For now, let us state the following in summary and move on: Kurdish workers, along with semi-proletarians, poor and middle peasants, the urban petit bourgeoisie and the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords are all subjected to national oppression. These classes make up the ranks of the Kurdish national movement. All these classes that unite against national oppression have, naturally, their own aims and goals. We shall point out later which of these we shall support and how far we shall support them.
In claiming that national oppression is only applied to the Kurdish people, the Safak Revisionists fall into one of these two errors: either the term Kurdish people is being used correctly and the entire Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords are not included in this, in which case the national oppression being implemented against the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords is being obscured, thereby indirectly approving this oppression, leading to the line of Turkish nationalism or, the whole Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords are being included in the concept of the Kurdish people, in which case the class oppression suffered by the Kurdish people in addition to national oppression is being obscured, the national movement is being portrayed as the same thing as the class movement, and in this way the line of the Kurdish nationalists is being adopted.
Moreover, apart from the Kurdish people there are minority peoples that do not constitute nations and national oppression is applied to them in the form of prohibiting use of their languages, etc. The Safak Revisionists leave this point entirely aside.
3. What is the Aim of National Oppression?
According to the Safak Revisionists the aim of national oppression is “to intimidate the Kurdish people.” “The pro-American administrations have embarked on severe injustice and oppression in order to cow the Kurdish people” [my emphasis]. Certainly one objective of the pro-American governments is to cow the Kurdish people. In fact, the aim of their oppression is to cow the Turkish people, Kurdish, Armenian, Greek, Arab, Laz, etc. – all the people of Turkey. But is this the aim of national oppression? If this were the case, how could the oppression of the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords be explained? What meaning would banning Kurdish have? If this were the case, what difference would there be between the oppression of the Turkish people by the pro-American governments and the oppression of the Kurdish people? The pro-American governments also wish to cow the Turkish people and they engage in severe torture and oppression for this purpose. The martial law tribunals are full of hundreds of revolutionary Turkish workers, peasants and intellectuals. After the events of June 15-16, hundreds of Turkish workers suffered torture at the hands of the police. Turkish peasants who occupied land were beaten to a pulp in police stations. The leaders were thrown in jail. In that instance, the aim of the pro-American government was not to “cow the Kurdish people.” This was a policy implemented by all reactionary governments against all toilers regardless of nationality. Beyond this, “oppression and torture” is carried out against the entire Kurdish nation (except for a handful of large feudal lords), not just the Kurdish people and not just to “intimidate” but to realize a more fundamental objective. What is this objective? This objective, in the most general terms, is to dominate the material wealth of all of the country’s markets without competitors, to gain new privileges, extend existing privileges to their limits and utilize them. For this purpose the bourgeoisie and landlords of the dominant nation, in order to conserve the political borders of the country, expend great efforts to prevent, at any cost, regions where different nationalities live from splitting off from the country. One of the necessary conditions for commerce to develop to the broadest degree is linguistic unity. With this aim in mind the bourgeoisie and landlords of the dominant nation want their language to be spoken in the whole country and even use coercion to force its acceptance. In the words of Comrade Stalin: “Who will dominate the market?” This is the essence of the matter. The slogans “national unity,” “the indivisible unity and integrity of the State, its land and people,” and “territorial integrity” are an expression of the selfish interests of the bourgeoisie and landlords and their desire to dominate “the market” unconditionally.
Comrade Stalin adds:
But matters are usually not confined to the market. The semi-feudal, semi-bourgeois bureaucracy of the dominant nation intervenes in the struggle with its own methods of “arresting and preventing.” The bourgeoisie – whether big or small – of the dominant nation is able to deal more “swiftly” and “decisively” with its competitor. “Forces” are united and a series of restrictive measures is put into operation against the “alien” bourgeoisie, measures passing into acts of repression. The struggle spreads from the economic sphere to the political sphere. Restriction of freedom of movement, repression of language, restriction of franchise, closing of schools, religious restrictions, and so on, are piled upon the head of the “competitor.” Of course, such measures are designed not only in the interest of the bourgeois classes of the dominant nation, but also in furtherance of the specifically caste aims, so to speak, of the ruling bureaucracy.[13]
The national oppression used by the bourgeoisie and landlords of the dominant nation for the “market” and by the dominant bureaucracy for “caste objectives” go as far as the usurpation of democratic rights and mass slaughter (that is, genocide). There are many examples of genocide in Turkey. The oppression of the toilers of minority peoples in this way acquires a doubled quality. Firstly, there is the class oppression utilized against the toilers in order to exploit and suppress the class struggle. Secondly, there is the national oppression implemented for the above-mentioned objectives against all classes of minority nations and nationalities. Communists have to distinguish between these two forms of oppression, because, for instance, while the Kurdish bourgeois and small landlord oppose the second form of oppression, they support the first. As for us, we are opposed to both forms of oppression. In order for national oppression to be removed we support the struggle of the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords, but, on the other hand, we have to struggle with them in order to end class oppression. The Safak Revisionists portray national oppression and class oppression as one and the same. There are two possibilities: either the Safak Revisionists do not include the Kurdish bourgeoisie and landlords within the concept of the Kurdish people, using this concept correctly, in which case they are reaching a conclusion – by denying the democratic content of the struggle of the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords against national oppression – that will be useful to the cause of Turkish nationalism. Or, the Safak Revisionists include, erroneously, the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords within the concept of people, in which case they are ignoring the struggle of the Kurdish workers and other toilers against the Kurdish bourgeoisie and small landlords, thereby assisting the cause of Kurdish nationalism. One of the two! In both cases, the unity of Turkish and Kurdish toilers is sabotaged and their struggle harmed.
It is of the utmost importance to separate the class oppression inflicted on the Kurdish people from the national oppression perpetrated against the Kurdish nation. As we have laid out above, the character of the two forms of oppression and their aims are different.