The Heyday of the Communist Party and the Red Trade Unions

In 1922 the influence of the Communist Party of Turkey reached its peak. During this period the opportunist and conservative faction of Resmor opposed the presence of women comrades in meetings for patriarchal reasons, forcing the old guard of the party into opposition. In the regional sections of the party a leftist and revolutionary faction formed around Ruşen Zeki, while the central leaders of the left were Navshirvanov and Hacıoğlu. Meanwhile the Eskişehir section of the Socialist Party of Turkey, which had 2,000 workers, asked to join and many were admitted on an individual basis.

Under the influence of the Communist Party of Constantinople, thousands of Turkish, Greek, Armenian, Jewish and other workers joined their unions, such as the International Workers Union, and celebrated May Day in Constantinople. In 1924 Ginzberg described the events of the demonstration in Constantinople: “The Communist Party of Constantinople had the mass of the workers under its influence, as demonstrated by the demonstration of May 1, 1922, despite martial law, the military tribunal and the special prohibition order. This party managed to bring over 6,000 workers of different nationalities onto the streets under its absolute leadership (...) The union organization included more than 4,000 workers and strong communist groups in almost all the unions that led them (...) The Social Democratic Party was completely wiped out by the Communist Party and no longer existed as a party”.

But the left in Constantinople didn’t only have to face government repression. After the May Day demonstration, the anarchists in the International Workers’ Union became alarmed by the growing communist influence and decided to act. Ginzberg described the events as follows: «After May 1, 1922, a bitter struggle began between the anarcho-syndicalist tendency and the communist one (...) The general secretary asked for the withdrawal from the Red Trade Union International at the June plenum. However, they were in the minority in the face of the activity and energetic attitude of the members of the Communist Party of Constantinople. In the elections that followed, the members of the Communist Party of Constantinople were elected as general secretary, in the Central Committee and in the newspaper”.

The Communist Party of Constantinople pushed for the formation of a General Confederation of Labor and invited the circle of the magazine “Aydınlık” (Clarity) – composed of the remnants of the Socialist Workers’ and Peasants’ Party – in order to extend its influence over the Muslim masses. In the aforementioned report, Ginzberg describes the events: «The conference opened on July 15. Twenty-three delegates representing 22,000 organized workers participated. The first two sessions were devoted to reports on the state of the organizations and to speeches. In the third session it was unanimously decided that all the unions should merge and dissolve into a General Confederation of Labor (...) We were thinking of calling a general strike to force the government to accept the IWU as the General Confederation of Labor (...) But Aydınlık refused to engage in practical activity.

The government outlawed the Congress of the Communist People’s Party of Turkey because the participants included foreign delegates from the Comintern. On August 15 and 16, the Second Congress of the Communist Party of Turkey was held illegally near Ankara. The Constantinople branch was unable to attend. The Party prioritized the organization of the labor movement throughout the country, leading to the formation of the Red Unions of Anatolia.

The draft program of the Party stated:
   “The Party considers it its duty to spread the ideals of class struggle, social revolution and communism among the masses of workers and proletarians.
   “The Party will organize the masses of the working people and use all the forces at its disposal to defend these aspirations aimed at guaranteeing the interests of the working class and poor peasants.
   “The attitude of the Communist Party towards bourgeois and petty-bourgeois organizations, with an idealistic worldview and a conservative character, is based on the following point of view: to fight relentlessly against all kinds of pro-Western groups, to establish relations and cooperate on some political issues with populists and other parties and groups that defend the interests of middle peasants and intellectuals.
   “The People’s Communist Party of Turkey is not a party of individuals, but of the most progressive sectors of the working class and peasantry, with a steely, persistent and determined internal organizational discipline, ready to sacrifice everything for the liberation of the proletariat and the peasants. Armed with the invincible Marxist methods, the Party invites all conscious proletarians of Turkey to take the field of class struggle for the liberation of all working humanity from ongoing exploitation and oppression”.

Ruşen Zeki, a member of the most leftist and revolutionary faction, and some other comrades warned the Comintern not to consider the Grand National Assembly of Turkey a revolutionary government. M. Golman, delegate to the Congress, reported: “(Some comrades) warn us in very harsh language not to consider the Turkish Grand National Assembly a revolutionary government and not to help it, because with our gold the police can do their work, and with our gold and our weapons the government can shoot at Turkish workers and peasants”.

Soviet Russia gave the government of Mustafa Kemal 3,065,000 gold rubles and 100,000 Ottoman gold in 1920, 9,400,000 gold rubles in 1921 and 4,600,000 gold rubles in 1922, for a total of 10,791.42 lira, as well as 37,812 rifles, 324 heavy and light machine guns and 44,587 cases of ammunition. The Anatolian Left’s criticism that Soviet Russia had given all this gold and these weapons to the Kemalists, without the communist movement benefitting from it, was shared by the Left of the Party in general.

However, despite disagreeing with the objections of the most radical militants of the Anatolian left on the advisability of supporting Kemalism, the Comintern supported the left against Resmor’s supporters. During the Fourth Congress of the Comintern, 1922, the decision was made to merge all organizations belonging to the Comintern in Constantinople and Anatolia. The protests of the delegates of the Communist Party of Constantinople, such as Ginzberg, against these decisions of the Congress were excluded from the stenographic records.

The delegate from Aydınlık, Sadreddin Celal, also criticized the support given to the Kemalists. Hacıoğlu’s letter to the Eastern Section of the Comintern expressed the general mood of the Party on the matter: “The recent attack and offense suffered by the Communist Party of Turkey in Anatolia at the hands of the national bourgeoisie, which has acquired its influence over the class as a result of the financial and political aid of the Soviet government, however intense this may be, cannot force the communists of Turkey to bow down before the national bourgeoisie, nor can it interrupt the currents of social revolution in Turkey.

At the Congress, the response to this general feeling of the Turkish left was given by Karl Radek: “We do not regret for a moment, having told the Turkish communists that their first task, after organizing themselves as a separate party, is to support the national liberation movement in Turkey (...) Even in this moment of persecution we say to the Turkish communists: In the present situation, don’t forget the immediate future. The task of defending Turkish sovereignty, which has great international revolutionary importance, is not finished. You must defend yourselves against your persecutors, you must strike blow after blow, but you must understand that historically the moment of the liberation struggle has not yet arrived; you will still have a considerable way to go with the revolutionary forces that are already beginning to crystallize in Turkey.

In fact, the Comintern was very unclear about the real situation in Turkey, whose capitalist history and national revolutionary movement were not taken into consideration and the potential of the class movement was ignored. On December 12, at the Second Congress of the Profintern, the International Workers’ Union of Constantinople, which had about 10,000 members, and the Red Unions of Anatolia, which also had 10,000 members in other cities, merged, forming the League of Red Unions of Turkey. The IWU, under the direction of the Communist Party of Constantinople, took action against the provocations and aggressions against non-Muslims following the Kemalists’ capture of Smyrna. In his 1924 report, Ginzberg described the general attitude of the left towards the Kemalists since the end of the war and its reaction against the feeling of nationalist frenzy:

“To enlighten the workers about their class interests and the meaning of Kemalist ’victory’, the Communist Party of Constantinople printed a declaration in Turkish: ’The working class welcomes every blow struck against imperialism. However, the Kemalist bourgeoisie has compromised with the imperialists with the Mudanya armistice. The Kemalist bourgeoisie will not realize the material aspirations of the workers. Whereas before it was the British, French and Italian police, under the command of foreign imperialists, who repressed the strikes, today it is the Turkish police, under the command of the Kemalist bourgeoisie, who are repressing the tram drivers’ strike against a French company a few days after their “victory”. Both the Turkish and foreign bourgeoisie are enemies of the working class. Only through struggle and force can the workers impose their rights on the bourgeoisie of all kinds. The Turkish bourgeoisie is trying to weaken the ranks of the workers with chauvinist demagogy. Turkish, Greek, Armenian and Jewish workers are brothers and have a common enemy: the bourgeoisie as a whole. The unity of all workers, regardless of race and nationality, is the struggle against the Kemalist bourgeoisie and imperialism. Taking advantage of the large street demonstrations, this leaflet was distributed among the protesting workers and stuck on almost every wall in the city.

“At the same time there was a tendency to massacre the Greeks. In every neighborhood we secretly formed committees of Turkish, Greek and Armenian workers whose task was to transform a possible racial massacre into a class struggle. The Greek, Armenian and Turkish members of the IWU participated together in all the street demonstrations. A very significant phenomenon: while the masses took the hats off the heads of passers-by and harassed those who did not wear a fez, the Greek, Jewish and Armenian members of the IWU, with their hats on, together with their Turkish comrades, walked undisturbed among tens of thousands of demonstrators and participated extensively in the action of breaking with stones the windows of the houses of bourgeois of different nationalities in the rich neighborhoods”.