As the old cadres of the TDKP, who had long since been affiliated with the pursuit of the union of communists, we in the July of 2004 had written an article “Change the Name the Story Will be Yours (Kızım Sana Söylüyorum Gelinim Sen Anla)” to give our account of the liquidation of Turkish Revolutionary Communist Party(TDKP). As it is obvious from the title of our paper; our primary objective was not to give a detailed account of the TDKP experience itself. Our true objective was to warn the militants of the centrist organizations and movements which had passed through the same trajectory that TDKP had passed through and were on their way to being liquidated, reminding them that this is also their story. However, this does not mean that we did not find it necessary to give our version of the historical review of the TDKP version, in fact we thought that it was responsibility to provide our evaluation of the events.

In the confines of this paper it will be impossible to provide a full and detailed account of the liquidation of the TDKP. In fact the problem here is not only our constraint in terms of the number of pages. We do not believe that this account can be offered from only a few individual communists. It is a job that can only be satisfactorily completed by the joint effort of all communists who have unfortunately been unable to stop the liquidation of the TDKP but still believe in the need for a revolutionary organization. Let this account be left unsettled, as we promise to give it its necessary due in the future. (Change the name the story will be yours 2004)

As these two years have passed the number of people who wanted to understand and evaluate the TDKP experience has grown steadily, along with the people who want to resurrect the TDKP from its decayed state. Hence, we deemed it opportune to settle our debts and offer our account of the events.

For years now we have been defining ourselves as the revolutionaries who defend the union of the communists rather than the old cadres of the TDKP. Naturally, this self-definition will effect how we relate to explain the issue at hand as it did in the last paper. We shall not disguise the effect of the political affiliations we hold right now, or the position we occupy in the political and organized struggle when giving our historical account. On the contrary we shall, as a first step, remind the reader the evaluation the platform(the platform of the creation of a new communist party) that we are a part of provides in the case of TDKP. Then we shall undertake the work of formalizing and deepening the analysis, thereby providing results that will illuminate both are thinking and the hopefully the other communists who want to provide an explanation for the past events.

Was TDKP A Crushed Party or an Unsuccessful Attempt at Becoming a Party?

The ones who want to offer their evaluation of the TDKP should first understand the nature and the properties of the subject that they are evaluating. It is well known that the main object to be defined is TDKP and the main narrative is the crumbling of the TDKP structure within EMEP. However we forget the main questions that are confronting us: Which time frame should this account consist of? Should we start it from 2 February 1980? Or the coup in April 1981?From the First General Conference? Or should we go further in time?Should we start everything with the 1978 conference were the TDKP-IO(Turkish Revolutionary Communist Party- Buildup organization)was established or the establishment of the THKO Temporary Central Committee and the publication of the Comrade(YOLDAS)?Or should we start a narrative with the establishment of the THKO(Turkish National Liberation Army)?

In fact the question goes much deeper than the question of where the start up. The main and the fundamental question is what should we understand from TDKP and the liquidation of the TDKP?Are we talking about the TDKP as a communist party which for a time lead the peasant and the proletariat masses which fell to pieces when the opportunists inside the party had their day?Or are we talking about the TDKP as another example of a unsuccessful party buildup process, where a revolutionary organization which never managed to establish a strong and healthy foundation for the establishment of a party never did become a party and slowly and surely regressed to a liberal and idle labor community?

Since we do not pretend to approach this issue with the guise of an academician or an impartial referee, and we are fully aware that we are revolutionaries who fought in the ranks of the TDKP, we cannot and will not forget the effort and the sacrifice levels of the cadres of TDKP,the GKB and the supporters of the TDKP in the name of the revolution and socialism. To forget that these people gave life and blood for the sake of “holding the party flag upright” is the most unadulaterated form of ungratefulness and rank injustice. However, we are aware that we cannot hold a honest review of the past events if we sink into feelings of nostalgia or TDKP romanticism, we shall strive to provide an account of honest,hardheadedness that is worthy of a militant.

That TDKP was a revolutionary organization there should be no considerable doubt. However,there should also be no considerable doubt when we deny that TDKP was never a real communist party. To show that it is not communist it will suffice to compare the program, functioning and the overall political line of the TDKP with the overall outline that was drawn by the first four congresses of the Communist International. However we shall not take this line of attack as our primary objective in this work is to review whether the TDKP was a real party or not.
Contrary to widely held opinion, the reason we believe that TDKP was not a party capable of leading the working class was not because the party was nearly dissolved as soon it was built, or because the parties political activities suffered severely from the effects of the coup after only eight months after the party was established. In fact a party can even be totally crushed in historical times like these. So the reason the TDKP never became a true party cannot be found in analyzing the extent of the effect the military coup will have on this revolutionary organization. In fact if the coup was the real culprit in the miscarriage of the party we would be talking about the wiping out or the destruction of the party rather than the liquadation. But in fact we know that for all the defeatism of the upper echelons of the party, and all the torture and deaths that the state inflicted upon them the militants did not allow the party being destroyed.

The real proof of the lack of true party coherence is standing right in front of us, when the ranking party officials of the TDKP themselves talk about the rebuilding process of the party they are in fact accepting that the party does not actually exist as of now.

There are many other objective proofs that TDKP is not a party with the ability to fulfill the goal to fulfill the goals that is has set for itself. From a movement that tries to establish itself as a party the least we can expect is for it to comply with its charter and to establish a praxis that is in line with its party program. Suprisingly this has never been the case for TDKP.

The congress that the party charter establishes to be the most paramount organ has never been convened after the coup in the 26th of April although the coup happened 25 years ago. The fact that the second congress could not be convened, is just another sign that the highest ranked members of the party passively had to admit that the party dissolved as soon as it was built up.

Not only this but the TDKP did not even follow the decisions that were taken in their first formative congress.The program that was decided in this congress was disregarded, repudiated and sent to the dust bin of history after the passage of only 8 months.

Finally, even the part of the party charter that was not related to the party congress was evaded by the party members. The charter, just as it was described by Lenin in his “Letter to a Comrade on our Organizational Tasks” remained as charter that was written on water without any influence on real life events. Contrary to the charter, the practice of the executive cadres while in prison was not reviewed, and the local committees did not give the effort to convene the congress which was delayed from year to year.

Clearly this so called party is not a party that was leading the proleteriat class. After all of these there should be no argument that what we are dealing with here is a revolutionary organisation that, although viewing itself as a party in theory, cannot convene its conference, refuses to follw its own charter, chooses to sweep its program under a rug and in practice does not fulfill one obligation that a party should be fulfilling.

Because of these reasons discussed above it will be wrong viewing the TDKP as a party that was functioning(at least to a certain extent) until the opportunists infiltrated the party, and afterwards was sabatoged and liquadated because of this infiltration. TDKP is a material result of a miscarriage of the building effort of a communist party.TDKP is the culmination of the political and organizational efforts (after 1974) of the revolutioanary cadres coming out from the experience of the THKO who suffered the defeat of 1971 and were in need of a revolutionary party. After a long and intricate process this organization started calling itself a party. However as is clear from the discussion carried above the TDKP never merited being called a ‘party’. Even though TDKP has went through a resurrection as a revolutionary organization after 1987 after the setback of 1980, and became more succesful when compared to the other revolutionary organizations in establishing ties with the proleteriat class, it never succeeded in becoming a party as even its executive branch as well as its dissidents accept implicitly.

The Consequences Should Not be Confused with Causes

It is not a run of the mill idea that TDKP is not a party because we need to understand this fact to explain the process that ended with the EMEP takeover.

As a first step the implication of this fact is that all the mainstream criticisms that are carried out to understand the TDKP experience are invalid. All these criticisms focus on three main weaknesses of the TDKP organisation, the class base that the organization depended upon, the TDKP program and the betrayal of the leaders of the organization. However any analysis carried on these points will unfortunately be totally useless in explaining the transformation of the TDKP to EMEP(The Party of Labor).

The idea that TDKP was leaning on the petty bourgeois as a social base, and was thereby unable to form a real and lasting link with the proleteriat class or to put in any way that the party was built on a feeble social footing has been widely used to explain the liquadation of the party. However this idea contradicts reality in the sense that there is hardly any other revolutionary organization that has interacted with the proleteriat class on a more wider scale or more intensively. The two movements that have surpassed TDKP in these efforts were TKP(Turkish Communist Party) and DEV-YOL(The Revolutionary Way) crumbled away even before TDKP. It should be example from these two cases that you are not immune to liquadationism simply because you established strong links with the proleteriat, and organized within the proleteriat class.

Another much used argument is that the TDKP party program was the reason that the party was liquadated. This argument is incorrect as well. Of course we do not deny that although TDKP asserted that it surpassed the TKP(immersed in the Mustafa Suphi tradition) its program was lacking and regressive when it was compared to the TKP program of Mustafa Suphi and his followers. However, even the TDKP program would not fit in the system of bourgeois dictatorship as is shown by the 16th clause this largely unmentioned document stating “The Turkish Revolutionary Communist Party, by a hard fought and violent revolution, will annhilate the militarist-bureaucratic state apparatus. The peoples army, that will comprise of the proleteriat and the peasant class, a army that was born out of the struggle the masses wage against reactionism and will be lead by the Turkish Revolutionary Communist Party will be the instrument that allows the revolutionary democratic national government to be established, and will spread this government to spread countrywide and will serve as the protector of this rule. It would be sheer idiocy to state that this is a program that opens the way for a liberal labor party.In order to prove that this program did not serve as a legitamizing narrative for the actions of the liquadationists one should just remember that the liquadationists themselves tried to hide and disown this program completely.
The ones that look for the origins of liquadationism by analyzing the sentences in the program that open the door for alliances with the national bourgeoisie(with the explicit condition that it also is enmeshed in the revolutionary struggle) are also misunderstanding and reversing the reality on the ground. In direct contradiction to these explanations even in the 90`s where the liquadation process was gaining steam the TDKP consistently kept on addressing the issue of the capital-labor contradiction rather than the probability of a alliance with the national bourgeoisie. The EP(Labor Party)-EMEP programs are quite striking concrete evidences of this impetus. The program that was used in the service of the liquadationists was not the program of the TDKP which accepted making a alliance with the national bourgeoisie as a probability, but the Labor Party Program that stated “ death to capital, government to labor”, and the articles in the Ozgurluk Dunyasi(Free World) which became the fundamental building blocks of this program.

The groups that have parted ways with the TDKP or have fallen out of grace with the party explain liquadation with the intrigues within the party. Although the role of intrigues should be obvious when we remember the course that has been travelled from the 2nd of February to put the entire burden of the liquadation on the executives of the Party is definitely misleading. It is misleading because these executives are not delivered with a decree from heaven, on the contrary they have been elected by the congress which was recognized as the highest organ by the TDKP charter(2 February 1980). So the party members who selected these leaders are just as responsible for the actions of these leaders as the leaders are themselves.

In addition, this charter did not make the Central Committee omnipotent. In fact in the limitation of the power of the Central Committee the language of the charter is quite transparent “The Party Congress will be convened by the Central Committee. In the situation that the Central Committee is overrun by the enemy or is debilitated with the votes of two-third of the local commitees the congress can also call for and convene an extraordinary session. If the organization is broken up or the Central Committee and the local commitees(in the absence of extraordinary political situations) do not take the initiative to call for a congress the party members that have the majority demand a congress, and carry the party into congress.” In direct contradiction to their charter the TDKP members did not call for a congress that would be instrumental in selecting a new central committee and calling the old central committee to account for its defeatist attitude after the coup of the 12th of September. Hence the members could be seen just as responsible as the central committee in the failure of the TDKP experience.

All of this does not mean that an analysis that point to the deficiencies in the links that the TDKP builds between itself and the working class, in the programme and the leaders of the party are barking up the wrong tree. What is wrong is imagining that this analysis provides the bulk of the explanation.It is no secret that the ties that TKDP establishes is divergent in nature than the ties that a communist party establishes with the working class, that the TDKP programme has serious deficiences, that the programme was not only more reactionary than the Mustafa Suphi programme but also more regressive and reactinary than the TKP-ML program which was very affected by the breaking away of 1971 which happened because of the divergence of views on the Kurdish Problem. It is also no secret that many betrayers of the revolution and socialism have come out from the ranks of even the highest orders and levels of the TDKP executive branch.However the main point is that all these deficiencies are not the main culprits of the liquadation but actually just another consequence of the main cause that also lead to the liquadation of the party.
The true reason of the liquadation is the unhealthy understanding and leanings when it comes to the subject of the building up of the party. The founders of the TDKP movement did not give the necessary self evaluation and the struggle to establish a revolutionary party. There approach to the question of the party buildup was completely erroneous. With its programme,its approach to the question of creating binds with the proleteriat class, and its executive cadres the TDKP itself was the culmination of these errors. In other words the basis and the origin of the liquadation should be looked for much earlier than the 2 February Congress, especially in the time frame between 1975 and 1980 where the party was in the process of being established. To get a clearer understanding of the root causes of the liquadation we should start the evaluation and the review process from 1975 when the party building movement which culminated in the TDKP had found steam.

From the THKO to the TDKP-IO

TDKP was the end result of the 1971 movement. The three main organizations that carried the flag for the 71 movement both achieved the revolutionary thrust but also suffered a crushing defeat. The watershed of 1971 represent the breaking away from legalism,parliemantarism class concession and Kemalism in different shades and colors. However from another perspective 1971 was also a time of defeat for the revolutionary organizations. The leading group of these truly revolutionary organizations followed a course of action that was born out of revolutionary theory, but this did not change the fact that this was a part that was totally crushed before they reached their goal of becoming the advance guard of the final struggle the people will wage against the state.

In the past we have taken great care to identify the relationship we had with the THKO of the Deniz Gezmis generation as an organic relationship. This relationship was not identified by us because of our individual affiliations, or because of our subjective ideas and feelings. On the contrary in the publications of our party when the past was being evaluated, THKO was always presented as our pioneering organization. All the members who keep their allegiance to the TDKP movement still see the THKO in this light.

Although one cannot deny that the majority of the TDKP was comprised of the THKO cadres and sympathizers, this does not imply that THKO was the pioneering organization of TDKP. As a starting argument, one should remember that the majority of the party members who took part in the founding congress held on the 2nd of February 1980 did not come from the THKO background which was heavily immersed in Che Guevaranism and Latin American guerilla warfare.

In addition to this a significant part of the THKO(including the ones who actually took up armed struggle) drew a line between themselves and us, and planned for themselves a different course which would end up in TKEP(Turkish Communist Labor Party). It can already be seen from these two crucial reasons that the THKO cannot be taken as the pioneers of the TDKP.

Maybe an even more important point to make is that even we who used the name THKO in the period between 1975-8 we did not have any important organizational,programmatic or practival similarities with the THKO of the Sinan-Deniz tradition. The same applies for the revolutionary organization THKO-MB(The Army of the Liberation of the People-Unified Struggle) which latter amalgamated to the TKEP, and their dissimilarity with the earlier THKO

Because of all these reasons when we are discussing the period preceding 1974 we shall coin the word “the group that will build the TDKP” rather than the “old cadres” of the THKO or the “inheritors” of the THKO tradition. Although the misgivings and mistakes of this group will be related to the group that will build the TKEP we shall deal with the part which concerns the TDKP, and this is the part that has given the TDKP organization its shape and structure.

In the period between 1974-1978 the group that would build the TDKP was dominated by two conflicting tendencies that plagued their political praxis. On the one side there was the tendency to see the 1971 defeat not as the defeat of the THKO but a defeat of the entire revolutionary left(thereby comprising also THKP and TKP-ML) . As a result of this approach a collective evaluation of the defeat had to be provided, and a revolutionary party which would solidify the break of the 71 movement, and make the borders between opportunism and revolutionaries more legible and cogent would be built. Both the evaluation and in the party building process was not seen as an responsibility of an already existing organization but the joint work of all revolutionaries who were coming from three seperate branches. Contradicting this tendency there was the rather lazy and narrow attempt of defining oneself as the comrades of the Deniz and Sinan(and the whole tradition) to use the borrowed sympathy that was afforded to this tradition in order to organize more easily.

If one wanted to show that it was the first tendency that came up on top, evidences of this would not be hard to find. The group that went on to build the TDKP actively stated that it accepted the inheritance of the 71 movement as a whole. They not only accepted the 71 movement but declared that it was their responsibility to offer an account of the affairs. The self-evaluation which could not in any terms be coined as a wash-up, the THKO tradition in its programmatic essentials and its praxis was totally disowned and refuted. In the first issue of the Comrade(Yoldas) revolutionary adventurism was criticized. In the second issue the Soviet Union was identified as a social-imperialist state. The group that will build the TDKP did not regard the leaders of the THKO,THKP and TKP-ML as their teachers of Marxist-Leninism but as the past heroes of the struggle of the masses. In this sense they did the same to the 71 movement what the Bolsheviks did to the Narodniks in Russia: they accepted the other side as part of the revolutionary tradition while in the same time agreeing on the need to surpass this tradition. Even more importantly this group by building a block with the THKP-C/ML and the TKP ML which it regarded as revolutionary organizations with the same programmatic priorities set a course to achieve the union of the proletarian revolutionaries.

However, one could also find numerous evidences to show that it was the rather more opportunist tendency that came on top. In fact, and this is rather unfortunate, one should state that the second tendency was always more influential in the development of the TDKP. We can find the most clear-cut evidence for this in the evaluations and the confessions that were carried out after the 71 defeat. The group that would go on to build the TDKP did not actualy accept the responsibility of the 71 movement en-masse but only pretended to do so. For instance they did not accept or inherit from the tradition of Ibrahim Kaypakkaya which was the summit and the main symbol of the 71 break. Although they stated that their intention was to internalize the 71 tradition and in the process surpass it, in practice they did not share the views and assertions that Kaypakkaya made about the TKP of Mustafa Suphi and the Kurdish problem, although these views and assertions were of the caliber that would benefit any revolutionary movement worthy of its name. Just because they choose to disown or disregard the tradition of Kaypakkaya they become dangerously close to allying themselves with the Aydinlik(Shiny Way) movement which was loyal to the tradition of Sefik Husnu and was openly social-chauvinist when it came to the issue of the Kurdish problem. “The second period is when the THKO drifted towards the right. In this period(though for a short interim) even the TIIKP(Turkish Revolutionary Proleteriat and Peasants Party) was regarded as a legitimate part of the union of the proleterian revolutionaries.”(Documents from the Congress)

The tendency to divide the 71 tradition, which led to alignment only with the THKO movement would materialize years after in a document in one issue of the Devrimin Sesi(Voice of the Revolution). Stating “The forerunner of our party is the THKO...It was founded by Deniz Gezmis,Huseyin Inan,Yusuf Aslan, Sinan Cemgil and friends. Deniz Gezmis, was the symbol of the 68 movement and his comrades were the most influential and esteemed youth leaders of the period. As a consequence although the THKO was not built in a process of real interaction and oneness with the proleteriat class, it was the most known, popular and influential revolutionary organization and it was the organization that was offered the strongest sympathy from the masses.” (On the 19th year of our Party and its Past Experiences,Devrimin Sesi , Issue 201).So what the article stated was that although the whole 71 movement was revolutionary the THKO was even more so, although all the leaders in the 71 movement tried to lead the masses, the THKO was the most able in leading the masses. Obviously the people from the THKO tradition saw the past in this light. However the question of how they managed to calculate the popularity of Mahir Cayan and Ibrahim Kaypakkaya and find it lacking remained an open one.

One other unfortunate tendency of the group that would later form the TDKO was that in direct contradiction to its stated aim of embracing all the movements that were sharing a political line of communism in the effort to build a revolutionary party they still continued to call themselves the THKO. In the period of 1975-1978 while still disowning any property or praxis that made the THKO into what they were, they still used thr label of THKO with relative ease. In the period when the political line of the so called new THKO was not drawn it could have made sense to use the label THKP. However, it was obvious by the time of the establishment of the THKO`s temporary central committee that the THKO had no similarity or common position with the old THKO. In fact one of the first jobs of the Temporary Central Committee was to publish the Comrade which rapidly moved to refute and repudiate the fundamental political positions of the THKO tradition.

If we look at why the group that would go on to build the TDKP still clung on to the label of the THKO, we see that this from a certain point fuelled by the rather widely held idea that the way a revolutionary organization achieves continuity is not by the continuity in the ideas that are proclaimed and the praxis that is being defended, but by the continuity in the membership profile and the cadres. However in actuality even this measure of continuity did not exist between the THKO-MB and the old THKO. Another reason why the name stuck was because the relative ease of carrying out a political project under the prestige that the name THKO afforded could not be given up by the members of this movement.

Ultimately the most conclusive evidence that the group which would latter build the TKDP saw as its defining goal the organization of the THKO sympathizers rather than a true and real union of all proletarian revolutionaries was given by what happened to the revolutionary bloc(which was brought together in 1975). This bloc, largely because of the competition and enmity that existed among all the rivaling old traditions that comprised it(including the THKO) could not complete its objective to an actual unified revolutionary party. However the defining move for dissolution of the bloc came from the THKO. The bloc dissolved because of the impetus (which was seen as a move forward at the first glance) which was provided by the THKO.

In the THKO conference held in 1978 the organization decided to stop using the name THKO. It reasoned that since the already existing political line of the THKO had no relation to the political line of the old THKO there was no reason why they would share names. “Our conference, has decided that our old name the THKO should be changed because this name is no longer in line with our communist nature and aims, and it has renamed this organization TDKP-IO(Turkish Revolutionary Communist Party-The Rebuilding Organization)on the grounds of the establishment of a true revolutionary party of the proletariat class being imminent. “(Devrimin Sesi. Issue 201). When we analyze this change without taking other things into account it is possible to say that the fact that there was a realization that the name THKO was not in line with the current political line of the organization could be seen as a positive outcome. However if this realization truly fuelled the name change the change would have occurred soon after the first issue of the Yoldas or maybe after before. In a similar vein our movement should have also undergone a name change when we provided a criticism of Maoism, and shifted suddenly our attitudes and conceptions of the Chinese experience in 1978.

Actually the true reason of the name change should be sought elsewhere. The establishment and the declaration of the TDKP-IO is in its fundamental nature, an opportunist move to outmaneuver the other movements and organizations that in essence share similar political lines with the TDKP-IO.

By the decisions made in the conference of 1978 the group which would later establish the TDKP had already proclaimed (unilaterally) how the union of the communists under a common party would be established. They were inviting all communists into their amateur organizations, presenting these organizations as a evolutionary stepping stone in the process of becoming a full scaled revolutionary organization (what was even more incomprehensible was that they thought this switch was imminent.). “On the other hand the Conference has proclaimed that from here on out the political project of unifying the proletarian revolutionaries has changed meaning, and this unification project can only be achieved under the umbrella of the TDKP-IO. After proclaiming in the Congress documents that at this stage The “Union of the Proletariat Revolutionaries” should be taken to mean a state unity with the international communist movement, unity around a Marxist-Leninist program and a common political line, and lastly a union that can only take place in the ranks of the TDKP-IO, the conscious responsibility of our party members have grown, and all our organizations have become more confident, ambitious, mature and responsible in their undertakings(Devrimin Sesi 201)

With the 1978 congress the true project that was disowned was not the tradition and the project of the THKO(which was already disowned and repudiated as early as 1975)but the project of the union of communists. In essence the idea that was defended was that the revolutionary communist party could be formed by the inner evolution of a single organization, and not revolutionary organization which gather around a shared understanding of the organizational and political program. This idea led to the invitation sent to all the other revolutionary organization to continue their revolutionary struggle in the amateur organization of the TDKP-IO.

THE DEFEAT ON THE 12TH OF SEPTEMBER SHOULD BE SEEN IN A NEW LIGHT

This over-hasty attempt at party-building coupled with the invitation to the other organizations to come under their own party led to certain foreseeable consequences.The militants in the other organization disregarded this appeal from the TDKP-IO. While the TDKP-IO blamed the other organizations for secterianism and petty bourgeoisie power squabbles,these accusations did not propel the militants in the other organizations to join the TDKP-IO. Quite to the contrary these accusations actually strenghtened the secterian binds that existed with these other militants and their respective organizations.

At the congress that was convened on the 2nd of September 1980 the TDKP-IO was dissolved to become TDKP. However, the realization that there was a huge difference between proclaiming that one is a party and acting as if one is a party followed quite swiftly from this proclamation. After the clampdown of 1981 the TDKP Central Committee was nearly totally dissolved. The program and the charter was rapidly shelved and as a result the party itself has been searching for its revival ever since.

The true Achilles heel for the party when it confronted the junta was not the local or peripheral bodies but the actual ruling clique of the party. However one should disregard the fact that although the members of the TDKP left the torture chambers of the state unblemished and unstained they were not able to confront the clique that had thrown the party programme and charter to the dustbin of history. Neither the regional committees nor the individual members were able to convene a congress although this was quite clearly within their rights as defined by the charter. However, this inability and weakness is not due to the individual misgivings of the cadres, but rather due to the deficiencies of the whole organization. An organization that was thrown into a process of party building, to outmaneuver the other organizations, without gaining the nature of a party, in other words an organization that was overstretched was most naturally the party were the members and the regional committees were not likely to use the rights they had gained in their charter.

The true reason that the rights in the charter could not be pursued by the members to convene a congress, is because the TDKP was a result of a haphazard and wrong conceptualization of a party building process. This fundamental flaw lead to the deepening of the sectarian leanings of the ruling group in the TDKP. Against us and against all movements which defended the same political line, of pro-Albania the party assumed a demeanor that was quite combative and arrogant. In response to the summons from the TKP/ML and the TKIH-two organizations which were trying to fulfill their goal(which they had set in the 1970s) of building up a party in the 1980`s- to take part in the party building party process despite all its sectarian leanings, the TDKP branded those who called for a unified party building platform as liquadationists and as groups opposed to their party. The reason of this negative response was that rather than accepting this summons as an opportunity to give an account about the mistakes committed before the 1980`s, the party choose to see it as a direct threat of their organizational existence and well being.

In direct conjunction with this rather ill-tempered stance towards all other organizations was the fact that the organization had started writings its own accolades in the internal affairs of the TDKP. Firstly all the mistakes and the weaknesses of the party position was blamed on the conspicuously visible(in the period before 1985) opportunist right element in the party and then the expulsion of this element which had already given up on being revolutionary was presented as a victory. Aided by this phony “victory” the ruling clique who had all but sold the party to the scrap yard in terms of organization managed to present itself as the group that defended the party against liquadation.
If indeed the TDKP had been able to lead the proleteriat class without gaining any kind of a party character and without striving for and achieving the union of the communists than this would be a direct refutation of the Leninist party theory. However, in direct contradiction to this the actual experience of the TDKP after 12th of September actually validated the Leninist doctrine which states that a necessary condition of reaching proleterian unity is the reach communist unity.In the period after 1987, while the party disregarded and neglected its goal of building communist party, it defended this rather puzzling policy change that stated that from here on out the party would be moving towards the proleteriat class(it was not immediately clear which class THKO or TDKO was moving towards earlier). As a result of this political change the party although benefiting in the short run from the spring movement in the long run made its liquadation that much more easier. As the party continued leaning towards the masses concessions were given from the revolutionary political line of the party. Also, at that time the party started to be crowded by all these elements which were largely comprised by trade union members and reformist elements, who neither in word nor deed had any intention of carrying the illegal party activities of TDKP.

As the situation progressed the administrative clique and the cadres of the party and the youth organization started to be seen in the legalistic sphere. First with the TDKP interviews and then with the booklet of the “mass labor party” the union bureaucrats and the TKP remnants were brought together under the umbrella of a legal party structure of a labor party. Of course in this process a very hard-lined approach was taken against the liquadationist projects of Perincek and Dev-Yol.In this process, especially the young cadres like us were told to organize limited cadre movements which would publicize the name of the party.

However we are aware that we have still left one question unanswered “How is it that the cadres who fought and resisted so valiantly against the junta, were so unable to move against the liquadationist chiefs, so incapable and late in wresting power away from them? In the last issue we had answered this question in a fashion by saying “We are the ones who had taken their time in leaving the party. We respected the reasons of the friends who had left the party but we were also angry at them for leaving us with these opportunists. We thought it was crucial to stay in the party and continue the fight. However both the defeatist gloomy attitude of the comrades who left the party and our attitude to keep the good fight on was wrong. Our comrades had the right action but the wrong attitude. We had the right attitude(struggle) but we were keeping up the struggle in the wrong place. When our friends asked us “Why are you there” we answered “Where should we be?, What should we do”. We were in the party because the proleteriat class was there. Rosa Luxembourg, a true symbol of the Trotskysists is rarely seen as an exemplary figure by the revolutionaries. Yet we did not know that it was she who said “Even the worst organization is better than no organization”. We had not yet realized that this was the aphorism employed by people who did not have the will to build up a truly revolutionary party. We were settling for bad when we saw what was worst. However we could not see that in a legal party apparatus it is futile to defend or fight for the rebuilding of the ilegal party. We had to leave the party and carry our criticisms from the outside. As long as we stayed in the party in order not to damage tha parties cohesion we could not get together with the other revolutionaries in the party. We were fighting the liquadationists on their own turf. Defeat was inevitable(Change the name the story will be yours ” 2004)

It is possible to take what we said 2 years one step forward, meaning that in light of what we have already said our account of the experience of the TDKP can be re-nourished. We did not only stay in the TDKP because we believed in the mantra “Bad organization is better than no organization”. We also carried some of the crippled understandings and the effects of the unhealthy party building program of the 1975-1980 period on us. We believed that our line was not only different from every other political movement but more revolutionary , from our preferred mode of mass interaction to our emphasis on class and party consciousness we believed that our tradition was more progressive than all the others. This is another reason we did not break away, because we thought that the TDKP and the masses around it was crucial to the class struggle. We believed that as soon as TDKP pulled itself together all honest elements in the other parties would just join our position. Because of our miscomprehension of the situation we wasted valuable time, and we were unable to oppose the current which was converting TDKP into a loose labor movement. We believe that a similar analysis would explain the past actions of the comrades we used to fight together with in the ranks of the TDKP.

EKIM-TKIP Process Should Be a Lesson for Us All

The balance sheet that was carried out after 12 March 1971 was lacking in terms of the solution it brought to the party problem and it was not only lacking it was erroneous. The deficiencies and the misapprehensions of the evaluation led directly to the unhealthy party building practice that was carried out until 12 September and for the liquadationist practice that was carried out afterwards. This historical connection is not only visible for all the see in the TDKP experience but is just as clear in the case of EKIM evolving into the TKIP in an important and warning account of a unhealthy and erroneous balance sheet process that went on the 12th of March and the 12th of September.

When the EKIM(October) left our ranks in 1987 it bombarded up with seemingly revolutionary rhetoric. We were accused of petty bourgeoisie revolutionism, populism, and being a party lacking in the socialist revolutionary vision. It is not the function of this paper to prove or to disprove these allegations. For our purposes what is important was that EKIM wanted actively to be the inheritor of the 71 break up and wanted to deepen the self-evaluation given by revolutionary organizations after the 12th of March. However although EKIM actively strove for these goals the end result was eerily similar to what all the other revolutionary organizations achieved. Mirroring the account of the earlier organizations in which the12th of March signified a watershed which signaled the bankruptcy of petty-bourgeoisie revolutionism, in the account of EKIM the 12th of September signified the same things. Similar to all the other revolutionary organization after 12th of March EKIM was proclaiming the need for a proletarian revolutionary party. Even when we look at the call of EKIM for theoretical renewal and the emphasis they put on it was not novel, all the revolutionary organizations after the defeat of 12 March spoke about and actively demanded the same theoretical-ideological renewal. Seen in this light, the account provided by EKIM of the 12 September defeat was a mirror image of the account provided by the group that went on to build the TDKP of 12th of March setback.

Looking at the same issue from another perspective we can see even clearly that the EKIM failed to learn anything from the process that started at 12th of March and culminated in the establishment of the TDKP. EKIM, which publicized all the defects and weaknesses it observed in the TDKP membership, has never once sought to understand and to criticize the party building process that happened in the interval 1975-1980.It is clearly because of this oversight that the process which converted the TDKP-IO into the TDKP got basically replicated in the process which converted the EKIM into TKIP. Just as TDKP-IO the main mantra of EKIM was "all efforts to the building of the proletarian revolutionary party", however it too assumed that this union of the communists which would culminate in the communist party would take place inside its organizational structure. As a result of this assumption their stance against the other revolutionary organizations was not one defending concerted effort for the creation of a joint platform of purposes, principles and priorities, but a stance and approach that was defined by repulsion and sarcasm(just like the TDKP-IO). As a result of this the final outcome of this process, the TKIP was no better than a failed imitator of TDKP(which was itself a failed experiment). Realizing that they were heading on a road to nowhere EKIM changed its main goal to unifying the masses rather than unifying the communists. As a result of this new orientation TKIP(as we have taken note in our brochure " Communists of all Countries Unite")evolved into a movement that most definitely resembled a party like EMEP.

Is it possible to reorganize the TDKP today?

Since we have realized that the voices of the TDKP cadres who want to rebuild the party and settle the account with the liquadationists are rising up we should conclude the discussion we carried up to now by answering the question "Is it possible to reorganize and reinvigorate the TDKP?"

The first point to emphasize is that to reinvigorate the party would be impossible and infeasible as a practical project. If we understand from the party a totality which encapsulates all the revolutionary organs and cells of the party rather than a collection of people who have shared metaphysical feelings,psyches and support similar ideas TDKP cannot be reinvigorated and organized under any condition along party lines. This is because 26 years has past since the last congress of the party and the 26 April clampdown occured 25 years ago. Today even the parties administrative clique who was principly responsible for the liquadation cannot argue that the party includes organs that actively take part in the political struggle. In fact many of the comrades who had been active in the party(even the GKB) and the struggle 25 years ago have left the struggle and the party a long time ago. Even the existence of parts of the party who have kept in touch anf have remained emotionally and ideologically affiliated to the party is not enough for the project to become feasible. This is because even these parts and elements who have not left revolutionism and the party in words and theory, have actually not gathered any organ for years,and according to the bolshevik meaning of the phrase being affilated of the organization are no longer a part of the party in the bolshevik sense.

Although the revitalization of the TDKP by the elements who have never become members of the party but have been sympathizers is a theoretical possibility, it is not a desirable outcome. It is not desirable because we have emphasized time and time again in our account that the main mistake that took the TDKP to a route of liquadation was that it disregarded its role in the unification of all communists,and emphasized their past position as the comrades in arms of the Deniz tradition(THKO) to make organizing and party building more effortless.Today the effort to revitilzatize the TDKP, thereby using the past and the name of the TDKP to become an organization with power is just returning back to the errant ways of the past.

If the TDKP can be rebuilt through reinforcements coming from outside the party, it will still be just another futile project with a bleak future like the EKIM-TKIP project. This will be caused by the fact that once the TDKP is rebuilt the party will reiterate its summons to the other communists to gather around the TDKP structure. This is nothing but a replication of the TDKP-IO summons in the 1978 and the EKIM summons in the post-1980`s period. This project in itself encapsulates the hollow ideal that all the revolutionaries can be brought together under the amateur organizational structure of the TDKP. To think that the TDKP can succeed in doing what even an organization live EKIM with its years of experience could not achieve is to live in a fools paradise. One does not have to be a soothsayer to see that the effort of the revolutionaries in this vein will be in vain.

As a conclusion we would like to state that in order to start reorganizing and revitalizing the TDKP, one will have to accept the party building process of the pre-1980`s period also in the process accepting and whitewashing the TDKP-IO movement. However,this is quite contrary to the spirit of accounting for the mistakes and misgivings of the TDKP since it is precisely these inheritances that this accounting must refute.In spite of all the truly revolutionary socialist struggles the cadres gave in the ranks of the party, in spite of all the respect we have and will continue to have for the sacrifices that were given in the name of the TDKP movement, the name TDKP has been irretreviably linked to the opportunist move of the TDKP-IO and the sectarian stance that was solidified that preceded this move. It is because of this linkage that one cannot own the TDKP name while disowning all these opportunist leanings and attitudes.

Judging from all the reasons we have outlined above we must conclude that the efforts to revitalize the TDKP will most likely be practically unsuccessful, and even in the case that they are successful they will be used to propagate and defend erroneous views on the party building process.

THE TASK OF THOSE WHO WANT TO CONTRIBUTE TO THE REBUILDING OF THE COMMUNIST PARTY

The fact that the political project of reorganizing the TKDP is erroneous should not lead us to conclude that the collective stance of our comrades that we used to fight with in the ranks of the TDKP is wrong, when this stance has many respectable features like staying organized, and a dedication to act in unity. In fact it makes this stance even more valuable and positive. We are living through times when organized struggle is most needed and lacking. In fact it is not at all wrong to feel the need for a revolutionary party while staying organized within an organization. What is wrong is the idea that one can build this revolutionary party from the ashes of an organization with an opportunist inheritance of a failed party building attempt that resulted in a miscarriage.

To own up to and inherit the TDKP tradition with its emphasis and active struggle for the establishment of the party one must concentrate not on the intrigues and the strings that were pulled by the liquadationists in the post 1980 period but rather on the account of the 71 movement provided in interval between 1975 and the 2nd of September 1980. We believe in this because we know that it was the errors and the misgivings of the account given of the 71 movement that culminated in the dillemmas of how to provide the post-12th of September balance sheet.

In this regard, the revolutionaries who have fought in the TDKP ranks in the past, and still strive for the creation of a revolutionary party should first try and account for the crippled party building project of the TDKP. Without questioning and criticizing the party building plan that culminated in the creation of TKDP one cannot take part in the movement to create a new revolutionary party.

The first step to settle the accounts with the TDKP is to leave the ranks of the TDKP and to accept a common and independent organizational identity of an organization that strives to build a truly revolutionary party. It is impossible to settle ones accounts with the party building process of the TDKO when one leaves the label of the TDKP hanging over its head, or as long as one continues to see TDKP as ones forerunning organization. This is caused by the fact that once we allow for TDKP to be labelled as a party which had the ability to lead the proleteriat class, we accept or silently condone the idea that secterian and opportunist maneuvers are fair game in the goal of establishing a truly communist party. This will lead us to side with the wrong sides and the wrong ideas from the starting point of our struggle.

To leave the organizational umbrella of the TDKP does not mean that the comrades who had fought in the TDKPranks should deny or repudiate their revolutionary past with the party en-masse. On the contrary one must settle accounts -once and for all and without concessions- with the opportunist party building strategies that were followed by the TDKP in the interval between 1975-1980 to adequately and truly come to terms with and live up to our most valuable past experiences with the TDKP.

We have carried out actions that were in line with the theoretical formulations that we have outlines, and we have decided to continue our struggle in a party building platform which strives to create the union of the communists. We do not pretend that this is the only choice that is available for the other forces who are today trying to revitalize and reorganize the TDKP, although we believe that our choice must be actively discussed as an option(although we do not put a priority on this today.).What we do put a priority on is the repudiation and refutation of all efforts to revitalize the TDKP and to reorganize the TDKP as an organizational base for class struggle. After this repudiation has been carried out the ones who have succeeded in the break should stay organized, and should decide by themselves on what organizational and political lines they would ally themselves to other movements also working for the establishment of a new party, also in the process distancing itself from certain other movements and organizations. However we see the earlier break and repudiation as a necessary condition for this decision process to commence.

To break away from the TDKP organizational umbrella,though not from organized struggle itself, wouls be most valuable materialization of revolutionary responsibility because it would signify that the demand should not be for a certain group of revolutionaries but a revolutionary party. After this break is soldified it will represent an honest invitation to all other revolutioanary organizations to combat opportunist in unity rather than fighting in different and opposing trenches. The break will also be characterized as an audacious move, but a move to settle accounts with a process which culminated in the establishment of the TDKP, while not cutting any corners because of the overbearing TDKP tradition, will require boldness and courage as a necessity.

We need all the courage and the revolutionary responsibilty we can muster today to establish the party which will relentlessly wage the struggle of the proleteriat class and the exploited masses.

For the Revolution a Revolutionary Party

For the Party the Union of the Communists.

Communists from Istanbul