1. Fundamental questions posed by the Taksim revolt
During the past months we have witnessed the heroic struggle of the Turkish people not only in Taksim Square and Ankara but all over the country. An uprising that was part of a new historical revolutionary cycle that started in the French suburbs back in 2005 and continued with December 2008 in Greece, the Arab Spring, the workers' struggles against austerity in a series of Southern European countries, the uprising of the British urban proletariat in 2011.
The speed at which the revolt in Turkey has developed, from an apparently minor issue into a national mass movement against the government, also reflects the enormously turbulent period we live in globally. The Arab Spring and the massive protests against austerity cuts in Southern Europe in the last two years certainly had an impact on the consciousness of millions of people in Turkey. The idea that international action and support is the way forward became a motive force as has been exemplified in slogans in the banners of protestors throughout the whole region.
This new period of revolutionary upheavals poses fundamental questions to us, questions of programmatic clarity and also questions of strategy.
It is clear to me that our strategy is focused on the possibility of a permanent general strike as the necessary and sufficient condition that is going to bring not only the overthrow of any bourgeois government but of the capitalist system itself that gives birth to the policies of exploitation and oppression.
The Taksim revolt was in its essence a movement against the neo-liberal Islamist conservatism of AKP suited to ruling in the context of the present crisis of decaying global capitalism.
In the context of the Taksim revolt, we have witnessed the heroic struggle of the poor urban strata, the youth, the various social movements but it is a fact that the organized working class failed to be mobilized and that its political representatives, the left political parties failed to lead the movement. This is the main reason why this heroic uprising was left half way through. The organized working class was absent with the sole exception of DISK and KESK trade unions.
This article is set to analyze the factors affecting the inner state of the class struggle in Turkey with the perspective of drawing conclussions on this and other matters of revolutionary politics globally.
My working hypothesis is that the background of the Taksim revolt was not just issues of democratic rights but deep social and economic issues arising from the prolonged crisis of late capitalism.
How a revolt could happen in an economy which has consistently registered very high rates of economic growth and in which GDP per capita has more than trebled in the ten years of the AKP government?
Why the working class organizations (both trade unions and political parties) failed to intervene and lead the insurgent masses by transforming issues of democratic rights to anticapitalist policies? It is therefore very important to discuss the condition of the working class in the country ie. the actual strength in numbers, the level of organization, the level of militancy and in the last analysis the balance of forces between reformists and revolutionaries in the working class.
I certainly hope that such a discussion can trigger a debate on this and other questions of revolutionary strategy globally.
2. The economic and social background of the revolt
The issue of the building of a shopping mall in Gezi Park was not just a question of “a few trees” as Erdogan put it. Taksim Square has an historic significance for the Turkish left and trade union movement. It was here that a huge demonstration of half a million people on May Day 1977 was attacked by paramilitary gangs and the security forces, who killed 42 and injuring hundreds. The return of the May Day demonstration to Taksim Square and the punishment and trial of those responsible for the killing has become a cause of enormous symbolic importance for the left and trade union movement in Turkey.
There is more to it. The official plan of the municipality is to build a reconstruction of the Ottoman Empire Taksim Military barracks which would house the shopping mall. This is seen as part of the AKP agenda to reclaim the ancient grandeur of Turkey. Few months ago, it was announced that a planned third bridge over the Bosphorus is going to be name after Sultan Selim I. All this reclaiming of the legacy of the Ottoman Empire is deeply offensive to many who are attached to the secular tradition of the bourgeois national movement of Ataturk, on which the modern Turkish republic was founded.
But this is not just a religious vs. secular issue either. The planned shopping mall in Taksim has come to symbolize the type of speculative urban development model on which the economic growth during the AKP government has been based upon. Opposition to the gentrification of whole areas of the city, the pushing out of working class people to the outskirts of the capital, the shoddy construction deals going to cronies of the ruling party, the glaring contradiction between the luxury homes of the millionaires and the shanty towns where the recently arrived workers from Anatolia live was all concentrated in the struggle against the bulldozing of Gezi Park to make room for yet another shopping mall. A speculative building boom was in fact a key element of the sustained economic growth which Turkey experienced for the best part of ten years.
There are also of course, issues of democratic and civil rights. For ten years the AKP has ruled with an iron hand, arresting independent and critical journalists, censoring the media, using repression and arrests against the trade union movement, etc. This has been combined with a creeping assault on the secular character of the state.
Many of these things were passively accepted, or at least did not provoke a mass movement up until now, as the economy was growing. It was mainly on the basis of this economic growth that the AKP solidified its electoral support, which went from 34% in 2002, to nearly 50% in 2011.
On the surface, the AKP had achieved very impressive rates of growth. Between 2002 and 2011, the Turkish economy grew by an average rate of 7.5 percent annually. Average per capita income rose from $2,800 U.S. in 2001 to around $10,000 U.S. in 2011. The economy was hit by the global crisis of capitalism in 2008/09, but recovered quickly with strong rates of growth of 9% and 8.5% in 2010 and 2011.
However, quite a lot of this growth was based on a massive influx of foreign direct investment, attracted by a program of wholesale privatisation of public assets, which meant the country accumulated a massive foreign debt. Between 2008 and 2012, the GDP grew by $44 billion, but at the same time the country accumulated a massive foreign debt of $55 billion.
While Turkey benefited from trade agreements with the European Union, the crisis in Europe has forced it to pursue a more aggressive political, trade and diplomatic offensive in the Middle East and North Africa in recent years. Behaving like a regional imperialist power, Turkey has attempted to secure markets and spheres of influence in the whole region by linking up with the newly established Muslim governments of Tunisia and Egypt, building strong links with the Kurdish Regional Government in Northern Iraq and becoming actively involved in supporting the Free Syrian Army rebels against the Assad regime.
All the factors that created the economic miracle are now turning into their opposite in the last year. GDP growth has dramatically slowed down to an almost standstill. The rate of growth for 2012 was just 2.2%, with domestic private consumption contracting 0.8% in the last quarter.
The headline figures of economic growth in reality were hiding a persistent and deep divide between the rich and the poor. In 2011, when GDP grew by 8.5%, the richest 20 percent of the population held almost half of national income while the poorest 20 percent had just 6 percent. Despite the economic growth of the last decade, Turkey is the third most unequal country in the OECD.
The glaring contradictions between the wealthy elite and the majority of the population are exemplified by a tax system in which indirect taxation represents 2/3 of revenue hitting working people and the poor hardest. Even indirect taxes are skewed in favour of the wealthy, with the general sales tax at 18%, while it is a mere 8% for caviar and 0% for some precious stones.
The unemployment rate has remained at around 9% throughout this period, and the official figures grossly underestimate the situation in which many have ceased looking for a job altogether. Youth unemployment amongst university graduates is around 30%. The official figure for people living below the poverty line is 16%.
These social inequalities were contained by a general improvement in living standards, while at the same time the economic growth created expectations which could not be met. Now that economic growth is slowing down sharply, all the contradictions have come to the fore.
It is this combination of democratic issues and social inequalities which exploded in this massive movement against Erdogan which has taken everyone by surprise.
3. The condition of the working class in Turkey
According to the official statistics the Turkish workforce numbers 24 million with an annual growth rate of 3,8%. The agricultural sector comprises of 5.5 million, the manufacturing sector (where the majority of the industrial working class is concentrated) is 3.5 million while education workers amount to a good 1 million.
The rate of labour force participation (those working or actively looking for work as a percentage of the entire working age population) is around 45% compared to over 70% in the EU. This means that the ratio of workers to the entire working population, when the self employed and unpaid family workers are taken into consideration, is relatively low.
Small and medium sized enterprises (SMEs) are particularly important for the Turkish economy: firms with less than ten employees accounting for nearly 60% (EU average = 30%) of all workers and their owners often seen as more anti-union than the managers of larger firms.
According to Turkish legislation, trade unions are allowed to recruit members only among registered workers, that means that the number of workers that can be unionized is much lower that the actual number of the total workforce (the 24 million).
For workers there are three main trade union confederations in Turkey: TÜRK- İŞ, HAK-İŞ and DİSK, all of which are members of the European Trade Union Confederation. The DISK confederation is the leftwing one, the other two can be classified as rightwing or reformist. As can be seen from Table-1 below, the largest of these, TÜRK- İŞ which had just over two million members in 2005 has increased to just over two and a quarter million members in 2009, with 33 affiliated unions. HAK-İŞ had nearly 370,000 members in 2005 and has seen its membership increase to 431,000 members in 2009, with 7 affiliated unions. DISK had almost 400,000 in 2005 and has also seen an increase in membership to just over 426,000 members in 2009, with 17 affiliated unions.
Of the overall figure for membership in 2009 17% were women. The sectors with the highest number of trade union members in 2009 were metal and textiles, followed by general services and the food industry. The sector with the most women union members is the textile industry.
Table 1: Official Membership Figures in 2009
Confederation Number of members Number of unions
TÜRK-İŞ 2,239,341 33
HAK-İŞ 431,550 7
DİSK 426,232 17
Independent 135,556 37
Grand total 3,232,679 –
Source: Ministry of Labour and Social Security (MLSS), January 2009 Statistics, Official Gazette, no 27113.
These official statistics give a high figure for union density of just under 60%. This figure may well be conditioned by the fact that there is a difference between legal membership and real membership, given that a worker who becomes temporarily unemployed may still remain a member of his or her union.
Moreover, the total number of workers eligible to be union members is just over 5 million, significantly lower than the 24 million mentioned above in the figures concerning total employment.
For civil servants there are three main confederations: Türkiye Kamu Çalişanlari Sendikalari Konfederasyonu (Türkiye KAMU-SEN), Memur Sendikalari Konfederasyonu (MEMUR-SEN); and Kamu Emekçileri Sendikalari Konfederasyonu (KESK) – KESK is the only organisation affiliated to the ETUC.
In 2009 MEMUR-SEN had 515,000 members, Türkiye KAMU-SEN had 395,000 members and KESK had 232,000 (Details can be seen in Table 2). Of the overall figure for membership in 2009 approximately 30% were women. The sector with by far the highest number of trade union members in 2009 was education, instruction and science, followed by health and social services.
Table 2: Official Membership Figures for Public Servants’ Unions
Confederation Membership
KESK 232,083
TÜRKİYE KAMU-SEN 394,497
MEMUR-SEN 515,378
BASK 3,627
BİRLEŞİK KAMU İŞ 26,422
HAK-SEN 3,499
DESK 4,146
INDEPENDENT 15,450
Grand total 1,195,102
Number of public servants 1,874,543
Unionization rate 63.75 %
Turkish trade unions suffer from two persistent problems that impede their organising in any sustained way. First, Turkey's restrictive trade-union legislation, criticized repeatedly as contradicting international conventions on labour rights, has made it difficult for unions to obtain legal recognition. Second, employers use various tactics to discourage unionisation, including intimidation, harassment and dismissals of union members, which often go unpunished. Recent legal amendments covering public servants’ unions and proposed draft legislation for workers’ trade unions fall well short of enhancing democratic freedom and guaranteeing the right to organise.
Despite attempts to increase their public visibility and voice demands, the political influence and social acceptance of Turkish trade unions remain limited. According to the European Trade Union Confederation Report the real unionisation rate is estimated to be 8.9 percent of the entire workforce.
Despite structural constraints, trade unions still have the potential to increase membership. Some trade unions have been able to grow over the last decade by organising in multinational companies with the help of global pressure. Others have focused their energy on organising subcontracted workers in the context of an increasingly precarious, flexible and informal labour market promoted.
Trade-union leadership and decision-making structures remain hierarchical and do not give enough voice to shop stewards and local branches. Women and young workers are under-represented.
4. The political representation of the working class – the Left political parties
The Taksim movement lacked a political leadership. In other words, no political organization in Turkey was ready to lead such a massive movement with a wide social base.
The main opposition party that supports the movement against Erdogan’s AKP is the CHP (Republican People’s Party); this is a bourgeois party. The CHP was concerned about the protests posing a challenge to capitalist rule. This was the worry when the Istanbul Stock Market crashed, following the flight of short term foreign capital. CHP softened its rhetoric and joined the chorus warning the masses against ’marginal groups’ and ‘provocations’. Nevertheless, CHP leadership did not fully control the militants in its rank and file.
The Left in Turkey embodies a strong secular outlook. There has long been a tendency to equate secularism with Kemalist elitism and anti-democratic militarism. The Left has been a defender of the Republic with the Kemalists but against their authoritarian tendencies - and has hard feelings with anyone connected to the coups which resulted in decimations of the Left in the 1980s. Some segments of CHP and the ex-Maoist Workers’ Party raise pro-military and Kemalist slogans to appeal to secular people but they failed. The emergence of the liberation theology of Anticapitalist Muslims and their participation in the protest make the issue of secularism more complicated. A clear-cut border line is difficult to be drawn.
It has been, and still is, an important prerequisite for the success of any left movement in Turkey to acquire political independence from the Kemalists.
The banners of ODP (Freedom and Solidarity Party), EMEP (Labour Party), TKP (Turkish Communist Party) and the other left organizations decorated Taksim Square, displacing commercial signs. However, these parties are small and they are far from leading the movement. In numerical terms, the largest left party is TKP. Like its sister party in Greece, the KKE, TKP followed a sectarian path until the revolt. For example, when thousands were fighting with the brutal police to try to gather in Taksim Square, the TKP held its own May Day rally in a different square. TKP militants later joined the masses. This illustrates an historical tendency for the rise of mass movements to marginalize sectarianism.
Revolutionary Left militants were more vocal then ever. They felt less isolated as millions join them in chanting their slogans against the AKP’s authoritarianism. For many people, this was their first political action and they were receptive to new revolutionary ideas.
The Left in Turkey is divided along ethnic lines (Turkish, Kurdish); that was an obstacle for the success of the revolt. The nationally oppressed Kurdish people are familiar with huge protests. However, while many young Kurdish people were in the protests, the leadership of the Kurdish national movement did not actively support the revolt. That leadership could mobilize over a million people, in Istanbul alone, and could easily spread the movement to the cities of Eastern Turkey. But it was reluctant because it negotiated a so-called the ‘peace process’, ending the armed struggle in exchange for a series of democratic reforms concerning Kurdish national identity. Thus it has been an important task to link the Kurdish movement and its leadership to the revolt.
All the internal divisions and programmatic inadequacies have made the Left to present a program whose focus has been on defending the democratic constitution, liberal democratic civil rights, ending unlawful and "legalized" police action, and fight and organize for the next election in order to deepen the liberal democratic turn for women's and LGBT rights, the right to abortion etc., and so on in the face of Erdogan's current antidemocratic turn. That was clearly a reformist program without any reference for equality on the distribution of wealth in the country.
5. The need for a mass revolutionary working class party
The above analysis exemplifies that during the revolt the working class did not have the organizational and political strength to intervene and transform the revolt into a revolution.
My own sense is that this popular uprising underlines the urgent need for independent working class politics, for the creation of a revolutionary mass working class party in Turkey. If the working class had its independent and organized political voice, this revolt could grow enormously and effectively to challenge the rule of capital.
Turkey is already a different place than when my plane landed at Istanbul’s Airport last May for the 3rd International Critical Education Conference. But such upheavals require a revolutionary leadership equipped with the knowledge of history, and the experience of social movements, and a concrete program and strategy, in order to claim political power and abolish capitalism. Such a party should be built in the course of the revolts, because during a revolt the consciousness of the people develops abruptly and the historic time is accelerated and the material conditions mature and become favourable to build the necessary party capable of uniting protesters around radical demands and leading them forward with correct tactics and a revolutionary strategy for power.
Once more, the crisis of the human civilization is proved to be a crisis of revolutionary leadership of the working class!
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This article will be translated in Turkish and published in a volume edited by Dr. Kemal Inal
