[The following interview with a Turkish Trotskyist leader, G. Gansever, is from the January 28 issue of Was Tun, the weekly paper of the International Marxist Group (GIM), the West German section of the Fourth International. The translation is by International Viewpoint.]
Question. Since September 12, for the third time in the last twenty years, a military regime is in power in Turkey. On May 27. 1960, the military overthrew the bankrupt Bayar-Menderes government. On March 12. 1971, the commanders of the army, air force, and navy forced the resignation of the Demirel government. Their objective, they declared, was to put an end to "chaos and anarchy in the country and to carry out the reforms overdue." For 500 days, a junta of generals headed by Kenan Evren has held the reins of government. Is the present junta any different from its predecessors?
Answer. A close look shows no class differences between the three putsches, although the whole Turkish left and so-called democratic public opinion regards the May 27, 1960, coup as progressive.
There are, however, differences of another sort. Since the workers movement has developed, the same forces have reacted differently. In 1960, the resistance of the farmers and of the workers was under the control of the Democratic Party (DP) and the Republican People's Party (CHP). These parties dominated the political stage.
The consciousness of the masses and the line they followed were largely determined by these bourgeois currents. It was not until later — as a result of growing industrialization — that a differentiation took place. As soon as the workers' movement came onto the political stage, the reaction of the military became harder and more brutal.
Q. What are the underlying reasons for the coup d'etat?
A. The previous putsches followed severe economic crises. The first two, in 1960 and 1971, brought a certain economic recovery. which, however, did not go above the level reached before the coup.
Thus, the 1977-78 gross national product (GNP) fell back to the level of 1968. According to the figures published by the Turkish statistical bureau, there has been a certain improvement, since GNP has risen to the level of 1978. But still, after almost fifteen years, it has only come back up to the level of 1968.
Junta admits torture deaths
Turkey's military regime admitted
March 16 that at least fifteen people have died under torture since the September 12,
1980, military coup. The admission came in response to a report by Amnesty International that at least seventy people had been tortured to death in the junta's prisons.
Since the military coup, more than
100,000 opponents of the regime have been jailed.
Q. What are the Even junta's objectives? What has it achieved?
A. Its primary objective was to restore "law and order"* in the country. To a certain extent, it has achieved that. There are 150,000 political prisoners. One hundred and fifty persons have died under torture. Amnesty International talks about seventy cases where it can be proven that people were tortured to death.
In so-called raids, 600 persons have been shot. Three thousand people have been condemned to death. One hundred and fifty have already been executed. The rightist terror that ravaged the country before September 12 has been replaced by a legalized state terror.
It must be made clear whom this terror is aimed at. The target is not some "democratic left," as you often hear in the West. This terror is aimed against the entire workers movement, against every current in it, and against the oppressed Kurdish nation. Some 90 percent of its victims come from the politically active left in the workers movement.
All parties have been banned, along with the independent unions grouped in the Revolutionary Workers Trade Union Confederation (DISK). The DISK leadership is now being tried in a military court, and some of the points in the indictment indicate that they could face the death penalty.
The other confederation, the Turkish Trade Union Confederation (Turk Is), is still legal.
Youth and farmers organizations have been banned. The CHP, which is close to the international Social Democracy, has also been banned. Its chairman, Bulent Ecevit, has had to serve a four-month prison sentence.
Q. Does that mean that the junta is ruling without any base in the population?
A. Unlike what happened after the 1971 putsch, the military have left certain bourgeois associations untouched. All the so-called progressive forces are trying to take the regime's
Kemalist propaganda seriously and to show that Kemalism* should not be applied the way the government is doing it but some other way.
While the revolutionary left has been suppressed, and the working class has been terrorized, the right wing of the CHP has been able to put its views forward. These people publish a weekly called Arayis. The obvious objective of this tactic is to channel the protests through this layer of bourgeois intellectuals.
e. What sort of protests are there? Is there resistance?
A. The open resistance has been broken. But there is a certain restlessness, a certain antagonism to the regime. For example, I have a letter here from the chief of a village near the city of Konya that was written to Arayis. Freely translated, it says: "Don't serve the interests of the rich. It is important to give more space to the country people and their problems, the people who can't get credit, who can't get hospital beds, who have no chance to get work."
This letter was written quite recently. If a village elder dares to write a letter like this, he is risking quite a lot.
Q. The complaints in this letter take us back to the objectives of the military junta. What sort of economic policy has it undertaken and what results has it registered up till now?
A. After "fighting terrorism," the junta's second objective was to reorient the country's economy massively toward export. So, what have the results been? According to the official figures, exports in the first nine months of 1980 increased by a half billion dollars over the same period of 1979, reaching a total of $2.25 billion. In 1981, they continued to rise, reaching roughly $3.5 billion. In recent months, the papers have been saying that this increase is a great success.
However, if you compare the export totals with those for imports, you will see that the latter have also risen sharply. The total has gone from $4 billion to $5.2 billion in 1980, and currently to $7.1 billion. The foreign trade deficit has gone from $2.3 billion in 1979 to $3 billion in 1980, to $3.6 billion in 1981.
These figures tell the real story about the socalled "restoration of economic health." This becomes still clearer, when you see that ex-
*Mustafa Kemal Ataturk was the leader of the revolution of 1919, which followed the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire and consolidated the modern Turkish state. As president of Turkey from 1923 to 1938, Ataturk carried out a program of capialist modernization.
ports rose by 48 percent more than imports in 1981, but despite that the foreign trade deficit increased.
Obviously, the increased exports were "bought" by lowering prices. The Turkish business press is complaining that Turkish export commodities are being sold at a loss. The profits of the traders, however, are being supported by state subsidies. This is a policy that was practiced back in the 1950s.
It is also interesting to look at the structure of imports, since it is claimed that Turkey's industrial production has risen. Some 91 percent of imports consist of raw materials and semimanufactures. This figure has remained constant for a long time. Has Turkey become a country that imports raw materials in order to transform them into industrial commodities? The fact is that Turkish industry has concentrated on manufacturing, in particular light manufacturing. Thus, plastic containers are produced from imported raw materials by imported machines with imported chemical equipment. This is also true for fertilizers, a very important sector, although the raw materials could be obtained in the country. So, dependency on the West is growing.
Q. So, the general's economic conceptions don't differ from Demirel's — are they just being applied more ruthlessly?
A. What has changed is the direction of the exports. A growing percentage is going to the Near and Middle East, to the countries Turkey gets its oil from (Libya, Iraq, Iran, Saudi Arabia). In 1979, 49 percent of all Turkish exports were still going to countries of the European Economic Community.
In mid-November, the economics minister, Turgut Ozal, said that 44 percent of total exports were going to the Arab countries. However, all our experience shows that the junta's economic policy is not really leading the country out of dependency and want.
The combination of precapitalist and semicapitalist modes of production with an advanced capitalist industry that only complements the industry and markets of the dominant capitalist countries of the West remains an insurmountable obstacle.
The junta has no program for land reform. The farmers as a group have gotten nothing from the putsch. Workers' wages have been cut and frozen.
The burden of military expenditure is increasing. Under such conditions, how can a process of economic growth be launched that could overcome the worst poverty?
Q. Can you give some concrete examples of this?
A. Let's take agriculture. It still produces two-thirds of exports. Forty-five to fifty million people are still being fed, without any immediate danger of famine. For the future, I think that the situation in agriculture presents the biggest dangers for a new economic collapse.
For example, the fertilizer factories have increased their capacity by 40%. But since fertilizer prices have increased by more than 1,000% in the last two years, the use of fertilizer has declined by 50%. The prices of insecticides have increased by 50%. Consumption has dropped by 30%. The price of livestock feeds has risen by 600%. The result is that 60% of the chicken industry has gone bankrupt.
In 1969, a tractor cost a half million Turkish lira. Today the cost is one and a half million. The result is that five-billion-lira worth of agricultural machinery remains unused in the storehouses of the Turkish Institute for Agricultural Development.
The junta claims that it is promoting the middle classes. In fact, the freeing of interest rates in June 1980 touched off a galloping expropriation of small property owners. The interest rate shot up from 12% to 70%, and socalled pirate bankers offer up to 140%.
A lot of small property owners, but also clerks and officials, sold their modest possessions in the hope of profiting from the high interest rates. About 160 billion lira were deposited, of which not an inconsiderable part came from Turkish workers abroad. A lot of civil servants have placed their pension checks with the bankers.
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A growing number of these bankers are going bankrupt or disappearing. About 25 billion lira has already disappeared into the pockets of such reckless speculators and absconding bankers.
The material situation of the workers is still worse. Monthly wages range between 10,000 and 20,000 lira. You cannot rent any place for less than 8,000 to 10,000 per month. A kilo of coffee costs 1,000 lira; a kilo of butter, 500 li- та.
Q. In the first weeks and months after the putsch, the West European governments and NATO provided political cover for the dictatorship, claiming that it was a necessary precondition for a "return to democracy." They are still supporting the generals and torturers and covering up for them. At the same time, recently, they have been weeping crocodile tears over the fate of the Polish workers. Nothing more is being said about a return to democracy. Was the junta able to gain a certain credibility in the eye of the population by its "democratization plans"?
A. The calling of a handpicked "Consultative Assembly" last fall had a certain effect, because these liberal "Kemalist" intellectuals, including circles of the CHP, played a role in this and developed a discussion around it. The assembly declared that it would consult the "social groups and organizations" in order to draw up a new constitution. This is still going on.
Representatives of the banned bourgeois parties that are not going to be consulted have raised their "protest" only because they say there is no democracy if they are not involved.
Around the end of 1982, a referenum is supposed to be held on the constitution and after that there are supposed to be elections for a new parliament. But before all that takes place, all the important laws — the new laws regulating political parties, trade unions, elections, and parliament, etc. — are going to be decreed by the junta.
We have seen the same sort of trickery in other parts of the world before.
0. What possibilities do you see for resistance?
A. Despite the torture and the indescribable conditions, the prisons today are centers of the resistance. The vanguard of the workers movement confined there is struggling to hold out and to achieve political clarity in preparation for a new upsurge of class struggle. For these militants, international solidarity is essential.
Outside the prisons, all forms of legal and illegal struggle that have shown their effectiveness are being considered. It is of decisive importance to systematically exploit all the possibilities that remain in the unions. The masses of former DISK members, deprived of their leaders, are supposed to be "transferred" to Turk Is. We have to be on the lookout for the smallest openings to do revolutionary work in this area.