174. The defeat of the international upsurge of working class struggles in the period 1968-75 allowed the bourgeoisie to stabilize its rule and launch a global offensive against the working class. Under conditions in which the crisis of revolutionary leadership had not been resolved, the Stalinist and Social Democratic leaderships, with the help of the Pabloites, betrayed numerous revolutionary situations and led the workers to defeat. Everywhere the ruling class demanded the replacement of Keynesian national economic regulations and class-compromise programs based on concessions to the working class with pro-market monetarist policies.

175. The global capitalist counteroffensive—symbolized by the coming to power of the Margaret Thatcher government in Britain in 1979 and the Ronald Reagan administration in the US in 1980, and carried out with the active collaboration of the trade union bureaucracies—found expression in Turkey through the NATO-backed military coup on September 12, 1980. Before 1980, a significant part of the working class was organized in the DİSK, once controlled by the TKP, and radical left organizations could mobilize hundreds of thousands of people. But far from offering the working class, the poor petty bourgeoisie and the youth a way forward, these leaderships played the role of misdirecting and defeating their struggles. The fascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP), founded in 1969, and its affiliated Grey Wolves played a role in armed attacks on leftist workers and students, and pogrom attempts against the Alevi religious minority, especially in the second half of the 1970s. In the 1970s, DİSK and numerous Stalinist tendencies prevented the development of an independent working class movement by directly or indirectly supporting the bourgeois Kemalist CHP in elections. At the same time radical leftist organizations focused on armed conflicts with the fascist gangs of the state-backed Nationalist Movement Party and among themselves. In an atmosphere of deep instability and terror, in which the working class was politically disarmed, the bourgeoisie’s violent counter-offensive program was put into practice with a military regime. Moreover, under the conditions of the overthrow of the Shah regime in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan, it was critical for the imperialist powers to ensure economic and political stability in Turkey, the US-NATO bridgehead in the Middle East.

176. In 1979, the Turkish economy, plagued by a chronic balance of payments crisis and unemployment, was on the verge of collapse, and inflation was rising to triple digits. However, in the face of the resistance of the working class, although controlled and repeatedly betrayed by the trade unions, and due to the political corruption of the ruling elite, the governments of the time were unable to meet the ruling class’s demand for stabilization measures. These measures, which included a drastic reduction in tariffs, the abolition of agricultural subsidies, the encouragement of foreign capital inflows and a constitutional amendment, were essential for the ruling class to free itself from the outdated and dysfunctional process of import substitution and domestic market-oriented accumulation.

177. The coup of September 12, 1980 was carried out by the Turkish Armed Forces (TSK) under the leadership of the Chief of General Staff Kenan Evren, with the complicity of the Pentagon and NATO, in the interests of both the imperialist centers and the Turkish bourgeoisie. If the coup, for which the TSK prepared the way by deliberately allowing an escalation of terror, did not meet with serious resistance, it was mainly because the Stalinist, social-democratic and petty-bourgeois radical leaderships had confused and betrayed the working class for years.

178. The coup regime, declared by the National Security Council (NSC) headed by Evren, extended martial law throughout the country, dissolved parliament and the government, suspended the constitution, and banned all political parties and trade unions except for the largest confederation, Türk-İş. After the coup, 650,000 people were arrested and 230,000 were put on trial. Around 50 people were executed and 14,000 were deprived of their citizenship. Torture and disappearances became routine activities of the police and army, which targeted hundreds of thousands of workers and youth.

179. After three years in power, the military regime enacted hundreds of laws to meet the demands of the bourgeoisie to subject the working class, which was severely repressed and whose trade union organizations were dismantled, to ever greater exploitation. It immediately approved Greece’s return to NATO’s military wing, which pre-coup governments had refused to ratify, and tightened military-strategic ties with the United States. The Turkish-American Defense Council was established in 1981. This was followed in October 1982 by a “Memorandum of Understanding” aimed at developing airfields in southeastern Turkey for military purposes.

180. The military regime drafted a new constitution that included mechanisms to prevent any organized working class opposition to the export-oriented model of capital accumulation. In November 1982, the new constitution was put to a referendum and approved by a large majority of the electorate, who were under pressure. The 1982 constitution established a new regime that provided the legal framework for a liberal economic structure open to global capital flows while maintaining the dominance of the Kemalist military-civilian bureaucracy within the state apparatus.

181. The military junta not only suppressed the organization and class struggle of workers by force but also promoted religious education and organization on religious grounds by the state. Thus, religious education was made compulsory in schools, and various sects and congregations with links to different sections of the Turkish bourgeoisie as well as to the imperialist powers began to play an increasing role in political and social life. This policy, which was deepened by the Kemalist military leaders and continued in the following years, played an important role in laying the foundations for the rise of the Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) led by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, especially since the beginning of the 2000s.

182. In the first general elections after the coup, held on November 6, 1983, the Motherland Party (ANAP), led by Turgut Özal, deputy prime minister of the military government since January 24, 1980 and the one who was mainly responsible for economic policy, was elected, and remained in power until 1991. The ANAP governments, strongly supported by the imperialist powers, implemented far-reaching market reforms that largely dismantled the public sector and turned Turkey into a platform for cheap labor.

183. But this massive social offensive did not take place without resistance from the working class. From the mid-1980s, workers began to mobilize again, and in 1989 some 600,000 public sector workers began work slowdowns and demonstrations against privatization and worsening living conditions. The “spring actions” were followed in 1990-91 by a strike of the Zonguldak coal miners and a march of up to 100,000 people to Ankara. Both the “spring strikes” and the struggle of the Zonguldak miners, who faced an attack similar to that of their British class brothers and sisters nearly six years earlier, were undermined by the Türk-İş trade-union apparatus. Forced to declare a “general strike” on January 3, 1991 in order to contain and end the growing movement, and under pressure from the miners’ rank and file, the Türk-İş leadership did its best to defuse the strike. The suppression of the miners’ strike by the union apparatus was critical because the miners, in addition to economic demands, raised anti-government and anti-Gulf War slogans, and it was feared that the strike, which was widely supported throughout the country, could trigger a broader movement of the working class.