Turkish Fascism

An introduction to today’s fascism by the Internationalist Commune of Rojava.

As revolutionary youth, we must know our enemy well in order to fight against him effectively. Understanding Turkish fascism, with its more than hundred years of history, is helpful and necessary because the Turkish state has been a project of Western powers and has taken on different roles since its foundation. Through all these phases and transformations that the Turkish state has undergone since its foundation in 1923, it has always been, at its core, a project of the hegemonic powers of capitalist modernity, a weapon of special warfare against the societies of the region and socialist movements.

But Turkish fascism is also a vanguard of modern fascism. If we understand Turkish fascism, we can develop perspectives for anti-fascist struggles on this basis in order to defeat fascism in the Middle East and across the world.

The Turkish state: Built on the basis of genocide and expulsion

After the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in World War 1, almost all parts of the current territory of the Turkish state were occupied by Great Britain, France and Italy. In the course of the Turkish War of Liberation and the establishment of the first Turkish parliament, the National Movement around Mustafa Kemal gained power in the newly founded Republic of Turkey.

The movement of the so-called Young Turks played an important role in the mobilization of the National Movement. The Young Turks had already worked towards a constitutional form of government when such activity was illegal during the Ottoman Empire. Their most influential party was the “İttihat ve Terakki” (“Committee for Unity and Progress”), which entered the parliament of the Ottoman Empire after the so-called Young Turk Revolution in 1908.

The Young Turks were one of the main actors in the Armenian genocide. 1 million people were murdered under the Young Turk regime, either shot or driven into the Syrian desert on death marches. Those who physically survived the genocide became the target of a brutal assimilation campaign, which was largely carried out through forced Islamisation and enslavement. Armenian women could only save themselves from being murdered by marrying a Muslim man, and thousands of children were taken from their parents and assimilated in state institutions.

The Young Turks also supported Mustafa Kemal because they hoped to be able to keep the land and property stolen from the Armenians under his rule. Many perpetrators of the genocide later became part of the parliament of the Republic of Turkey, which was founded in 1923. There were various currents within the Young Turk movement, supported and influenced by various major powers. Great Britain, Germany, Italy and France tried to assert their claims in the Middle East through the movement. Turkey’s role was to spread the European model of the Nation-State in the Middle East and to provide a blueprint for the founding of the state of Israel. The basis of the genocides of the Turkish state is the ideology of the Nation-State summarized in the slogan of the Republic: “One nation, one flag, one state”.

White fascism: Assimilation as a state ideology

After the founding of the republic on July 24, 1923, the CHP (Turkish: Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, Republican People’s Party) established a quasi-dictatorship under Mustafa Kemal. No free elections were held in the republic until 1950. Under the CHP, over 1 million Christian Orthodox Greeks were expelled and the policy of assimilation against Armenians, Kurds and Ezîdî was continued. Abdullah Öcalan describes this first generation of Turkish fascism as “white fascism”: other ethnic groups were only accepted on the condition that they assimilated, i.e. adopted a Turkish identity instead of their own. Other languages, especially Kurdish, were systematically suppressed, banned and pushed back. Even today, it can still be dangerous to speak Kurdish in public. Even if the methods of white fascism are more subtle, any form of resistance against the state was still met with massacres, as the Dersim genocide shows.

Especially after the Second World War, the forces of white fascism were massively supported by the USA. The Turkish state became an important instrument for asserting the interests of the USA in the Middle East. It was to be positioned against the growing influence of the Soviet Union and communist parties in the region.

Black fascism: Terror and counter-guerrillas

As the youth awakening that came with the revolution of 1968 began to threaten the foundations of power around the world, other forces were now activated in Turkey by the USA and NATO to crush the youth and labor movement. The increasingly influential Turkish Left was now to be fought by the second generation of Turkish fascism that had been formed after the World War II.

The Grey Wolves (Turkish: Bozkurtlar or Bozkurtçular), as these Turkish fascists are called, are part of a current that Abdullah Öcalan describes as Black Fascism. At its core, it is anti-Semitic, racist and has ideological and personal ties to the fascism of Adolf Hitler. The central figure of this current, which led the fight against the Turkish Left from 1960 onwards, was Alparslan Türkeş. Türkeş and other Turkish officers were trained in the USA between 1945 and 1950 and were founding members of the nationalist MHP (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, Nationalist Movement Party) and the counter-guerrilla, the Turkish GLADIO offshoot.

As part of the so-called GLADIO program, the USA and NATO set up paramilitary structures in Greece, Germany, France and many other European countries after World War II, which were to be activated in the event of a political takeover by communist parties.

The military coups of March 12, 1971 and September 19, 1980

In the history of the Republic of Turkey, the military has regularly seized power when the ruling parties were unable to take effective action against workers’ organizations and the left. Since 1960, the military has been plotting coups almost exactly every 10 years.

The coup in 1971 was a reaction to the growing strength of the left, which had fought for decisive rights for workers in the previous years. In the following years, the country experienced a campaign of fascist violence. Thousands of students, teachers, intellectuals and activists were killed between 1975 and 1980.

Hundreds of thousands of Turkish and Kurdish leftists were also arrested or tortured to death as a result of the coup on September 19, 1980. After the seizure of power, a military junta ruled and put into practice everything the right had tried to achieve in the previous years. Left-wing organizations, media and trade unions were banned and the country was subjected to neo-liberal privatization. The Turkish left could not withstand the attacks of the state as it was not prepared for the military coup. Abdullah Öcalan had warned of the impending coup early on and tried to unite left-wing forces in Turkey. While the Turkish left was unable to recover from the wave of repression, arrests and murders, the PKK managed to get several hundred cadres out of the country and prepare for armed struggle thanks to the foresight of Öcalan. The prison resistance, especially in the Diyarbekir dungeon in Amed, defied fascism and laid an important foundation stone for the PKK’s and the Kurdish people’s struggle for freedom, which continues to this day. The stance of Kemal Pîr, Mazlum Doğan, Mehmet Hayrî Durmuş, Ali Çiçek and Sakine Cansız became a benchmark for revolutionaries and the culture of resistance all over the world.

Green Fascism: The Islamic-nationalist synthesis

The phase surrounding the military coup of September 19 was characterized on the one hand by the brutality of Black Fascism, and on the other hand, forces were already being positioned in the background to implement the USA’s future strategy in the Middle East.

From the 1970s onwards, the USA supported Islamism or Islamic nationalism in order to push back the influence of the USSR in Afghanistan and the influence of socialism in Central Asia and the Middle East and to integrate the culture of Islam into the capitalist system.

After the left was largely liquidated in the 1970s and 1980s, Islamists appealed to religious sentiments and were able to gain support among workers through social rhetoric. The Synthesis combined religion with Turkish nationalism and aimed, among other things, to bind Kurdish Muslims to the state.

The synthesis of Islamism and Turkish nationalism is what Abdullah Öcalan defines as Green Fascism. The best-known organization of this current is the AKP (Turkish: Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, Justice and Development Party). The AKP under Erdoğan has been in power in Turkey since 2002. Since 2018, it has formed the government in Turkey together with the MHP.

Ideologies of Turkish Fascism

Nazi Germany had a strong influence on the theory and practice of Turkish fascism; Alparslan Türkeş was the central contact person of the Hitler regime in Turkey. Nihal Atsız, the most influential ideologue of Turkish fascism, assumed a Turanian (Ural-Altai) race and developed the Turkish equivalent of the German race-theory. The aim was to establish a Turanian empire from Central Asia to Turkey.

The Islamic-Turkish synthesis, represented by the AKP, is a mixture of this claim to the Greater Turanian Empire and the re-establishment of the Ottoman Empire. This synthesis is expressed by the fascist coalition of MHP and AKP, which has been in power since 2015.

Turkish fascism manifests itself in three main currents: White Fascism, Black Fascism and Green Fascism. These three currents were shaped by different geopolitical and historical contexts, but are still linked together today in a kind of synthesis. The support of Western powers - whether by Germany during the Ottoman Empire or by the USA after the Second World War - has significantly shaped Turkish fascism and allowed it to serve as an instrument of hegemonic interests in the region. From the genocide of the Armenians and Kurds to modern fascist governments under Erdoğan, there is a continuity that shows how deeply rooted Turkish fascism is in the structures of the state and society. The combination of nationalism, religion and repression makes it an obstacle to democracy and peace in the Middle East. The systematic crushing of opposition movements, especially the Kurdish freedom movement and the left-wing opposition, remains a central component of Turkish fascism to this day. The strategies employed - including intelligence operations, counter-guerrilla and false flag operations - were later adopted by other regimes and authoritarian states.

The Turkish state is a regime of special warfare

Since the emergence of the Turkish state, it has used strategies of special war to keep itself alive. In all phases of fascism practiced in Turkey, strategies of special war have been used to control, frighten and massacre society. Special war is a war without rules and without morals. A war that serves to secure power by any means necessary. In Turkey, there has been great resistance to the strict ideology of the nation state since the beginning. Kurds, in particular, repeatedly staged uprisings, but Laz, Armenians and socialist Turks also organized themselves against the regime. In order to secure its own power, Turkey established the deep state, i.e. a regime of special war, to suppress the organization of society. In order to secure its own rule, the Turkish state formed special forces and repeatedly initiated special operations. As part of the military, units were trained to carry out operations, attacks, assassinations and abductions, plan military coups and manipulate the psychology of society.

Special war is based on three main strategies. The first strategy is asymmetric war. This is an irregular war that creates confusion and fear. With the support of the USA, Turkey developed counter-guerrillas, the Turkish branch of Gladio. Counter-guerrillas were created specifically to eliminate revolutionary movements. In the 1990s, the counter-guerrillas regularly stormed villages, murdered people and looted houses. Afterwards, the Turkish state reported that the PKK carried out these attacks.

The second strategy is stabilization operations, or coups. When the Turkish regime has been weakened, it has repeatedly initiated coups or attempted coups to legitimize tougher action against revolutionary and opposition forces. There is a coup in Turkey approximately every 10 years. However, the regime does not change, but renews and strengthens fascism.

The third strategy is psychological warfare. Actions that appear to be coincidental are actually planned strategies for psychological attacks on society. The psyche is manipulated and anti-systemic thoughts in particular are attacked. Psychological warfare can be found in all areas. One main tool is the media. The Turkish state in particular regularly spreads propaganda and lies via the media. For example, during the attacks on Rojava on December 13, 2024, the Turkish media announced that the Tishreen Dam had been taken by Turkey's proxy forces. But that was a lie. As we saw in the local media, the dam was still in the hands of the SDF (Syrian Democratic Forces). These lies serve to intimidate society and weaken trust in independent media. They are intended to create doubt in society and make it hopeless and passive in its resistance. As another current example, the AKP uses Imams to spread fascist propaganda in mosques. In doing so, it uses the faith of society for its own purposes. But this strategy can be found in all areas. In schools, universities, on television, on digital media, in the military and the police, in the healthcare system and the judiciary. Everywhere the Turkish state has special forces spreading fascist ideology.

Confronting fascism

In general, Turkish fascism today plays a pioneering role as a modern fascist regime. Despite its obviously misanthropic, misogynist and nationalist ideology, the Turkish state is recognized as a plausible regime and is still supported by hegemonic forces such as NATO. Understanding Turkish fascism is of great importance for all anti-fascist forces, as many states orient themselves towards Turkey’s strategies.

But on the other hand, we should not make it bigger than it is. Today, Turkey is in a major crisis at all levels because it is stuck with the status quo of the Nation-State and shows no willingness to democratize its system. Despite the most perfidious methods, the war against society, daily arrests, assassinations, air raids and media wars, the Turkish state does not manage to control society. It does not manage to eliminate the revolutionary forces, above all the Kurdish Freedom Movement and the PKK. Therefore, the strengths, but also the weaknesses of Turkish fascism should be well evaluated in order to fight against it. Especially the contradictions within NATO, the contradictions with the USA and the EU should be well evaluated and deciphered. On the other hand, fascism must be explained to people everywhere and the system behind it must be understood. This can create a stronger basis for the fight against fascism everywhere. Because only if we know our opponent and know ourselves will we be successful in the struggle against fascism and for freedom.

The history of the PKK and the Kurdish Freedom Movement clearly shows how modern fascism can be confronted on the basis of education, organization and self-defence. Against the special war of the nation states, we must build the revolutionary people’s war and the unity of all the oppressed!