek (Labor) group, on account of the
journal that they published. Although it is commonly argued that the dispute occurred
because of the disagreement over the Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia in August
1968, Boran states that she herself criticized the event as strongly as Aybar did. 326
The third grand congress of the party met in November 1968. Despite the fact that
Aybar was reelected to party leadership and Sadun Aren was elected to party general
assembly, it prefigured the inevitable dissolution of the party.
By 1969, almost all opposition within the party was silenced. The TLP had
managed to get rid of the pro-NDR and the pro-TCP (Turkish Communist Party)
groups. This prompted students who were either part of the pro-NDR or already had
turned to extra- parliamentary opposition, to turn to armed struggle in the early 1970s,
a shift which the TLP denounced. 327 On November 15 1969, in the aftermath of a
disastrous electoral performance which saw the party’s parliamentary contingence
reduced from 15 to 2, Aybar resigned from his role as party leader. Mehmet Ali
Aslan, a young Doğulu lawyer, was elected to party chairmanship where he stayed
325 Uğur Mumcu, Aybar ile Söylesi; Sosyalizm ve Bağımsızlık, p.56.
326 Uğur Mumcu, Bir Uzun Yürüyüs (Ankara: Tekin Yayınevi, 1990), p.63.
327 Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, Türkiye Đsçi Partis Genel Yönetim Kurulu Raporu,
(Dördüncü Olağan Büyük Kongre, 29.30.31 Ekim 1970- Ankara) (Ankara: Senyuva
Matbaası, 1970), pp.24-25.
112
just a month. Although Aslan was elected as party chairman, Aybar’s defeat led also
to a decline in Doğulu group’s support to the party.
The Party’s Fourth Congress, the last one, held in Ankara on 29-31 November
1970. Behice Boran became the party leader, while almost no one from the Aybar
group was elected to party organs in the Congress. 328 As will be examined later, in
this congress, although both Doğulu group and pro-Aybar group withdrew their
support of the party, Boran took great pains to keep the young Kurdish students of the
DDKO on their side since the students of the pro-NDR were no longer aligned with
the party. 329 The next section will focus on the shift within the TLP which resulted in
the party’s historical resolution declaring that there were a Kurdish people living in
the East of Turkey. Finally, the same period saw the TLP redefine itself from a mass
party to a Leninist party. Specifically, a party that saw itself as a vanguardist
movement based on scientific socialism.330
Easterners, the Turkish Labor Party, and the Eastern Question
As already mentioned, up until 1960, the Kurds had remained aloof not only
from the Leftist groups, but also from Turkish nationalism, in its opposition to some
of the actions of the state. The Turkish Labor Party was no exception regarding its
understanding of the region and the population that lived there. The presence of
Aybar attracted some Kurdish socialists, who considered themselves Sosyalist
Doğulular (Socialist Easterners) who functioned as a bridge between the leftist
328 Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi IV. Büyük Kongresi (29-31 Ekim
1970 Ankara); Alınan Kararlar ve Yapılan Seçimlerin Sonuçları.
329 Mümtaz Kotan, “Tarihin Karartılması Eylemi Üzerine: Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları
Somut bir örnek DDKO” BÎR, no. 6 2006, (originally derived from Mümtaz Kotan,
Yenilginin Đzdüsümleri, 2003, pp. 374-451)
330 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Sol Siyaset Sorunları;… p.315.
113
movement and Kurdish Anatolia. This group represented the militants of the party in
the region, employing Duverger’s term, those “who form the nucleus of the party’s
basic groups and regularly attend meetings, spread the party’s slogans, help to
organize its propaganda, and prepare its electoral campaigns.” 331
Yet, as will be seen below, those whose identity was already ethnicized and
considered themselves Kurds, and who mainly resided in the Kurdish regions also
became party militants. Although it is hard to make a clear distinction between the
two groups, Easterners and Kurds, save for the fact that in some sense both were
ethnically Kurdish, it can be argued that the following conflicts derived essentially
from the way they chose to describe themselves and the problems that they faced.
Those who can be considered to have been militants of the party comprised
three different groups. Firstly, the group of young socialist Kurdish intellectuals,
many of whom had higher educations and worked mainly as either lawyers, medical
doctors or publishers, established and organized virtually all party branches across the
region. Among them were Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Naci Kutlay, Mehmet Ali Aslan, Kemal
Burkay, Tahsin Ekinci, Edip Karahan and Canip Yıldırım, Örfi Akkoyunlu, Yasar
Kaya, Enver Aytekin and Musa Anter.
The second group consisted of those who were either supporters of the TKDP
or nonpartisan Kurds (primarily the Kurdish mullahs or artisans). This group included
Sait Elçi, Abdulkerim Ceylan (Mele Abdülkerim), Mahmut Okutucu (Mele Mahmut),
Sait Kırmızıtoprak, Muhterem Biçimli, Hüseyin Musa Sağnıç ( Feqi Hüseyin), Nazmi
Balkas and Osman Aydın, Mehmet Emin Bozarslan, Fehmi Firat (Fehmiyé Bilal)
Niyazi Tatlıcı (Usta) and Mehdi Bilici (Zana) and Abdurrahman Uçar. This group
331 Duverger, p.110.
114
also supported the formation of TLP branches in the region and helped to spread the
party’s base.
The third group, though there is a scarcity of information, consisted of
Kurdish students, not only in Istanbul and in Ankara, but in Kurdish Anatolia as well.
They also helped the party organization and played a considerable role in the election
campaigns. By the 1970 there were dozens of Kurdish student associations and clubs,
most of which functioned as hemseri (fellow townsmen) support groups and
associations. The DDKO was an attempt to unite all these disparate Kurdish
associations on the part of the Kurdish youth. It should be pointed out that the borders
between the above-mentioned groups were not entirely clear. As such, many of those
belonging to the first or second group were also involved in the foundation of the
DDKO.
These three factions of Kurds within the party generally got along with each
other and did not clash, for two major reasons; namely political ambition and
ideological differences on the Kurdish issue. Despite this, they faced a deep crisis in
1970. At the same time, the participation of these groups in the TLP not only changed
the party’s stance towards Kurdish Anatolia and its population, but also encouraged
the party and its militants in the region. This led the Kurds within the TLP to focus
more on the region and its unique problems, to wit, the suppression of Kurdish
ethnicity and economic backwardness.
However, as the following Table shows, party expansion in terms of party
members was limited to less than two thousand people. The table relies on the party’s
documents and represents the peak of the party expansion in terms of membership,
specifically in the year 1968. As a result of the party’s policy which gave priority to
the organization and sought to transform itself to be a grassroots labor party, the party
115
branches were formed in 22 provinces and 184 districts within just thirteen days.332
As noted above, Kurdish socialists participated in the formation of many of these
branches. Although it was generally hard to find enough people to form the party, it
also striking that none of the party’s members was women. 333
Table 2 Regional Distribution of Turkish Labor Party's Members
7,986; 62%
2,019; 16%
1,094; 9%
1,596; 13%
Marmara, Aegean, Mediterranean Central Anatolia Black Sea East and Southeast Anatolia
Whereas the party had been organized only in Diyarbakır in 1963 and ran in
local elections in the same year, prior to the general elections of 1965, with the
exception of Bitlis, Erzincan and Hakkâri,334 party branches were formed in eleven
cities and several districts in the fifteen provinces of the region. As in other parts of
the country, the TLP was suppressed and faced severe attacks, which made it almost
impossible to form party branches. The impetus for the rapid expansion of the party
332 Artun Ünsal, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi (1961–1971) (Đstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yurt Yayınları,
2002) p.235.
333 Doğu Perinçek, “Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Üyelerinin Sınıf Yapısı,” Aydınlık Sosyalist
Dergi,no. 3 (January 1969), p.220.
334 Although the TLP in first place was organized in the province of Gaziantep, which was
deemed as the East as well, in my analysis, I do not include Gaziantep.
Source: Doğu Perinçek, “Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Üyelerinin Sınıf Yapısı,” Aydınlık
Sosyalist Dergi, no, 3 (January, 1969), p.208.
116
in the Eastern region, though not so easy, was undoubtedly the first group of Kurdish
socialists and their collaboration with the other two groups.
The expansion of the party in Kurdish Anatolia went as follows: First, in
Diyarbakır, the most important eastern city in the region, then Malatya, Urfa (in
Siverek), Mardin (in Derik), Van, Mus, Ağrı, Kars, Siirt, Elazığ and Tunceli.335 As a
matter of fact, except for the Malatya branch, which was formed by Hayrettin Abacı,
a former socialist, and Siirt branch which was formed by Enver Aytekin, Tarık Ziya
Ekinci, Tahsin Ekinci, Naci Kutlay, Mehmet Ali Aslan and Kemal Burkay were the
main force behind it.336 In addition, prior to the 1969 elections, Mehmet Ali Aslan
formed party branches in Erzurum and Bitlis, too.337
The first group managed to gain influence within the TLP through
participation in the General Committee. Influential easterners included Tarık Ziya
Ekinci, Mehmet Ali Aslan in 1966, and in 1968 Naci Kutlay, and Kemal Burkay.
However, none of above persons was elected to the party administration in the Fourth
Grand Congress in 1970, which was held after Aybar resigned from the party
leadership. As will be discussed below in detail, besides intra-party conflicts, the
competition among Kurdish groups and their influence within the party would
determine its stance on the Kurdish question. However, with the exception of a few
minor clashes such as the TKDP’s attempt to seize control of the TLP Diyarbakir
branch,338 and a conflict between Musa Anter and Tarık Ziya Ekinci and Canip
335 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Sol Siyaset Sorunları, p.300.
336 For more details, see Burkay, Kutlay, T.Ekinci and Aslan.
337 Mehmet Ali Aslan, interview by the author, tape recording, Istanbul, Turkey, 31 January
2009.
338 Tarik Ziya Ekinci, Sol Siyaset Sorunları, p.302.
117
Yıldırım,339 relations between all three sections of Kurdish activism remained
peaceful up to the late 1960s.
The Turkish Labor Party and the Formation of Doğu Meselesi
In light of what was discussed above, it is important to recognize that the
party’s stand on the Eastern Question was not constant. Aybar, just after his election
as TLP leader, embarked on a tour of the East. The party’s first approach to the issue
appeared in 1963 during the party’s General Meeting held in Gaziantep. Aybar’s
statement at the meeting, which was also included in the party’s program and
remained as the main policy of the party on the region until the late 1960s, declared
under the title of “development of the East” that;
Today, the East and Southeastern provinces, according to masses of their
citizens and civil servants, are a region of destitution…parallel to the region’s
underdevelopment, those citizens inhabit there are socially and culturally
backward. Besides, from those citizens who speak Kurdish and Arabic or
belong to Alevi sect, are being discriminated against owing to this situation.
We confront the difficult issues of the cause of this state of affairs. It is a
national duty to be taken serious to find an optimum and humane remedy in
accordance with our national interests.340
It continues:
Secondly, the East and Southeastern provinces must be freed from being a
region of destitution. Taking into account the fact that hitherto they have been
neglected, factories, hospitals, libraries, theaters and roads must the
constructed in these provinces. The most qualified, humane and publicminded
civil servants must be sent to those provinces so that these citizens
will feel that they are real children of the motherland and would not be seized
339 Musa Anter, Hatıralarım 1-2, p.213.
340 “Bugün doğu ve güneydoğu illerimiz büyük vatandas ve memur kitlesi gözünde bir
mahrumiyet bölgesidir…bölgenin ekonomik geriliğine paralel olarak buradaki vatandaslar
sosyal ve kültürel bakımdan geri durumdadırlar. Üstelik bu vatandaslarımızdan kütçe ve
Arapça konusanlar veya alevi mezhebinden olanlar bu durumları sebebiyle ayırıma
uğramaktadırlar. Bunun doğurduğu çetin meselelerle karsı karsıyayız. Ulusal
menfaatlerimize en uygun, en insanca çözüm yollarını bulmak ihmal edilmiyecek bir yurt
vazifesidir.”TĐP, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Programı, p.110.
118
with the instigations of internal and external enemies. There is no other way
but this for solution. 341
Furthermore, the party programme promised to solve the economic problems
of the region with a comprehensive land reform that promised to redistribute land to
those who had insufficient holdings or none at all. The party both in its documents
and in its electoral campaigns frequently mentioned that it would give priority to the
development of the region. 342 Accordingly, the party in its later publications put great
emphasis on the economic underdevelopment of the region.
This is remarkable for various reasons. First, as will be seen below, the party
underlined the ethnic characteristic of the region, mainly the language, during its
electoral campaigns. Furthermore, thanks to the TLP’s overemphasis upon
independence, dependence and other such leftist jargon, as well as its stress on the
economic backwardness of the region, many Kurdish groups starting from the late
1960s reinvented the “theory of developmentalism” and interpreted it as “theory of
dependency.” They would argue that it is not because the region was neglected that
there was an Eastern Question, rather it was because Kurds were being exploited due
to their ethnic identity. Moreover, if Turkey was not independent, then the Kurdish
regions were not, since they were exploited by Turkey. As Aslan argues, this theory
of dependency attracted the younger Kurdish socialists. 343
341“Đkincisi Doğu ve Güneydoğu illeri bir mahrumiyet bölgesi olmaktan kurtarılmalıdır.
Simdiye kadar ihmal edildiklerini de göz önünde bulundurarak okulun, fabrikanın,
hastanenin, kütüphanenin, tiyatronun, yolun en çoğu bu illerde açılmalıdır. Memurun en
iyisi, en insancılı ve yurtseveri bu illere gönderilmelidir. Ta ki, bu vatandaslarımız
anayurdun öz evlatları olduklarını kalplerinde duysunlar ve iç ve dıs düsmanların
kıskırtmasına kapılmasınlar. Bu meselenin baska bir çözüm yolu yoktur.” Mehmet Ali
Aybar, Bağımsızlık, Demokrasi, Sosyalizm; Seçmeler pp.281-282.
342 Mehmet Ali Aybar, 25 Eylül 1965 TĐP 10 Ekim 1965 Radyo Konusmaları, Yasasın
Emekçiler, Yasasın Türkiye (Ankara: Sosyal Adalet Yayınları, 1966), p.14.
343 Mehmet Ali Aslan, Sabancı’ya Mektup; Kürt Sorunu, PKK Realitesi, Sosyalizmin
Geleceği (Ankara: Söğüt Ofset, 1996), p.165.
119
TLP conceded that the Eastern Question had some ethnic aspect to it.
However, the issue was primarily one of, poverty and underdevelopment. The TLP
never clearly formulated the ethnic aspect of the Eastern Question. The party
promised that those who were treated as “second class citizens,” namely, workers,
those whose mother tongue was Kurdish and those who belonged to the Alevi sect
would be treated as “first class citizens.” 344 The Party’s program stated that:
The party will treat these compatriots as full citizens…make sure they enjoy
the rights and freedoms acknowledged in the Constitution. It is written in the
12th Article of the Constitution that all citizens are equal before the law
irrespective of religion, language, race, group or class; this order of our
Constitution will be implemented word for word.
However, it went on to note:
The Turkish Labor Party, as is manifested in the 3rd Article of the
Constitution, enounces the indivisibility of the Turkish state as a whole
comprising its territory and people and definitely disallows any kind of
separatism and regionalism. 345
It is striking that the 3rd article also includes the provision; “Its [Turkey’s]
official language is Turkish,” a point the party programme does not mention.
According to Aybar, the Eastern Question would be solved alongside the other issues
that affected the country. 346 Interestingly, as will be discussed below, the Party’s
election manifesto for the 1965 election declared that “our nationalism disapproves
the idea of fascist nationalism, which is contemptuous and aggressive, and takes the
344 Mehmet Ali Aybar, Bağımsızlık, Demokrasi, Sosyalizm; Seçmeler,, p.632.
345 “…bu yurttaslarımıza tam bir yurttas muamelesi yapacaktır. Anayasa’da tanınan hak ve
hürriyetlerden bu yurttaslarımızın da yararlanmaları sağlanacaktır. Anayasa’mızın
12.maddesinde yurttaslar arasında din, dil, ırk, sınıf ve zümre ayrımı gözetilmeyeceği
yazılıdır; Anayasa’mızın bu emri harfi harfine yerine getirilecektir. Türkiye Đsçi Partisi
Anayasa’nın 3. maddesinde belirtildiği gibi Türkiye’nin ülkesi ve milleti ile bölünmez bir
bütün olduğunu ifade eder ve her türlü bölücülüğü ve bölgeciliği kesinlikle reddeder. Her
seyden evvel, Toprak Reformunun uygulanması, adaletli gelir dağılımı, sosyal ve iktisadi
nedenlerden dolayı elzemdir.” TĐP, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Programı, pp.110-111.
346 Mehmet Ali Aybar, Bağımsızlık, Demokrasi, Sosyalizm; Seçmeler, p.594.
120
lead of policy of expansionism of imperialism.” 347 According to the Party’s manual,
the primary reason for the disdaining of “our eastern citizens,” was because they were
poor. “There are such aghas and beys who speak Kurdish and are accredited and
respected well enough.” 348 Accordingly, Boran after one of her tours from the region
declared,
Aghas, Sheiks and other local men of weight as well, support the idea that the
Eastern and Southeastern regions are backward and poor because of ethnic
distinction, the intentional negligence and different treatment on account of
that reason. During my last journey, I noticed that this idea is deliberately
disseminated…349
Moreover, during one of the party meeting in Diyarbakir in 1964, Boran stated
that:
The working class is deliberately to be divided against itself by the kindling of
race issues. In Turkey, distinctions such as Kurdish, Circassian, Abaza, Alevi,
and Sunni are instigated by the self-seeking classes. Administrators
discriminate between regions. Diyarbakir is only one of them; the
wretchedness of the East is not Kurdish versus Turkish. Those who say this
are liars. 350
Of course, there are plenty such examples. However, now it is necessary to
move to a discussion about how this issue was referred to by the Kurdish socialists.
As examined in the first chapter, an ethnoregional movement is twofold, the
economic underdevelopment and ethnicity. The affiliation between a region’s new
347 Türkiye Đsçi Partisi, Seçim Bildirisi, (Đstanbul: Yenilik basımevi, 1965), p.18.
348 Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, TĐP.li’nin El Kitabı, p.33.
349“Ağalar, seyhler, öbür mahalli nüfuzlular da Doğu ve Güneydoğu bölgelerinin daha geri
ve yoksul kalmasını etnik farka ve bu fark dolaysıyla ihmal edilisine, farklı muamele
görmesine atfeden görüsü desteklemektedir. Son gezimde söyle bir iddianın yayılmak
istendiğini sezdim.” Behice Boran, Türkiye ve Sosyalizm Sorunları, p.191.
350 bütün dünyada isçi sınıfının, ırk sorunu ortaya çıkarılarak bölünmesi üzerine konustu:
“Türkiye’de Kürt, Çerkez, Abaza, Alevi, Sünni gibi ayrımların, çıkarcı çevrelerce
körüklendiğini…Yöneticiler bölge bölge ayırımm yapıyorlar. Diyarbakır bunlardan yalnız
birisi, doğunun sefaleti Kürtlük-Türklük değildir. Bunu söyleyenler yalancıdırlar” Sosyal
Adalet, Aralik 1964, p.45. quoted in Ahmad and Ahmad, p.281.
121
elites and socialist movement after a while, as the first chapter pointed out, tend to be
ethnosocialist. While the socialists emphasize the economic situation, which is the
source of other problems as well, the ethnic elites also include the issue of their
ethnicity, which they argue causes the region to stand out from the rest of the country
and feeds economic backwardness.
In this regard, the socialist part of the ethnoregional movement, that is to say,
the TLP’s leadership and militants as a whole, including the vanguard Kurdish
socialists, believed that socioeconomic restoration in accordance with the socialist
economic approach would solve all other questions at once. Land reform, the
fulfillment of the constitution, and state-supported industrialization together were
regarded as remedies. This view also deeply influenced those who considered
ethnicity as a part of the problem. For instance, Mehmet Emin Bozarslan’s early book
strikes a similar tone. 351
Furthermore, Tarık Ziya Ekinci, as a deputy from Diyarbakir, argued in the
assembly that implementations of land reform and a just income distribution for
social and economic reasons were indispensible. 352 He also responded to ultranationalist
articles which called for ethnic cleansing and the expulsion of the
population,353 by arguing that showing the economic deprivation of the region
justifiable, because of its population’s ethnic characteristics was treacherous. 354
However, it must be underlined that the party used a dual language in terms of
Kurdish ethnicity and its suppression. Furthermore, as mentioned above, there was
351 Mehmed Emin Bozarslan, Doğunun Sorunları (Diyarbakır: Safak Kitabevi, 1966), p.145.
352 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Doğu Dramı Türkiye Đsçi Partisi Mecliste:5 (Ankara: Ankara Basım
ve Ciltevi, 1967), pp.15-16.
353 Among them were Ötüken and Milli Yol, which I already mentioned in the previous
chapter.
354 Ekinci, Doğu Dramı, p.25.
122
more than one group within the party. Especially during election campaigns, the party
militants would employ Kurdish ethnicity. As a matter of fact, the second group of
Kurds had already started discussions about Kurdish ethnicity and language. In 1963,
when 23 Kurdish writers and publishers, three of whom were members of the TLP,
were arrested, Niyazi Ağırnaslı, senator of the TLP, refuted the claims made by the
Minister of the Interior. He asserted that the party was not behind either their
individual crimes nor did it support any such activities against the indivisibility and
unity of the state and the nation. 355
Apparently, the party endeavored to keep away from ethnic discourse-leaning
accusations. For example, after the publication of Yeni Akıs, in 1966, Boran and her
colleagues accused the publisher, Mehmet Ali Aslan, of supporting bourgeois
nationalism, which conflicted with the party program and Marxist ideology. 356
Moreover, despite the resolution accepted in the Fourth General Congress of the Party
in 1970, the party would refuse to support Kurdish nationalism since it was against
any kind of nationalism owing to the fact they were against the constitution. 357
Horowits argues that ethnicity offers political leaders the promise of secure
support. 358 Owing to the fact that playing the ethnic card explicitly was out of
question due to legal restrictions in the 1960s, the party and its militants preferred to
use a rather vague language. Therefore, since they could not apply to the ethnic card
explicitly they avoided any connections with the ethnicized parties in public. In this
sense, although they applied to the ethnic card implicitly, and indeed some groups
355 Turhan Salman, TĐP (Türkiye Đsçi Partisi) Parlamentoda 1963–1966 (Đstanbul: Tüstav,
2004), p.32.
356 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Kürtlerde Sosyal Değisim Süreçleri ve TĐP’in Katkısı, 19 Eylül 2008
(Unpublished Paper). Aslan also confirmed this.
357 Turkish Republic, Resmi Gazete, 6 Ocak 1972, Karar Sayisi;1971/3 pp.3–16.
358 Horowitz, p.295.
123
within the party, such as the TKDP, mullahs and, to some extent, students focused on
the ethnic aspect of the issue, the party militants generally used the existing ties to
attain as many as votes as they could. The last section of this chapter is devoted to the
responses of the Kurdish groups to above-mentioned TLP policy on the Kurdish
issue. We first look at the election results in the region to reach a general conclusion
on the Eastern Question and the TLP.
The Elections, the Turkish Labor Party and the Region
Between two military interventions, 1960–1971, constituents voted eight
times in Turkey, three times in national elections (1961, 1965 and 1969), twice for
local elections (1963 and 1968), and three times for renewal elections for the Senate
(1961 with the general elections, 1964, 1966 and 1968). Interestingly, the
participation rates consistently declined from 81.4 percent in 1961 to 64.3 percent in
1969. The decrease occurred for a number of reasons, such as the military
intervention and the radicalization of youth in the late 1960s. As Table 2 reveals,
while no single party won the majority of the seats in the assembly in 1961, the
Justice Party (JP) successor of the DP, was the winner in 1965 and 1969 general
elections. At the national level, the TLP received 0.39 percent and 2.72 percent in
1963 and 1968 local elections, 2.97 percent and 2.68 percent in 1965 and 1969
general elections, while it obtained 3.9 percent and 4.7 percent in renewal elections
for the Senate. In contrast to the 1965 elections, from which the party obtained 7.9
percent of the votes in Istanbul, 4.3 percent in Ankara and 3.9 percent in Izmir and
sent four representatives from these three large cities, in 1969 general elections, it
124
garnered only 5.7 percent, 2.5 percent and 2.9 percent, respectively in these cities. In
fact, the only seats that the TLP managed to win in 1969 were from Istanbul.359
A
As Table 3 reveals, the change of the electoral system in the 1969 election,
from proportional representation, which allowed small parties to gain greater
representation in a “first past the post system,” led to a great discrepancy among party
votes and seats in the assembly. The TLP got its 12 deputies thanks to the electoral
system in 1965. While the Turkish Union Party, which had been founded by leading
Alevis and drew its support mainly from the Alevi community,360 was able send 8
359 See Appendix A.
360 Mehmet Ertan’s M.A. Thesis is a thorough study of the TUP and gives us some insights
into the party. See Mehmet Ertan, The Circuitous Politicization of Alevism: The Affiliation
between the Alevis and the Left Politics (1960–1980). M.A. Thesis, The Ataturk Institute for
Modern Turkish History, Boğaziçi University, 2008.
Table 3 Result of the General Election of Representatives between 1961-1969
1961 1965 1969
Population
Number of registered voters
Number of actual voters
Participation rate (%)
Number of valid votes
28 227 000
12 925 395
10 522 716
81.4
10 138 035
31 14900
13 679 753
9 748 678
71.3
9 307 563
31 443 000
14 788 552
9 516 035
64.3
9 086 296
Votes (%) Seats Votes (%) Seats Votes (%) Seats
Justice Party (JP) 34.79 158 52.87 240 46.55 256
Nation Party (NP) - 6.27 31 3.22 6
Nationalist Action Party
(NAP)
- - 3.02 1
New Turkey Party (NTP) 13.72 65 3.72 19 2.17 6
Republican People’s Party
(RPP)
36.74 173 28.74 134 27.37 143
Republican Peasant’s
Nationalists Party (RPNP)
13.96 54 2.24 11 -
Republican Reliance Party
(RRP)
- - 6.57 15
Turkish Labor Party (TLP) - 2.97 14 2.68 2
Turkish Union Party (TUP) - - 2.80 8
Independents 0.80 - 3.18 1 5.62 13
Source: T.C. Basbakanlık Türkiye Đstatistik Kurumu, Đstatistik Göstergeler;
1923-2005, Publication Number: 3047, Ankara, 2006, p.136-140.
125
representatives with 2.80 percent of the vote. However, in 1969 The NTP won six
seats even though it polled less than the TLP. It should be noted that four out of six
deputies of the NTP were elected from the East and Southeast regions due to the fact
that the new system favored party’s which had strong local concentrations of support.
The electoral system favored the two big political parties, the JP and the RPP.
Although both parties obtained less than they had in 1965, they increased their seats.
The JP, the ruling party, got the most votes and seats in 1969 as it had earlier in the
decade.
In the case of the East and Southeast region, the JP made rapid progress and it
became the largest party in the region. As the following diagram demonstrates, in the
early 1960s the JP had been unable to organize properly in the East and won 11.7
percent (1961) of the vote. This early weakness mainly had been because of the
presence of the NTP, which had strong support in the region. However, in the later
elections, the JP faired better. It obtained 30.9 percent (1965) and 30.3 percent (1969)
of the total amount of votes in fifteen provinces in the region.
0,0%
5,0%
10,0%
15,0%
20,0%
25,0%
30,0%
35,0%
40,0%
45,0%
50,0%
1961 1965 1969
The General Elections
Votes
JP
RPP
NTP
INDEPENDENTS
OTHERS
Figure 5 Parties' votes in the fifteen provinces in the East and Southeast.
126
At the same time, the percentage of votes for the NTP went down from 34.9
percent (1961) to 18 percent (1965) and to 10.9 percent (1969). The same decline can
be observed in the RPP’s case; while it was the first party in the region in 1961 (40.4
percent), the RPP obtained only 31.4 percent in 1965 and this was reduced to 24
percent in 1969. Other parties, comprising of the Republican Peasants Nationalist
Party (RPNP) which became Nationalist Action Party in 1969 (NAP), the Nation
Party (NP), the Republican Reliance Party (RRP), Turkish Labor Party (TLP) and
Turkish Unity Party (TUP), however, saw an increase in the vote in Kurdish Anatolia.
These groups gained 13.3 percent in 1961, 7.7 percent in 1965 and 18.2 percent in
1969, while independent candidates increased their votes from 0.3 percent in 1961 to
7.7 percent in 1965 and 18.2 percent in 1969.361
First of all, the dramatic decline of the two political parties, the JP and the
RPP, is worth mentioning here. While the two major political parties, the JP and the
RPP together obtained a 75.7 percent average in the three elections at the national
level, the two managed to get only 28.1 percent of the Southeastern region’s votes,
which was almost three times less than the national average.362 The NTP faced a
decline at the national level due to its failure to win over the JP’s voters or former DP
supporters. While it got 14 percent in 1961, it obtained only 3.7 percent and 2.2
percent in the 1969 general elections. Likewise, at the national level, the RPP also fell
from 36.7 percent (1961) to 28.7 percent (1965) and to 27.4 percent (1969). In
addition, the RRP of Turhan Feyzioglu, which broke off the RPP, played a great role
in the RPP’s decline in the region. The RRP managed to split the RPP vote in 1969 by
obtaining 36.9 percent in Hakkari, 31.1 percent in Ağrı and 23.6 percent in Van.
361 For more details, see Appendix B.
362 Calculated from three general elections results. See Table 3 and appendix B.
127
Finally, the decline of the two biggest parties in 1961 was based on the increase of
independent candidates and the other political parties, too.
When looking on the previous page, the first question that comes to mind is
how these deviations could have happened. First of all, as Mehmet Emin Bozarslan, a
Kurdish mullah from Diyarbakır who was affiliated with the TLP, points out, “the
Easterners vote for his Agha or Sheik or his acquaintance.” 363 On the other hand,
almost 75 percent of the population was made up peasants and the illiterate.
Furthermore, as Lale Yalçın-Heckmann underlines, the tribal way of life and its
impact on political life were primary reasons for the fluctuation of votes in the region.
364 This is because, the political power in the region was in the hands of an elite group
of aghas, sheiks, and some intellectuals and their relatives. Therefore, tribal
membership and religious authority could be political assets for garnering support.
When the notables shifted their alignment, they brought with them a ready-made
voting bloc.
Despite some very small changes by the 1960s, this pattern and structure of
the Kurdish political landscape remained more or less the same until late 1970s. In
terms of figures, the TLP’s participation in the elections did not change this situation
either. Even the TLP itself used these traditional channels in the elections on many
occasions. If one looks at the fluctuation of TLP votes, it appears to be more or less
the same as the other political parties. In other words, the candidates themselves were
the most decisive factors behind either the success or failure of the party in the region.
363 Mehmed Emin Bozarslan, Doğunun Sorunları, p.141.
364 Lale Yalçın-Heckmann, “On Kinship, Tribalism and Ethnicity in Eastern Turkey,”in
Ethnic Groups in the Republic of Turkey, comp. and ed. Peter Alford Andrews (Wiesbaden:
Dr. Ludwig Reichert Verlag, 1989), p.626.
128
Because the TLP could not participate in the 1961 general elections, contested
only in Diyarbakır in 1963 local elections, and got 1.5 percent, this analysis is mainly
based on three elections, the 1965 and 1969 general elections and the local elections
in 1968. Party branches, as pointed out above, were opened in almost all provinces
except for Bitlis, Erzincan and Hakkari due primarily to local notables’
disapproval.365 However, except for some branches such as in Diyarbakır, Tunceli,
Ağrı, Kars, Malatya, Mus and Urfa, party organizations to some extent were symbolic
and hollow. Therefore, the attention was directed at the above-mentioned cities. In the
1965 elections, the TLP ran candidates from the region such Tarık Ziya Ekinci in
365The strongest objection to organization of the party usually came from the local groups
mentioned above. For instance, in Erzincan where the majority of population was Alevi,
Kemal Burkay was told to not to divide Alevi constituency by opening the party branch
there. See, Burkay, Anılar, Belgeler, I.Cilt, p.236.
Table 4 The Turkish Labor Party’s Votes in the Fifteen Provinces
Province
1965 General Election
Votes % Seats
1968 Local Elections
Votes %
1969 General Election
Votes % Seats
Agri 3466 4.90 0 894 1.1 1290 1.65 0
Bingol 830 2.12 0 1668 3.5 778 1.58 0
Bitlis --- --- -- --- --- 346 0.78 0
Diyarbakir 8867 8.00 1 3037 2.3 3330 2.75 0
Elazig 2062 2.63 0 2505 3.0 1410 1.75 0
Erzincan --- --- --- --- --- 958 1.39 0
Hakkâri --- --- --- 1320 4.7 154 0.55 0
Kars 9333 5.97 1 12932 4.9 13003 8.26 0
Malatya 4707 3.71 1 12409 10.1 6952 5.24 0
Mardin 1965 1.66 0 --- --- 317 0.23 0
Mus 2062 3.72 0 614 1.0 2282 3.69 0
Siirt 1190 1.96 0 1140 1.4 911 1.20 0
Tunceli 2387 5.84 0 2369 5.2 7187 16.80 0
Urfa 3771 3.17 1 6018 5.2 2578 2.00 0
Van 1869 2.62 0 2732 3.3 952 1.17 0
TOTAL 42509 3.09 4 47638 3.04 42448 3.26 0
Source: T.C. Basbakanlık Devlet Istatistik Enstitüsü, 1950-1965 Milletvekili ve 1961,
1964 Cumhuriyet Senatosu Üye Seçimleri Sonuçları, Yayın No: 513 Ankara, 1966,
pp. XXII-XXXVII; T.C. Basbakanlık Devlet Istatistik Enstitüsü, 17 Kasim 1963
Mahalli Seçimler Sonuçları, Yayın no: 474, Ankara, 1963; ---2 Haziran 1968
Mahalli Secimler Sonuclari, Yayın no: 555, Ankara, 1969.
129
Diyarbakır, Mehmet Ali Aslan in Ağrı, Kemal Burkay in Bingöl (Burkay had in fact
never been to Bingöl), Behice Boran in Urfa, Saban Erik in Malatya, Adil Kurtel in
Kars. Among fifteen deputies, four were elected to the Parliament from the region:
Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Adil Kurtel, Saban Erik and Behice Boran.366
As Ekinci mentions in his book on the TLP, prior to the 1965 elections, each
group within the party wanted to dominate by choosing and directing the delegates
and candidates for the parliament. This is evidenced by the efforts of the pro-TKDP
group to assume control of the Diyarbakir TLP branch. 367 Musa Anter was asked to
run for the Mardin TLP candidacy against Canip Yıldırım, another prominent Kurd in
Diyarbakır. Anter refused to do so and ran as an independent.368 Due to this
dissension among parties, the TLP was unable win in Mardin and got only 1190 votes
(1.9 percent), while Anter himself obtained 10,000 votes, the highest amount in the
fifteen provinces. However, Anter was not able to win a seat. On the other hand, Faik
Bucak, although he had been rejected by the JP, ran for the Urfa seat as an
independent. He, too, got a quite large number of votes, about 15, 000. However, he
too was unable to enter parliament. 369
All these candidates were more or less of the same class base. All were
educated, with strong tribal and family ties, middle-class or upper class individuals.
On the other hand, despite the fact that the party put forward 382 candidates for the
366 The rest were: Mehmet Ali Aybar (Đstanbul), Rıza Kuas (Ankara), Muzaffer Karan
(Denizli),Sadun Aren (Đstanbul), Yahya Kanbolat (Hatay), Cemal Hakkı Selek (Izmir),
Yunus Koçak (Konya), Yusuf Ziya Bahadınlı(Yozgat) Ali Karcı (Adana), Kemal Nebioğlu
(Tekirdag), Çetin Altan (Đstanbul), for detailed information see Turhan Salman, TĐP
(Türkiye Đsçi Partisi) Parlamentoda 1963–1966.
367 Tariık Ziya Ekinci, Sol Siyaset Sorunları, p.302.
368 Musa Anter, Hatıralarım 1-2. p.213.
369 Ömer Ağın, Kürtler, Kemalizm ve TKP (Đstanbul: VS Yayınları, 2006) p.139.
130
Parliament, 216 of whom were proletarian, as Aren point out, three out of the 15
deputies were trade unionists and the rest belonged to the intelligentsia. 370 Naci
Kutlay, in his memoirs, says that even in his province, Ağrı, those who supported the
TLP were generally middle class, although there was some interest from the aghas.
He goes on to tell that in Malazgirt, the head of party was Halis Agha and during the
campaigns, he, in a comical way, propagated for land reform by saying, “vote for this
party, they will give the land of people like me to you.” 371 The party candidate for
Tunceli, according to Burkay, was not even a socialist; he was a person who was well
aware of the opportunities of the national remainder system.372 In Kars, Adil Kurt,
who was elected deputy for the parliament, succeeded thanks to his connections and
influence.
In 1969, the TLP increased its poll only in three provinces; Kars, Malatya and
in Tunceli. However, these increases were related to specific local conditions.
Regarding the province of Kars, where the party in 1969 obtained 8.3 percent in
contrast to 5.9 percent in 1965, Adil Kurtel, who had been elected to the parliament in
1965, again was a key factor behind this increase. In addition, the pro-NDR group
also supported Adil Kurtel in Kars, while in other provinces they openly attacked the
party. 373
In Tunceli, the Party gained 16.8 percent of the votes in 1969, in contrast to
5.8 percent in 1965, due to Kemal Burkay’s personal success and efforts. He had
worked there as a lawyer and had taken a leading part in the Eastern meetings in
370 Sadun Aren, TĐP Olayı, 1961–1971, p.105.
371 Naci Kutlay, Anılarım (Istanbul: Avesta, 1998), p.117.
372 Kemal Burkay, Anilar, Belgeler, pp.164-167.
373 Turhan Feyizoğlu, Mahir; On’ların Öyküsü (Đstanbul: Ozan Yayıncılık, 11th edition,
2007), p.179.
131
1967. Finally, regarding Malatya, despite the fact that the pro-NDR group supported
another candidate, whom they dubbed the “independent proletarian candidate,” the
TLP candidate, Sabri Tanrıverdi, a big landowner and an Alevi dede (religious
leader), who saved the party’s fortunes.374 Despite the pro-NDR clique, the party’s
votes jumped from 3.7 percent to 5.2 percent.
According to a study done in the wake of elections, the TLP’s votes in the
villages where a village voted entirely for one political party was related to the
candidates’ individual influence. While the TLP could get almost no votes from the
majority of villages in the country, in Malatya or in Diyarbakır it received almost all
votes in some villages. 375 Furthermore, 23 of 24 villages, which voted entirely for the
TLP, were in the east with the single exception being a village in central Anatolia. 376
In Adıyaman, as I mentioned, owing to the person who was candidate in 1969, eight
villages as a whole voted for the TLP.
Among those provinces in which the party fared less well than it had in 1965,
Diyarbakır is worth commenting on. Whereas the proportion of the TLP’s vote was 8
percent in 1965, it fell to 2.7 percent in 1969, which was more than half. Paramount
among those factors was Tarık Ziya Ekinci’s nomination to Ankara. This move was
related to the fact Ankara seemed to be a safer seat. Although Ekinci and his family
or tribe had supported the party in 1965, it seems that due to Ekinci’s candidacy in
Ankara, the actions of the pro-TKDP group, and the conflict between Ekinci and
Canip Yıldırım all contributed to this decline.
374 Cumhuriyet, 12 September, 1969, quoted in Ahmad and Ahmad, p.374.
375 Arslan Baser Kafaoğlu, “TĐP’in Köy Oyları” Yön, Sayı 196, 30 Aralık 1966.
376 Cenap Nuhrat, “Turkiye Koylerinde Olagandisi Oy Verme,” Siyasal Bilgiler Fakultesi
Dergisi, (Volume: XXVI, March 1971 No: 1, Ankara Universitesi, Ankara), pp.219-244.
132
Since this decline happened after the historical events of the Eastern Meetings,
which are seen as a major landmark in the development of Kurdish mobilization it
leads us to look at the role of individuals. It is very important for our theoretical
approach, which argues that ethnoregional movement and ethnosocialist rhetoric is
primarily based on individuals, most of whom participate in politics to attain as much
as power they can. It also confirms the case of province of Ağrı where the party
received 1.65 percent of the votes in contrast to 4.90 percent in 1965. Regarding the
latter, Mehmet Ali Aslan was put forward for Izmir’s primary candidacy, while the
Emek group, that is, Sadun Aren and Behice Boran, shared positions further down on
party lists. 377
The party militants who formed the party’s branches virtually overnight were
also negotiators between the party center and the constituency as well. Politics even
in the TLP’s case was a negotiation with influential local notables and intellectuals.
What is evident is that the TLP’s militants were not as powerful or capable as their
opponents in mobilizing the electorate. Henceforth, these new counter-elite tried new
channels through which they aimed to politicize and mobilize the region’s population
so that the old allegiances could be replaced by new sets of ideas and commitments.
Nevertheless, they initially used the existing channels, specifically, tribal affiliations
and the cult of personality.
It was in the local elections of 1963 when the party participated in some areas
and made its propaganda over the radio. Although those radio speeches caught the
attention of quite a lot of people due to their unprecedented language, the party was
unable to translate this interest into electoral success. The TLP was further damaged
by rumors fueled by the JP, which alleged that the TLP supporters were communists,
377 Seref Yıldız, Fırtınada Yürüyüs (Đstanbul: Sarı Defter9, 2008), p. 68.
133
supporters of Soviet Russia and that if they were elected would launch a merciless
assault on Islam. The anti-TLP propaganda sometimes erupted in acts of civil
disorder, such as sudden attacks on the TLP and its organizations or physical attacks
on members of the party.378
In addition, during the 1965 election campaign, the JP’s accusation was that
the TLP had been sought to bring communism to the country and followed Stalin’s
policies. 379 As virtually all the party’s militants in the East say, while forming the
party branches, they were asked for money and many landlords and other local
notables refused to have contacts with them due to these accusations.
At the same time, the TLP policy mainly was conditioned by the need to
prevent the party from being closed down and to expand its message as far as possible
in order not only to the refute accusations against it, but as to convince the
constituency to follow its path.
Soon after Niyazi Ağırnaslı joined the party in 1963, the party started to
appeal in the Constitutional Court not only to make the constitution workable, but
also to help amend the laws which they felt were out of step with the constitution.
Between 1963 and 1971 when the party dissolved, the party had made 41 appeals to
the court, 20 of which were successful and had led to the cancelation of various
laws.380
The TLP published almost all of its activities, such as radio speeches and the
assembly records under the title of “Turkish Labor Party is in the Assembly” and was
378 Mehmet Ali Aybar, TĐP Tarihi;1, pp.223-224.
379 Nermin Abadan, Anayasa Hukuku ve Siyasi Bilimler Açısından 1965 Seçimlerinin Tahlili
(Ankara: Sevinç Matbaası, 1966), p.135.
380 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, “Türkiye Đsçi Partisi’nin Anayasa Mahkemesi’nde Açtığı Davalar,” in
Gündüz Vassaf, Mehmet Ali Aybar Sempozyumları, 1997–2002; Özgürlesme Sorunları,
(Đstanbul: Tarih Vakfı Yayınları, 2003), pp.209–231.
134
quite successful in distributing its ideas through publications. In addition, most of the
prominent figures in the party wrote periodically in Yön, Sosyal Adalet, Emek and
other leftist journals. In a booklet entitled “TLP’s radio speeches for October 1965
Elections,” the policies as well as the lively discourse can be seen. Aybar said,
“Workers, poor peasants, artisans….Ataturkist Youth, officers…citizens, Turkey
cannot develop with a capitalist meaning.”381 In Ankara, more than three thousand
people gathered to listen382 to Sadun Aren, Çetin Altan, Yasar Kemal and Antepli
Hamdos, a local storyteller.
It is easily discernible that both groups in the party preferred to use their own
vocabulary. Aybar appealed to his audience, which included Ataturkist Youth and
officers: however, Tarık Ziya Ekinci, as spokesman of the Easterners struck a
different tone. He stated, “with the arrival of your sole party, the Turkish Labor
Party, this is to say your power, because the bondage of one man to another will
wither away, the gap between race, religion, sect and language, and the situations
created by this gap will be terminated.” 383 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, as the only
representative of Doğulu group in the Assembly between 1965 and 1969, brought to
attention both economic and social and cultural problems of the region several times.
For instance, in one of his speech to the assembly during the second Five-year
Development Plan, he focused on the underdevelopment of the East arguing that the
plan did not include the particular needs of the region comprehensively. He further
381 Mehmet Ali Aybar, 25 Eylül 1965 in TĐP 10 Ekim 1965 Radyo Konusmaları, p.8.
382 “TĐP, Ankara’da demokratik hayatın en büyük kapalı salon toplantısını yaptı:”Yön, no.
131, (1 November 1965).
383 “Senin biricik siyasi partin olan Türkiye Đsçi Partisi’nin yani senin iktidara gelmenle
her türlü sömürme, kula kulluk son bulacağından ırk, din, mezhep ve dil ayrılıklarıyla
bunların sebep olduğu elim vaziyetler son bulacaktır.” Tarık Ziya Ekinci, TĐP 10 Ekim 1965
Radyo Konusmaları, pp.55-60.
135
quoted from Ötüken and Milli Yol, journals that had used pejorative language against
the Kurds and argued that according to the constitution it was illegal to write such
articles. He further explained that private investments would not solve the economic
backwardness of the region.384
From Eastern Meetings to the DDKO (Revolutionary Eastern Cultural
Hearths), or the End of the TLP
Starting from the late 1950s, as the previous sections explain, Kurdish
ethnicity under the guise of Doğulu or Kürtçü (Kurdist) either through the arrest of
Kurdish intellectuals or publication of some Kurdish journals, timidly started to
appear in the public domain. In addition, the presence of a growing number of
Kurdish students in Turkey’s two greatest cities, Istanbul and Ankara, the relatively
free political atmosphere, migrations, the expansion of the market, and the increasing
number of actors in politics were some other factors which contributed to this
reappearance of Kurdish ethnicity after almost three decades of suppression.
As already mentioned, the interaction between the leftists and the Kurdish
elites did not lead to a parallel interaction between the state authorities or the
nationalist and rightist segment of society and the Kurds. Therefore, when the
Kurdish ethnicity was seen in the public sphere, there were some fixed labels, such as
Kurdist. However, these so-called Kurdists were extremely shy about ethnicizing
their demands. They framed most of their discourse in terms of constitutionalism. As
Mehdi Zana, one of the initiator of those meetings, points out, this same approach
demonstrated itself in the Eastern Meetings. These meetings, while encouraging the
population as a whole to raise its voice against the economic situation of the region,
384 Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Doğu Dramı, pp.25-26.
136
also stimulated the young generation of Kurdish intellectuals, and university students’
ethnic demands, which focused on language and culture.385
These meetings resulted in outbreaks of popular protest. In 1967, seven big
demonstrations were held in Silvan (a district of Diyarbakir), Diyarbakir, Siverek (a
district of Urfa), Batman (used to be a district of Siirt), Tunceli and Ağrı,
respectively. Also, in 1969, in Lice (Diyarbakir), Siverek (the district of Urfa), Varto
(the district of Mus) and in Hilvan (Urfa), Suruc (Urfa) five similar demonstrations
were held. 386 In addition to those meetings, in Ankara and Istanbul, equally important
were “Doğu Gecesi” (Eastern Night) in which hemseris gathered around and listened,
and sang local songs and shared ideas. 387
The Eastern meetings, as many of their participants argue, started as a reaction
to articles of the ultra-nationalist Ötüken and Milli Yol periodicals. In addition, the
TLP, other political organizations such as the TKDP were active during those
historical events. However, these events were arranged mainly by the first group of
TLP militants, such as Mehdi Zana, Naci Kutlay, Kemal Burkay and Mehmet Ali
Aslan. 388 However, Mehmet Ali Aybar in Diyarbakir, Behice Boran in Batman and
Tarik Ziya Ekinci in Ağrı and Diyarbakır also took part in the meetings. At the same
385 Mehdi Zana, interview by Delal Aydın, Ankara, Turkey, February 2005.
386 Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları, Dava Dosyası 1 (Ankara: Komal, 1975), pp.30-33.
387 Ibid.,
388 Đsmail Besikçi’s early study, which was published in the same year, is the first handbook
of these meetings. Đsmail Besikçi, Doğu Mitinglerinin Analizi, (Ankara: Yurt-Kitap Yayin,
1992); and Azad Zana Gündoğan ibid.; alsoYasar Karadoğan, “Kürd Demokratik
Mücadelesinde Bir Kilometre Tası: 1967-1969 Doğu Mitingleri ve Kürd Uyanısı,” BÎR:
Arastırma ve Đnceleme Dergisi: DDKO-I’, no. 5, (2006), pp.254-283.
137
time, the TKDP was also influential. In Silvan, for example, Sait Elçi of the TKDP
and Tarık Ziya Ekinci gave speeches at the same time. 389
Though these outbursts of popular activism were to some extent spontaneous
reactions to specific events, the militants of the TLP and the TKDP were the two
groups that provided the organizational basis for the public outcry. The majority of
demands and speeches were based on the economic backwardness of the region.
People were told to raise their voices against inequalities and underdevelopment of
their region. On some occasions, such as in Silvan, people were agitated by a Kurdish
poem, according to Mehmet Ali Aslan, who had recited it. It was for the first time in
the Turkish republic’s history that a Kurdish poem had been recited in the public.
390In Batman, the speaker Nevzat Nas, a student, recited Kurdish poems from
Ahmedé Xani, Cigerxwin, and Kemal Badilli.391
Despite its official disapproval, these meetings much of the time were a
platform for TLP propaganda. In addition to those meetings, the TLP also embarked
on a 10-day Eastern Tour to almost all provinces where Aybar, Boran, Kurtel and
Ekinci as the party deputies gave speeches and told people about the Eastern question,
which they argued was an “outcome of unemployment, destitution…all of which
derived from the coalition of Aghas and comprador bourgeoisie.” 392 For the first
389 Ömer Ağın, Kürtler, Kemalizm ve TKP, (Đstanbul: VS Yayınları, 2006), p.141.
390 Mehmet Ali Aslan, interview by the author, tape recording, Istanbul, Turkey, 31 January
2009
391 Abdullah Kaya, Hévriz Ağacı, (Đstanbul: Đletisim, 2002), p.138.
392 “Doğu’daki vatandasların sosyal ve kültürel haklarının tanınmadığını, halkın ekonomik
gerilik, eğitimsizlik, issizlik, yokluk, yoksulluk, topraksızlık ve sefalet içinde kendi kaderiyle
bas basa bırakıldığını, bunların nedeni olarak da toprak ağalarıyla ittifak içindeki sermaye
düzeni olduğunu anlatıyorlardı.” Tarık Ziya Ekinci, Kürtlerde Sosyal Değisim Süreçleri ve
TĐP’in Katkısı.
138
time, these meetings demonstrated the divergence of point of views very clearly. 393
The struggle between the TLP and the TKDP to achieve dominance over the
subsequent mobilization of the population became a salient bone of contention.
One important feature of the meetings was the participation of many Kurdish
students, some of whom already had worked for the TLP’s in 1965 general election
campaign. This younger generation of future members of the Kurdish elites and
intelligentsia, as with the TKDP, did not agree that the Eastern Question was just
about economic backwardness and social injustice. They forcefully put forward the
ethnic characteristic of the region and related it to backwardness and
underdevelopment. In other words, for them, the economic underdevelopment in the
Kurdish regions of Turkey was not economic happenstance. On the contrary, it was
due to social and cultural factors associated with the Kurdishness of those regions.
The next important development was the 1969 foundation of the DDKOs
(Revolutionary Eastern Cultural Hearths) in Ankara and Istanbul in 1969. Between
1970 and 1971, first in Diyarbakir and then in Silvan, Ergani, Kozluk and Batman the
DDKOs were founded by TLP militants such as Tahsin Ekinci, Naci Kutlay, Tarık
Ziya Ekinci, Abdurrahman Uçar, and Mehdi Zana.394 Other activists included
Mümtaz Kotan, Orhan Kotan, Đbrahim Güçlü, Nezir Semmikanlı, Đhsan Aksoy, Fikret
Sahin, Sabri Çepik, Sıraç Bilgin, Ali Beyköylü, Đhsan Yavuztürk, Ferit Uzun, Faruk
Aras, Đsa Geçit, Hikmet Bozçalı and Ümit Fırat.395 Like the coalition in the TLP, the
393 Soon after one of articles disdaining Kurds and Kurdish culture, in September 1967, 19
students associations, and clubs signed a notice, condemning the articles and their writers.
see, Nezir Semmikanlı, “Geçmis Olmadan Gelecek Olmaz!,” BÎR: Arastırma ve Đnceleme
Dergisi: DDKO-I’’, (5), 2006: 71−97.
394 Interview withTarik Ziya Ekinci, in Diken. p.61.
395Đsmail Besikçi, “Hapisteki DDKO (Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları)” BÎR: Arastırma ve
Đnceleme Dergisi: DDKO-I’ (5) (2006) 99−156.
139
DDKOs also included various groups: Pro-Sait Kırmızıtoprak (also known by his
sobriquet Dr. Sivan,) group, T’de KDP, pro-Dev-Genç group and pro-TKDP. 396In
addition, activists who were not even members, such as Deniz Gezmis, a charismatic
and influential student leader, visited the DDKO several times in Ankara. 397
According to Yavuz, Abdullah Öcalan, the leader of the PKK, took part in the
activities and established connections with other students when he was in Istanbul in
1970.398
First of all, it should be noted that the DDKOs, despite the fact that their
founders were mainly members of the TLP, were not subsidiaries or organs of the
party. Nor did they do only propaganda for the party. They developed during the
chaotic experienced by the Turkish socialist student movement and in an environment
where their Turkish counterparts virtually as a whole were longing for a revolution
lead by the intellectuals, students and the army. Kurdish university students founded
these organizations in order to gather around a bigger association rather than small
and scattered fellow townsmen associations.
At the same time, the attacks of the ultra-nationalist students and the chaotic
political atmosphere of the late 1960s, all together channeled Kurdish students toward
uncertainty in many respects. What was crucial for them was the legality. Unlike their
Turkish counterparts, they tried to remain within the legal framework of the
constitution.399 It can be argued that these organizations made much more
396 Seref Yıldız, Fırtınada Yürüyüs, p.66.
397 Orhan Miroğlu, Canip Yıldırım’la Söylesi, p.219.
398 Yavuz, p.10.
399 Zerruk Vakifahmetoğlu, one of the members of the DDKO, when he argued with friends
at the Diyarbakir DDKO and expressed his thoughts for an armed-struggle, was accused of
being a Dev-Gencist, which referred to the radicalism of the Turkish Left in 1970. Soon
after he resigned, he and some of his friend went Diyarbakir to start a guerilla war; however,
140
contribution to the young Kurdish students’ worldview than anything. Its monthly
bulletin was circulated among thousands of students. In addition, seminars and talks
regarding the Kurdish issue and the economic situation of the region given by various
people such as Đsmail Besikçi, and Mehmet Emin Bozarslan were organized.
Moreover, in Diyarbakir and other provinces, the DDKOs functioned as an open
university in which many issues such as socialism and self-determination were
taught.400
The DDKOs were also founded at a time when the army was launching
Commando Operations against Kurdish villagers. Đsmail Cem, a journalist at the time,
described these as having a long-term effect on the politics of the region.401 Dozens of
villages and towns were searched simultaneously for illegal guns and bandits,
villagers were treated as sub-human and most importantly, they were scorned by the
officers for being Kurds. 402 The DDKOs militants paid great attention to this issue
and sent a telegram to the president. 403 Furthermore, the militants went to the region
to investigate the conditions and most of the time paid great attention to reminding
the population of their rights and warned them that these commando operations were
against the constitution.
the DDKO in Diyarbakir did not let them to even enter the building there since they were
told that they are for violence by which they would cause troubles. See interview with ,
Zerruk Vakifahmetoglu in Diken, p.204.
400 Naci Kutlay, Anılarım,p.180.
401 Milliyet, 12-19 July 1970, in Ismail Cem, Türkiye Üzerine Arastırmalar (Đstanbul: Cem
Yayinevi, 1970), p.29.
402, Ibid., p.18.
403 “D.D.K.O Aylık Haber Bülteni9,”in DDKO, Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları Dava
Dosyası 1. pp.573- 581.
141
The DDKOs’ emphasis upon commando operations caught the attention of the
TLP, too. Both in the Parliament and in the Senate the party representatives
condemned the operations. Fatma Đsmen, the party’s only senator (from Kocaeli),
claimed that these operations were “more evidence of the effort directed towards
creating a fascist order. Suppression by the government is the heavy repression of our
citizens in the East and Southeast region under the banner of searching guns and
criminals.” 404
However, the 1969 general elections as well as the radicalization of students
paved the way for the devastation of the party. Aybar resigned just after the elections,
while Mehmet Ali Aslan was elected party chairman. He remained about a month and
then he too resigned. The party by 1970 was de facto inactive. The pro-Aybar group,
including many Kurds, students and other groups, had left the party. The Fourth
Congress of the party was held amidst the chaotic situation in Ankara on 29-31
November 1970. The proposal of the DDKO, “Halklar Tasarısı” (proposal of
peoples) was passed in the congress. According to decision, the party accepted and
declared that:
There live a Kurdish people in the East of Turkey;
The Ruling classes and fascist governments have been implementing a policy
of terror and assimilation upon Kurdish people, which from time to time has
been in the guise of bloody persecution activities;
One of the fundamental reasons for the backwardness of the region where the
Kurdish people lives, in comparison with the other regions of Turkey, is in
addition to the capitalism’s unequal law, an outcome of the social and political
policies executed by the ruling class governments, which take into account the
fact that the other region is inhabited by the Kurdish people;
For this reason, considering the “ Eastern Question” as a question of regional
development is nothing but an extension of the chauvinist-nationalist views
and attitudes of the ruling class governments.
404 “Hükümetin baskısı, bir fasist düzen kurma çabasının diğer bir delili, son sıralarda Doğu
ve Güney-Doğu bölgemizdeki silah ve suçlu arama bahanesi ile oradaki vatandaslarımıza
yapılan ağır baskıdır” in Fatma Hikmet Đsmen, Parlamento’da 9 Yıl; TĐP Senatörü Olarak
1966–1975 Dönemi Parlamento Çalısmaları, (Ankara: Çark Matbaası, 1976), p.228.
142
It went on to state that the party would:
Support the struggle of the Kurdish people to enjoy its constitutional
citizenship rights and to realize that their all other democratic aspirations and
demands is an ordinary and necessary revolutionary duty…
The party regards the Kurdish problem in accordance with the requirements of
working class’ socialist revolutionary struggle. 405
During the Congress the pro-Aybar Kurdish group, including Kemal Burkay
who gave a speech there, underlined the fact that the TLP was to be protected.406
They clearly were worried that the passing of such a resolution would lead to the
closure of the party. Tarık Ziya Ekinci abstained from voting. Mehmet Ali Aslan tried
to persuade the rest of the Eastern delegates and the party not to pass the resolution.407
Moreover, Burkay maintains that he proposed a moderate proposal, which was turned
down by the other delegates whom were under the influence of Dr. Sivan, the leader
of the T’de KDP and who in fact wanted to get the party closed down. 408 The party
405 “Türkiye’nin Doğu’sunda Kürt halkının yasamakta olduğunu;
Kürt halkı üzerinde, bastan beri, hakim sınıfların fasist iktidarların, zaman zaman kanlı
zulüm hareketleri niteliğine bürünen, baskı, terör ve asimilasyon politikasını
uyguladıklarını;
Kürt halkının yasadığı bölgenin, Türkiye’nin öteki bölgelerine oranla, geribırakılmıs
olmasının temel nedenlerinden birinin, kapitalizmin esitsiz gelisme kanununa ek olarak, bu
bölgede Kürt halkının yasadığı gerçeğini göz önüne alan hakim sınıf iktidarlarının,
güttükleri ekonomik ve sosyal politikanın bir sonucu olduğunu;
Bu nedenle, “Doğu sorununu” bir bölgesel kalkınma sorunu olarak ele almanın, hakim sınıf
iktidarlarının soven-milliyetçi görüslerinin ve tutumunun bir uzantısıdan baska bir sey
olmadığını;
Kürt halkının Anayasal vatandaslık haklarını kullanmak ve diğer tüm demokratik özlem ve
isteklerini gerçeklestirmek yolundaki mücadelesinin, bütün anti-demokratik, fasist, baskıcı,
soven-milliyetçi akımların amansız düsmanı olan Partimiz tarafından desteklenmesinin
olağan ve zorunlu bir devrimci görev olduğunu;… Partinin Kürt sorununa, isçi sınıfının
sosyalist devrim mücadelesinin gerekleri açısından baktığını kabul ve ilan eder.”Türkiye
Đsçi Partisi Genel Merkezi, Türkiye Đsçi Partisi IV. Büyük Kongresi (29-31 Ekim 1970
Ankara); Alınan Kararlar ve Yapılan Seçimlerin Sonuçları, pp.6-7; and Sadun Aren, TĐP
Olayı (1961-1971), pp.71-72.
406 Nihat Sargın, TĐP’li Yıllar (1961–1971) (Đstanbul: Felis Yayınları, 2001), pp.967-973.
407 Mehmet Ali Aslan, interview by the author, tape recording, Istanbul, Turkey, 31 January
2009.
408 Kemal Burkay, Anılar, Belgeler, p.279.
143
was closed down on the pretext of the resolution above. According to the indictment,
the problem was approached only as the Kurdish Question and “other democratic
aspirations and demands” was just a euphemism for separation and secession. 409
Even before the March 12, 1971 coup, Turkey’s socialist movement
underwent a series of internal conflicts. Although the constitution was amended and
thousands of young socialists and Kurds were arrested, the Socialist movement and
the history of the Kurdish movement, of course, did not end. Indeed, in the case of the
Kurds, it is possible to argue that actually a fully developed Kurdish movement in and
for itself only developed after 1971. While many leftists and Kurds were in prison,
the conflicts and contradictions between Kurdish militants of the TLP and the
DDKOs became salient. They went before the court with three separate groups; the
first group was comprised of those who accepted the Kurdish ethnicity and language
as a social reality of Turkey, and made no more demands. The second group, the one
also known as the Ocak Komünü (January Commune), representing a more radical
group, included persons such as Mümtaz Kotan, Đbrahim Güçlü, Yumnu Budak, and
who also received so much help from Đsmail Besikçi during the preparation of their
hearings. This group focused on building a romanticized argument based on the
broken promises of the founding fathers of the Republic to the Kurds and the unique
nature of the Kurdish language. The third group, on the other hand, consisted of those
individuals who denied all charges.
The best way to conclude this chapter is to call attention to a very crucial
process in those years, and afterwards: the time Kurdish militants shared in prison,
that is to say in 1959-60, in 1963 and in 1971-4. Far beyond the scope of this thesis,
somehow those arrestments turned out to be the best way to gather scattered Kurdish
409 Turkish Republic, Resmi Gazete, 6 Ocak 1972, Karar Sayisi;1971/3 pp.3–16.
144
militants together under a roof where they could debate several issues, gain cohesion,
even learn Kurdish. At the same time, this situation also facilitated the factionalism
that occurred with both the 49ers of 1959 and in the TLP and the DDKOs of 1971. In
other words, another big split after the arrest of 49ers in 1959 happened among the
Kurdish activists of the TLP in 1971. In prison, the Kurds divided into several groups
and descended into mutual recriminations, each group claiming the other group was, a
splitter or too radical or unrealistic. In the case of the DDKO and the TLP, the split
brought about irreversible changes both for the future of the Kurdish movement and
Turkey’s politics in general, changes that would be felt for decades to come.
145
CHAPTER FIVE
CONCLUSION: RETROSPECTIVE AND PROSPECTIVE
The politicization of the Kurdish identity in the 1960s was a symptom of the
politicization of Turkish life at the time. Starting from the 1950s Turkey’s politics
acquired an increasingly local characteristic, with political movements feeding off
intense local support and issues rather than national problems. A new generation of
Kurdish intelligentsia joined the established traditional Kurdish elites in the late
1950s. The political turmoil in the 1950s and 1960s was related to this new wave of
Kurdish activism. The 58ers, many of whom were arrested in 1959, were the principal
actors in the development of the Kurdish ethnoregional movement. The
regionalization of politics was blended with the growing prominence of ethnic
identities among constituents in the mid-1960s.
This Kurdish identity also was supported by the rise of Kurdish periodicals,
which served as a means for the transmission of cultural and political thought for
many young intellectuals and members of the Turkish Labor Party. Despite a
growing recognition of a collective Kurdish identity among intellectuals and students,
the movement was not transformed into a full-fledged ethnic struggle. First of all, the
label “Kurdist,” which was applied by the Turkish state to anyone making demands
for ethnic or cultural recognition, was not to be taken lightly. The state fiercely
discouraged all ethnic expression within any political or legal framework, often with
the arrest of the offender, their family and friends. This served to strongly discourage
Kurdish intellectuals from couching their demands as ethnically derived, and so they
constituted themselves as a movement fighting for economic equality. As a result the
146
58ers adopted the vague term “Doğulu,” to describe themselves, which did not
prioritize their ethnicity.
The importance of the TLP in the case of Kurdish mobilization and the
politicization of the Kurdish identity were not because the TLP was an important
actor in Turkish or even Kurdish politics as such. Quite the opposite, the TLP never
managed to gain any more than a small percentage of the national vote. It provided
an organizational framework under which Kurds for the first time could articulate and
debate their situation. This experience was not lost on the emerging Kurdish leaders.
While the TLP ultimately failed to deliver the change it promised, this failed
experiment served to discourage the 68 and 78ers from attempting to integrate into
mainstream politics.
The result was the articulation of a separate Kurdish ethnic identity and
political structure. The previous iterations of Kurdish identity had been fused with
socialist and leftist rhetoric, and viewed as subordinate to the cause of national
development and freedom. The new Kurdish politics of this era made no claim to any
sort of universal motive. They were not couched in the religious language of the past,
and although they used the leftist ideology which they had learned, the Kurdish
question was now one of ethnicity. The new Kurdish elite sought to make room for a
powerful Kurdish identity that was tied to the Kurdish language, not any broad
conception of Islam or socialism.
If the 58ers had been preoccupied with solving the social and economic
problems throughout the country, and the Southeast in specific, the arrival of the
more radical 68ers served to take the Kurdish issue out from under the TLP and the
dominance of socialist ideology. The trials of Kurdish and TLP leaders in 1971
created as a schism between the 58 and 68ers. The persecution of the previous
147
generation convinced the 68ers that political representation and legitimization would
be impossible under the current system: the leftist parties such as the TLP were
incapable of prioritizing the ethnic component of the struggle, and the Turkish state
was entirely unwilling to recognize Kurdish identity and ethnicity.
The trials of 1971 began a period of intergenerational conflict between
Kurdish leaders, as the 68ers fought with the 58ers over who would be the legitimate
face of the Kurdish movement. Furthermore, the key issue was how to describe the
ubiquitous Kurdish problem. The 58ers strongly argued that a resolution of the
Kurdish question required little more than economic development and social
revitalization. The 68ers refused to define the Kurdish issue so narrowly, and took
cultural and ethnic rights as integral to the emancipation of the Kurdish people.
Underneath the ideological struggle lay a strong current of power politics. Political
favors and cronyism were rampant elements of political life, and holding the right
office would make a politician rich. The Kurdish movement at this time was strongly
influenced by the various personalities and egos competing for power.
The 78ers movement, which comprised many of 68ers as well, was less
focused on the acquisition of political power within the Turkish system, and turned its
sights on the realization of a greater Kurdistan. They viewed Kurdistan as being
occupied by Turkey and sought to create a new political and economic system,
borrowing heavily from socialist ideology. During 1960s as well as 70s, individuals’
identification generally was based on one’s family and tribal ties in the region. The
most important means of identification was someone’s birthplace, which led to
mushrooming of hemseri associations (fellow townsmenship association) among
Kurdish students. This is why the term Doğulu was essential—it served to put all
these regional identities under a larger banner. By identifying themselves broadly as
148
Doğulu, Kurdish students were able to maintain their overriding hemseri identities
while becoming part of a greater movement. This was one crucial step along the
development of a historical identity.
The transition from regional, to leftist, and then to what would become a more
universal Kurdish identity defines the limits and aims of the Kurdish movements at
the different periods. The adoption of these terms was far from automatic and far
from easy. The term Doğulu was not widely accepted by the Kurdish population.
Likewise, leftist ideology was not easily adopted by Kurds in the Southeast. This
ideology would eventually give way to an ethnically derived Kurdish identity, but this
too required a large amount of propaganda before it was accepted by the masses.
It would be misleading not to take into consideration the evolution of the state
discourse in Turkey. First of all, the absolute denial of the existence of Kurds as a
distinctive and dissimilar group and of the Kurdish language needs to be underlined.
Yet, in order to understand the transformation of state discourse, one needs to look at
the struggle and the interaction of Kurdish activists with the authorities. In comparing
the lawsuits of the DDKOs and the DDKD (the Turkish acronym for Revolutionary
Democrat Culture Associations, opened in the mid-1970s and closed down in 1980), I
realized that the state discourse in the DDKOs case was based on the denial of a
distinct Kurdish people and language. In the DDKDs case, the state was preoccupied
with separating nationalism from Marxism and communism. The difference between
these two lawsuits is that the Turkish state opposed the DDKD militants, and
regarded the DDKDs as nationalist rather than communist whereas it portrayed the
DDKO militants as separatist.410
410 See KĐP/DDKD Davası; Kesinlesmis Karar, (Bromma: Jina Nu Yayınları, 2006); and
DDKO, Devrimci Doğu Kültür Ocakları Dava Dosyası 1.
149
The Kurdish problem has become particularly acute since the 1980s. The
growing severity of the Kurdish problem has politicized and distorted the history of
the Kurdish movement. Nowadays, the majority of Kurdish politicians who rose to
prominence in the 1960s conflate past events with the current situation. What they
relay is not true, however, and understanding the difference between then and now
has never been more important. One of my interviewees, Ömer Ağın, felt the need to
correct me when I asked him about Kurdish nationalism in the 1960s. He claimed that
the whole history of the Kurdish movement must be studied within the context of
“Kürt ulusal demokratik hareketi,” or the Kurdish democratic national movement as it
is known today. Tarık Ziya Ekinci argues the same thing in one of his unpublished
papers. Their point is that the Kurdish movement is teleological in all steps leading up
to the nationalist movement of today. As was shown, this was not the case, and the
Kurdish political movement and militancy of the 1960s to the 1980s was of a
markedly different character than that of today.
While they embarked on their political journey as young and ambitious
middle-class intelligentsia, highly influenced by socialist rhetoric, they were
frustrated by the socioeconomic conditions of their region, and so they promised to
eliminate economic deprivation in the region via developmentalism. With regard to
ethnic demands, many Kurdish activists of the time did believe that the 1961
Constitution would save them from prosecution since their demands were convenient
to the constitution.
Kurdish nationalism, as a means of demanding both cultural and political
rights for the Kurdish population within the Turkish republic, is one of the most
prominent factors in the region’s political life today. The existence of a much more
coherent and forceful Kurdish nationalism is undeniable. Current Kurdish
150
nationalism has attempted to re-write the history of Kurdish movements to better suit
its narrative. To this end, individuals who took part in the region’s political life
describe their past actions as part of a larger struggle that continues today. Many of
them stake out the claim “We got there first.” Yet, what had happened during 1980s
and 1990s diverges substantially from what was the case in the 1960s.
Today, Kurdish nationalism must be studied with its history and development
in mind, and not be taken as one indivisible movement. The divisions within the
Kurdish movements are tremendous, and its internal schisms have done more to
shape the movement than any conflict with Turkish socialist and nationalist groups.
The story of the Kurdish movement is not one of constant struggle against an
oppressor, but of a continual attempt to refine and redefine the concept of
Kurdishness. The Kurdish movement of today has little in common with the
aspirations and efforts of the 58 and 68ers.
Up until the 1960s, Kurdish politicians, traditionally from the leading stratum
of Kurdish society, seemed far more concerned with their own political survival than
advocating Kurdish nationalism or the development of the region. Accordingly,
Kurdish Leftists, especially those who held leading positions in the TLP, did not take
any greater risk in terms of propagating Kurdish nationalism. Yet it was the use of
socialist rhetoric and the language of equality that transformed the Kurdish movement
into the “ethnoregional” movement that it is today. The 1968 and 1978 generation of
Kurdish intellectuals and students, who would become even more radicalized than
past generations, believed that there was nothing to be gained by cooperating with the
current political system, and had less and less to lose by opposing the system as a
whole.
151
Regarding the ethnoregional argument here, the affiliation with the socialist
movement, which particularly affected the subsequent developments of the Kurdish
movement, had two major consequences. First, given the emphasis that Turkish
socialism placed on the dependent nature of Turkey within the world system, the
Kurdish leaders used this same construction in arguing that the Kurdish regions were
being exploited by the Turkish state. Second, another tenet of Turkish socialism was
that it alone held the solutions to Turkey’s problems, and that competing ideologies
were insufficient. This led Kurdish leaders to conclude that a Turkish socialism was
specific for Turks and Turkey, that the Kurdish problem too required its own unique
solution. Furthermore, if Turkish socialism could singularly provide the answer to
every ethnic, social, and economic problem in Turkey, then a Kurdish movement
could be likewise all-encompassing. The Kurdish problem, complex as it was, did
not require a multifaceted approach. Rather a single party was all that the Kurdish
problem required.
This is not to say that the Kurdish movement existed in a monolithic form.
An essential part of the Kurdish movement’s DNA was intense factionalism. This
had been transmitted from their experience in the TLP and other leftist parties which
had been undoing mitosis on an almost daily basis. The atomization of Kurdish
politics to the personal level nullifies any claim of a teleological or united movement.
Finally, the Doğulu group’s appearance on the political stage overlapped with
the period when Turkey in general and Kurdish society in particular underwent
fundamental social, economic and demographic changes. Whereas they broke away
with some of the 58ers, during their arrest in 1959, the next generation of Kurdish
students and intellectuals, namely the generation of 68, who formed the DDKOs and
the T’de KDP would separate from their elder brothers while they were under arrest
152
in 1971. Those personalities and groups which appeared after the 1971 would do
completely different things. They would not only burn bridges with the Turkish
socialists, but also would fight against each other in order to take control of the same
turf. However, in the late 1970s, for many active Kurdish organizations legality
would lose its credibility and the struggle to liberate “ the colony of Kurdistan,” and
overemphasize the uniqueness of its conditions, the very lesson they learned from the
discussions of underdevelopment or that is to say from Turkish Socialism.411
The contemporary period of the legal Kurdish movement begins with the
formation of the HEP (Labor Party of People) in 1990. This new party at first
attempted to call together the disparate Kurdish organizations that had so often been
working at cross-purposes. This call was initially answered, yet continued
ideological and personal divisions within this umbrella structure led to the exclusion
of the very groups it had once sought to unite. The DTP (Democratic Society Party),
albeit most inclusive, and the heir to the legacy of the HEP, tries to monopolize its
position as the one legitimate mouthpiece of the Kurdish movement today. This does
not mean that the marginal groups that surround and compete with DTP are
unimportant. Rather, the diversity of political thought and ideology within the
Kurdish movement must be recognized. This is not to say simply that the issue is
complex, although it is, but that any broad discussion of a “Kurdish movement”
requires a significant amount of specification for the particular time, place, and
people who are involved. Although it is in the interest of the leaders of both the
leading Kurdish parties and the Turkish state to portray the Kurdish movement as a
united front, this could not be further from the truth. The reality of the growth of the
411 Kemal Burkay’s Kurdistan Socialist Party, influential rather in Europe, is a very good
example of this interpretation. Its programme starts with the section titled, “Kurdistan’in
Sömürge Haline Gelisi” (transformation of Kurdistan into a colony) available at
http://www.kurdistan.nu/psk/bername_program/psk_program.htm
153
Kurdish movement is one of intense rivalries, and divisions which have not ceased
multiplying.
A good example in the changes that the Kurdish movement has undergone
comes in the comparison of two mass protests, one in the 1960s and one in the 1990s.
The historical events in the Kurdish movement, Serhildans or (uprisings), in the early
1990s in comparison to the subject of this study are reminiscent of the Eastern
Meetings of the 1960s. During that time, thousands of people in Cizre, Batman,
Diyarbakir and so forth were called to revolt against the state. Also, songs were
composed with the lyrics; “Berxwedan, Serhildan…Jiyan e” (Resistance, Uprisings
are life). By contrast, during and after 1960s, thousands of Kurds were called upon to
demonstrate in a peaceful fashion. A Kurdish folk song that be sung was “… [ji] Me
ra bisin sosyalizme, Ew dermané hemi derdan” (send out to us socialism, it is the
remedy of all sorrows) 412
Beyond demonstrating the difference in popular sentiments, this shows how
the movements were shaped by external events and forces as well as by different
leaderships. The movements changed with the times and their leaders, but so did the
state. If the 1960s marchers had been met with state opposition, by the 1990s they
were met with oppression. These were mass movements, Kurdish in nature, but it is
difficult to connect the two given the differences in the organizations themselves, and
the environment in which they inhabited. The changes that the Kurdish movement
underwent in the 1960s cannot be exaggerated, especially given the upheavals that
Turkish politics, economics, and society at large have undergone. In terms of what the
first chapter tries to conceptualize, both events are remarkable. Following the step,
412 The song was about the Koçgiri Rebellion and goes as “Me ra bisin Sahe
Merdan”Mehmet Emin Bozarslan, (Trans.), Kurdistan: Rojnama Kurdi ya pesin (Ilk Kurd
Gazetesi,) 1898-1902, Cild I, p.32-33.
154
the highlighting of economic, political, cultural grievances and persuasion of
individuals by the way they were represented both events epitomize the step
“attention by masses” which either goes toward concessional or structural demands.
As materialized both in the Doğulus and in the PKK’s maneuvers throughout history,
there is not a clear demarcation of demands in terms of structural and concessional
demands. This is primarily because of the essence of the movement, which depends
highly on leading figures and their personal decisions.
It may be too early to speculate about how things might have been otherwise,
yet a question comes to mind as to whether the DTP would have been as successful
and influential in the 1960s, if it had been allowed to participate in politics with its
current political standpoint? In my opinion, the DTP of today serves a constituency
that did not exist in the 1960s. The Kurds fifty years ago were far more preoccupied
with questions of economic and social justice than of any ethnic questions. As a
result, the DTP would have been irrelevant to the Kurds of that era. Likewise, it is
the experiences of state oppression, and political failure and international discourse
on minority rights that have produced a far more radical Kurdish movement than in
the past. The socialist movements of the past would be unintelligible to the current
demands for ethnic rights and recognition. Therefore, further studies, instead of fixing
on Kurdish nationalism should look at this perspective of the region’s political life
and the struggle amongst Kurdish groups as well as intra-persons conflicts and the
shift of the state discourse, which, in my opinion, constitutes the historical reality of
Kurdish nationalism more than anything else.
155
APPENDIX A
Table 5 Results of the Election of Provincial General Council Members and the
Senate
1963 1964* 1966* 1968* 1968
Votes polled by political parties and independents (%)
Justice Party (JP) 45.5 50.3 56.9 49.9 49.1
Nation Party (NP) 3.1 - 5.3 6.0 3.5
Nationalist Action Party (NAP) - - - - -
New Turkey Party (NTP) 6.5 3.5 2.4 - 0.7
Republican People’s Party
(RPP)
36.2 40.8 29.6 27.1 27.9
Republican Peasant’s
Nationalists Party (RPNP)
3.1 3.0 1.9 2.0 1.0
Republican Reliance Party
(RRP)
- - - 8.6 6.6
Turkish Labor Party (TLP) 0.4 - 3.9 4.7 2.7
Turkish Union Party (TUP) - - - - 1.7
Independents 5.2 2.3 - 1.7 6.8
* These are renewal elections for the Senate.
Source: T.C. Basbakanlık Türkiye Đstatistik Kurumu, Đstatistik
Gostergeler;1923-2005, Publication Number:3047, Ankara, 2006, p.142
Table 6 Results of the General Elections of Representatives in Three Big Cities
(1961-1969)
Province
JP NP NAP NTP RPP RPNP RRP TLP TUP IND.
61-
Istanbul65-
69-
41.8
53.2
47.8
---
4.9
2.7
---
---
2.6
3.3.
0.9
0.8
38.2
29.7
33.9
12.3
1.5
---
---
---
2.3
---
7.9
5.8
---
---
2.8
4.4
1.9
1.3
61-
Ankara 65-
69-
19.8
46.5
42.7
---
14.2
7.6
---
---
3.5
5.1
1.6
0.8
38.7
30.2
34.3
35.6
2.5
---
---
---
3.8
---
4.3
2.5
---
---
4.4
0.8
0.6
1.1
61-
Izmir 65-
69-
55.0
62.2
53.2
---
2.8
1.1
---
---
1.1
1.5
---
0.6
39.6
29.8
35.1
3.1
1.1
---
---
---
3.9
---
3.9
2.9
---
---
1.6
0.8
0.2
0.4
Source: T.C. Basbakanlık Devlet Istatistik Enstitüsü, 1950-1965 Milletvekili ve
1961, 1964 Cumhuriyet Senatosu Üye Seçimleri Sonuçları, Yayın No: 513
Ankara, 1966, pp.XXII-XXXVII, : T.C. Basbakanlık Türkiye Đstatistik Kurumu,
Đstatistik Gostergeler;1923-2005, Publication Number:3047, Ankara, 2006,
p.136-140
156
APPENDIX B
Table 7 Result of the General Elections of Representatives in Fifteen Provinces,
1961-1969 (%)
Province
JP
%
NP
%
NAP
%
NTP
%
RPP
%
RPNP
%
RRP
%
TLP
%
TUP
%
IND.
%
61-
Ağrı 65-
69-
11.0
20.8
36.2
---
0.9
3.0
---
---
1.6
22.3
42.8
0.48
32.4
18.6
26.0
34.3
11.8
---
---
---
31.1
---
4.9
1.6
---
---
---
--
--
---
61-
Bingol 65-
69-
---
25.3
14.2
---
3.8
0.3
---
---
---
54.6
30.9
22.5
31.1
35.7
12.2
11.7
---
---
---
---
7.0
---
2.1
1.6
---
---
---
2.6
2.3
42.1
61-
Bitlis 65-
69-
---
49.2
41.9
---
1.4
---
---
---
---
46.9
10.4
23.3
30.8
17.4
32.2
22.3
---
---
---
---
1.7
---
---
0.8
---
---
---
---
21.5
---
61-
D.Bakir65-
69-
19.2
28.8
35.5
---
1.7
7.9
---
---
0.8
42.8
23.1
26.4
32.8
23.2
7.3
5.2
3.4
---
---
---
3.0
---
8.0
2.7
---
---
---
---
11.7
16.4
61-
Elazig 65-
69-
42.3
48.6
35.1
---
---
0.8
---
---
5.4
0.6
4.0
2.9
35.3
39.6
26.8
21.8
3.3
---
---
---
7.9
---
2.6
1.8
---
---
3.3
---
1.9
15.9
61-
Erzincan65
69-
4.8
43.8
42.2
---
---
1.1
---
---
4.5
44.2
3.9
0.7
48.5
28.8
43.4
2.0
---
---
---
---
3.1
---
---
1.3
---
---
13.1
0.5
23.6
3.6
61-
Hakkari65-
69-
3.1
5.5
27.7
---
1.0
0.5
---
---
0.2
25.3
55.1
0.2
41.3
37.5
34.0
---
0.8
---
---
---
36.9
---
---
0.5
---
---
---
30.3
---
---
61-
Kars 65-
69-
21.5
37.3
42.9
---
2.9
1.6
---
---
5.8
30.5
9.7
2.4
48.0
34.3
33.3
---
---
---
---
---
4.0
---
6.0
8.3
---
---
---
---
9.8
1.7
61-
Malatya65-
69-
4.2
31.0
14.5
---
3.5
0.4
---
---
2.7
23.1
2.9
1.6
67.2
51.2
41.4
5.5
2.9
---
---
---
2.3
---
3.8
5.2
---
---
11.8
---
4.7
20.1
61-
Mardin 65-
69-
---
22.7
27.4
---
---
0.7
---
---
0.2
34.9
12.3
12.1
43.3
22.5
12.0
21.8
1.8
---
---
---
8.0
---
1.7
0.2
---
---
---
---
39.1
39.0
61-
Mus 65-
69-
20.4
18.3
10.3
---
8.0
0.5
---
---
---
43.9
13.6
14.3
31.4
19.1
16.8
4.3
18.0
---
---
---
5.2
---
3.7
3.7
---
---
---
---
19.3
49,2
61-
Siirt 65-
69-
---
36.7
25.3
---
2.0
0.5
---
---
---
51.0
14.1
24.2
47.7
35.8
18.5
---
---
---
---
---
15.6
---
2.0
1.2
---
---
---
1.3
8.8
14.6
61-
Tunceli65-
69-
---
26.9
23.3
---
---
0.5
---
---
---
35.4
29.8
14.9
35.1
33.5
18.9
7.1
---
---
---
---
1.1
---
5.8
16.8
---
---
6.9
22.3
12.0
17.6
61-
Urfa 65-
69-
20.6
34.9
43.5
---
---
0.8
---
---
0.5
30.4
9.1
9.4
42.9
30.1
22.5
6.1
---
---
---
---
8.2
---
3.2
2.0
---
---
---
---
22.3
13.1
61-
Van 65-
69-
7.9
30.2
27.2
---
---
---
---
---
9.4
38.1
19.7
12.1
32.6
45.2
10.4
21.4
---
---
---
---
23.6
---
2.6
1.2
---
---
---
---
2.3
16.1
Source: T.C. Basbakanlık Devlet Istatistik Enstitüsü, 1950-1965 Milletvekili ve 1961, 1964
Cumhuriyet Senatosu Üye Seçimleri Sonuçları, Yayın No: 513 Ankara, 1966, pp. XXIIXXXVII;
T.C. Basbakanlık Türkiye Đstatistik Kurumu, Đstatistik Gostergeler;1923-2005,
157
APPENDIX C
Table 8 The Turkish Labor Party’s Votes by Provinces
1965 General Elections 1969 General Elections
Provinces Votes % Votes %
ADANA 7.926 3.20 5.247 2.10
ADIYAMAN 1.943 2.77 7.331 8.58
AFYON 2.795 1.90 2.906 2.26
AĞRI 3.466 4.90 1.290 1.65
AMASYA 5.239 5.75 3.308 3.74
ANKARA 20.264 4.31 12.264 2.54
ANTALYA 3.468 2.49 2.132 1.48
ARTVĐN 0 0.00 1.021 1.69
AYDIN 6.639 3.68 2.949 1.82
BALIKESĐR 5.963 2.45 4.911 2.23
BĐLECĐK 1.600 3.06 592 1.35
BĐNGÖL 830 2.12 778 1.58
BĐTLĐS 0 0.00 346 0.78
BOLU 2.474 1.84 2.142 1.73
BURDUR 2.233 4.31 912 1.72
BURSA 6.019 2.18 5.382 2.11
ÇANAKKALE 2.479 2.07 2.706 2.23
ÇANKIRI 0 0.00 1.341 1.87
ÇORUM 0 0.00 3.367 2.43
DENĐZLĐ 2.691 1.90 3.028 2.30
DĐYARBAKIR 8.867 8.00 3.330 2.75
EDĐRNE 2.891 3.03 4.347 5.07
ELAZIĞ 2.062 2.63 1.410 1.75
ERZĐNCAN 0 0.00 958 1.39
ERZURUM 0 0.00 3.387 1.93
ESKĐSEHĐR 3.766 2.75 3.672 2.88
GAZĐANTEP 5.064 3.41 2.872 1.96
GĐRESUN 2.393 1.83 1.984 1.67
GÜMÜSHANE 0 0.00 720 0.92
HAKKARĐ 0 0.00 154 0.55
HATAY 5.371 4.61 5.033 3.65
ISPARTA 0 0.00 780 0.98
ĐÇEL 4.271 2.84 2.461 1.71
ĐSTANBUL 49.422 7.93 34.636 5.77
ĐZMĐR 15.840 3.92 11.085 2.86
KAHRAMANMARAS 2.284 1.98 2.230 1.86
158
KARS 9.333 5.97 13.003 8.26
KASTAMONU 0 0.00 3.177 2.44
KAYSERĐ 3.700 2.19 4.142 2.70
KIRKLARELĐ 2.716 3.10 3.839 5.42
KIRSEHĐR 0 0.00 1.100 2.13
KOCAELĐ 3.495 3.29 1.914 1.90
KONYA 6.753 2.16 5.591 1.92
KÜTAHYA 0 0.00 1.494 1.26
MALATYA 4.586 3.71 6.952 5.24
MANĐSA 6.504 2.64 5.334 2.36
MARDĐN 1.965 1.66 317 0.23
MUĞLA 3.021 2.76 1.766 1.62
MUS 2.062 3.72 2.282 3.69
NEVSEHĐR 0 0.00 1.058 1.85
NĐĞDE 2.539 2.46 2.525 2.55
ORDU 5.212 3.47 2.362 1.64
RĐZE 0 0.00 1.130 1.32
SAKARYA 2.777 2.22 1.825 1.52
SAMSUN 19 0.01 3.914 1.71
SĐĐRT 1.190 1.96 911 1.20
SĐNOP 0 0.00 3.094 4.64
SĐVAS 5.699 2.74 5.428 2.98
SANLIURFA 3.771 3.17 2.578 2.00
TEKĐRDAĞ 2.639 2.86 3.378 4.00
TOKAT 5.981 3.96 2.847 1.80
TRABZON 1.939 1.15 1.642 1.02
TUNCELĐ 2.387 5.84 7.187 16.80
USAK 0 0.00 1.243 2.40
VAN 1.869 2.62 952 1.17
YOZGAT 7.086 5.28 3.162 2.52
ZONGULDAK 4.856 2.18 4.638 2.11
Source: T.C. Basbakanlık Devlet Đstatistik Enstitüsü, 1950-1965 Milletvekili ve 1961,
1964 Cumhuriyet Senatosu Üye Seçimleri Sonuçları, Yayın No: 513 Ankara, 1966, pp.
XXII-XXXVII ,
http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/develop/owa/secim_sorgu.secim_cevreleri?p_secim_yili=196
5
http://www.tbmm.gov.tr/develop/owa/secim_sorgu.secim_cevreleri?p_secim_yili=196
9
159
APPENDIX
FAMILY TREE OF THE KURDISH MOVEMENT IN TURKEY:
1945-1980
KURDISH-NATIONALISTS COMMUNISTS-SOCIALISTS
JOURNALS, DAILIES, ETC
PARTIES, GROUPS, ETC
PARTIES, GROUPS, ETC
KEMALISM-NATIONALISMFORMER
REBELLIONS
URBANIZATION, PLANSDEVELOPM.
EDUCATION---
—SOVIET- SOCIALISMCOLD
WAR- CHINAANTI-
AMERICANISM
Dicle’nin Kaynağı–
1948
TKDP-Faik Bucak and Said Elçi–1965
of TIP: Tarık Ziya Ekinci-Mehmet Ali Aslan-Mehdi Zana-Naci Kutlay-Kemal Burkay-Yasar Kemal-Musa Anter
of AP and YTP : Serafettin Elçi-Nurettin Yılmaz-A. Melik Fırat-Yusuf Azizioğlu-Ekrem Alican-Necmettin
Cevheri---
of 49’s : Musa Anter-Kamuran Bedirxan-M.Remzi Bucak-Sait Elçi-Nurettin Yılmaz-Sait Kırmızıtoprak-Naci
Kutlay-Canip Yıldırım-Yasar Kaya---
Others: Kemal Burkay (TKSP)-Đsmail Besikçi-M.Emin Bozarslan-Fehmi-e Bilal-H.Hisyar Serdi-Đhsan Nuri-
Mümtaz Kotan (Rizgari)-Abdullah Öcalan-Zinar Silopi-Meded Serhat-A.Qasimlo (IKDP)-‘Cegerxwin-Qedri Can,
Osman Sabri (Syrian poets)’---
Đleri Yurt Gazetesi-
1958-Musa Anter
–61 CONSTITUTION.-
TURKISH LEFT-TLPDEV-
GENÇ-STUDENTS
IRAQ-INDEPENDENCEMIDDLE-
EAST
49’lar
1959
Doğu
Mitingleri
1967–1969
55’ler
Sürgünü
TURKISH LABOR PARTY
Dicle-Fırat–1962–63-
Musa Anter
Deng- 1962-M. Serhat
Yeni Akıs-1966 M.A. Aslan
DDKO–1970
DEV-GENÇ–1969
(TDGF)
FĐKĐR KULÜPLERĐ F.
Turkiye’de Kürdistan
Demokrat Party-Dr. Sivan
DDKD–Devrimci
Demokrat Kultur
Dernegi -1975?
23’ler
1963
Rizgari-Kurtulus, Mumtaz
Kotan–1976–1979
Türkiye Kürdistanı Sosyalist
Partisi-Özgürlük Yolu Kemal Burkay-1975
-1975
Kawa–1976
KUK–1978
PKK–197(4)-8
Roja Welat-
1977–8
Yutan Haberler-
1980
Serxwebun–1979
Denge Kawa–
1977
Rizgari–1976
Ala Rizgari–1979
Yekbun–1979
TKP-ML- Ibrahim
Kappakkaya
THKO–Deniz
Gezmis–1970
THKPC-Mahir
Cayan
Doğu-1969-M.Anter
Kürtleri Kurtarma
Cemiyeti–1941
Dicle yurdu
1941
Fırat Yurdu
1942
Sark Postası-1954
Çıra-1965-K.Burkay
DHKD-Devrimci
Halk Kültür
Derneği
ASK-DER-Anti-
Sömürgeci Kültür Der.
Devrimci Demokrat
Gençlik Dergisi-1978
DDKO Haber
Bulteni- 1970
Denge Kawa-
1979
Instructions: Yellow: Dynamics / Turquoise: Publications / Blue: Associations, Clubs (legal and illegal) /
Lavender: Political Parties (legal and illegal) / White ovals: some historical events / Grey: some figures
Source: drawn by the author.
160
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