Revolutionary greetings to our global comrades!

We owe our present political stance to the analyses we have made of the relationship between leftist thought and modernism in the effort to understand the deadlock of the leftist movement, which is incapable of producing any sort of political stance against global capitalism. Through this effort of analysis, the problems of modernity in both at the intellectual and the practical sphere have become a major topic of debate for us. The main axis of this debate is the way that politics and engagement have taken shape within a modernist discourse. In this article, we attempt to present the intellectual background of our own politics and form of struggle which we try to make part of the society we live in and which have resulted from these discussions.
The dynamics of the modernist discourse which has lead to the deadlock of the leftist movement in Turkey have quite different characteristics from those in Europe or the West, which was able socialize its way of thinking and social structure as an international political subject. This difference is mainly based on the fact that the process of the socialization of capitalist relations was realized at the very foundation of modernist projects imposed by the state and the elites in both the late Ottoman and early Turkish Republic period, rather than emerging as part of the concrete conflicts between classes up to the 1950s. The simultaneous realization of capitalization and modernization processes defined the essence of the Kemalist Revolution, which created the Turkish modern nation-state configured as a bourgeois revolution. This intertwined capitalization and modernization process informed all social and political agents, including those on the left, with a progressivist, developmentalist and nationalist discourse. By constituting itself within this discourse, leftist movements were incapable of creating possibilities for developing resistance-based struggles capable of liberating social conflicts informed by their own specificities. As a result, the left created political agents centralized upon the foundation of a vertical form of politics speaking and acting in the name of social dynamics. Therefore, the politicization of social demands was fulfilled through relations of political and social representation’ which instrumentalize the means of political action. As opposed to this general framework, we distinguish the armed revolutionary struggle in the 70s which we consider to be the political reference for the resistance and movement tradition.
Within the capitalist power mechanism of the modern era, the developmentalist and nationalist discourse sufficed to clear the path for the revolutionary struggle of the leftist movement. Throughout this period, the left could construct its political existence only through an oppositional position; for example, being opposed to imperialism and/or fascism could be a sufficient condition for revolutionism. After the 80s, internationalization, the reorganization of production and labour processes at the international level, and the erasure of differentiation between center and periphery, are determining dynamics within the power mechanism of capitalism. Therefore even though they have been produced by the left, nationalist and developmentalist policies formed in parallel with an anti-imperialist discourse in Turkey, still cannot create a counter-power promising social liberation in response to global capitalism. Yet the guarantee for a power formation against capitalism is the anti-capitalist resistance movement, in which political ends are organized as immanent to the movement. In this sense, every form of resistance to capitalism at the local level organizes vertical politics by itself. In other words, the separation between local and/or national and universal has been removed.
The will of the above–mentioned anti-capitalist movement consists in the social dynamics that are not only the producers of their own discourse, but also the direct subjects of their own actions. Discursively, the driving force of the revolutionary movement has become opposition to the functioning of global power, through a new form of political grounding initiated for the purposes of social liberation by abandoning the entire discourse and tool-kit of vertical politics that took shape as part of the geographical, cultural and economical particularities of the earlier period. In other words, democracy based on vertical politics and social democracy based on the horizontal politics have become interwoven. By deploying itself in all fields of social relations, capitalism has eliminated the differentiation between ‘the political’ and ‘the social’. And the left, which has so far defined itself as ‘vanguard’ with the task of politicizing ‘the social sphere’ on account of this dichotomy, cannot realize its objectives. However, we feel that the process of creating a social democracy which might stand as a counterweight to the deployment of global capitalistic power is indeed possible, and directly related to the organizing of a movement by which the social dynamics can mobilize their own experiences and means of power against the power mechanism of global capitalism. We do not claim this phenomenon to be something new, on the contrary, we believe that the history of revolutionary resistance includes the experiences of social democracy. However much the non-nationalist, anti-globalization movement has the potential for becoming a political subject in the construction of social democracy, so also the European workers movement in 1848, the Paris Commune, and the Soviet experience before NEP in Soviet Russia were the political subjects of social democracy.
Today, we think that Social Forums may provide an opportunity for a new way of politics and socialization practices within the anti-capitalist movement. The multitude in Social Forums opens the way for a theoretical perspective and forms of practices getting beyond the national and geographical boundaries. How Social Forums would be constituted is a matter of political stance given the defensive position of the nationalist discourse. It implies an open-ended process shaping through social movements which can mobilize their own experiences and means of politics on the anti-capitalist basis. In our sense, İstanbul Social Forum (İSF) may provide an interaction with the anti-capitalist global movements. This interaction may serve to share different kind of political experiences and to enable global resistance to spread and grow stronger. We strive to incorporate different movements, dynamics and organizations into the process and invite them to build the Forum together. Yet the problem in Turkish context is the low level of participation in İSF. In the long-term, we believe that we will be able to overcome this problem. We contribute to İSF through organizing student movement within the anti-capitalist discourse.
We conceive of the student movement that we are part of as one of the constituent dynamics for social democracy. By this view, the role of the universities in Turkey’s political and social evolution past and present constitutes a significant reference point. Two constituent forces in the social and political structure in the capitalization and modernization of Turkey: military and universities may be mentioned. Until the 1960s, the universities undertook the role of producing and reproducing the enlightenment tradition within the constitution of the nation-state. This role was mainly realized as part of a broad process of transition to modern life, by means of the producing a Westernizationist perspective and permeating all knowledge of the social and cultural sphere with this perspective. During this earlier period it is not possible to speak of a dominant left-wing opposition within the university in Turkey. After the 60s, however, a left-wing opposition, anti-imperialist in approach as part of the world political conjuncture, was developed out of the context of relatively greater rights and liberties offered by the 1961 Constitution.
There were two main factors which distinguished the movement of the 70s from other periods. The first was that the university movement of the 60s restricted itself to a struggle for democracy and academic freedom. The second was the increasing need for a more holistic political intervention transcending the limits of this “academic-democratic” struggle as a response to the rise of fascism which resulted from the problems of integration to capitalism and the economic crisis of the 70s. The combination of these two factors set off an armed struggle which detached itself from the university movement, but the cadres of which consisted mainly of students. The 1980 military coup hastened the course for the integration of Turkey into the new power mechanism of capitalism through structural adjustment programs. This process was perhaps much smoother than could be expected because thousands of revolutionaries and leftist dissident had been eliminated through execution, torture, and years of imprisonment. Thus the regime of oppression and fear prevented the formation of a new opposition. The rising workers protests in the late 80s later provided new vitality for the left, yet this vitality was unable to create a consistent leftist movement since it couldn’t transcend the “economic-democratic” struggle which dominated the workers movement, and similarly, the “academic-democratic” struggle dominating the student movement. In fact the dynamics of the new power mechanisms of capitalism were far from sufficiently understood, and this was a critical obstacle in the path of creating a revolutionary politics. Within the new power mechanisms, the new role of the universities was defined as the socialization of neo-liberal policies. In practice, this definition was manifest as a mercantilization of education and the legitimation of university-market relations. In this process, the universities definied themselves as economical entities and structured their activities and institutionalization according to the conditions of the market. Today, this restructuring continues with the new law proposal drafted by YÖK (Yüksek Ögrenim Kurulu, or the Higher Education Council), which organized and oversaw the 1980 process mentioned above within the universities. This draft law proposal, which defines and operates the university as a market agent, is not only a reflection of the GATS regime that advances the marketization of services, but is also part of the policy of capitalist restructuring in Turkey.*
Global capitalism is internalizing all social spheres through marketization. Within this commodification process, which turns all social relations (not excluding the relation of the individual to herself) into a subject of production and reproduction, globalised capitalism structures them as an operator of their own power mechanisms. While each and every value is defined in relation to market value, the market operates as a control mechanism within the bodies and consciousnesses of the people. Within the totalizing logic of the market, global capitalism eliminates distinctions between ‘the political’ and ‘the social’, as well as the ‘the public’ and ‘the private’. Therefore, the university is no longer a mass sphere (social sphere) politicized by a central leadership; it has now become the constituent dynamic of social democracy.
Yet as subjects of their own discourse and action, the self-organization of the students, academicians and the workers will form the greatest threat as a counter-weight to the functioning of global capitalism. We have witnessed how the power mechanisms of capitalism are capable of internalizing the academic-democratic struggle within the context of the university. As part of the process of integration of the university with the market, financial autonomy can be maintained and even a realm of academic freedom can be defined, though in a limited and debatable way. Moreover, financial autonomy which gives rise to the university as an economic agent in the market and appears to be a reasonable solution to the self-constitution of the university at first glance conceals the process of marketization. Agents of power which would arise from the movement of subjects from every social sphere become a threat as they signify a political rupture with global capitalism and open the way for social democracy. For us, free and equal relations of such power agents create a guarantee of social democracy. According to this perspective, we argue for a new understanding and practice of autonomy that would organize on the basis of the campus and create a student movement by means of the liberation of the specifities of all autonomous individuals.
We have been trying to realize our general discourse through direct activism. We have concentrated our actions at the intersection of university and market relations. Demonstrations against the new law proposal drafted by YÖK were aimed at revealing the intent of the proposed law and at socialization of opposition to it. Through panel discussions, declarations, and campus activities we struggle for maintenance of a unity of anti-capitalist discourse among the constituents of university. However, the important thing for us is how the draft law determines and shapes our lives at universities. We experience it in two ways. The first is that we are forced to pay money for every single service. The second aspect is market oriented social relations and practices originating from relations with business groups such as banks, media companies, and industrial corporations that universities are so eager to form relationships with.
Here we can point to two practices that we have observed and acted on: one is the common projects of university-business partnerships, and the other is what our university administration has put forth under the name “P&R Days”. During “P&R Days” huge companies organize presentational meetings and advertise or market their products at stands which they rent. The university turns into a market place for workers where labor buyers (firms) and labor sellers (students) meet. During the last academic term we have been intensely active for a month for the purpose of exposing “P&R Days”. We organized the activities with our anarchist and anti-capitalist Muslim friends in a common spirit as distinct from the types of alliances arrived at as a consequence of interminable meetings and political bargains. Since we planned demonstrations in the evenings and implemented them the following mornings, we felt ourselves to be part of a new and creative process. Through this process itself we experienced the proposition that market relations are not the only alternative and that another network of social relations is possible through our demonstrations. These demonstrations succeeded in preventing organized meetings and in disturbing both the organizers and presentors. We felt ourselves free within our new form of practice. We shouted slogans in a theatrical manner: “P&R Days is slave market!” “If you are unhappy, the reason is you may be allergic to capitalism!” And the song we sang:
“We are all slaves,
We always obey,
We die for money,
We sell our souls…”
We hope that we have succeeded at informing you about our theoretical background and process of struggle through which we try to constitute and socialize ourselves. We are certain not to perceive this process of political liberalization as completed and absolute; instead, it signifies a permanent affirmation of political experience, a search for revolutionary possibilities that never encloses or closes in on itself within a sense of truth and sufficiency. It opens the way for getting in touch with life through the perception that this world belongs to us.

——————————————————————————–

* In the context of enlargement process of the European Union, we think that the issue of Turkey’s entrance to European Union is part of the integration of Turkey into the global capitalism. We consider EU as the dynamic of regionalization embedded within the capitalist globalization. Debate on EU in Turkey is based on the concerns of democratic development and human rights and reorganization of social and political life. The issue of integration into the global capitalism is left out of debate. From our point of view, to say ” yes or no” to EU is irrelevant if it would be a matter of inclusion by the power mechanism of global capitalism.