The Marxist-Leninist movement wages a struggle against the efforts of landlords, mullahs, sheikhs etc. to reconcile the struggle against national oppression with their attempts to strengthen their own positions.
The Marxist-Leninist movement is conscious of the efforts of the big Kurdish feudal lords, clergymen, big bourgeois etc., to use nationalist slogans as cover to split the ranks of the workers and peasants through secret intrigues between the Turkish bourgeoisie and landlords and the working peoples of all nationalities, and to pacify the workers and peasants and their struggle against them.
The Marxist-Leninist movement, as Comrade Lenin explains, in the eyes of the working masses of all countries, especially the oppressed countries, is constantly and systematically being defrauded by the imperialist states, which, in reality—under the guise of forming politically independent states—create economically, militarily and financially dependent states.
The Marxist-Leninist movement supports and advocates for the working class and other working people of a particular state to form unified organizations, i.e. in common political, trade union, cooperative, cultural organizations, etc. It fights against the tendency towards separate organizations of workers and working people according to different nationalities. Because only when they are organized together can the workers and working people of different nationalities successfully carry out the fight against international capital and reaction. Only then can they successfully combat the propaganda and the reactionary aspirations of the landlords, clergymen and bourgeois nationalists of all nationalities.
The Marxist-Leninist movement absolutely rejects the plan of “national-cultural autonomy”, which is generally adopted by all of the bourgeois and petit-bourgeois, opportunistic parties and movements of all nationalities in our country. This plan proposes the division of the state educational system according to diffferent nationalities, thereby aiming to bind the workers and laborers of every nationalities to the culture of their respective bourgeoisie and landlords with their consequential spiritual enslavement. Therefore, this plan is extremely harmful, both from the standpoint of democracy and from the standpoint of the class struggle of the proletariat.
The Marxist-Leninist movement provides the following solution to the national question under the system of the people’s democratic dictatorship:
In the system of popular democratic dictatorship, full equality of nations and languages will be guaranteed. No compulsory national language will be recognized, and public schools that teach all native languages will be created. The constitution of the people’s state will strictly prohibit the privileges of any nation and the violation of the rights of national minorities.
Every nation will be given the right to self-determination. To achieve all of this requires especially widespread regional autonomy and full democratic local self-government. The basis of these autonomous and self-governing region, economic and social conditions, the national composition of the population, etc., will be determined by the local population itself.
Let us again repeat our main slogan on the national question: “Complete equality of rights for all nations; the right of nations to self-determination; the unity of the workers [and oppressed people] of all nations.”[67]
Note: This was written in December 1971. After the organization separated from revisionism, the original text was revised in June 1972.