Hiro, Inside the Middle East
Dilip Hiro, Inside the Middle East (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1982).
Berberoglu, Turkey in Crisis
Berch Berberoglu, Turkey in Crisis, From State Capitalism to Neocolonialism (London: Zed Press, 1982).
This is a useful, concise rendition of Turkish political history and economic development. It is rich in facts and easy-to-use economic data. Its best conceptual contribution is the portrayal of the contradictions of the “state capitalist” development path. The analysis is presented chronologically rather than thematically. There is a strong sense of inevitability in this method: of Turkish history marching inexorably toward the pitched “class” battles of the 1970s and the implicitly fascist coup of 1980.
The Torture of Huseyin Yildirim
Hüseyin Yildirim is a lawyer and a Kurd from eastern Turkey. In the fall of 1981, he was serving as defense counsel to members of the Kurdish Workers’ Party (PKK), many of whom had been arrested and subjected to torture by Turkey’s military junta. Yildirim himself was seized in October 1981, and was imprisoned in the Diyarbakir Military Prison from November 1981 until July 1982. He gave the following testimony to Amnesty International on November 3 and 4, 1982, in Sweden, where he now lives. According to Amnesty, a medical examination conducted on November 2, 1982, confirmed that Yildirim “shows signs of external violent injury…[which] may well have occurred as a result of the torture described by [him].”
The Kurds in Turkey
Traveling from western Turkey to its eastern provinces is like going to an entirely different country—more primitive, poorer, with starker social contradictions. Many peasants there still live in semi-feudal bondage, tribal loyalties are strong, and traditional concepts of honor find expression in violent conflicts. Many people there speak Kurdish rather than Turkish. According to many Turkish politicians or academics, this linguistic peculiarity is yet another indication of the area’s backwardness. In the official Turkish view, the Kurds are of Turkish origin, but they have culturally and linguistically degenerated and now speak a gibberish comprised of Persian, Arabic and Turkish and incapable of expressing sophisticated thought.
“Please Don’t Use My Name”
This interview was conducted by Karen Pfeifer in Ankara during November 1983.
How would you like to be identified?
I have been in prison five times since the 1980 coup, so please don’t use my name. I was an activist in the construction workers’ union, a shop steward in one of the most progressive unions in the Türk-Iş federation. I started as an unskilled worker, making pavement. I worked for two years in a private company, then for 25 years in the state highway department.
What was your work day like?
“The Traditional Middle in Turkish Politics Disintegrated”
Ahmet (a pseudonym) was a founder of the Turkish People’s Liberation Front Party in 1971. He was imprisoned from 1972 to 1974, and released during the general amnesty. He worked with Türk-Iş (the state-endorsed trade union confederation) in the 1970s and helped publish the political journal Birikim. In 1979, he was invited by Abdullah Baştürk to transfer to work with DISK, the progressive confederation of trade unions. Ahmet resigned from DISK in April 1980.
“The Workers as a Class Were Defeated”
Metin Kara (a pseudonym) worked on the staff of DISK, the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions. He now lives in exile in Brussels, and he works with the DISK liaison bureau there. His trade union work dates back to 1967, when he was a member of a DISK-affiliated union. From 1975 to 1978, he worked as a staff member in the publication and education bureaus of several DISK member unions. He was interviewed in late 1983 by Sami Kum, a Turkish citizen who now lives in the US and works with the Committee for Human Rights and Democracy in Turkey.
How do you see the political history of the workers’ movement in Turkey after World War II?
Trade Unions and Turkey’s Working Class
The emergence of the working class as a force on Turkey’s political scene is essentially a phenomenon of the years since World War II. The organized expression of this class, trade unions, also made their appearance in these years. Both these developments were closely related to the process of rapid industrialization in postwar Turkey. In the 1940s, industry and construction accounted for about 20 percent, and manufacturing for just over 10 percent, of national output. As of 1950, these shares began to rise, accompanied by falling ratios for the agricultural sector. By 1970, manufacturing accounted for a fifth of GNP, and by 1978 this sector was responsible for a greater share of GNP than agriculture.
Western Silence on Turkey
About July 20, 1983, a BBC television news crew filming outside Istanbul’s Metris prison found itself confronted by difficulties which, one of the crew said, he had never experienced even in the Soviet Union. During a subsequent flurry of messages between the crew, the British Embassy in Ankara, and the Turkish Foreign Ministry, the crew learned that they were supposed to work with a Turkish plainclothes policeman permanently at their side (or if they wished, following at a distance). The Foreign Ministry also indicated that the crew might have had an easier time had they not chosen to be accompanied by the present writer, the Ankara stringer for the BBC as well as for other newspapers and broadcasting organizations. The message was duly relayed to the crew.
From the Editors (January/February 1984)
It has become quite the rage in Washington lately to declaim “state terrorism” as the new scourge of humanity. Both the New York Times and the Washington Post recently featured extensive inquiries into the attacks against US and Israeli targets in Lebanon, and US and Kuwaiti targets in the Gulf. Before the ink was dry, the chorus of Reagan, Shultz and Weinberger were denouncing “state terrorism” from every pulpit and grandstand as the major affliction of civilization in this decade. Never mind that acts of armed resistance against military occupation—such as in Lebanon—are now routinely labeled “terrorist” by the learned men who edit the Times and the Post.
Visualizing History
Sarah Graham-Brown, The Palestinians and Their Society, 1880-1946 (New York: Quartet Books, 1980).
Mortimer, Faith and Power
Edward Mortimer, Faith and Power: The Politics of Islam (New York: Random House, 1982).
The Hammamat Declaration
In early April 1983, a group of 35 Arab intellectuals, academicians, professionals and political activists met at the Hammamat cultural center in Tunis to discuss the crisis of human rights and democratic freedoms in the Arab world. No officials or representatives of any Arab government attended, and the gathering was not sponsored by any government or political organization.
Recession Hits Saudi Oil Sector
A visitor to the kingdom might be startled to hear Saudis speak of a “recession” here. Non-oil growth of the gross domestic product (GDP) is proceeding at a 6 percent clip. Unemployment is nil and construction sites still appear to be eating up the desert around every major city. It hardly looks like a recession. Nevertheless, a leaner economic climate is unmistakable. Saudi and foreign contractors alike complain of a slowdown in government payments that leaves them short of cash. The private sector is pruning payrolls and expenses, and layoffs are underway at two of the country’s largest employers, Aramco and the national airline, Saudia. Demand for many key goods and services has stabilized, leaving traders in the lurch.
Marxism, the Third World and the Middle East
It has become common in the West to question the relevance of Marxism to advanced capitalism, and to suggest that, as a theory, it is in “crisis” and requires substantial revision. Paradoxically, more orthodox versions of Marxist theory and politics seem to retain an appeal in the Third World. Since the end of World War II, nearly 20 countries have acquired governments professing adherence to Marxist ideas. Within the past decade alone, more than ten states have gone through social upheavals that have brought regimes of a Marxist orientation to power. As a force in world history, Marxism’s success in the Third World contrasts with its more checkered fate in the developed countries.
Restructuring the World Energy Industry
A decade ago, the states that make up the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) took a number of important steps to alter the structure of the world oil industry by encroaching on the prerogatives of the international oil companies. The producers unilaterally increased the “posted price” for crude oil and boosted royalty and tax rates. They took over direct ownership of their crude reserves, and created state firms which subsequently took charge of oil operations in many (though not all) producing countries. The monopoly power of the international oil companies was further eroded a few years later when these governments slashed long-term supply contracts and undertook to sell their oil directly to consumer governments and small private traders.
OPEC’s Decade
No one can deny that the past ten years have witnessed great changes in the international oil industry. A decade ago, the seven largest international oil companies — Exxon, Shell, British Petroleum, Texaco, Standard of California, Mobil and Gulf — still dominated the industry in virtually every respect. In 1972, these seven companies accounted for three fifths of the non-communist world’s production of crude oil and refined products, and similar shares of transport and marketing as well. Even these figures fail to reflect the relative profitability of these “seven sisters.” They controlled only one third of oil production in the United States, where costs were relatively high and profits correspondingly lower.
Ten Years After
It is still possible, even likely, that history will take note of the remarkable events of late 1973 and early 1974: Egyptian troops crossed the Suez Canal and penetrated the supposedly impregnable Bar Lev line in a matter of hours; the kings and presidents of the Arab oil producing states, led by Faysal of Saudi Arabia, decreed a boycott of the world’s most powerful state; the major Third World oil producers, grouped in the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC), doubled the price of crude oil in a single afternoon and, a few weeks later, doubled it again. The grievances and frustrations of many generations, it seemed, had finally overturned the old and accustomed hierarchies in cumulative bursts of political energy.
From the Editors (January/February 1984)
For all the other things that 1984 may represent, it marks a time when US policy in the Middle East has come under a new degree of scrutiny here. The events of the last few months have inserted the Middle East onto the agenda of the growing anti-nuclear movement. A number of public forums have been organized around the country on the theme of “Deadly Connections” pointing to US military intervention in the Middle East or Central America as the most likely trigger of a nuclear war. According to organizers, the various issues of MERIP Reports discussing these matters have provided helpful information and analysis. More such events are planned for the months ahead.
Letters (November/December 1983)
I’ve been working for some time on the question of Israeli military sales. I found Esther Howard’s article, “Israel: The Sorcerer’s Apprentice,” (MERIP Reports 112) invaluable. However, I have uncovered two minor errors which might mislead others using it as a source.
