Candidate Kürkçü: Third pole is emerging in Turkey
Candidate Kürkçü: Third pole is emerging in Turkey
Ertuðrul Kürkçü has been nominated candidate for Member of Parliament for Mersin (eastern Mediterranean coast) of the Labour, Democracy and Freedom Block. Speaking to ANF he said he sees his candidature as a "job that need to be done. The crucial point is to always continue to pass on the word of socialism". And he concluded: "If I can do that properly, then this time I serve the general objectives of my life on these grounds".63-year-old Kürkçü is the Secretary General of the ÝPS Communication Foundation and the Coordinator of the BÝA Project. He studied architecture at the Middle East Technical University (ODTÜ) in Ankara where he chaired the ODTÜ Socialist Ideas Society. In 1970, he was elected the General President of the Federation of Turkish Revolutionary Youth Associations (DEV-GENÇ).
Kürkçü was one of eleven young revolutionists who tried to rescue Deniz Gezmiþ, Yusuf Arslan and Hüseyin Ýnan, members of the Turkey's People's Liberation Army (THKO) who were sentenced to death penalty by the Ankara Martial Law Court after the military coup on 12 March 1970. Kürkçü was the only one who survived the operation at the Kýzýldere village in the Niksar district of Tokat. The Martial Law Court sentenced him to death penalty. Kürkçü served 14 years in prison before being released in March 1986.
Between 1986 and 1988, he was the editor and translator of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We worked as an author and publication director of the Encyclopaedia of Socialism and Social Struggles. He contributed to the foundations of the Özgür Gündem ('Free Agenda') and Evrensel ('Universal') newspapers and worked as a writer for the Yeniden Özgür Gündem ('New Free Agenda') newspaper.
* Why did you accept the candidature?
"The parties and organisations forming the Block agree on the basic aims. But on the whole, the Labour, Democracy and Freedom union is not a socialist or an anti-capitalist union. Much more work is needed for that. The block will embrace a political campaign around pressing problems. It is clear from my point of view, that other dynamics will have to be initiated if we where to create what I call a social alliance.
* What it could mean for the BDP to have a stronger representation in the parliament?
We are talking much more about a block than about the BDP. The Labour, Democracy and Freedom Block. It runs for the elections within the Turkish socialist movement and the Kurdish national movement, outside of the BDP, constituted of other elements than the BDP. But clearly the BDP creates a vital point for the block. Three important results will occur if this representation is being strengthened in parliament, I think. First, it means that the BDP will be strengthened in parliament and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP) will be weakened accordingly. Second, the possibility to communicate more intensely a concrete and positive project for peace will emerge.
Third, our say and visibility increases due to the alliance of the socialists with the BDP. Hence, there will be many more opportunities to make the voice and the problems of the labour movement heard on the highest level in Turkey.
The parliament is one of the grounds for our struggle. If there is no movement and life on the streets, in schools, in factories, and if this representation does not strengthen this life and movement, then it does not mean a thing in itself.
But to my knowledge, this union emerges from the contributing people, structures, surroundings and the people who are related to this base. In this aspect I believe that this will be the opportunity for a positive transformation".
* Which kind of a city is Mersin?
Mersin is a place with the most important industrial workers where furthermore industrial and trade sectors are being organized. Agriculture and tourism are prevalent in this region. Therefore, it is a place where work force is being used intensely and where workforce is being massively exploited. In this aspect, Mersin has a high profile for the labour struggle.
Second, there is a huge population of Kurds here. The ratio of Kurdish immigrants is very high. There is an important mixture of Turks, Kurds and Arabic Alevis here. The women's movement is very alert. The place has a considerable intellectual power due to the university. Taking all these aspects into account, Mersin - despite its small number of inhabitants - is a multi-cultural place with an intense struggle, a rich combination of people and many identities. In other words this is a place where all discrepancies of Turkey come together.
* How can the block be a pushing force for the Kurdish question?
I hope that we can continue this block by enlarging it. I hope that unions and the Alevi movement will actively participate in this process. If they can give an impetus to this block, the struggle can be broadened and continued.
We are not talking about the struggle to broaden an alternative group in parliament; what we are talking about his the struggle to transform Turkey. This block has to be continued by broadening and deepening its composition.
* Clearly the BDP, and before that the DTP, has been violently stopped by the Turkish state which tried to prevent any change proposed by the Kurds.
Indeed. Since 14 April 2009, two weeks after the closure of poll boxes for local elections, in 13 different cities and total 40 Kurdish political and NGO activists were arrested. Among them were officers of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which was closed by the Constitutional Court later on, and lawyers of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. DTP had emerged from the local elections held on 29 March as a strengthened political force. The government had particularly lost ground in the pre-dominantly Kurdish region of the South-East of the country, though they claimed the opposite. For the DTP, 2009 local elections was a real success in southeast. The DTP increased the the number of its predecessor DEHAP’s municipalities from 36 to 58. Seven among them are city municipalities; one is a greeater metropolitan municipality (Diyarbakýr). Yet, DTP lagged behind DEHAP. In the 2002 general elections DEHAP got 1 million 933 thousand 680 votes (6.14 percent) and 287 thousand 953 votes in Istanbul (5.51 percent). As of 02.08 am, DTP's percentage rests at around 5.30 and 4.53 in Istanbul.” The status quo’s response was a crackdown on the party’s left-wing who urged for local power based on social values vis-a-vis the liberal pressure comþing from the Kurdish businessmen as well as from the government. In August the same year, the AKP government having cracked-down the local arm of the DTP started an initiative for negotiating for an end to 25 years of bloodshed in Turkey’s southeast. However starting amidst nationalist cries for revenge even from among the ruling AKP parliamentary group and party grassroots, “the Kurdish opening” as initially dubbed by the ministry of interior had to be halted when nationalist reactions climaxed upon entering into Turkish territory of a group of unarmed Kurdish guerrillas, and immigrants from the UN sponsored Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq in their traditional “peshmerga” garbs who were welcomed by nearly one million people dancing and cheering with the expectation of a immediate “honest peace”. Yet , the opening was based not on the Kurdish people’s urge for freedom but Turkish establishment’s concerns for security and influence was immediately revealed by one of PM Erdoðan’s closest aidees.
* How would you describe the current political situation in Turkey?
Turkey's recent politics appears to revolve around court cases. With the recent crack down on the generals implicated in a series of coups against the legitimately elected ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) now stand behind the bar. The defendants are headed up by former army commanders, who during duty may have mobilized the power they exercised within the state security and intelligence services for crushing the ruling Islamist-rooted AKP government. The complex web, built up under the leadership of a retired four star general, comprises of a vast array of figures from Turkey's broad political spectrum including covert killers, fanatic ultra-nationalist agitators, former-Maoist political figures, solemn academics, retired paramilitaries, and others.
The AKP after their grasp of all the power bases in the state is hardly likely to ever appear in the constitutional court to defend themselves in a closure case against charges by the Head Prosecutor of the Turkish Republic under charges of “having become a focus of fundamentalist Islamist threat against the secular republic.”
The involvement of courts, judges and prosecutors in the ongoing strife may surprise an onlooker who is unfamiliar with the particularities of Turkey's political background. What unfolds before our eyes is not simply a legal process as such, yet a war for power ‘pursued by other means.’ Seen through the eyes of European or U.S. media, Turkey appears to being torn apart between secularists and Islamists. But this ideological approach misses the real nature of the ongoing strife in the country: the warring parties' programs are related to the restructuring of Turkey's socio-economic relation in a globalized world economy, rather than particular worldviews toward secularism or Islam, though the latter has indeed had a considerable impact on the course of the conflict.
In the one camp stands a contradictory alliance of Turkey's big capitalist class – who strive to ascend a higher level for competition in the global market through membership in the European Union (EU) – and the ‘Anatolian Tigers’. The Anatolian group is made up of middle scale businesses generally owned by the conservative local bourgeoisie of central Turkey of an Islamic background. They have been competing in the global market since the 1980s when Turkey adopted export oriented development strategies to replace the statist and import substitution approach of the previous two decades. The ruling AKP has had an eye to further influence in the Middle East as a NATO member with a 'strategic alliance' with Washington, contrary to neo-conservative paranoia of Turkey adopting the ‘Taliban model.’ In the last six years in government, it has been able to coalesce with the interests of the big capital from its Islamist power base, although there have also been at times fierce frictions between the allies.
In the other camp is a complex political and social network of Turkey's bureaucratic and military elites in alliance with certain sections of the bourgeoisie whose domestic interests are endangered by the influx of international finance-capital in the Turkish markets. They derive their power from their manipulative capacity over Turkey's powerful state apparatuses – from the military to judiciary, from the academy to administrative bureaucracy – rather than from their role in social production. The recent crackdown on the secret special organization 'Ergenekon', however, has apparently inflicted a heavy blow on the most criminal elements of this network. This group, with their extensive network across Turkey among staunch secularist-republicans, and with their control over the military-industrial complex, still represents an attractive – even if irrational from the standpoint of the globalization – perspective particularly among white collar occupations, who comprise the urban base of Turkey's political landscape. They have argued for a future for Turkish capitalism in Eurasia – the giant political-geographical space between Russia and China. The influential generals who have inspired this new direction had already in 2002 stated that “instead of bidding for membership in the unreliable EU, Turkey should turn towards cooperation with Russia and Iran.” The following years would prove that these were more than mere words.
* Given this context you have stated that a "third pole" is needed. Could the "Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block" be considered as a step toward building this new "third pole"?
The present situation throws up discussion of mainly two options. On the one hand, the restoration of a 'military guardianship' regime, which may or may not get along with the AKP government, is posited. Turkey, however, is not faced with an imminent military takeover as there exists no real social-economic pretext for such an extraordinary regime, in terms of the present balance of class forces.
On the other hand, the AKP is often posed as deepening Islamic solution to the impasse. But while the AKP pursues a social-cultural policy of pushing Islamist values in daily life as an instrument of its ideological-cultural hegemony, it is highly skeptical that they are aiming at an Islamic state, simply for the concrete reason that this would inflict more harm on their power base than their secularist opponents. An Islamist Turkey would inevitably be ousted from the negotiations table for EU membership (a major guarantee for the free circulation of Turkish capital and goods within the Euro zone, Turkey's major foreign trade partner).
That is why a 'third pole' is necessary to widen political options in Turkey. It is also necessary to bring to justice the Turkish political and military authorities responsible over the last decade for encouraging the secret Ergenekon organization. The military and political elites did so either through tolerance for extra-legal forces or by abusing their power to assist such forces for the sake of the survival of the military 'guardianship' regime. They did so at the expense of the lives of hundreds of people and the uncountable waste of human and material resources.
Such Herculean tasks can only be undertaken by a force that is not the accomplice of any bourgeois government, and that has no tolerance for oppression either by the political Islamists or by the ultra-nationalists. This task can only be assumed by those political forces that fight for a Social Republic. Such a pole in Turkey is emerging.
Kürkçü was one of eleven young revolutionists who tried to rescue Deniz Gezmiþ, Yusuf Arslan and Hüseyin Ýnan, members of the Turkey's People's Liberation Army (THKO) who were sentenced to death penalty by the Ankara Martial Law Court after the military coup on 12 March 1970. Kürkçü was the only one who survived the operation at the Kýzýldere village in the Niksar district of Tokat. The Martial Law Court sentenced him to death penalty. Kürkçü served 14 years in prison before being released in March 1986.
Between 1986 and 1988, he was the editor and translator of the Encyclopaedia Britannica. We worked as an author and publication director of the Encyclopaedia of Socialism and Social Struggles. He contributed to the foundations of the Özgür Gündem ('Free Agenda') and Evrensel ('Universal') newspapers and worked as a writer for the Yeniden Özgür Gündem ('New Free Agenda') newspaper.
* Why did you accept the candidature?
"The parties and organisations forming the Block agree on the basic aims. But on the whole, the Labour, Democracy and Freedom union is not a socialist or an anti-capitalist union. Much more work is needed for that. The block will embrace a political campaign around pressing problems. It is clear from my point of view, that other dynamics will have to be initiated if we where to create what I call a social alliance.
* What it could mean for the BDP to have a stronger representation in the parliament?
We are talking much more about a block than about the BDP. The Labour, Democracy and Freedom Block. It runs for the elections within the Turkish socialist movement and the Kurdish national movement, outside of the BDP, constituted of other elements than the BDP. But clearly the BDP creates a vital point for the block. Three important results will occur if this representation is being strengthened in parliament, I think. First, it means that the BDP will be strengthened in parliament and the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP) will be weakened accordingly. Second, the possibility to communicate more intensely a concrete and positive project for peace will emerge.
Third, our say and visibility increases due to the alliance of the socialists with the BDP. Hence, there will be many more opportunities to make the voice and the problems of the labour movement heard on the highest level in Turkey.
The parliament is one of the grounds for our struggle. If there is no movement and life on the streets, in schools, in factories, and if this representation does not strengthen this life and movement, then it does not mean a thing in itself.
But to my knowledge, this union emerges from the contributing people, structures, surroundings and the people who are related to this base. In this aspect I believe that this will be the opportunity for a positive transformation".
* Which kind of a city is Mersin?
Mersin is a place with the most important industrial workers where furthermore industrial and trade sectors are being organized. Agriculture and tourism are prevalent in this region. Therefore, it is a place where work force is being used intensely and where workforce is being massively exploited. In this aspect, Mersin has a high profile for the labour struggle.
Second, there is a huge population of Kurds here. The ratio of Kurdish immigrants is very high. There is an important mixture of Turks, Kurds and Arabic Alevis here. The women's movement is very alert. The place has a considerable intellectual power due to the university. Taking all these aspects into account, Mersin - despite its small number of inhabitants - is a multi-cultural place with an intense struggle, a rich combination of people and many identities. In other words this is a place where all discrepancies of Turkey come together.
* How can the block be a pushing force for the Kurdish question?
I hope that we can continue this block by enlarging it. I hope that unions and the Alevi movement will actively participate in this process. If they can give an impetus to this block, the struggle can be broadened and continued.
We are not talking about the struggle to broaden an alternative group in parliament; what we are talking about his the struggle to transform Turkey. This block has to be continued by broadening and deepening its composition.
* Clearly the BDP, and before that the DTP, has been violently stopped by the Turkish state which tried to prevent any change proposed by the Kurds.
Indeed. Since 14 April 2009, two weeks after the closure of poll boxes for local elections, in 13 different cities and total 40 Kurdish political and NGO activists were arrested. Among them were officers of the Democratic Society Party (DTP), which was closed by the Constitutional Court later on, and lawyers of imprisoned PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan. DTP had emerged from the local elections held on 29 March as a strengthened political force. The government had particularly lost ground in the pre-dominantly Kurdish region of the South-East of the country, though they claimed the opposite. For the DTP, 2009 local elections was a real success in southeast. The DTP increased the the number of its predecessor DEHAP’s municipalities from 36 to 58. Seven among them are city municipalities; one is a greeater metropolitan municipality (Diyarbakýr). Yet, DTP lagged behind DEHAP. In the 2002 general elections DEHAP got 1 million 933 thousand 680 votes (6.14 percent) and 287 thousand 953 votes in Istanbul (5.51 percent). As of 02.08 am, DTP's percentage rests at around 5.30 and 4.53 in Istanbul.” The status quo’s response was a crackdown on the party’s left-wing who urged for local power based on social values vis-a-vis the liberal pressure comþing from the Kurdish businessmen as well as from the government. In August the same year, the AKP government having cracked-down the local arm of the DTP started an initiative for negotiating for an end to 25 years of bloodshed in Turkey’s southeast. However starting amidst nationalist cries for revenge even from among the ruling AKP parliamentary group and party grassroots, “the Kurdish opening” as initially dubbed by the ministry of interior had to be halted when nationalist reactions climaxed upon entering into Turkish territory of a group of unarmed Kurdish guerrillas, and immigrants from the UN sponsored Makhmour refugee camp in northern Iraq in their traditional “peshmerga” garbs who were welcomed by nearly one million people dancing and cheering with the expectation of a immediate “honest peace”. Yet , the opening was based not on the Kurdish people’s urge for freedom but Turkish establishment’s concerns for security and influence was immediately revealed by one of PM Erdoðan’s closest aidees.
* How would you describe the current political situation in Turkey?
Turkey's recent politics appears to revolve around court cases. With the recent crack down on the generals implicated in a series of coups against the legitimately elected ruling AKP (Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi – Justice and Development Party) now stand behind the bar. The defendants are headed up by former army commanders, who during duty may have mobilized the power they exercised within the state security and intelligence services for crushing the ruling Islamist-rooted AKP government. The complex web, built up under the leadership of a retired four star general, comprises of a vast array of figures from Turkey's broad political spectrum including covert killers, fanatic ultra-nationalist agitators, former-Maoist political figures, solemn academics, retired paramilitaries, and others.
The AKP after their grasp of all the power bases in the state is hardly likely to ever appear in the constitutional court to defend themselves in a closure case against charges by the Head Prosecutor of the Turkish Republic under charges of “having become a focus of fundamentalist Islamist threat against the secular republic.”
The involvement of courts, judges and prosecutors in the ongoing strife may surprise an onlooker who is unfamiliar with the particularities of Turkey's political background. What unfolds before our eyes is not simply a legal process as such, yet a war for power ‘pursued by other means.’ Seen through the eyes of European or U.S. media, Turkey appears to being torn apart between secularists and Islamists. But this ideological approach misses the real nature of the ongoing strife in the country: the warring parties' programs are related to the restructuring of Turkey's socio-economic relation in a globalized world economy, rather than particular worldviews toward secularism or Islam, though the latter has indeed had a considerable impact on the course of the conflict.
In the one camp stands a contradictory alliance of Turkey's big capitalist class – who strive to ascend a higher level for competition in the global market through membership in the European Union (EU) – and the ‘Anatolian Tigers’. The Anatolian group is made up of middle scale businesses generally owned by the conservative local bourgeoisie of central Turkey of an Islamic background. They have been competing in the global market since the 1980s when Turkey adopted export oriented development strategies to replace the statist and import substitution approach of the previous two decades. The ruling AKP has had an eye to further influence in the Middle East as a NATO member with a 'strategic alliance' with Washington, contrary to neo-conservative paranoia of Turkey adopting the ‘Taliban model.’ In the last six years in government, it has been able to coalesce with the interests of the big capital from its Islamist power base, although there have also been at times fierce frictions between the allies.
In the other camp is a complex political and social network of Turkey's bureaucratic and military elites in alliance with certain sections of the bourgeoisie whose domestic interests are endangered by the influx of international finance-capital in the Turkish markets. They derive their power from their manipulative capacity over Turkey's powerful state apparatuses – from the military to judiciary, from the academy to administrative bureaucracy – rather than from their role in social production. The recent crackdown on the secret special organization 'Ergenekon', however, has apparently inflicted a heavy blow on the most criminal elements of this network. This group, with their extensive network across Turkey among staunch secularist-republicans, and with their control over the military-industrial complex, still represents an attractive – even if irrational from the standpoint of the globalization – perspective particularly among white collar occupations, who comprise the urban base of Turkey's political landscape. They have argued for a future for Turkish capitalism in Eurasia – the giant political-geographical space between Russia and China. The influential generals who have inspired this new direction had already in 2002 stated that “instead of bidding for membership in the unreliable EU, Turkey should turn towards cooperation with Russia and Iran.” The following years would prove that these were more than mere words.
* Given this context you have stated that a "third pole" is needed. Could the "Labor, Democracy and Freedom Block" be considered as a step toward building this new "third pole"?
The present situation throws up discussion of mainly two options. On the one hand, the restoration of a 'military guardianship' regime, which may or may not get along with the AKP government, is posited. Turkey, however, is not faced with an imminent military takeover as there exists no real social-economic pretext for such an extraordinary regime, in terms of the present balance of class forces.
On the other hand, the AKP is often posed as deepening Islamic solution to the impasse. But while the AKP pursues a social-cultural policy of pushing Islamist values in daily life as an instrument of its ideological-cultural hegemony, it is highly skeptical that they are aiming at an Islamic state, simply for the concrete reason that this would inflict more harm on their power base than their secularist opponents. An Islamist Turkey would inevitably be ousted from the negotiations table for EU membership (a major guarantee for the free circulation of Turkish capital and goods within the Euro zone, Turkey's major foreign trade partner).
That is why a 'third pole' is necessary to widen political options in Turkey. It is also necessary to bring to justice the Turkish political and military authorities responsible over the last decade for encouraging the secret Ergenekon organization. The military and political elites did so either through tolerance for extra-legal forces or by abusing their power to assist such forces for the sake of the survival of the military 'guardianship' regime. They did so at the expense of the lives of hundreds of people and the uncountable waste of human and material resources.
Such Herculean tasks can only be undertaken by a force that is not the accomplice of any bourgeois government, and that has no tolerance for oppression either by the political Islamists or by the ultra-nationalists. This task can only be assumed by those political forces that fight for a Social Republic. Such a pole in Turkey is emerging.
