RE: Sabri on Turkey

[Sabri Oncu <soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx>]

Michael wrote;

> In a sense, such non-violence depends on the good-will of the oppressor.
Your
> story does not make that strategy seem viable.

No matter what they did, they had no hope to convince the Turkish State to
give into any of their demands, although their final set of demands were not
at all that difficult to accommodate for the government. In other words, the
government could have accommodated their final demands and still manage to
save face. DHKP-C main strategy was to generate outside reaction, mainly
from the so-called Western democracies in Europe, so that they could
pressure the government, given its interest in joining EU, to give in. But
911 changed all that. And even before that the outside support was weak and
because of the ongoing economic crisis, most Turkish people were worried
about their own lives, let alone the lives of "some leftist hunger
strikers", so there was no significant internal support either. Yet,
although this hunger strike was highly questionable even before 911, I did
not think there was any point in saying this publicly. Indeed, my suggestion
to them to reconsider their action came only after 911. If you look at this
web page, you will see an analysis by Aziz Demir (should be a pen name) and
my reasons for not publicly criticizing DHKP-C are similar to his:

http://www.mail-archive.com/marxism@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxx/msg25634.html

After I wrote to them suggesting that in the light of 911, it would be best
to stop this action now and look for other means of struggle, what I
received back was a long lecture in the form of an e-mail on why I was wrong
and they were right in pursuing their hunger strike struggle and that only
the proletariat can change the flow of history and all that usual stuff. The
reason why I can say with such a confidence that this action was doomed to
fail is because the proletariat that they think they represent was not
behind them. They were losing ground in the working class neighborhoods they
once had some influence and the only strongholds they were left with were
the prisons, although they never mention this in their press releases.

Now, with this neo-McCarthyism around the globe, DHKP-C most likely will
find itself classified as a terrorist group. Indeed, as far as I recall from
some Turkish newspapers, some of their financial assets were already
confiscated by the UK government in the UK (or in some other country that I
don't recall), if this is a signal of anything.

These more than seventy people did not have to die like this. Most, if not
all of them, have died in vain. They could have done much more for their
cause, had they chosen to live.

Sabri Oncu
soncu@xxxxxxxxxxx