The Communists and the Kadro Movement: Shaping Ideology in Ataturk's Turkey 1617191140, 9781617191145

Table of contents :
Preface
Introduction
Chapter I: Preparing the Ground
Chapter II: Turkish Communism: The Legal Phase
CHAPTER III: Adapting to Underground Life
CHAPTER IV: The Challenge of the Great Depression
CHAPTER V: Kadro
CHAPTER VI: The Communists and the Kadro Movement
CHAPTER VII: Toward the United Front and Beyond
Appendix 1: Türkiye Kommunist Fırkası: Fealiyet Programı
Appendix 2: Kadro
Appendix 3: Exchange of letters between Latife and Kameneva
Bibliography

Citation preview

The C o m m u n i s t s and the K adro M o v e m e n t S h a p i n g I d e o l o g y in A t a t ü r k ' s T u r k e y

© 2002 The Isis Press Published by The Isis Press Şemsibey Sokak 10 Beylerbeyi, 81210 Istanbul Tel.: (0216) 321 38 51 Fax.: (0216) 321 86 66 e-mail: [email protected] www.theisispress.com

ISBN: 975-428-229-3

George S. HARRIS

THE COMMUNISTS AND THE K A D R O MOVEMENT SHAPING IDEOLOGY IN ATATÜRK'S TURKEY

THE ISIS PRESS ISTANBUL

George S. Harris received his Ph. D. in History of the Middle East from Harvard University in 1957. He then served at the American Embassy in Ankara until 1962, when he returned to Washington for various assignments dealing with the Middle East. In 1977 he became Director of Analysis for Western Europe in INR in the Department of State, and in 1979 he was made Director of Analysis for Near East and South Asia, a post which he occupied until his retirement from the Department of State at the end of December 1995. In addition to his government career, he was a Professorial Lecturer at the School for Advanced International Studies of The Johns Hopkins University from 1968 to 1981 and at The George Washington University. He has written many article and a number of books on Turkey including The Origins o f Communism in Turkey (1967).

For Colin and Margot Who have known about Turkey from their earliest years.

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Prefeœ

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Introduction

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Chapter I: Preparing the Ground

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Chapter II: Turkish Communism: The Legal Phase Chapter III: Adapting to Underground Life

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69

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93

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115

Chapter VII: Toward the United Front and Beyond

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131

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143

Appendix 1; Türkiye Kommunist Fırkası: Fealiyet Programı

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173

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206

Appendix 3: Exchange of letters between Latife and Kameneva

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224

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227

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237

Bibliography Index

15 39

Chapter VI: The Communists and the Kadro Movement

Appendix 2: Kadro

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Chapter IV: The Challenge of the Great Depression Chapter V: Kadro

9

P reface

My work on the Turkish Communist Party began in the depths of the Cold War with the publications in 1968 of The Origins o f Communism in Turkey. That study covered the legal phase of Communist experience in Turkey, a period ending in 1925. At the time when that analysis was completed, documentation available to me appeared too sparse to permit tracing the continuation of the party as an underground entity or to elucidate, except in the most sketchy fashion, the relationship of the Communist movement to the ideologists who attempted to develop a systematic formulation of Kemalism in Turkey. The present study draws heavily on material that has become available since the original investigation. It does not, however, aim to repeat in detail the data presented in my earlier treatment or to provide a detailed account of the legal period of Turkish Communist existence, that is the pre-1926 period. Instead, while the text that follows will present some of the more important new findings relating to the period before the Communist Party became illegal in 1925, the primary emphasis of the current work will be on the period during Atatürk's lifetime when the Communist Party was underground, i.e., the late 1920s and 1930s. This era was one of decisive influence on the development of contemporary Turkey. But it has been the focus of less scholarly attention than was the earlier period, evidently because the events from 1925 to Ataturk's death appeared less striking than the unmistakable political landmarks of the struggle for independence after the First World War and the establishment of the Republic. Yet for a more balanced understanding of the politics of the Atatürk era, it is necessary to pay attention to even such competing movements as the Turkish Communist Party, which left an imprint on Turkish economic thinking which lasted for decades. The debts of a researcher attempting to delve into this difficult terrain are many and obvious. The present work could not have been produced without the assistance of some of the more prominent early defectors from the Turkish Communist movement who came together to found the influential journal, Kadro. I was fortunate indeed to have been able to arrange lengthy sessions with Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, Yakup Kadri Karaosmanoğlu, and Ismail Hüsrev Tökin to discuss their involvement with the Turkish Communist Party and their subsequent role in contributing to the elaboration of Kemalist ideology. Not only did they provide insights into their own thinking and intentions, but Aydemir made available documentation not heretofore at the disposal erf scholars.

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The growing ranks of investigators in Turkey who have added to the documentary record have also been of inestimable value in informing the present study. I would cite especially the efforts of Mete Tunçay to locate and publish party documents and photographs, particularly relating to the party’s period of legal operation. It is also a pleasure to note the contributions of Aclan Sayilgan, whose personal generosity saved me much unnecessary labor. Among others who helped me along the way I would like to single out the administration of Bilkent University and its professors in the political sciences, public administrations and international relations departments. In addition, I have had the opportunity to discuss these issues with a number of other scholars and observers reflecting a wide spectrum of political opinion in Turkey. Although they have thus contributed materially to my understanding, none of those who were kind enough to provide their interpretations is responsible for the way I have used their observations or the conclusions I have drawn. I have also sought to base my work as far as possible on data from underground Communist Party publications circulated in the 1920s and 1930s and on Comintern documents published in the same period. I have also used some of the memoirs penned by members of the Turkish Communist Party, although they were often later adherents and were at times reporting hearsay. Taken together, this material allows new light to be shed on the twists and turns of the Communist line. Many of these documents were published by a branch of the Turkish Communist Party in London in the 1980s, some in photocopy and others merely in transcription. They seem entirely genuine, although they were published in the service of conducting a doctrinal fight within the party against the Moscow-line leadership. As this material was banned in Turkey at the time of publication and is somewhat ephemeral in nature, it has apparently been unavailable to most researchers who have sought to understand and explain the Turkish Communist Party during its period of illegality. Finally, in crediting those who have substantially enriched my labors, it is a happy obligation to be able to express here my great thanks and deep appreciation to my wife for her patient encouragement during the extravagantly long effort to put this analysis into its present form. GSH Westmoreland Hills

2002

Introduction

The effort to formulate an ideology for the Kemalist revolution became a major enterprise in the Turkey of Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. It was clear to many spanning the spectrum from left to right that the Kemalist movement was important enough and individual enough to inspire an ideology. Atatürk himself provided an outline, but many felt that they could fill in the chinks to serve their own interests. Thus it was not surprising that Turkish Communists, who often seemed to have imbibed some of the strain of nationalism, too, would participate in this process. And ex-Communists as well were in the forefront of those who engaged in this exercise. The story of the contribution of the left to this process is what the ensuing pages are about. Many of the vicissitudes of the Communist Party's short period of legal existence in Turkey in the 1920s have been exposed in earlier research. But the party’s fortunes were affected by the general course of relations between the Soviet regime in Moscow and Atatürk’s government in Ankara in greater degree than is usually realized. Indeed, it is clear—and not surprising—that the Turkish Communist Party often served as an adjunct of official Soviet foreign policy. The following pages help make that evident. The thread of continuity after the party was banned in 1925 and its leaders arrested or dispersed has been far more difficult to unravel. Until the Comintern and Soviet archives are opened to a far greater extent than this researcher was able to find, much more will be left to explain. Yet the present study does attempt to fill in some of the gaps in order to explain the major lines of Communist activity underground during Atatürk's lifetime. It will do so by a close inspection of Communist party illegal literature, especially that published in Turkey and circulated primarily to party members. But it will also compare that with the Comintern’s publications abroad to allow a more rounded view of the Turkish Communist Party’s approach. There are four areas in particular where the current work makes a contribution. First it gives a running account that allows the reader to follow changes in the line of the Turkish Communist Party toward the Kemalist regime as well as toward world events having no particular relevance to Turkey. Second, it contributes to a better appreciation of the factional problems within the party, including the role of Nâzım Hikmet in particular. Third it illuminates some of the problems in the relationship between the Turkish Communist Party and the Comintern. And finally, it contributes to greater understanding of where Communists arguments influenced intellectual thinking in Turkey.

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In particular, thanks to new documentation, light can now be shed on the relationship of the party to the effort of the so-called “Kadro movement" to develop ideology for modem Turkey in the early 1930s. Kadro has been the source of considerable confusion in the literature on Turkey. On the one hand, it has been viewed as providing the ideological underpinnings for the Kemalist principle of “étatism.” In a slightly different understanding of the importance of the Kadro group, its members have been hailed as a transmission belt for leftist ideas from the earlier Turkish Communist movement of the radicals of the late 1960s and beyond in Turkey. While both notions contain a germ of truth, neither is entirely correct. Although the Kadro group sought to supply the operational code for étatism in the 1930s, in the end it was not fully successful. The content and application of that statist economic policy were largely defined and set by the banking community in Turkey led by Celâl Bayar, the most ardent foe of the ideas redolent of Marxism propounded by Kadro. Indeed, as practiced in Turkey in the 1930s, étatism proved rather to be a kind of “ vitamin-treatment" for Turkish capitalism, something that the Moscow-line Turkish Communist Party recognized. Turkish étatism was by no means the leftist formula for a comprehensive planned economy modeled on Soviet experience that the Kadro message implied.1 The proposition that Kadro was a bridge between Communists and the new radicals who threatened the political structure of modem Turkey especially in the 1970s is valid only to a point. Şevket Süreyya Aydemir, an exCommunist who was one of the spark plugs of the original Kadro group, did attempt to redefine its principles for the generation of the 1960s. Aydemir in the latter period was lionized by student admirers and lent support to some who were seeking to promote a military takeover at the end of the 1960s in hopes that a military regime would serve as a prelude to a leftist regime. Moreover, the influential journal, Yön, published from 1961 to 1967, was a frank imitation of Kadro thirty years before. But the young radicals of the 1960s and 1970s in Turkey had imbibed a far more potent brew than the Kadro mixture of Marxism and nationalism. Their activism was inspired by Soviet and Maoist thought as well as by Palestinian and Latin American radicalism. Among their heroes were figures such as Che Guevara and Carlos Marighella. Their training was often received in camps run by the more extreme components of the Palestine Liberation Organization. It would thus be a grave error to judge the leftist violence that upended two different civilian regimes in Turkey as in important degree the outgrowth of Kadro's teachings. 1See E. Günçe, "Early Planning Experiences in Turkey,” in S. İlkin and E. İnanç (eds.). Planning in Turkey (Ankara: Middle East Technical University, publication no. 9,1967), p. 13.

INTRODUCTION

13

The question of whether the founders of the K adro movement were renegades who had truly abandoned their Communist ties or whether they maintained their allegiance to Moscow in an insidious effort to subvert Kemalism from within has been the stuff of polemics in Turkey. It was involved in the controversy in the immediate post-Second World War period in Turkey over the fitness of the Republican Peoples party to rule and the unwariness of the early Democrat Party leadership. Yet when one inspects the differences between the Moscow-line Communists and the Kadroists, it is clear that the former dropped their emphasis on state capitalism in favor of reflecting the views of the Comintern internationally and argued that class was the prime determinant of developments domestically. The Kadroists, on the other hand, represented a nationalist view of the world that, although accepting dialectical materialism, eschewed the inevitability of class conflict. While this political competition has lost some o f its original political salience, what does seem beyond question is that the Kadro venture served as a beacon for an increasingly important current among Turkish intellectuals. Even though the Kadroist vision of a “third way,” neither Communist nor capitalist, for Turkey was never fully implemented by the Kemalist Peoples Party when it was in power, elements of this vision long colored economic thinking in Turkey. The protectionist philosophy which, thanks at least in part to them, had become an accepted tenet of Kemalist orthodoxy frustrated Adnan Menderes' efforts to open the Turkish economy to foreign investment. In the decades of the 1960s and 1970s, it formed, for example, the intellectual grounding for some to oppose Turkish membership in European economic arrangements. And it gave an autarkic cast to Turkish economic policy that long inspired Turkey's bureaucrats to resist efforts by business interests to woo foreign capital and liberalize the economy. Although this narrowly nationalistic approach demanding virtually complete self-sufficiency is now in full retreat before broad pressures to open up the Turkish economic structure to the outside world along free market lines and join in the European Union, it may be still too early to be sure that all elements of the Kadro recipe have lost their latent appeal for all time. A major addition to the literature attempting to clarify the relationship of the Kadroists to their Communist antecedents is the document that Şevket Süreyya Aydemir received from Berlin in 1932, critiquing from the Turkish Communist Party's point of view the contents of the first issue of Kadro. In providing a copy of this missive to the present author, Aydemir indicated that he had “held it back” from publication to save it for a projected, but never completed book on his Kadro experiences.

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The Berlin document is extremely revealing of Communist attitudes of the day. In the context of the Comintern's public reaction to the development of étatism in Turkey, it allows a far more confident appraisal of the degree of difference between the Kadro formula and the Stalinist dogma of the Turkish Communist Party. It also provides access into the always murky recesses of Communist factional imperatives. Finally, it contributes to an understanding of why the Communist Party became increasingly irrelevant to the Turkey of the later 1930s.

CHAPTER I: Preparing the Ground

The disruptions resulting from the First World War, the Bolshevik Revolution with its claims to world-wide reach, and the Turkish struggle for independence set the stage on which Communism in Turkey would play out in the 1920s and 1930s. In a state of war almost constantly since 1912, the Ottoman State disintegrated once the war with the Entente came to an end. Istanbul lost control of the extensive Arab portions of the Empire as well as the last remnants of the Balkans. The top layers of Ottoman leadership either were arrested or fled, leaving a fluid political scene. The disruption was aggravated when occupation of the Ottoman capital by British forces soon complicated communication between Anatolia and Istanbul. Victorious, the Entente powers sought to pursue war-time schemes to divide the Turkish speaking area and leave only a rump hinterland under control of a Turkish government. These intentions were revealed by the new Russian regime in November 1917. That shocked the Turkish intelligentsia which was thus forced to abandon its hope that the Great Powers would assure Turkish sovereignty over the portions of the Ottoman realm inhabited by Turks as provided in Wilson's Fourteen Points. The treaty of Sèvres in August 1920, with its provisions for a Kurdish state as well, just confirmed to nationalist Turks that they could not look to the West for their defense. As a result, this was a time of ferment. The Turkish intellectual class was seeking new ideas and principles as well as new forms of organization. Turks had had little experience with socialism, although Salonika’s largely non-Turkish population had displayed some interest in Marxism since the Young Turk revolution. Istanbul and Izmir had not been entirely immune to the blandishments of socialist thought. But in the last days of the Ottoman Empire, pan-Turkism and pan-Islam attracted far more attention and adherents. Yet, despite the fact that the works of Marx and Lenin were not yet available in translation, the élite was able to follow the installation of Soviet rule in Russia and began to show interest in this new contender on the world stage. Early experiences in dealing with this new Bolshevik power would create for a time hopes among Turkish politicians that Communism could usher in a new day and that the enmity of past centuries could be buried. Those hopes were burnished, especially as Lenin had spoken out against the Russian military occupation of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum even before the Bolshevik

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takeover.1 But at the same time, the residue of historical suspicion of the northern neighbor continued to infect the élite, leaving latent doubts about whether or not Communist intentions would be entirely benign. The first substantial contact with the nascent Soviet state came at BrestLitovsk at the end of 1917. In peace negotiations there, Enver Pasha had charged his chief of delegation, Foreign Minister Ahmet Nessimi Bey, to regain the provinces of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum lost in 1878 to Russia. Despite the lack of hoped for German support, the Turkish delegation pressed on. It was encouraged by the Communist regime's public renunciation of rights under the war-time secret agreements just before negotiations were to begin. And with the treaty signed on March 3, 1918 at Brest-Litovsk, the Turks finally managed to secure agreement to the return of their eastern provinces.2 Negotiations to secure this result had been difficult, however, especially because Moscow was preoccupied with refusing German demands to allow annexation of territory in east Europe. Problems with Germany also complicated agreement on the repatriation of prisoners of war held by Russia, thus delaying the return of many Turks. In this situation, Ottoman officials soon came to believe that the Bolsheviks were stalling for time. Hence the Turks punctuated their demands with military operations to achieve success. And in fact, the Russian Communists signed the Brest-Litovsk Treaty under protest, at the last minute complaining that Kars, Ardahan, and Batum were not conquered by the Turks and thus should not be given to them. Moreover, in the end a provision with troublesome implications for the Turks was inserted in the agreement at the insistence of the Soviets. It promised the Armenians the right freely to determine their own future.3 Thus from the first, Communist renunciation of nationalism seemed less than complete on a point that concerned Turkey. This stand would not go unnoticed by the Turkish élite. Pursuant to the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, in April 1918 the Ottomans sent experienced diplomat Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu as Minister in Moscow, even though the Soviets did not respond by sending their own envoy to Istanbul. He was immediately embroiled in reporting the attacks of Turkish Communists against the Ottoman government in Yeni D ünya, a newly established publication issued by the Central Committee of Muslim Socialists 1 Richard G. Hovannisian, “Armenia and the Caucasus in the Genesis of the Soviet-Turkish Entente,” International Journal o f Middle East Studies, vol. 4, no. 2 (April 1973), p. 130. 2Stefanos Yerasimos, TUrk-Sovyet İlişkileri: Ekim Devriminden "M illî M ücadele"ye (Istanbul: Gözlem Yayınlan, 1979), pp. 44-49. 3Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, Hariciye Hizmetinde Otuz Sene (İstanbul: İka Matbaası, 1949), pp. 401-485, esp. pp. 442-443.

PREPARING THE GROUND

17

in Moscow. His second preoccupation in the nearly four months he was in Moscow was the fate of Turks in Russia under the Communist regime. His efforts to secure the repeal of laws that conflicted with Islamic principles ran up against sharp rejection by the Kremlin. And finally, he faced a difficult task in parrying Soviet objections to Turkish advances in the Caucasus which Enver pasha was determined to make. In the end, Foreign Minister Georgi Chicherin protested Turkish intimidation of the local population. Chicherin maintained that these actions during the Turkish occupation of Kars, Ardahan, and Batum tainted the referendum process established in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. As a result, the Russians questioned whether the Turks had legitimate rights to these provinces. With the signature of the Mudros Armistice between the Ottoman state and the Western allies, Söylemezoğlu's tenure in Moscow came to an end. It would be over two years before diplomatic relations were restored, and this time with the Ankara regime, not with the Ottomans.1

Turning to the Bolsheviks Neither the problems nor the benefits of negotiating with the Communists in Moscow were lost on Mustafa Kemal Atatürk. Even from the earliest stages of organizing the struggle for independence, he recognized that dealing with Moscow would have an important place in the success of his nationalist endeavor. Like many in his generation, he was impressed by the apparent power of the Russian Revolution. From observing the ill-fated Communist experiment in Hungary under Bela Kun at the end of 1918, he apparently concluded that it was the absence of common borders with the Soviet state which prevented Moscow from extending effective aid and thereby caused the Hungarian Revolution to fail.2 That lesson animated his thinking all through the struggle for independence. It inclined him to cooperate with the Communist regime in Moscow, to clear away obstacles to direct contact in the Caucasus, and to seek good relations with the Kremlin no matter how bothersome Soviet machinations in Anatolia might be. How to make direct contact with the Bolsheviks and what Turkey had to do to enlist Moscow’s support were thus among the first questions Atatürk considered after landing in Samsun to raise the flag of independence in May 1919. This preoccupation was visible even as early as the period when he was acting as Chairman of the Representative Committee, before the Grand National Assembly moved to Ankara. Already by June 1919, he was receiving messages from his force commanders about the attractiveness and desirability

1Galip Kemali Söylemezoğlu, 30 Senelik Siyasi Hatıralarımın Üçüncü Cildi: Kısım: 1:19181922 (İstanbul: Ülkü Basımevi, 1953), pp. 19-135. Yerasimos, Türk-Sovyet İlifkileri, pp. 18-31. 2Rasih Nuri İleri, Atatürk ve Komünizm (İstanbul: Anadolu Yayınlan, 1970), pp. 20-21.

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of dealing with the Communist regime in Russia. In reply he made clear that the nationalists should not wait for the Bolsheviks to make the first proposal. “It would be appropriate” he told the commanders, “to enter into discussions with them [the Bolsheviks) immediately through some envoys to be sent secretly. In this way it would not be necessary for Bolsheviks to enter our country in numbers and with force.” 1 By giving this cautionary note about holding the Communists at arms length, it was clear that Atatürk was wary of their intentions from the first, despite the urgency of establishing relations with the revolutionary regime in Moscow. This urgency, he explained, was because it was necessary to arrange material and monetary support for the nationalist movement, which was under immediate and compelling pressure from the Greek forces. The latter had landed in İzmir and soon began to push inland. Further Atatürk also deemed it of high priority to find out what the Kremlin's intentions were toward the Armenians, who had set up a state of their own in the Caucasus and then joined in a Caucasus confederation. It has often been thought that the telegram on the need to take the initiative in contact with the Soviets was sent from Havza on June 23,1919, just after a meeting between Atatürk and a Soviet envoy often identified as Major Budennyi. However, it now appears doubtful that such a meeting with a Soviet official took place, though Atatürk may well have met with an agent from Subhi's party as several were in Anatolia at the time.2 In any event, Atatürk had arrived so recently in Anatolia and was still so guarded about his real aims that there probably would not have been time enough for Moscow or Baku to have recognized what he was doing and send someone specifically for the purpose of probing his activities. Whatever the nature of his contact with Communists may have been at this point, Atatürk's views during the period when the national struggle in Turkey was getting organized before the opening of parliament in Ankara, were remarkably well formed. Unlike the shifting Comintern and Turkish Communist view of his revolution, Atatürk's understanding of Communism did not change in its essentials thereafter. From the first, he understood the political implications of the spread of Communism. In common with the secular élite of his time, Atatürk appreciated the anti-imperialist emphasis of Communist dogma and he accepted the old dictum: “the enemy of my enemy is my friend.” But while he thoroughly agreed with the Marxist identification of imperialism as one of the driving forces of history, already in 1919 he was wary of accepting class conflict as the basis of political evolution. Moreover, he was always concerned to make sure that Bolshevism did not undercut his 1Kâzım Karabekir, İstiklâl Harbimiz (Istanbul: Türkiye Yayınevi, 1960), p. 58. 2 Major (later Marshal) Budennyi's travels in distant parts of Russia in May 1919 make it unlikely he could have been in Anatolia to meet with Atatürk. It is possible, however, that other unofficial emissaries did make contact with the Turkish leader.

PREPARING

THE GROUND

19

national movement. In particular, he was from the first determined not to allow any movement controlled from abroad to challenge his control in Anatolia. Indeed, in his speech opening the Erzurum Congress on July 23, 1919, he proclaimed that only A natolia could produce a national administration for Turkey deriving its power from the national will.1 On this basis, he could not have felt that the Appeal to the Workers and Peasants of Turkey to rise in revolt that Soviet Foreign Minister Chicherin made in September 1919 was a friendly gesture, ignoring entirely as it did the Kemalist movement. While that appeal was clearly directed at subjects of the Sultan's government in Istanbul, its silence on dealing with the emerging Ankara regime may have merely spurred him on to try to establish friendly relations with the Bolshevik government in Moscow in order to protect his rear and to probe the possibility of securing aid from that quarter.2 Yet at the same time, Atatürk was careful to try to staunch fears in the West that he was soft on Communism. To that end he sought to take advantage of the arrival of General James Harbord, who had been sent by President Woodrow Wilson to Anatolia to investigate the question of a possible American mandate in Turkey. Even if one makes an allowance for AtatUrk's obvious effort to impress his audience in a way to deflect Washington from considering further the mandate project, his analysis for the United States government is striking in its consistency with his views over the long term. His statement to Harbord on October IS, 1919, included the following reassurances: As to the Bolshevists: there is no room whatever in our country for this doctrine, our religion and customs as well as our social organization being entirely unfavorable to its implantation. In Turkey there are neither great capitalists nor millions of artisans and workingmen. On the other hand, we are not saddled with an agrarian question. Finally, from the social point of view our religious principles are such as to dispense us with the adoption of Bolshevism.3

^Atatürk’ün Söylev ve Demeçleri: vol. 1: T.B M .M eclis inde ve C.H.P. Kurultaylarında (19191938), (İstanbul: Maarif matbaası, 1945), p. 6. 2Stefanos Yerasimos, TUrk-Sovyet t lif kileri: Ekim Devriminden "M illî MUcadele”ye (İstanbul: Gözlem Yayınlan, 1979), pp. 130-133. 3See George S. Harris, The Origins o f Communism in Turkey (Stanford: The Hoover Institution on War, Revolution and Peace, 1967), p. 3; İleri, Atatürk ve Komünizm, p. 63.

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Facing Communism in Anatolia Atatürk constantly rejected claims by the Istanbul government that the Communists were making serious inroads into Anatolia and had influence over the nationalist movement. Nonetheless, when he made Ankara the headquarters of the struggle for independence in December 1919, he found interest in Bolshevism had risen to a pitch high enough to require some action on his part. Defeat in the First World War triggered a wave of dissatisfaction with the West among Turks. This reaction against the political encroachments of Europe crystallized in a school of thought that gained currency as “the Eastern Ideal.” Exponents of this point of view held that Western civilization had become decadent and would soon be destroyed. In contrast, they glorified the Orient as the center of a new civilization already in its birth pangs. They could not yet discern the pattern of this new growth, but by its very genesis they saw it as pulling down the old order. On this basis, the “Eastemizers” urged that Turkey should throw in its lot with eastern countries to avoid destruction, perhaps taking the Russian Revolution as a model. The protagonists of this point of view were mostly intellectuals who had no practical conception of what Bolshevism would mean in Turkey. They were primarily concerned with liberation from the West. Many envisaged a Turkey free of direct Russian control. In line with this thinking, by the time the Grand National Assembly moved to Ankara in April 1920, the Kemalist élite had taken to calling each other “Comrade” and even referred to the ministries of the nationalist government as “People's Commissariats.” 1 While later observers have tended to regard the climate for Communism to develop as quite limited in the Turkey of that day, Atatürk clearly did not think the Anatolian soil was so unpromising for its growth at this time. In view of the effervescence of Bolshevik behavior, Atatürk concluded that he must inform the parliamentarians of his own reservations about Communism. Thus as early as the period when the new government was being organized, he took the floor in a closed session of the Assembly on April 24,1920, the day after parliament opened in Ankara to say: The Bolsheviks, as you know, have their own special principles and point of view. I personally am not privy to these in all clarity and detail. And wherever we contacted the Bolsheviks and wherever they came up to now, the Bolsheviks always were determined to have their own points of view accepted. Whatever these points of view might be,

^ e v fik Bıyıklıoğlu, Atatürk Anadolu'da (1919-1921) (Ankara: Türk Tarih Kurumu Basımevi, 1959), pp. 68, reports that “all those at the top including Mustafa Kemal Pasha [Atatürk] took the name ‘Comrade’ and wore red-peaked kalpaks and made a show of being Communists in order to be able to control the secret Communist activity of the Russians in Anatolia.”

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our own country has a set of view points of its own.... Our nation has customs, religious requirements, and national exigencies, such that whatever we may do, we must keep in mind our customs and religious requirements and we must lay a foundation consistent with that for ourselves.1 He went on to stress that the Kemalist movement was the “enemy of tyranny and the enemy of imperialists.’’ Yet at the same time he noted that Ankara must consider the fact that the Europeans feared Bolshevism. Clearly Atatürk did not want to put any unnecessary obstacles in the way of eventual peace with Europe. The problem was that in order to preserve Turkey's nadonal existence “we found it valid to use every source [of aid from] abroad.’’ But efforts to secure aid from the Communists in Russia had not yet given firm results. If assistance were to become possible, Atatürk expected that the Assembly would approve a relationship with Moscow, without of course allowing such a relationship to entail conversion to Communism. On May 11, 1920, an “Appeal to Muslims of Russia and the East’’ from the Russian Commissar for Nationalities was read in the Ankara Assembly. The text of this declaration had been picked up by the Erzurum radio listening post and sent to the Grand National Assembly by Eastern Front Commander Kazım Karabekir. The appeal was clearly designed to speak to the Kemalist regime, for this time it was not addressed to “workers and peasants,’’ but instead called for rejection of imperialism and defense of all Islamic peoples. Specifically it announced that “Istanbul will remain in the hands of Muslims. The treaty about dividing Turkey and forming Armenia from Turkish land is tom up and destroyed.’’ And it asked its audience to reject tyranny which sought to make Turkey bow in subservience. “Be the owners [“effendi”] of your country,” it urged.2 Reading of this appeal occasioned a debate in the Ankara parliament, first over the need to respond. Eventually, by a show of hands, the Council of Ministers was directed to send a telegram of thanks. The major part of the debate, however, concerned the nature of Communism as practiced by the Soviets. Antalya deputy Hamdullah Subhi Tannöver led off. As a convinced conservative, he frankly stated that “there are some points of concern in the face of Bolshevik currents.” The Turkish people know little about Communism, but “our ignorance does not prevent Bolshevism coming to our borders,” he added. Nor was Turkey at all prepared to meet this challenge because it had not decided on its point of view. Our country “is seduced,” he 1 TBMM, Gizli Celse Zabıtları, vol. 1 (Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, 1980), pp. 4-5 (session of April 24,1920). ^.B .M .M ., Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 1 (Ankara: T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 3rd edition, 1959), pp. 256-257 (session of May 11,1920).

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pointed out. As a result, there was a danger that if Communism entered Anatolia it would destroy Turkish traditions and what was sacred. Thus Turks must learn what Communism was and “we must make a judgment. Perhaps it is not such. Perhaps it comes as the truest helper for us. [Perhaps] it comes as a force to help us drive the others from our soil.” But Tannöver faulted the Assembly for backing away from clarity and not carrying out its duty in regard to enlightening the people about Communism. He ended his remarks with words of praise for the actions of Bolsheviks toward the Islamic world. Lenin had said that the Communists would respect religion, property, and institutions. In Tannöveris view, Turks had to decide whether the Communists had kept their word. But he assured them that reliable sources in Russia told him they had done so. On this basis he judged that the Bolsheviks were bringing aid “to drive out the treasonous forces that had invaded Turkey.” 1 These words, coming from a Turkish patriot who had long been suspicious of Russia, met a round of approval from various deputies. Besim Atalay from Kütahya pointed out that the West and the East were bound to clash, and asked if Turkey should join with British Prime Minister William Gladstone who saw the Koran as an enemy, or “should we rush to the force from the East that opens its hands to us.” Voices from the Assembly called out “Of course, to the East.” And Atalay continued that “by walking together with the Bolsheviks we are approaching nearer to Sharia” Islamic law. Thus Atalay endorsed sending a telegram of thanks to the Soviets.2 As the discussion went on, Tannöver decided to take the floor again to comment on the appropriateness of using the word “revolution” in the Turkish context. Apparently fellow deputies in talking among themselves had accused him of changing his opinion by giving the Communists a clean bill of health. Therefore, he got up a second time to argue that it was wrong to call the Kemalist movement a “revolution,” for it was not a movement against the Sultan. Nor could the word be used to describe the struggle against foreign invaders like the British. Even joining forces with the revolutionary movement coming from Russia would not qualify as “revolution,” to him. What Turkey had in mind was a political agreement with the Soviets. Tannöver went on to explain his view that the Red Army had paused on the border and not yet crossed over into Azerbaijan because it was a Turkish country. They did not want to crush Turkish institutions, he believed. And to cries of approval from the floor, he asserted that his confidence in the benign intentions of the Russian Communists reflected the unanimous opinion of the Assembly.3 ^Ibid., pp. 257-258 (session of May 11,1920). 2Ibid., p.258 (session of May 11,1920). 3Ibid., pp. 258-259 (session of May 11,1920).

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This suspension of disbelief and willingness to expect aid without strings from the international Communist movement framed the problem for Atatürk and his government. Because of its importance, a significant proportion of the closed Assembly debates in the months after parliament opened in Ankara toward the end of April 1920 concerned Russia and Communism. Atatürk spoke on the topic in most of these sessions. For example, toward the end of May 1920 when İzmit deputy Sim Bey suggested that Turkey should look to the East to the Bolsheviks for help and make an alliance with them, Atatürk made a point of cautioning that receptivity to alliance did not mean receptivity to Communism. After explaining that the force of the Kemalist revolution must be centered at home in the will of the people, he added: But taking into consideration that our enemies are many ... it is a sacred duty to add to our forces. Naturally we will pay attention to positive forces which can come from the East in this regard. But it is necessary to separate two aspects in this from each other. One is to become Bolshevik; the other is to make alliance with Bolshevik Russia. But we are not talking of becoming Bolshevik. We, the Council of Ministers, are talking of making an alliance with Bolshevik Russia. To become Bolshevik is something else entirely. But the question of making an alliance is being followed up very seriously and with importance and we are confident in our hope we will succeed.1 Further, Atatürk added that he would not let alliance with the Bolsheviks today prevent Turkey from attempting to establish political relations with America and the West tomorrow. In his view, Turkey had an opportunity to take advantage of the conclusion which he believed that the Communists had reached to die effect that alliance with the Islamic world was necessary to beat imperialism. And Atatürk repeated this caution on July 3, 1920, in a closed session of parliament where he said “for us, for our nation, there is no question of asking shall we be Bolshevik or not,” because “for us there is no question of being Bolshevik.” He added “in this regard there are those who are more royalist than the king." Again he repeated that “we are faithful to our customs and principles. Their enemy is our enemy.... We can unite with them to achieve our own goals.... There is no question of being a slave to them.”2

‘TBMM, G idi Celse Zabıtları, vol, 1. pp. 47-48 (session of May 29.1920). 2Ibid, p. 72 (session of July 3,1920).

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But Atatiirk's cautionary note did not dampen interest in “light from the East.” Again in the open Assembly debate on July 8, 1920, hope of support from Soviet Russia trumped fears of the age old enemy of the Turks. Impatiently waiting for aid since the opening of the Ankara parliament, Sim Bey from İzmit again deplored the obstacles that had prevented the coming of this “light,” which in open session he carefully refrained from calling by name. He was seconded by Sheykh Servet Efendi from Bursa who expected the Bolsheviks to save Islam. To him, if the Bolsheviks had the virtues that they seemed to embody, then “our religion should accept these virtues.” Atatürk then took the floor to assure the deputies that “we sought out the Bolsheviks and we found them and our last contact was entered in a very material and decisive way.” To “bravos” from the floor he proclaimed that “the Soviet Union promised to meet our material needs in arms, guns and money.” Problems in the relationship, he asserted, were about to be resolved to facilitate the flow of aid.1

E fforts to Contact the Kremlin The course to a treaty of alliance with the emergent Soviet state, however, would be neither easy nor ultimately successful. By mid-August, Atatürk had become frustrated by the persistence of difficulties in early efforts to establish contact. He told the Assembly in mid-August 1920 that he had sought contact with the Communists as early as his arrival in Erzurum in July 1919, when he “sent some comrades empowered secretly [a reference to the mission of Dr. Fuat Sabit]. But months passed and we could not get a material answer from the mission we sent.” Therefore, when Bolshevik forces reached the Soviet border with Armenia, Atatürk felt it essential to probe what Bolshevik intentions were and what aid they might provide. He sent a second mission, evidently the mission of former Ottoman general Halil Kut who left Anatolia in September 1919. A letter signed by Atatürk was given to this mission. In brief, it explained how the Kemalists saw Soviet aims. It proposed cooperation with Bolshevik Russia in actions against imperialist governments. Specifically Atatürk informed the Kremlin: “We will help you in all actions against Armenians.... Our aim is to live in our country independently. This is our aim before all else." When that too did not produce a reply for a long time, Atatürk sent a mission in May 1920 headed by Foreign Minister Bekir Sami to whom he reported that he had given greater authority to negotiate than to either of the previous two delegations. According to Atatürk, “When the last mission we sent arrived in Erzurum, the

’ t .B.M.M., Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 2, (Ankara: T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 2* printing, 1940), pp. 205-209 (session of July 8,1920).

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first mission had gone to Moscow and the second mission that went returned to Trabzon with answers it got from there.” 1 Although these missions began with high hopes, their results would do nothing to raise the stature of Communists in Turkey. In reply to the invitation to establish relations, Chicherin wrote in June 1920 that they were happy to initiate relations. The Soviets found Turkish independence natural. But Atatürk informed the Assembly that he perceived a major sticking point in Chicherin's reply. There was, he explained to parliament with apparent irony, “a small difference” in interpreting the National Pact, the key document that set out the borders of the state for which the Kemalists were willing to fight. That difference involved the question of permitting Islamic peoples “belonging to various races inside our national frontier” to hold a plebiscite. Atatürk said that, although he had no problem with Syria and Iraq and even Armenians determining their own future, he could not agree for Kurds and Laz to participate in a plebiscite. “ Our general principle is that various Islamic elements living inside the bounds we sketched as a national border are our true brothers.” That meant also that in the question of eastern Thrace, Atatürk let the deputies know that Chicherin was applying unwelcome pressure on the Ankara regime when the Russians said that ‘Thrace will determine its own fate itself.”2 Atatürk further indicated his displeasure with the reluctance of the Soviet mission that was on its way to Anatolia to hand over to Ankara's men a part of the money they promised. The Soviets argued that because the road taken by the Turks came from Batum, the money could fall into the hands of the English. Atatürk complained that it had not arrived because evidently the Bolsheviks thought the Turks were promoting a counter-revolution in Azerbaijan. It took time to correct this error and speed the money on its way. Nonetheless, in view of the high stakes in terms of aid, Atatürk was willing to try to appease the Moscow regime in the Caucasus. The Soviet Foreign Minister had written to offer to help solve politically the question of determining the boundaries of Armenia, Iran, and Turkey through the mediation of the Russian Soviet government. On this basis, Russia did not want the Turkish attack on the Armenians to continue. As a result, after talks between a Soviet delegation with Turkish Foreign Minister Bekir Sami and his mission in Erzurum, Atatürk stopped the attack on June 20, 1920. He did so in deference to the Soviet need not to be distracted from the goal of combating imperialism, explaining that the Communists “did not shrink from ^Gizli Celse Zabıtları, p. 72; see also Atattlrk's speech to parliament on Aug. 14,1920, T.B.M.M., Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 3 (Ankara: T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 1941), p. 185. ^.B .M .M ., Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 3 (Ankara: T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 1941), p. 185 (session of Aug. 14.1920.

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declaring war and declaring hostility against the imperialists of the whole world. It was very successful up to now.” He then tried to neutralize expected opposition to his policy from Islamists in the Assembly whose support was necessary in the struggle for independence in Anatolia by saying: “The victory that Bolshevism, which contains the highest rules and laws of Islam, obtained today against the joint enemy which threatens our very existence is a result worthy of our gratitude.” But, appealing for unity of purpose among Turks, he went on to repeat his standard theme that the policies of the Kemalist nationalist movement should not be confused with those of the Communists: Our point of view and our principles, you all know, are not Bolshevik principles, and we never thought and attempted up to now to have our nation accept Bolshevik principles... Our point of view—i.e., populism—holds that force, power, sovereignty, and rule are given directly to the people and are in the hands of the people. Indeed, there is no doubt that this is one of the world's most powerful and basic principles. Naturally such a principle does not contradict Bolshevik principles.... Our nationalism in any event is not an egoistic and proud nationalism; and, especially because we are Muslims, we have a community feeling from the Islamic point of view that transposes the limited compass which nationalism circumscribes into a limitless field. Especially from this point of view, the Bolshevik course can seem to be in our direction. Bolshevism represents the view of a class of people who are oppressed in a country. Our nation, indeed, is oppressed and tyrannized as a whole. In this regard, our nation, too, is worthy of protection by the forces which are undertaking the salvation of humanity [i.e., the Bolsheviks].1

The Propaganda War The deputies in the Grand National Assembly soon began to see need of greater propaganda in favor of the nationalist movement. And this raised a question of how the government should treat the spread of Communist propaganda in Anatolia. Summoning the General Director of the newly formed General Directorate for Press and Information on September 28, 1920, the deputies asked him about what the Ankara authorities were doing to aid the provincial press. The newly installed General Director, working directly under Atatürk, informed the Assembly that the government was helping newspapers in Anatolia according to their need and was generally assuring them newsprint T.B.M.M., Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 3, p. 189 (Session of Aug. 14,1920). Atatürk on Sept 16, 1920, told Western Front Commander Ali Fuad Cebesoy in a telegram that “the internal Communist organization is entirely opposed to us in goals. We must arrest the secret Communist organization.” See Dr. Fethi Tevetoglu, Türkiye'de Sosyalist ve Komünist Faäliyetler (1910I960), (Ankara: 1967), pp. 119-123.

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at low cost. He acknowledged that one of the newspapers which had already received much government assistance was Seyyare-i Yeni Dünya. It had begun publishing in Eskişehir at the end of the summer 1920 under the slogan "Workers of the World Unite!" Atatürk then broke in to inform the deputies that, among the newly founded Anatolian newspapers, this organ alone had broken its promise to follow instructions to support his revolutionary movement Yet, nonetheless, Atatürk reported that they were considering printing several pamphlets on Bolshevism and the relationship between Bolshevism and Islam.1

M ission to M oscow Soon the Assembly was to hear that the mission to Moscow was proving less than smooth. When in mid-October 1920 the deputies in parliament heard the interim report on Bekir Sami's mission by its second in command, Minister of Economics Yusuf Kemal Tengirşenk, his presentation showed them that cooperation with a Communist regime was replete with dangers and evidences of bad faith. Although Atatürk and his Foreign Ministry colleagues were aware of the manifold problems because they had been receiving telegrams detailing the course of the negotiations all along, for the deputies at large, this recital presented a new vista of what cooperation with the Communists was like. As this report would have a pronounced impact on their attitudes, it is worth considering in some detail. Tengirşenk explained that the nationalist delegation reached Moscow by train from Warsaw on July 19,1920, after an unusually lengthy trip. To their intense displeasure, when they arrived the delegates were not met by any dignitaries. Instead they made their way to the Kremlin where the Soviet Ambassador to Bokhara met them to say that all personnel of the Foreign Commissariat were in St. Petersburg for the opening of the Second Congress of the Comintern. They were further told that protocol and traditional diplomatic niceties had been abolished by the Bolsheviks, a foretaste of the style of negotiations to come.2 When Foreign Minister Georgi Vasilievich Chicherin returned from St. Petersburg a few days later, he met with the Turkish delegation. He conversed with them easily in French, while his assistant Leonid Karakhan knew only Zabıt Ceridesi, vol. 4 (Ankara: T.B.M.M.Matbaası, 2“1 printing, 1942), pp. 345-351 lion of Sept 28,1920); sec also Seyyare-i Yeni Dünya, O ct 11,1920. MM, Gizli Celse Zabıtları, vol, 1 (Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, 1980), pp. 158-173 (Session of 16 O c t 1920), report of Minister of Economics Yusuf Kemal (Tengirşenk]; pp. 176-187 (Session of October 17, 1920), which was occupied with responses to the report by various deputies. See also, Ali Fuat Ccbesoy, Moskova Hatıraları (Istanbul: "Vatan” Neşriyatı, 1955), pp. 59-100.

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Russian. Chicherin asked about the agreement the Kemalists had made with the French, saying that that caused Moscow some anxiety. The Turks tried to reassure the Soviets, but noted that no agreement with the French had been concluded before their delegation left Ankara. Chicherin then wanted to know what Ankara was negotiating with the British. The Soviets further asked their opinion on whether there would be a counter-revolutionary movement in the Islamic world to resist revolution against imperialism. Finally Chicherin turned them over to Karakhan to start negotiations. From these questions, it was clear to Tengirşenk's parliamentary audience that the atmosphere in Moscow for the Turks was chillier than they had expected. Then the Turkish mission turned to the central matter for the Turks of how to get supplies to Anatolia. Negotiating with Karakhan was difficult for the Turkish mission. Tengirşenk ascribed this difficulty to the fact that though Karakhan was a committed Communist, he had Armenian blood in his veins.1 Nonetheless, he seemed sincere in his Communist outlook to his Turkish audience. In the talks, the key obstacle arose from the fact that the Armenians blocked a land route between Soviet dominions and the area controlled by the Kemalists. But at first both sides were reluctant to engage on the issue. Talks recessed and the Turks expected Karakhan to set a time for their resumption. Days passed without hearing from him, and, to their obvious intense annoyance, they were told that the Ministry was dealing with extraordinarily important questions which took precedence over their negotiations. They would later find that these included reaching agreement with the Armenians on points that disadvantaged the Turks. In response, the Turkish mission asked Chicherin to assign someone else as negotiator, someone who spoke French. Thereupon the Soviets designated two others to handle the negotiations. These officials started by asking in whose name the Turkish delegation came. That was, of course, not an entirely friendly question. It was even difficult to answer as the Sultan's government still existed in Istanbul. Bekir Sami’s mission replied that they represented the Ankara government, provoking the further question of whom did the Ankara government represent. The Turks answered that Foreign Commissar Chicherin had written to Ankara recognizing its government and had even sent an envoy there. Moreover, the Turks pointed out that they had given the Soviets copies of their letters of credence on arrival. The Turkish delegates then announced that they were ready to talk about conditions for an alliance. That ended that day's talks, leaving the Turks less than satisfied.

1Galip Kemali Söylemezoglu, Hariciye Hizmetinde Otuz Sene, p. 429, reported that Karakhan was from a "good” Georgian family, not an Armenian. Karakhan would later represent the USSR in Ankara (1934-1*37) until he was recalled and executed in Stalin's prc-Scoond World War purges.

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At their next meeting the Soviets announced that they wanted to talk with principals only, without any note takers. The Turks countered by asking that experts decide questions of quantities of aid and the like, while the principals debated political questions. The Turks wanted to know what was happening in Russia and how the Russians regarded Atatiirk's nationalist movement. In reply, the Soviets upset their Turkish interlocutors by declaring that an alliance was out of the question. When the Turkish side insisted that that was a prime reason for their coming to Moscow, the Soviets asked what Turkey could give to Russia in return for such an alliance. The Turks argued that their adherence to an alliance would give the Kremlin great psychological assistance. The Soviets, who did not accept this line of argument, asked if there would be no alliance, then what would happen. To this, the Turks replied that they could make a different kind of treaty if need be. The Soviets thereupon proposed a treaty of friendship. They maintained that for traditional warring foes such an accord would be more impressive than a treaty of alliance. While the Turkish delegation reluctantly agreed to the Soviet proposition, from the reaction when that news was presented to the Grand National Assembly, it was clear that the Soviet explanation did not satisfy the Turkish audience at home. Discussion then touched on the important question of what borders of the Turkish state Moscow would recognize. The Turkish delegation gave the Soviets a copy of a map showing the borders accepted by the National Pact approved by the Turkish parliament on January 28, 1920, before it moved from Istanbul to Ankara. The map showed Kars, Ardahan, and Batum in Turkish hands. Those borders also reflected those agreed in the Brest-Litovsk Treaty. At that, the Turks and Soviets traded accusations of responsibility for not solving the Armenian question. In this connection the Communists seemed not to understand why the Turks considered it important to control a direct land route between Russia and Turkey. Even Vladimir Ilyich Lenin participated in this discussion, trying to reassure the Turkish negotiators that he recognized that the Soviets had made a mistake in making a treaty with Armenia behind the back of the Turkish delegation while it was in Moscow. Moreover, he acknowledged the error of giving control of a key point along the route to the Armenians. Despite his assurances that nothing hostile to the Ankara regime was intended, the Soviets did not offer to undo their errors and that obviously left a particularly bitter taste for the Turks. Tengirşenk then reported what he termed ”a terrible article" which the Soviets had proposed. They had demanded that whatever privileges or sphere of influence the Turks extended to anyone be extended to the Russians as well. The Turks were particularly upset at the economic implications of this most favored nation demand, obviously fearing that in effect it raised the specter of reviving the capitulations. Tengirşenk assured the Assembly that the Turkish

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delegation absolutely refused to consider this article. In justification for this position, the Turkish mission explained to the Russians that “we are shedding our blood today in Anatolia” to reject this principle. Tengirşenk's audience in the Assembly in Ankara clearly shared his view that even to raise such a demand showed ill will toward Turkey. The Turks had better luck in connection with the discussion of Istanbul and the Straits. The Turkish delegates had inserted these issues into the negotiation not because they wanted these matters to be in contention, but principally to probe Moscow's views, as Russian regimes had long coveted these places. Tengirşenk noted that “thankfully we saw that the Russians say...that they are Turkish.” Also the Soviets gave up on raising the topic of Black Sea navigation. That would remain for another day well in the future. At this point the Soviets seemed to loose interest in further negotiations. The Turkish delegation judged that this was because Chicherin’s mandate focused primarily on issues concerning Western Europe, leaving Karakhan to deal with affairs of the Orient. But Karakhan had delegated his responsibility for negotiating with the Turks to a subordinate who was then unaccountably and suddenly reassigned. That change brought negotiations to a sudden end. Thus on August 24, 1920, Bekir Sami was left to initial the text in two copies which were to be kept secret. Tengirşenk explained that this unsatisfactory conclusion left four important matters unresolved which were of interest to the Turks: the repatriation of former prisoners of war taken by the Tsarist regime; a protocol on trade; regularization of postal relations; and the matter of permitting Muslims in Russia to emigrate to Turkey. He also noted another completely unacceptable demand now advanced by the Soviet negotiators. The Russians tried to insist that the Kemalist regime promise that if the Grand National Assembly were to change “state policy,” then Moscow must be informed. The Turks rejected this saying that “you are asking something that violates our independence.” To accept this demand while receiving aid would subject the negotiators to the charge that they had “sold out the country.” The Russians, after attempting to apply some further pressure on this point, agreed to drop this idea. The Soviet side then continued to press the Turks on the issue of “racial borders.” Beyond the issue of Armenia, in which the Turkish delegation rejected Russian mediation on the grounds that the Russians were not impartial, there remained the question of Batum. The Turks parried Russian refusal to agree that it was Turkish by pointing out that in Chicherin's June 3, 1920, letter, he had agreed that the will of the population would determine Batum's fate. That was acceptable to Turkey. When the Russians professed ignorance of the contents of this letter, the Turks showed them a copy and the matter was left hanging.

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As to the all-important question of aid, Tengirşenk explained that the Turkish delegation had finally concluded that specific agreement was immaterial as the Comintern had accepted in principle to extend aid to Turkey. To Tengirşenk and his colleagues that meant that the matter had been decided on even before the Turkish delegation arrived. With that lengthy explanation of how the negotiations in Moscow had gone, Tengirşenk told them that the draft friendship treaty was presented to the Assembly for its debate and approval. The decision to approve was entirely theirs and the document would not go into force unless Ankara approved. Following that explanation, Tengirşenk gave his own impressions of Communism in Russia. He noted the many different Muslim groups in the Soviet state. He reported that these groups say that the Communists gave them freedom, but in fact their incorporation into the Soviet Union was accomplished by the Red Army by force. When Communism is declared, he warned, many bad things happen. The Turkish delegation did not have time to look into all this. Most Communists, he noted were not ethnic Russians but were Georgian and Jewish; those in Azerbaijan were Armenians, not people of Turkish descent He also commented on the question of the large number of Turkic peoples in the Soviet realm. These peoples, he believed, looked to Turkey. That gave him hope that Turkey would have a great future in the East. According to Tengirşenk, these people consider ‘Turkey the root” and their groups to be “the branches.” Finally, he described Communist administration in Russia. The main difference between it and the nationalist administration in Anatolia in his view was that only peasants and workers could vote or be elected in the Soviet domains. The bourgeoisie were not allowed to take part in elections. That news would not have made the Communist system particularly palatable to his audience in the Grand National Assembly as the Kemalists had been extremely careful not to conduct a social revolution. Instead Atatürk had based his whole movement on the existing bourgeois élite, not on workers and peasants, though he attempted to minimize all class differences. Tengirşenk ended his extended remarks with the warning that if Turks did not create a robust barrier to attacks, the imperialist world would make Turks their tools. “If Turkey cannot do this, it should think about [joining] the Communist current.”

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This long recital occasioned vigorous reaction among the deputies who devoted the next day's closed session to it. In fact, it would form a turning point in the treatment of Communism by the Kemalists. From the speeches it was clear that suspicion of Communist motives had now become the dominant emotion among the deputies. No one spoke in favor of the draft and only one deputy suggested that there was any small room for compromise. It would be no coincidence that Atatürk announced the formation of his own rival Turkish Communist Party the day after debate on this report concluded. Hasan Fehmi Ataç, a deputy from Gümüşhane, led off the responses with the observation that from Yusuf Kemal Tengirşenk's explanations it was clear that “Russia had changed its internal organization, but it did not change its foreign policy.” Whatever it had sought during the time of the Tsars, from Peter the Great on, it continued to seek under the Communists. While Turkey had “stretched out its hand in sincere friendship,” it seemed to have acted too fast. Russia needed Turkey as much as Turkey needed Russia in Ataç's appraisal. Indeed, it was Islamic elements that assured the success of the Russian Revolution, he asserted with considerable exaggeration. In this situation, the amount of aid to Turkey from Russia was trivial and disappointing, in his opinion. He judged that the Turkish delegation had agreed in effect to annul the Brest-Litovsk Treaty, but got little in return. “Just as the British were enemies because they fear pan-Islam, the Russians were enemies because they fear pan-Turanism.” In Ataç's view, the Soviets merely must hide their hostility now because they are resisting the imperialists. “But can we,” he asked, “cut off our interest in the 70 million Turks and Muslims” in Soviet lands? Ataç went on to say that “the [twentieth] century is a century of nations.” While the Communists profess internationalism, they pursue nationalism. What right do they have, he asked, to speak in the name of the Anatolian people? To applause he added that even the Assembly in Ankara had no right to surrender land without polling public opinion over all the country. Moreover, even if the Assembly rejected the current draft of the Treaty of Friendship nothing would change. For he believed that needing Turkish success against the West, the Communists would extend any aid they could to Turkey. And finally he suggested that “if we give the Russians a firm answer, they will understand that they are not in a position to be independent of us.” 1 The deep suspicion of Communist intentions that Tengirşenk's report engendered, permeated the reaction of Mazhar Müfit Kansu representing Hakkan. He flatly stated that “Bekir Sami's assent to give up land in Van and Bitlis provinces reduced the zero the nature and value of this treaty.” Then he ^TBMM, Gizli Celse Zabıtları, vol, 1, pp. 177-179 (session of O ct 17,1920).

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raised questions about the motives of the Russian government in making this proposal. In Kansu's opinion, it was designed to cut Turkey off from the East, that is the millions of Turkic peoples in the Soviet domains. In addition, the Soviets were attempting to extend Armenia after bringing it under Communist control. There was thus no difference between what the Russians proposed and what the West was proposing in respect to Armenia. The Assembly should not agree to give up any land within the borders of the National Pact It would be “damned” if it did, he said.1 The only one to suggest some room for compromise was Ismail Suphi from Burdur. He cautioned against being stampeded into acting rashly because Russia is a force with arms and an ideology. “War has not disappeared from the world,” he reminded his audience. Yet “what happened in Azerbaijan deeply affected me,” he said. Therefore, it would not be right to give up land in the Caucasus. Where some adjustment could be made in his view was to guarantee free passage through the Straits for Russia inasmuch as it has long wanted warm water ports. But Turkey had some strengths in negotiation and Russia would not sacrifice millions of Turkic peoples for half a million Armenians. But if in the end some additional sacrifice had to be made, a tiny bit of land in Kars province might just be possible, he suggested. Others in the Assembly showed their disappointment and basically advised the government not to give an inch. When Hacı Şükrü representing Diyarbekir proposed to reject the draft entirely, voices in the Assembly indicated that “we all agree." And even Yusuf Kemal Tengirşenk then inteijected that he was not recommending acceptance of the draft Hamdi Gör from İzmit expressed a common sentiment when he opened his remarks by saying: “I expected much from the Russians. But alas!”*2 In this changed atmosphere of suspicion and doubt, the draft was not ratified. The tenor of this debate, therefore, stood in sharp contrast with the kind and hopeful words that had been said in reference to the Soviet state and Communism in previous Assembly debates. In future, the tone would be one of doubt and suspicion. The vast majority of parliamentarians in Ankara would no longer credit Communism with being a philosophy friendly to the Kemalist regime. Cooperation with the Communists would thus be considered merely expedient and not based on truly compatible aims.

>IbkL, ppL 179-182 (session of Oct. 17,1920). 2Ibid, ppi 182-186 (session of O ct 17.1920).

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The “O fficial” Turkish Communist Party It was clearly not a coincidence that the day after this important debate, Atatürk announced the formation of his own “official” Turkish Communist Party. Later in the Assembly in closed session he explained the rationale behind his action as follows:1 Communists from abroad were seeking to “insert Russian Bolshevism by various channels” into the heart of Anatolia. Ignorance about Communism provided a milieu in which some believed that Communism would be a saving force for Turks. Intellectuals who knew what Communism was could deal with it. But the people and army generally did not know enough about Communism. Thus the government felt it had to take additional steps. According to Atatürk, to employ force against Communism was useless. It was not possible to “break the heads of those who call themselves Communist,” nor could one expel immediately all who come from Russia. If the Turkish government tried that, it would have to break relations with Russia and could not get aid from that source. Thus “we do not consider it useful to use violent steps against a current of ideas.” Atatürk made clear that in dealing with ideas, one had to reply with ideas. Violence only strengthened erroneous notions. Thus he regarded the enlightening of public opinion as the most beneficial path to solution. ‘T h e product of this thought,” he explained, “is that a party under the name of the Communist Party was organized in Ankara” by entirely trustworthy comrades. Atatürk continued: To avoid misinterpretation, I want to explain briefly the mentality that was well known to me of the men who formed this [Kemalist Communist] party.... Those who formed this party had the intellect to explain to the nation what Communism was...But the point to which they were very attentive was that the true author of every kind of social revolution in this country and in this nation, even if harmful, must be the nation.... Also it was to insult and humiliate those who are tools for foreigners creating any revolution in this country. But it was a fine line to condemn Russian Communism without condemning the Soviet regime in Moscow. Hence, Atatürk tried to emphasize that he was not opposing the Kemalist Eastern policy. “We don't want Communism, but that does not mean that we cannot follow an Eastern policy.” Communism must be rejected because “it cannot be reconciled with our religious principles and conditions of life and our social conditions.” Yet referring to his officially sanctioned Communist Party he proclaimed to his audience in closed session that “to appear Communist is to assure political 1 Ibid., pp. 333-336 (session of Jan. 22,1921).

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ends beneficial for the country, not in truth to be Communist or Bolshevik.” Finally, he insisted that the Kemalists could not cooperate with any organization that had its center outside of the country. This effort to explain a policy that was inherently confusing did not answer all questions from the deputies. Yahya Galip from Kırşehir admitted that he could not distinguish between “Bolshevism and Communism.” In his opinion, neither Russian Bolshevism nor Atatiirk's Communism could bring any advantage to Turkey, but only harm. Moreover, it was “not sensible to mix Bolshevism and Islam.” If they were the same, then he suggested that Communists adopt Islam. Otherwise Communism and Bolshevism were not suited to be applied in Anatolia. Foreign Minister Ahmet Muhtar echoed these sentiments and pointed out that unlike Russia, which was struggling against imperialism and capitalism, “we agree with Russia only on the first [that is, the struggle against imperialism],” as there were no large capitalists in Turkey.1 Indeed, many deputies sought to emphasize the differences between the precepts of Islam and Communist teachings. At the same Assembly session where Atatürk explained his “official” Communist Party, Vehbi from Karesi lamented that “today Islamic monuments are crushed under the feet of a base enemy.” He added, “Damn those who seduce the country....This country wants defense of religion." And Basri from Karesi proclaimed that “our duty is the make Ankara a center of the mind of the Islamic world.” He advocated fighting ideas with ideas and logic and stated that the Communists were “leading Islam into the abyss.” Hüseyin Avni Ulaş from Erzurum referring to the Communization of Azerbaijan after the Red Army took over, pointed out that the Russians had put Communist teachers in schools. Communists in Turkey “were inoculated by the Russians. Today the current invading us is the Russian current. It is like a microbe.” He warned that these Communists falsely claimed that there was very little difference between Islam and Bolshevism.*2 From all that was said in the Assembly, it was clear that the atmosphere of tolerance of Communism had vanished and in its place the Ankara regime and its parliament had begun to accept the need for action against Communists in Anatolia.

hbid., pp. 337-338 (session of Jan. 22,1921). 2Ibid, pp. 325-332 (session of Jan. 22.1921).

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Ethem 's R evolt A final major event that destroyed the ground that might have allowed Communist activities greater scope in Anatolia was the revolt of Ethem the Circassian at the end of 1920. Ethem was the leader of a Circassian band of irregulars who after parliament opened in 1920 became disaffected with Atatiirk's leadership. He was unwilling to bend to discipline imposed by the Ankara regime and see his forces incorporated into the regular army being organized by the nationalists. From his base of operations in Eskişehir, which was the site of considerable Communist activity at that time, he challenged the Kemalist regime. He led his irregulars in the most serious revolt Atatürk had to face during the struggle for independence. This insurrection appeared to be linked to the nascent Communist movement in Eskişehir. At the very least, Ethem's forces protected Communist propagandists there and urged the workers to join in their revolt. Atatürk on December 29, 1920, in explaining to a secret session of the Grand National Assembly, the military operations against Ethem, linked him to “the Turkish Communist Party” and to the Russian diplomatic mission which had recently arrived.1 In public, after this uprising was put down early in January 1921 Atatürk gave a somewhat different account of Ethem's attempted putsch. To an open session of parliament, he claimed that Ethem and his brothers wanted to “deceive the Bolsheviks and to create the impression that it was possible to make a revolution immediately in the country” to seem to be Communist. The appeal to workers to rise did not work, in part because “we knew about it beforehand." On the other hand, “the Bolsheviks understood that these men had no doctrine and precepts.”2 Clearly by this new account, Atatürk was seeking to limit the damage to relations with the Soviets at a time when his regime was at its weakest: a national army was in the process of formation and the militia which had heretofore formed the backbone of the nationalist forces had just been dispersed as unreliable. And with the most dangerous internal threat to his regime removed, he could afford to give the Soviets a more or less clean bill of health. Moreover, it was now useful to downplay the Communist links of Ethem in public, whatever the truth may have been. The suppression of Ethem's revolt ended the most potent physical threat that Communist inspired elements would pose to the Kemalists. Yet it dramatized the dangers that disloyal elements could pose if left unopposed. It thus created an atmosphere where stronger direct action against Communists in Turkey could be taken without risking the danger of political backlash that up to then Atatürk had obviously feared.

'ibid., pp. 286-287 (session of Dec. 29, 1920). For more extensive coverage of these events, see Harris, The Origins o f Communism in Turkey, pp. 86-89. Zabıt Ceridesi, 2nd edition (Ankara: T.B.M.M. Matbaası, 1944), vol. 7, pp. 160,227230 (session of Jan. 3 & 8,1921).

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And to prepare the ground for further action, in February 1921, to the Kemalist standard-bearer Hakimiyeti Milliye newspaper Atatürk gave a disquisition on Russia and Communism. He was optimistic that the delegation he had sent back to Moscow would eventually negotiate an acceptable agreement in place of the one negotiated by Bekir Sami which parliament had not ratified. When asked about relations between Communism and Russian friendship, he replied forthrightly to his interviewer Communism is a social question. The situation o f our country, the social conditions of our country, and the force of religious and national traditions are of a nature to confirm the opinion that Russian Communism is not suited to be applied in our land. The parties set up on the basis of Communism in our country recently are of the opinion that it is necessary to stop their activities having comprehended this fact by experience. In fact, even Russian thinkers themselves believe that this fact is true for us. Thus our ties and friendship with Russians are concerned only with the principles of unity and alliance of two independent states.' In line with this interpretation, government freedom of action against the Turkish Communists became even more pronounced. The wave of arrests in April 1921 of Communists in Ankara resulted in some heavy sentences. Even though to curry favor with Moscow these jail terms were soon commuted and those arrested released, the general approach of the Ankara government was henceforth clear: it would not tolerate any action, however minor, by the Communists inside Turkey to stir up the population. And with the victory of the Kemalists in the struggle for independence and the establishment of the Turkish Republic this position would not only become more firm, it could be applied in Istanbul where a mixed group of minority and local Turkish seekers after Communism were still active.

' İleri, Atatürk ve Komünizm, pp. 230-231.

CHAPTER II: Turkish Communism: The Legal Phase

The Bolshevik Revolution in Russia toward the end of 1917 marked the start of interest in Communism in Turkey. The new dogma appealed principally to a handful of intellectuals in Istanbul on the fringes of mainstream politics who were looking for ways to cope with the destruction of the First World War. They believed that major changes in the domestic as well as the international situation were necessary. But interest in this new doctrine also would infect some members of Atatiirk's nationalist movement, who were attracted particularly by the anti-imperialist aspects of Communist philosophy. Members of the non-Turkish minorities (Greeks and Jews, in particular) were well represented in the ranks of the Communist movement from the start. Only a small number of workers were counted among its adherents. Although some members of the irregular militias which formed the backbone of the early forces resisting the Greeks also had Communist leanings, that seemed to be for opportunistic reasons rather than out of conviction. In fact, the response to Communism among the common people was limited. And Communism never became a popular movement in Turkey. Its long-term significance would be its influence on economic attitudes and intellectual thinking in Turkey. Many reasons account for why the party was not able acquire a large following. One of its major obstacles lay in the fact that it was up against Atatürk who was a master politician, able to capture the allegiance of the Turkish élite and, from the first—as has been made clear— aware of the danger that Communism directed from Moscow might have for the Turkish state. His counter-strokes kept the party as an organization perennially off balance. Efforts to expand the party from the beginning also ran up against the fact that there were relatively few workers in the Turkey of the 1920s and 1930s, though that stratum of society was a primary target of Communist propaganda. Moreover, workers were for the most part traditionally oriented, linked by solidarity ties of family and place of origin. Social control was exercised by heads of affinity groups who were able to keep group members in line. Thus the number of those willing to jeopardize their jobs by joining in agitation was limited. In addition, there was no tradition from Ottoman days of laborers and intellectuals working together for a common cause. It was even much more difficult to communicate a message of revolution to the peasantry, scattered as they were over the surface of Anatolia, with a minimal road system and a generally low level of other means of

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communication. The literacy rate in the villages was miniscule and even main­ stream newspapers did not circulate there. A greater obstacle still was the fact that peasants were completely unused to thinking of themselves as able to influence government policy.1 The religious conservatism of the peasantry in any event made gaining recruits among the rural population an uphill task for the Turkish Communist Party. On another level, the party's difficult task was made all the more arduous by the behavior of the Soviet state that was described in the preceding chapter. In addition, the party suffered from the start from the fragmentation of the Communist movement. Some of those who were attracted toward Communism tended to give it an Islamic tinge radically at odds with those who favored extreme secular Marxism. Nationalism rather than the internationalism of the Comintern formed a potent lodestone for others. Corporatism and some forms of state capitalism found their adherents as well. That was divisive especially because, as a hierarchically organized entity, the Turkish Communist Party increasingly demanded conformity of its members and subservience to the party leadership whether within the country or later abroad. That would lead to frequent purges as well as sharp shifts in the party line to conform to the dictates of Moscow. Intense factional competition between its constituent parts also proved to be the bane of Communist experience. Unlike almost all other Communist movements of the world, the Turkish Communist Party represented the confluence of three entirely distinct streams. The rivalries between these separate groups, which reflected differences in personality and approach as well, have bedeviled the movement all through its existence. Reverberations of this conflict have been perceptible even within the closing decades of the twentieth century in debate within the party. These strains have been all the more intense as until relatively recently the party's chiefs have largely been drawn from the ranks of those who joined in the formative days of the party's early existence. For those "old Turks” the contrasting identities of the original components had particular salience.

Kremlin Loyalists Turkish émigrés and prisoners of war in the Soviet Union began to form a Communist organization in Moscow soon after Lenin came to power. Under the Kremlin's guidance and control, Mustafa Subhi, the main figure in Frederick W. Frey, who engaged in polling in Turkey in the 1960s, commented to the author that even at that date when asked wnat things they would do if they were Prime Minister, peasants in Turkey were unable to visualize having political power. Hence, they typically evaded the question, saying: “But I am not Prime Minister.”

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this faction, shifted from attachment to economic nationalism along the lines of Ferdinand Lasalle to the Marxist interpretation of Stalin, whose protégé he rapidly became. Subhi's efforts through the Muslim Bureau of the Commissariat of Nationalities to use the Congress of Turkish Left Socialists in Moscow in July 1918 to create a formal Turkish Communist Party proved premature. But he took part in the preparatory meeting to launch the Comintern in December 1918. His speech calling revolution in the East the engine of proletarian revolution in the West was actually delivered at this forum, though it was published in the minutes of the First Congress of the Comintern as though it has been delivered at this later gathering.1 In this scheme of things, creation of an organization inside of Turkey held a high priority. To further this cause, those involved in Communist organizational work with Turkic peoples in Russia dispatched agents to Istanbul and the Black Sea coast of Anatolia. Copies of Yeni Dünya, the Turkish periodical published by Mustafa Subhi in various locations within the Soviet domains, were sent to Turkey. But until 1920, the difficulties of direct access made contact between the Russia-based party and Anatolia haphazard and sporadic.2 Subhi's own plans to return to Turkish territory were delayed by White Russian advances in the Crimea in 1919. But when he finally reached Baku in May 1920, his organizational talent had been whetted by experience in organizing party activity in Turkestan during the previous year. After abolishing the indigenous Turkish Communist Party which had been set up in Baku under the auspices of former Committee of Union and Progress personalities, he formed his own organization in contact with Moscow. One cannot be sure of Subhi's orientation at this distance, but there is abundant evidence that he began political life as an ardent Turkish nationalist and even at this time he may still have been at heart more a sort of national Communist in orientation than a convinced Stalinist, despite his close association with that Soviet leader. However that may be, Subhi launched a program of education and propaganda among the Turks in Azerbaijan, many of whom were former prisoners of war or émigrés who fled the Young Turk regime. And to accomplish his main goal of promoting his party, he requested permission from Atatürk to carry on Communist activity into Turkey in exchange for Bolshevik support of the Anatolian struggle for independence.

1Communist International, Sow jet-Russland und die Volker der W elt: Reden a u f der Internationalen Versammlung in Petrograd am 19. Dezember, 1918 (Petrograd, 1920). 2For a detailed discussion of the legal Communist experience in Turkey, see George S. Harris, The Origins o f Communism in Turkey (Stanford: Hoover Institution Press, 1967), passim.

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Without waiting for a positive response from the Turkish authorities in Ankara, Subhi stepped up efforts to organize Communists in Anatolia and issued propaganda from Baku which took a rather hostile line against some aspects of the Kemalist regime. He denounced Foreign Minister Bekir Sami and his delegation that Atatürk sent to Moscow in July 1920 to seek a treaty of alliance, calling them "masked nationalists."1 At the same time, he invited sympathizers in Anatolia to come to Baku in September 1920 to attend two major gatherings which he hoped to use to mobilize and unify the disparate Communist groupings in the Ottoman domains: the Congress of the Peoples of the East and the First Congress of the Turkish Communist Party which followed immediately on its heels. Effective unity was not to be achieved at these congresses. Many of the participants had only a casual interest in the new movement. Some of the former internees from Russia who attended were seeking merely to facilitate their own return to Anatolia. Others were representatives sent by Atatürk to monitor the proceedings. But even among the most ardent proponents of the Communist party, rivalries over precedence as well as differences over doctrinal issues prevented anything more than superficial unity. Debate at Baku at the Congress of the Peoples of the East laid bare the contradictions inherent in the emerging Communist doctrine on the definition of and policy toward national liberation movements. In fact, dispute over what constituted a valid national struggle would become one of the principal foci of factional controversy within the Turkish Communist Party all during the Atatürk era. Wider considerations of common opposition to the West dictated that Subhi call for a popular front from Baku in support of the Anatolian nationalists against the British and their Greek surrogates. Yet the conferees could not pass without insisting as well on the need to organize to take power directly in the name of the proletariat in the long run. The Turkish Communist Party program that was ratified at its Baku Congress showed that the party was strongly under the influence of the Kremlin, echoing standard Communist lines. It started with a highly theoretical explanation of the evils of capitalism which were claimed to have led to colonialism and the exploitation of workers. The program repeated the Leninist theory, dear to Suphi's heart, that revolution in the East had a very important part in stimulating world revolution, but it noted that Turkey was at the initial stage of developing class struggle. In joining the struggle against foreign capitalism in the shape of the Entente, workers were joining “the enemy of the enemy” rather than defending strictly class interests. The Turkish Communist Party was called “first of all a ‘worker and farm hand’ party,” H arris, p. 61.

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though in fact it was clearly primarily a party of the élite. Suphi's party, as a member of the Third International, was dedicated to struggle actively against the “international bourgeoisie.” It engaged to act as a “vanguard” for working people to show them the path to victory.1 Celebrating Soviet government as opening a new period in human history, the party program followed the hypocritical Kremlin line that this sort of administration was “a temporary form of government for the transitional period between Communism and capitalism.” The party engaged “to work untiringly to establish a worker and peasant Soviet Republic which is the highest form of populism.” And it asserted that it would do so through propaganda in the first instance. Wary at this stage of alienating traditionally oriented peasants, the party pledged that religious education would be “subject to the free will of every nation.” It promised not to violate the creed of anyone and to assure absolute freedom of conscience. On the important question of national “communities” (the nationality question), the program called the party to seek solutions “to end ancient hostility between revolutionary worker and peasant classes belonging to the various communities.” It advocated full freedom of all communities from a linguistic and cultural point of view and made clear its preference for a federation based on “the free union of free communities” in the organization of the Turkish state. And, echoing Lenin’s message to Atatürk earlier that year, it favored a plebiscite as the way to settle whether such communities as the Kurds would be entirely separate and independent or would join in a federation with the Turks. In the economic realm, the program advocated having the major means of production brought under government control. It called for economic activity in general to be conducted under a comprehensive plan which would also embrace economic and political ties with other countries. It demanded that all forms of colonialism and capitulations be abolished. And the party pledged to give needs of women workers special attention. In conducting economic activity, the program strongly endorsed the creation of cooperatives, both for artisans in production cooperatives under party supervision and for workers and peasants in consumption cooperatives. Cooperatives would operate not on the principle of profit, but on that of the well-being of members. The Turkish Communist Party promised that after the establishment of a new social regime, it would seek to bring farming work under Communist principles and would form farming communes. As to banking, this function would be brought under government control, and the party would create a “Peoples Bank” to support manufacturing and trade. The program indicated that in a period when the principles of Communism did not reign in production 1For the text of the Baku program, see Mete Tunçay, Türkiye’de Sol Akım lar (1908-1925) (Ankara: Bilgi Yayınevi, 3rd ed., 1978), pp. 403-14.

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relationships, money could not be abolished. However, money lending practices by the rich to exploit the poor would not be tolerated. The aim of the Turkish Communist Party would be to abolish all taxes levied on working people. Instead, in order to meet government expenses, the party proposed to impose a wealth tax on the rich. In its final sections, the program committed the party to agitate for an 8-hour work day under good working conditions and to oppose the use of drugs, gambling and prostitution. It instructed party members to create cells inside military and police units. Through this mechanism the party pledged to supervise units in the Red Army created to fight for the revolution. And the party committed itself to work for universal education up to age 17 for both males and females. Although it was clear that the party opposed the Ottoman regime, the program was not specific on what relations with the Kemalists should be. Hence, as Subhi and his associates made their way back to Anatolia at the start of 1921, they met with suspicion from Turkish officials. Atatürk was concerned over the Communist potential to challenge his regime, although he obviously felt that to refuse Subhi permission to return would upset relations with the Kremlin. Local commanders in the field were also disturbed over the anti-Islamic thrust of Communist propaganda, despite the program's insistence on freedom of conscience. The more conservative elements of the population, for their part, greeted the Communists with open hostility. Subhi was well aware of this suspicion and tried to dampen it as much as possible. To this end, in Kars in January 1921, he told Ali Fuat Cebesoy, who was on his way to Moscow as ambassador, that the Comintern was “not absolutely determined to apply Communism inside Turkey.” Suphi went on to assure his interlocutor that “we do not consider beys and pashas in Turkey [to be] from the bourgeois class. On the contrary, we find them as the closest helpers of the masses of the people." That was an interpretation far from the practice in the Soviet Union and one that echoed Atatiirk's own appraisal of the classless nature of revolutionary Turkey. It was obviously intended to be comforting to the leaders in Ankara. Nonetheless, Cebesoy was not at all fully reassured. He assessed Subhi as “intelligent, sly, and determined.” A man of considerable ambition seeking fame, Subhi “wanted to be like Lenin or Stalin” in Cebesoy's estimation. Indeed, in a message to Ankara, Cebesoy indicated his belief that Subhi was committed to “Communism and wants to make its ideas and principles his policy.” At the same time, Cebesoy judged that over

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the short run Subhi was willing to work with Atatürk to fight against the foreign enemy.1 In this climate of deep mistrust and with perhaps discreet encouragement from Turkish officialdom, demonstrations were mounted against Subhi and his colleagues at every stop in eastern Turkey. At the end of January 1921, when the party reached Trabzon, Subhi and a number of his companions were seized by local conservatives, who murdered the Communists and had their bodies thrown into the sea. The degree of Ankara’s official complicity in this affair cannot yet be determined with any assurance. However, it is d e a r that the destruction of this group of Russian loyalists in the Communist leadership brought to an end the domination of Subhi's group over the Turkish Communist organization. His remaining followers would be absorbed in the Anatolian and Istanbul parties.*2

Anatolian Primitives The second principal faction of the Turkish Communist Party reflected a strong overlay of traditionalist attitudes and a less intellectual approach. Based in Anatolia and in only intermittent contact with Moscow or with Subhi's organization in Baku, these largely home-grown Communists of the hinterland often stressed the compatibility of their new doctrine with Islam. In this context. Communist demands for social justice were portrayed as consistent with Islamic injunctions. At the same time, the Anatolian leftists exploited the appeal of the anti-imperialist slant of Communist dogma to a population which was outraged by European imperial designs. A doctrinaire approach compounded of such features had considerable attractiveness for a traditional audience. Hence, a small group of more or less conservative politicians in Anatolia were drawn to this rough-hewn Islamic Communism for a brief moment in the spring of 1920. The climate for the creation of a Communist-style party was fostered by agitators from Baku, led by the Bashkir envoy, Şerif Manatov, as well as by native leftists. Building on this foundation, political activists—some of them close to Atatürk— exploited the burgeoning interest in developments in Russia to stitch together a secret political grouping called the “Green Army” in May 1920. Atatürk was aware of this activity; however, he claimed not to have been actually involved. The Green Army was not primarily a military force (although its regulations called for it to have its own “fedayeen”), but ^ l i Fuat Cebeaoy, Moskova Hatıraları (21/J111920—2/6/1922) (Istanbul: “Vatan” Neşriyatı, 1955), pp. « M l . 2For the official Turkish response to the Kremlin disclaiming any responsibility for Subhi's murder, see The Nation, Sept 7,1921, v. 113, p. 273.

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apparently it did come to enjoy the allegiance of some Circassian irregular forces. With its anti-imperialist, anti-capitalist Islamic-Communist approach, this organization provided a political umbrella for an upweiling of leftist activity. Its statutes called it a fraternal organization to the Red Army “ in accord with Moscow,” and it advocated extensive governmental intervention in economic and social life. At the same time, it claimed to respect the family as the basic institution of society. To increase its drawing power, it identified “the path of Right” with the “path of God,” and committed itself to an effort “to expel from Asia the self-loving greed coming from the West and to restore the mutual sincerity of the age of salvation [i.e., the era of Mohammed's lifetime] by relying on all the social principles of Islam.” And one of its principal slogans was supposed to be the device “Asia is for the Asians” which its regulations enjoined it to affix to its battle flag. These formulations disguised its Communist leanings and attenuated to a degree the natural antipathy that radical secular-style Communism would have been expected to arouse in the traditionalist circles of Anatolia.1 Far from ever being a mass organization, the Green Army would remain an organization of the élite with a membership largely drawn from members of parliament and government officials. Its activities were mostly secret and largely confined to Ankara, with the important exception that it was able to organize a major branch in Eskişehir. Although the Ankara headquarters was more or less under Atatiirk's control, the Eskişehir branch would in time become an independent source of leftist activity which would cause the Ankara authorities to move sharply against it. While the Green Army movement succeeded in injecting a mild socialistic note into the basic legislation enacted by the wartime parliament in Ankara, some of its activities appeared considerably more extreme. One of its factions, apparently in contact with the Russian embassy, may have been responsible for circulating the extraordinarily radical 'Turkish Communist Party General Statutes” which were distributed in Anatolia in June 1920. This program envisaged the administration of the country through a system of “ Soviets,” the abolition of private property, the nationalization of all businesses, and the eventual elimination of money as a medium of exchange. The authors of this document or the organization that disseminated it cannot be identified with any assurance on current evidence. But if Şerif Mantov was in fact involved, as appears plausible, it would provide an additional indication

1The regulations of the Green Army stated that ‘T he world is facing revolution... Muslims will profit and will not be harmed by this social revolution, since Islam and the prophet Mohammed laid down and advocated these principles.... Thus one point of our organization is to profit from the Socialist movement and to help i t ” For a comprehensive treatment of the Green Army, see Tunçay, pp. 130-52. He reproduces its regulations on pp. 393-97.

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that his band of leftists considered itself a branch of Subhi's Communist Party in Baku.1 Atatürk found it difficult to tolerate such extremism in the heart of his wartime capital. Indeed, the links of the Anatolian Communists with Soviet emissaries newly arrived in Ankara increased Atatürk's perception of the threat from this quarter. The Turks would soon learn that sensitive matters were leaking to the Russians from closed sessions of parliament. The delegation sent by Atatürk to Moscow in the opening days of the Turkish parliament in April 1920 heard from Chicherin “many things that were very harmful for our national interests and our country if disclosed abroad.” The Turkish President indicated that Chicherin was in possession of information that came directly from matters discussed in closed sessions of the Ankara parliament. Though Atatürk did not specifically name the source in this closed session of parliament, the authorities concluded that these leaks emanated from Nâzım öztelli Resmor who would form the so-called Peoples Communist Party in Ankara in December 1920 with close ties to the Russian embassy.*2 Amid these conflicting imperatives, Atatürk adopted a policy that sought to neuter the destructive tendencies of the Communist movement, but in ways that would not prevent relatively smooth relations with Moscow. He acted quickly in the summer of 1920 to clip the wings of the Green Army in Ankara. At the start of 1921, he forcibly put down the revolt of Ethem's Circassian partisans who had fallen under the spell of a “Muslim Bolshevik Committee” established in Eskişehir by Şerif Mantov and remnants of the Green Army. But he did not move against the Russian embassy which had been linked to Ethem's movement. And to combat the seductive identification of Communism with Islam, he had Muslim dignitaries issue religious edicts declaring Communism “incompatible with the Koran.”3 Atatürk's most distinctive response, however, was to set up an “official” version of the Communist Party in order to gain control of this potentially challenging movement. Though he talked about its role in educating the people about Communism, in fact, the main effort of this party was directed abroad at gaining Moscow's recognition as the legitimate representative of Communists in Turkey. After some months, however, once Moscow had rejected the request of this tame party to be accepted by the Third International.

*A translation of these statutes, which suggest the fervor of wartime Communism in the Soviet Union, is in Harris, pp. 149-52. 2TBMM, G izli Celse Zabıtları vol. 1(Ankara: TBMM Basımevi, 1980), pp. 356-362 (session of Feb. 1,1921). 3S. Velt'man, “Novaia Turtsiia ve otrazheniiakh anatoliskoi pressi,” Novyi Vostok, 1922, no. 2, p. 643.

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And when the nationalists in Ankara had concluded that the initiative had outlived its usefulness in sowing confusion, it was disbanded.1 Nonetheless, Atatürk could not immediately end the challenge of the Anatolian Communists. A group of leftist parliamentarians, who had been active in the Green Army, took advantage of the confusion in parliament and managed to elect Nâzım Resmor as Minister of Interior in September 1920. Because of Resmor's links to the Soviet mission as well as his contacts with Mustafa Subhi in Baku, Atatürk felt it necessary to intervene personally to countermand this appointment and to explain to the assembled deputies the dangers he saw in such foreign ties.2 Undaunted, however, this group at the initiative of Şerif Manatov set about organizing the Peoples Communist Party of Turkey, to which the government reluctantly accorded an official permit to operate on December 7, 1920. Recognizing the almost complete absence of industrial workers in rural Anatolia, the new party gave a significant emphasis to the peasantry, which it envisaged as a potentially revolutionary force. In fact, the organization's adherents, on the other hand, were drawn almost entirely from the political élite. Calling itself the product of the combination of the “secret Communist Party” and the Green Army “populists,” the new organization reprinted inflammatory articles from the journal Z iy a , published by Turkish Communists in Bulgaria. The Peoples Communist Party frankly stated its uncertainty that Atatürk would keep Turkey on a positive tack in future and called for an economic war against capitalists in Anatolia once the foreign foe had been vanquished. The party strongly professed its attachment to the international Communist movement; indeed, it was promptly admitted into membership in the Comintern as a second body representing Communists in Turkey in addition to the organization set up by Mustafa Subhi.3 Although the newly established Peoples Communist Party does not appear to have responded to overtures by Ethem's Circassian insurgents who rose in armed defiance of Atatürk at the end of 1920, it was soon suspended by the Ankara government for alleged involvement with Ethem's partisan bands. The party's leadership was arrested early in 1921 and convicted on charges that included unauthorized links to foreign powers, meaning contact with Moscow. ^Tunçay, p. 169, presents a schematic rendition of the “official” party's table of organization. For Atatilrk's own explanation of the “official” party, see, Chapter 1 above. 2Ali Çankaya, Yeni Mülkiye Tarihi ve M ülkiyeliler (Ankara, Mars Matbaası, 1968-1969, vol. 3, pp. 405-406, gives a biography of Nâzım Resmor. The claim that Resmor was jailed until 1935, however, is incorrect For the parliamentary debate on lifting Nâzım Resmor's immunity, see TBMM, Gizli Celse Zabıtları, vol. 1, pp. 356-63 (session of Feb. 1,1921). 3For a facsimile edition of the first issue of the Peoples Communist Party's original organ. Emek, see Ali Ergin Gttran (ed.), Türkiye Halk Iştirakiyyun Fırkası Yaym Organları I (İstanbul: Katkı Yayınlan, Belgesel Sosyalizm Serisi, no. 2,1975), pp. 1-17.

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But as a result of strong Soviet representations, the Ankara government permitted the Peoples Communist Party of Turkey to resume operations in March 1922. Again under the direction of Nâzım Resmor, the party began to publish a new theoretical journal, Yeni Hayat, which presented a varied menu of Islamic and Communist subjects.1 The Peoples Communist Party, however, had lost critical momentum by its suspension. Although the Anatolian Communists now showed far greater circumspection than in their initial days, even specifically supporting the National Pact which earlier they had questioned on grounds of selfdetermination for ethnic groups in Anatolia, they continued to offend the Kemalists. As a result, the Ankara government severely restricted party activities and in August 1922 refused permission for a Communist Party congress in Ankara with international participation.2 This gathering, which was nonetheless held in mid-September 1922 with representatives from European Communist parties in attendance, was celebrated with considerable exaggeration as the Second Congress of the Turkish Communist Party. Its participants were obliged to meet on the premises of the Soviet Embassy to get around the Kemalist ban. While two German Communist observers on the scene reported that it was attended by some 30 delegates, including intellectuals, workers, and “two peasants,” there is no indication that major figures from Istanbul attended. Thus, despite the international tinge that appeared especially provocative to the Kemalist regime, the Congress had a decidedly local character.3 As if this defiance of Ankara were not risky enough, the Peoples Communist Party's chances for survival were further jeopardized when Moscow greeted the Kemalist victory over the Greeks in September 1922 with the pronouncement that Turkish workers would eventually have to turn against the Anatolian government. Atatürk responded by closing Yeni Hayat for criticizing the Kemalist leaders in November 1922. Nâzım Resmor was arrested and his party was closed. This time ignoring the protests of Soviet organs and the Comintern, the Ankara authorities refused to allow the party to reopen.4

1 Yeni Hayat began publishing on March 18, 1922. It was closed after an editorial on Sept. 24, 1922, was deemed to have threatened the government Sec Tunçay, pp. 510-514. 2 Ahmet Akıncı, “öldürülmelerinin 47-inci yıldönümü münasebetiyle MUSTAFA SUPHİ’leri anıyoruz,” Yeni Çağ, Jan. 1968, pp. 70-74. 3For the German report on the Congress, see Leonid & Friedrich, Angora: Freiheitskrieg der Türkei (Berlin: Vereinigung Internationaler Verlagsanstalten, 1923), pp. 56-68. See also Harris, pp. 112-13. 4 The Ankara court decision issued on Aug. 9,1923 is in Tuncay, pp. 510-514

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As a result, although the leaders of the Peoples Communist Party were sentenced to only short terms in jail in the summer of 1923, its members henceforth had only two choices: they could either meld themselves into the Communist movement based in Istanbul, which operated outside of the capital and thus presented a less immediate threat to the regime, or (like Nâzım Resmor) they could withdraw from political life entirely. In either event, the impact on the Turkish Communist Party was clear. The initiative in future had passed to the Istanbul wing.

Istanbul Sophisticates European, especially French, intellectual Marxism cast the spell under which the Istanbul faction of the Turkish Communist Party began its operations. Significantly, the Istanbul organizers were of diverse national origins: ethnic Greeks and Jews played a disproportionate role all through the first decade of the party's existence. These non-Turkish elements became particularly active in Istanbul qfter the British extended their military occupation in March 1920. The celebrated Communist of Greek ethnic origin, Serafim Maximos, for example, established a so-called “International Union of Workers” at the end of 1920, but few Turks joined.1 Another prominent ethnic Greek, Nikos Asimopulos, in 1919 played an active part in the formation of the Istanbul Port Workers Union and joined the Turkish Communist Party in 1921. He played an important role in the underground publication Kokkini Neolea and helped organize the Worker and Student Youth League in the Ottoman capital as well. He is said to have been one of the organizers of the first May Day demonstration to agitate against “foreign imperialists” in Turkey.2 Communist activity among Istanbul's Turkish population developed slowly. The Turkish Worker and Peasant Party, which was to serve as a front organization for the Communists until 1925, was first conceived by Turkish students in Germany in September 1919 under the impress of postwar revolutionary ferment there. After its transfer to Istanbul later that year, the party added the appellation of "Socialist" to its name and Şefik Hüsnü Deymer, a disciple of the French radical socialist Jean Jaurès, took over its leadership. Deymer was the son of Salonika notable Hüsnü pasha, hence from a quite privileged family. He explained that his conversion to Communism had taken place while a student in Europe by hearing personally the speeches of Communist leaders. At his direction, the Turkish Communists set up their f u tu r e Greek Communist Party Secretary General Nikos Zakhariades also cut his Communist eye teeth in activity in the International Union of Workers. For information on the constituent unions that comprised this organization, see Tunçay, pp. 314-16. 2See Yeni Çağ, no. 3(45), March 1968, pp. 235-326.

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own tiny labor union, the Turkish Worker Association, and published an intellectual journal, Kurtuluş, for their predominantly élite membership.1 To judge from the eclectic contents of this theoretical publication, of which five issues appeared on a somewhat irregular schedule over the ensuing six months, party discipline was all but nonexistent. Even Deymer, in his two articles on the proletariat, followed a line quite innocent of Leninist formulations. He described at length the economic forces he identified as impoverishing the poorer peasants and enlarging the work force in the cities. And he called on the intellectual élite to show its humanitarian concern by teaching Turkey's nascent proletariat lessons learned from the struggle in industrial states. To him, organization and the fostering of class consciousness were the keys to success. Hence, he deplored the tendency of the masses to remain aloof from worker movements out of hope of being able to enter the bourgeois class themselves. Only when the masses learned who they were and came together could the power of capitalism be destroyed, he wrote.2 The British military occupation of Istanbul in 1920 interrupted Communist activity. The Turkish Worker and Peasant Party's organ was closed and most of the leaders of the Turkish wing left for Anatolia. Some would answer Mustafa Subhi's summons to Baku, where they would ratify the formal junction of the Istanbul Communists with his Russia-based organization. Deymer, however, remained in Istanbul with a few close associates. He later justified his failure to join the core of opposition in Anatolia to the British and to the Sultan by claiming that he had been determined to keep in touch with Turkey's only significant concentration of workers who were in the Ottoman capital. In defending this position, he argued that he had then been under the impression that, as in Russia, social revolution would depend on the allegiance of workers, since the peasants were completely lacking in class-consciousness.3 In fact, however, Deymer's reluctance to leave Istanbul must have had less to do with unwillingness to abandon the workers than a pragmatic recognition that remaining in Turkey's only intellectual center was essential if he wished to maintain his position in the struggle for leadership of the inchoate Communist movement. ^See the obituary of his sister, Leman Deymer, in M illiyet, Nov. 20, 1974. That obituary also shows that SelAhi Birizkent, was a brother of Şefik HUsnil Deymer. Abidin Nesimi, Türkiye Komünist Partisinde Antlar ve Değerlendirmeler: 1909-1949 (İstanbul: Promete Yayınlan, 1979), pp. 114,156,162, identifies Selfihi Birizkent as part of Şefik Hüsnü Deymer's group. For the trial in which Deymer explained his conversion to Communism and early activity, see “Instruction, par la Cour criminelle, des procès des communistes,” Le M illiett, Jan. 17,1928. 2See his “Yarınki Proletarya,” Kurtuluş, no. 2, O ct 25, 1919, pp. 117-21; and his “Bügünktl Proletarya ve Sınıf Şuurunu,” ibid, no. 3, Nov. 29,1919, pp. 46-47. 3See Mihri Belli's introduction to Şefik Hüsnü Deymer, Seçme Yazılar (Ankara: Aydınlık Yayınlan, no. 6,1971), p. 14. Deymer, years after the event, admitted to Belli that his refusal to go to Ankara was a mistake, inasmuch as “at the start, at least, a broader union of forces with Mustafa Kemal [Atatürk] could have been assured. We were, in fact, fellow townsmen. We had many mutual friends. In our country, such personal ties can be influential, at least for the short run.”

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In any event, under the influence of Henri Barbusse and the French Communist Party, with which the Istanbul leftists maintained direct contact, Deymer's group apparently established the nucleus of a clandestine Turkish Communist Party about September 1920. It also reactivated the Turkish W orker and Peasant Socialist Party and on June 1, 1921, began the publication of a new theoretical journal, A ydınlık, patently modeled on Barbusse's Clarté and steeped in its élite intellectual approach.1 The Communists remaining in Istanbul, however, were not immune to the ethnic discord between Greek and Turk fanned by the Greek invasion of Anatolia in those years. Competition for the allegiance of the labor movement complicated the development of Communist activity. The Turkish Worker Association's effort in 1921 to unite labor organizations in Istanbul under its leadership failed to bring even Communist-led unions together in any lasting way. Indeed, the International Union of Workers under Maximos actively sought to sabotage this initiative. Yet there was no formal break between the Greek and Turkish wings. While Maximos and a number of other prominent figures from the Greek community left Turkey in 1923 amid a general exodus of ethnic Greeks after the Turkish victory in the struggle for independence, it was not until the 1930s that all important agitators of Greek extraction were impelled to emigrate in the face of pressure from the Ankara authorities. Only then did the Communist Party become for all practical purposes a Turkish ethnic organization for the first time.2 Even inside of the Turkish wing of the Istanbul movement, however, ideological unity proved elusive. Moderate nationalists with a social justice orientation mingled with socialists propounding the radical transformation of society. Some saw labor agitation as the appropriate focus of action. Şefik Hüsnii Deymer, whose leadership role was nonetheless widely accepted within Communist circles, favored a scholastic analysis of Marxist principles and careful organizational work over hortatory and ringing appeals to action. Although workers were ostensibly his audience, his message was highly intellectual, pitched for the most educated and sophisticated of the élite. Nor did he ever abandon this general approach, even if at times his party adopted inflammatory slogans or adjusted the content of its message to please the Kremlin. Before the victory of the Kemalists in Anatolia, Deymer's articles in Aydınlık sought to lay the basis for a Marxist understanding of classes and social revolution in Turkey. Attempting to adapt classical Marxism to Turkey,

1On Aydınlık and Clarté, see Hams, pp. 100-101. 2Nikos Asimopulos was one of the last to go. See his obituary in Yeni Çağ, no. 3 (45), March 1968, pp. 235-36. He emigrated in 1933.

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he attributed the emergence of inequalities in society primarily to the existence of private property. But he accurately recognized that wealth for Turks came from political privilege and not from economic activity, which was largely in the hands of the minority communities. This diagnosis led him to regard the petty bourgeoisie as the key to change in Turkey, despite what he saw as its attachment to the status quo out of the hopes of its members to improve their material and social standing. While Deymer did not deny that the urban proletariat might be able on its own to gain sufficient class-consciousness to arouse the somnolent peasants if given enough time, he argued that the support of the petty bourgeoisie was likely in Turkey's case to provide a more efficient transition to the eventual classless society he desired. Doubting that for a long time it would be possible for a reformist regime to survive without the cooperation of the petty bourgeoisie, he thus opposed measures that would discourage artisans and small entrepreneurs from investing or modernizing their enterprises. Yet in a bow to Marxist orthodoxy, he at the same time acknowledged in principle the great revolutionary potential of the peasantry, calling it “the true foundation stone of the new structure” that would be erected after the revolutionaries seized power.1 All during the military occupation of Istanbul by the British, Deymer’s interpretation reflected this highly utopian character. For example, he waxed eloquent on the program a revolutionary regime would carry out, citing the need to develop state capitalism and institute industrial and agricultural collectives in order to woo the peasants and discourage counterrevolution. Talk of the withering away of government and the inevitability of historical dialectics seemed designed to compensate for the absence of specifics about how to achieve or organize for revolution. For most of this period, the Istanbul Communists wrote little that would excite British censorship. Only at the very end of the British occupation did Deymer venture an analysis of populism (evidently directed at explaining the political currents in Anatolia where Atatiirk's movement was commonly referred to as “populist”). His article was deleted by the censor in its entirety. The British may have been especially sensitive because Deymer was dealing with a political cause which challenged the legitimacy of the Istanbul government. In this issue of Aydınlık as well, other writers apparently took what the British regarded as a more aggressive stance than before and also ran afoul of the censor.2

1See, for example, his “Türkiye'de İnkılâbın şekli,” Aydınlık, no. 5, Nov. 1,1921, pp. 130-34. 2D r. Şefik Hüsnü [Deymer], “Halkçılığa dair Mülâhazat,” A ydınlık, no. 9, Sept 20. 1922, p. 226. Aside from the tide, the page was left blank with only Deymer's signature printed at the bottom.

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The Communists and the Kem alist M ovement With the victory of the Kemalists in Anatolia in September 1922, the line of the Istanbul party began to change. Lenin's name figured in its literature with increasing frequency. But the dominant new theme reflected the political reality that the Kemalists now wielded power. That opened a long­ standing debate among the Communists over how progressive a social force Atatürk's movement was and how far Communists could support it. In an initial analysis, Deymer probably expressed a nearly unanimous Communist view in praising the defeat of the Greeks as a defeat of imperialism, “a true liberation struggle,” causing pleasure to “all like us who love right and the independence of nations.” And Deymer added his fervent hope that after victory the Anatolian leaders would help workers and peasants to use all their rights.1 Nonetheless, Deymer confessed his lack of confidence in the ultimate orientation of the Kemalist regime. Arguing that it was necessary to devise and publicize the ideology of conscious social reform, he pronounced that those educated under the old regime who had partaken of its “blessings" could not be expected to carry out this task. Only youth who had been trained in new ways could be counted on, he believed, to have the necessary social awareness. In their confidence that youth would defend their respective revolutions, his views and those of Atatürk converged, though the two came at the problem from different directions.2 And this line of argument also foreshadowed a notorious article by Nâzım Hikmet toward the end of the decade which raised the hackles of nationalist intellectuals around Atatürk. The initial acts of the Kemalists as they established control over Istanbul in November 1922 confirmed Deymer in the view that Atatürk was leading merely a bourgeois revolution. As the Communist leader wrote at the time, “the Anatolian revolution is very far from satisfying those who believe that there is no way to save this country except a radical social revolution.” Nevertheless, he added, “we must say that this revolutionary initiative [Kemalism], which we very much hope is sincere, is a great step forward from the point of view of its present leadership, although we believe it will not be able to resolve in future many questions that must be resolved.” As a result, he made clear that for all its failings the Kemalist regime should be defended against conservative and traditionalist attacks.3

ta r . Şefik Hüsnü [Deymer], “Hakiki İnkılâba Dogru,” Aydınlık, no. U , Dec. 10, 1922, pp. 27479. 2Dr. Şefik HUsnU [Deymer], “Türk Münevverleri,’’ Aydınlık, no. 10, Nov. 1, 1922, pp.250-52. 3Dr. Şefik Hüsnü [Deymer], “Anadoludan Gelen Fikirler Etrafındaki Münakaşalar,” Aydınlık, no. 10, Nov. 1,1922, pp. 265-67.

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As time went on, however, Deymer would state more and more categorically his view that “our struggle is not over.” When he discerned moves by the Ankara authorities that required total subjugation and total conformity to the new regime, he urged his supporters to resist. Although buoyed initially by unrealistic hopes that the new parliament in Ankara would reject private enterprise as the guiding philosophy of the Kemalist state, Deymer had no illusions that Atatürk would extirpate capitalism or move to anything approaching a classless society. Indeed, the prominent role that minorities were still playing in Turkey's economy strengthened Deymer in his view that Europe was continuing to try to enslave Turkey. Thus he persisted in his fear that the capitulations would be reimposed, despite Atatiirk's clear resolve not to make concessions in this regard. To escape this danger, Deymer called for Turkey to cooperate with “the Revolutionary East” as he saw the republics of the Caucasus doing.1 Deymer's ambivalence toward the Kemalists and his uncertainty that they would be able to preserve political independence from the West was echoed in confusion within the Comintern on how to evaluate AtatUrk's movement. The Fourth Congress of the Communist International in November 1922, which finally directed the various Communist groups in Turkey to combine into one single organization, was the scene of vigorous debate on this matter. Karl Radek took a position more or less congruent with Deymer's general view. Like the Istanbul leader, he deplored the arrests of Turkish Communists, but he made clear that the responsibility for these actions against the party lay on the shoulders of the conservative faction among the Kemalists, specifically Rauf Orbay and Refet Bele, and he largely absolved Atatürk from blame. Radek also indicated that the path to Communism in Turkey would be long and he cautioned that no early effort to seize power should be contemplated. Indeed, he left no doubt that cooperation with the revolutionary wing of the Kemalists against the imperialists and reactionaries should be the order of the day.2 Others in the Comintern took a position less favorable to Atatürk's movement “Orhan,” a Turkish delegate at the Fourth Congress protested Ankara's treatment of the Peoples Communist Party of Turkey. He insisted that Atatürk's regime could not be considered revolutionary any longer, arguing that the Anatolian nationalists had fallen into the clutches of the European imperialists, at least since Ankara had accepted the British invitation to the London Conference in February 1921. The Turkish delegate attacked Atatürk for pursuing a two-faced policy to deceive the Soviet leadership as 1Dr. Şefik HUsnU [Deymer], H akiki İnkılâba Dogru,” Aydınlık, no. 11, Dec. 10,1922, pp. 27479. 2Commumst International, Fourth Congress o f the Communist International (London: Southwark Picas, n.