I. LESSONS ON HISTORY AND REVOLUTION
1.The Turkish War of Independence was won thanks to the peasantry. However, there was no significant peasant movement demanding land, following the revolution. This is why a land reform forcefully demanded by the peasantry never became a pressing issue. As Marx pointed out, revolution is the result of the efforts of a revolutionary class. This is a fact confirmed over and over again. The revolutionary intentions of the vanguard is not sufficient to put into practice any revolutionary action, if it is not carried out by a revolutionary class.
2. The Kemalist government, in the first years of the Republic, concentrated more on the cultivation of vacant lands rather than distribution of land, because the population was small and a considerable amount of land was uncultivated.
3. Atatürk had put forward the gist of the matter-that it is a question of state power- with the slogan, “The peasantry is the master of the country”. In a country where the peasantry comprise the great majority of the population, if the power is in the hands of the people it is actually the peasantry who is in power. The peasantry, shaking off the shackles bound by the landlord and the sheikh, can rule the country. Genuine democracy can only be established on this basis. Only in this way can national sovereignty, general elections, the votes of the electorate acquire meaningful content. At present all these notions are mere words with no meaning. They have been turned into farcical gibberish in the mouths of the Gladio, the Mafia, the reactionary religious orders and landlords.
4. Under the conditions when a strong peasant movement resisting the landlord system did not exist, the feudal relations and institutions inherited from the Medieval times could not be radically eliminated by the governments of the young Republic via the state officials. Thus the issue of the peasantry and the Kurdish problem remained to be solved and continued up to the present. What is more, the national state could not be founded on sound grounds and a genuine democracy could not be established, since the peasantry could not be liberated from the yoke of the landlord system and accordingly the process of the people of the Turkish Republic gradually turning into a nation could not be completed. Democracy can only be established by a national state and the national state is always founded upon a sound basis by a free society liberated from the old Medieval relations.
5. The reason why the governments of the young Republic were not successful in their struggle against the reactionary Medieval powers was because they could not put up a struggle mobilizing the peasantry. Though the first revolutionary governments of the Republic led by Atatürk had land reform plans in their minds, they did not have a land distribution program to begin with. The Atatürk administration was obliged to organize a campaign to educate and mobilize the peasants. They needed to activate the peasantry against the landlords by organizing and illuminating them. This inability, no doubt, was due to ideological and political shortcomings. Thus, the bulk of the lands distributed among the peasants by the state was regained by the landlords, the sheiks and the tribe chiefs in no time.
6. The feudal system of ownership was stronger and more enduring on the lands where Kurdish landlords were ruling. When Sultan Selim I was fighting the Iranian Safavid dynasty for power over the land, he granted autonomy to the Kurdish landlords, i.e. the Kurdish beys. For this reason the land controlled by the Kurdish feudals were left outside the boundaries of the common land owned by the [Ottoman] state(1). For this reason, the Kurdish peasantry and tribes lived only under the control of their autonomous landlords for many centuries. The strongest resistance against the reforms for strengthening the central authority came from the Kurdish feudals in the 19th Century. The roots of the uprisings in Eastern Anatolia in the 19th Century were this feudal resistance. Sultan Abdülhamid II further strengthened these armed feudal forces by establishing the Hamidiye Regiments. In fact, the ex-commanders of these Hamidiye Regiments were on the forefront in the uprisings against the Republican regime.
7. During the War of Independence which started in 1914, with the First World War, the Kurdish beys and common people participated in the Liberation War and fought against the invaders in defence of the homeland. This aborted the efforts of the British imperialists and the Tsarist Russia to use the Kurdish beys and the Kurdish people against Turkey. The Kurds, by participating in the Independence War, became one of the fundamental constituents of the new state. İsmet İnönü(2) emphasized this fact in the Lausanne Conference and stated that the government of Turkey was “the government of both the Turks and the Kurds”.
8. Following the War there was a confrontation between the leadership of the Republic and the armed feudal system of the Kurds. The 1925 uprising of the Sheikh Said was a reactionary revolt. It was followed by the 1930 Ağrı revolt. The plundering of the villages in the vicinity and the unrest around Dersim in 1930’s became a serious matter of security for the Republic. Authority was in the hands of the feudal beys not the legal organs of the Republic. In the face of disruptive revolts, it became a necessity to eliminate the feudal system in Eastern and South-Eastern Anatolia. The Government decided to put an end to the local authority of the feudal landlords and establish the authority of the Republic, in order to secure domestic peace and modernize the country. This was to be done by distributing land among the peasants.
9. The feudal power in Dersim was armed. In order for the Republic to be able to put into practice its own program, this armed authority had to be dissolved. The crucial point was to take the right action. Trying to quench the riots arising under the leadership of the feudals, the Republic could not take the peasants to its side, it aimed also at the common masses of people besides the feudals. The great tragedies that took place then nourished dissent that continued through generations among the people.
10. In the Republican period, we can see an inclination to win the people over to the side of the new Republic but we hardly witness any efforts to mobilize them. The actions taken to solve the problem of the feudal landlord system by mobilizing the people met with opposition due to the ties based on belonging to the same tribe, the same ethnicity or the same Islamic sect. The landlord could present the government’s efforts to abolish the feudal ties as if they were against the Kurdish nation and the Alawi sect. The Republican governments used the antagonisms between different tribes or different sects, just like the Ottoman governments did, in order to suppress the revolts but hardy thought of mobilizing the peasantry against the landlord and therefore did hardly anything in this direction. If the Kemalist governments had chosen to solve the Kurdish problem and the problems of feudal despotism by mobilizing the people they could have taken many actions. They could send the pioneers of the Republic consisting of the Kurdish intelligentsia in favour of the Republic and the natural leaders of the people to the rural areas and could organize and mobilize the peasantry against the feudal system. The heavy oppression and suppression on the share-croppers and the casual labourers gave the government the opportunity to win them to the side of the Republic. A peasant movement could easily have been organized with the help of the power in the hands of the Republican government, against landlordism. Under these conditions a new spirit could have been created among the people which would be the support of the Republic and the feudal system of landlordism could have been eliminated with the cooperation of the people’s movement organized in the lower ranks and the Republican administration organized in the higher ranks and the separatist movements could have been aborted with the help of the Kurdish peasantry and people.
11. The ideological reason why the Kemalist Revolution could not radically solve the problem of the peasantry and the Kurdish problem is that the leading cadres of the revolution did not sufficiently have the notion of mobilizing the people and the narrow nationalistic suspicions they bore towards the Kurdish poor. The philosophy of the Kemalist revolution was not radical and strong enough with respect to carrying out the revolution from the lower levels of the people to the higher cadres. The Kemalist revolutionaries were hostile towards the feudal system of landlordism, however, they had doubts about the Kurdish poor. The narrow-minded nationalistic view-point which did not consider the Kurdish masses of people their own, enfeebled the enthusiastic, revolutionary spirit of the Kemalist leading cadres who were to rely on the people. Atatürk’s understanding of “Those people of Turkey who founded the Republic of Turkey are called the Turkish people” was not understood properly and was not put into practice with all its depth and content.
12. Around mid 1930’ies the leadership of the revolution decided to put into effect a land reform which aimed at abolishing landlordism, tribal chiefdom and sheikhdom . In 1934 and 1935, the Settlement and Endowments Bills were passed in the Parliament. The Republican Populist Party (CHP)’s great 5th congress which convened in May 1935 , included land distribution in its programme . Distribution of land to farmers became a Constitutional issue at the beginning of 1937. What is more important was the amendment made in the connected article of the Constitution which opened the way to the special article concerning the confiscation of the lands in the possession of the landlords almost without compensation. This opened the way to land reform. Nation’s Schools and People’s Centres(3) were opened. Later, in 1940’s, Village Institutions(4) were established.
13. The land reform which intended to make the peasants “the masters of the country” lost its leader on the 10th of November. It was followed by the 2nd World War which brought foreign threats to the top of the agenda, causing the delay of the land reform.
14. Under the conditions of the post 2nd World War when , the Kemalist Revolution started to lose the initial enthusiasm, Turkey gradually started to come under the control of the USA and the landlords joined hands with their great patron, the USA. In 1945, İsmet İnönü pointed out that the reforms did not continue after 1939 and explained it with the 2nd World War. This explanation, no doubt, contained some truth in it. However, Turkey changed its foreign policy of friendship with the Soviet Union, which Atatürk repeatedly advised his Prime Minister Celal Bayar; the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Tevfik Rüştü Aras and his close friend Kılıç Ali as well as İsmet İnönü and General Ali Fuat Cebesoy, before the 2nd World War. And thus, the path leading to serving the Western Imperialist system had already been taken before the 2nd World War. Following the 2nd World War, Turkey’s relations with the West got closer and closer. Now the sheikhs and the landlords had a great saviour. So, domestic reactionary movements cooperated with the reaction on the world scale and obstructed the completion of the Republican Revolution. Atatürk, at the 4th Great Congress of the Republican Popular Party, in 1935 had emphasized continual revolution. It was proved by life itself how right he was. If you do not continue with your revolution, you will suffer counter-revolution!
15. The law concerning distribution of land to farmers was passed too early to be enacted. After 1945, the landlords, supported by the imperialists on the other side of the Atlantic, blocked the land reform. As a result, as it is accepted by the thinkers of the Revolution, The Republic could not eliminate the feudal institutions of landlordism and sheikhdom from the country radically, with all its social and economic foundations. In other words, the Republic could not complete its programme of “making the peasants the masters of the country”.
16. The process of the national fusion of Kurds with the rest of the people of Turkey is at the same time, a process of democratic revolution and enlightenment. The national democratic revolution of Turkey which started in the 19th Century, was not only a process of national fusion but also a process of democratic revolution and enlightenment as far as the Kurds are concerned. The Turkish people have been living through this process of revolution and enlightenment with all its ethnic groups for two hundred years. The revolutionary process of the people of Turkey, of both Kurds and Turks, have been fused in one another and intertwined with each other.
17. The process of unification reversed during the phase of counter-revolution. The Kemalist Revolution which included the War of Independence had started the process of fusion of Kurds and Turks. Before the Republic, the Kurds were one of the ethnic groups living inside the boundaries of the Ottoman Empire. However, this ethnic group was Muslim in religion and throughout history they had been living with the Turks. They had fused with the Turks sharing the same feudal culture. During the phase of the disintegration of the Ottoman Empire, while the other ethnic groups left the Empire one after the other, as a result of the wars encouraged and supported by the imperialist countries, only the Kurds wilfully joined the Turks against the enemy and participated in the War of Independence as one of the “integral factors” of the foundation of the Republic. Thus the process of “the people participating in the foundation of the Turkish Republic being called the Turkish people” recorded its biggest leap in history. Every blow dealt by the Republic on the feudal forces meant an advance in the fusion of the Kurdish citizens in the Turkish nation. During the early Republican period the Kurdish and Turkish identities were mingled and this process continued. Cıtizenship of the Republic of Turkey was replacing ethnic identities. However, this unification which went parallel with the construction of the Republic in all respects was reversed with the counter revolution and unification turned into separation. At the point we are standing now, Turkey will either complete the Kemalist Revolution and bring the process of unification to a decisive end or submit to imperialism and the feudal system, in agreement with the separatist plans.
II. THE FOUNDATIONS OF SEPARATISM AND TERROR
18. The power that has been trying to divide Turkey has come all the way from over the Atlantic and occupying Iraq, has become our southern “neighbour”. The threat Turkey is face to face with, today has an international scope. The USA has announced the Greater Middle East Project (GMEP)and consequently declared that they “will change the borders and the regimes” of 24 Middle Eastern countries including Turkey. On the maps reflected on the walls in NATO meetings, the triangular land between Hakkari-Gaziantep and Artvin has been included within the borders of the state of Second Israel to be founded in northern Iraq. Furthermore, Diyarbakır, a province within the borders of Turkey has been marked as the centre of this puppet-state.
19.”Opening-out to new horizons “ which actually intend to partition both the Turkish nation & state have been organized by the US over their Turkish co-operators bound to them with secret agreements. Erdoğan who carries the title of the Turkish Prime Minister has been introducing himself as the co-chairman of the Greater Middle East project and admitting that his duty is “to make Diyarbakır a centre within the GMEP of the USA. Abdullah Gül, on the other hand, who inhabits the Presidential House in Çankaya, himself admitted on 2nd April 2003 in Ankara, that he made a secret agreement “consisting of 2 pages and 9 articles” with the Foreign Minister of the USA, Mr Powell. We explained in detail all the articles of this agreement in our press conference on 13th July 2003. The contents of these articles in the agreement have been put into practice one after the other, since then. The content of the secret agreement has been verified with the practices of the Erdoğan-Gül administration over the years. All the latest issues of the political agenda, i.e. “opening-out to Kurds”, “opening-out to Armenians” ,“opening-out to the Alawites” and “ opening-out to Cyprus” were the articles of the secret agreement that we brought to daylight in the summer of 2003.
20. The process of actually dividing the Turkish territory has already started. The municipalities under the control of the PKK, the Kurdish nationalist terrorist organization have established an autonomous region and actually are in the process of unifying with the north of Iraq. Now, the process has come to the stage of legally announcing the establishment of the puppet state founded with the support of the US invader army. The south eastern part of Turkey and the north of Iraq are homogeneous socially and economically. The landlordism, the tribal chiefdom and the sheikdom that are still valid in south-eastern Turkey are harmonious with the feudal conditions of northern Iraq.
21. Separatist terrorism has been a tool in the hands of the GMEP of the US since 1991.Turkey which has been pushed towards the EU as a candidate country, never to be accepted as a member, cannot defend itself and is, at the same time, enfeebled with terrorism and separatism is encouraged. The US is putting into practice its plan of expanding the second Israel founded in northern Iraq, towards Tel Afar. The disinformation that the US will dissolve the PKK has been intentionally concocted to include Turkey within US plans. On the contrary, The US is actually legalizing the PKK and turning it into a partner of the Gladio-Mafia-Islamist regime in power in Turkey today. It is not possible to solve the terror problem under the control of the US, while at the same time waiting for membership on the threshold of the EU. It is not realistic to imagine that the US will put an end to the PKK terror.
22. The socio-economic foundation of terror in Turkey is its semi-feudal social structure controlled by Imperialism. Under these conditions, the price to be paid for the dependence on imperialism and the existence of religious orders and landlordism is anarchy, terror and the partitioning of the national territory. For this reason, land reform in Turkey is not a simple distribution of land. If we want to realize and secure territorial integrity, democracy, domestic peace and modern social relations, we have to make the south-eastern Turkey a part of our national territory. The question brought before us by life itself is simple enough. Either the feudal relations of landlordism and diving into religious orders, or the territorial integrity, the unity of the people and domestic peace will be abandoned.
III: DIFFERENT ALTERNATIVES AND PEOPLE’S SOLUTION
23.The Gladio-Mafia and Islamist partnership which has grasped power over the Turkish state which is disintegrating and collapsing today is ineffective and in betrayal. The Turkish state which started to disintegrate during the process of coming under the control of the US imperialism and Islamic orders, is fully in the grasp of the Gladio-Mafia-Islamist powers. The policy of those in power now is tolerance or even cooperation with terrorism. Under these conditions there can never be a solution to the gradual impoverishment, alienation and wasting away in the atmosphere of terror. Turkey, under the control of the US and patiently waiting at the door-steps of the EU has no other alternative. Those who have brought about this collapse of the Turkish state are attending the funerals of the dead soldiers wearing dark glasses and shedding false tears.
24. The unity and territorial integrity of Turkey has become once more a matter of revolution. Completing the national democratic revolution does not only mean completing the process of liberation and modernization but also uniting as a nation. Turkey can only become a point of attraction for Kurds, not by moving further in the direction of feudalism, but by modernizing. The saviour of the Kurds will not be Barzani, Öcalan or Fetullah Hodja, led by the US but the people’s government.
25. The reactionary alternative for the Kurds of Turkey is to unite with the Barzani Feudalism under the guidance of the US. The progressive alternative is to take part in the great revolutionary leap of Turkey and all together with Turks, take part in the liberation, unification and modernization of the country and become its equal citizens.Partitioning means, for all who live in Turkey, submission, impoverishment and regression. Liberation, flourishing and enlightenment come with unity. There is no other way , but joining in the revolution of Turkey for the Kurds living in Turkey to liberate and modernize. Barzani and the terrorist organization PKK is the way leading to the Middle Ages. Joining with Barzani does not mean becoming a nation neither for the Kurds living in Turkey nor for those in Iraq. There are the feudal principalities of Barzani and Talabani in northern Iraq. The PKK is trying to establish the third one. For this reason, uniting with northern Iraq, for the Kurds of Turkey, is a trap of endless wars among the Kurds and with other countries which will continue for years. Legalization of the puppet state by the US will bring nothing else to the Kurds besides civil war and regional wars that will sacrifice the lives of Kurds. The US is planning to use the Kurds against Turkey, Iran, Iraq and Syria in these wars. A Kurd, Guri Benzer, one of the leaders of the Workers’ Party (Turkey) says that Kurds would prefer to live one day in Turkey rather than living ten years in northern Iraq. It is this preference that is important. Turkey will solve the problem not by presenting the Kurds of Turkey to Barzani with Erdoğan’s hands, but by liberating them.
26. It is the determining factor to liberate Turkey from the US control and waiting at the door-steps of the EU, to secure the unity of the nation, and the welfare of the people.In order to stop terror, Turkey has to extricate itself from the US control and immediately drop its application for membership in the EU. The US, having occupied and partitioned Iraq, is exporting terror to Turkey from there. Submitting to US plans, means welcoming terror, today. On the other hand, the “passion” of pursuing membership to EU is strengthening the opinion that the state of the Turkish Republic is being liquidated, among the Kurdish citizens and is partitioning the country in the minds of the people. Directing the expectations of the people, especially our Kurdish citizens to Washington DC and to Brussels actually means dangerously partitioning Turkey. It means that the Republic of Turkey is erased as a hope from the consciousness of its own citizens. Nevertheless, actually, it is the popular and revolutionary Turkey which is the sole framework of liberation, flourishing and enlightenment of Turkey.
27. The land owned by the Turkish Treasury, the mined border areas and the land belonging to the landlords and tribe chiefs should be distributed among the peasants and the present system of landlordism and sheikhdom should be abolished. In order for the peasants not to lose their lands to the landlords again, the peasant who has received land should be equipped with everything he would need to stand on his own two feet. The producer of crops should be supported with cheap oil, cheap fertilizers, cheap agricultural chemicals, cheap seeds and interest-free loans. Joint activity by means of cooperatives should be supported and modern and productive farming methods should be developed. Thus, peasants will be liberated and flourish.
28. A programme of full employment, flourishing markets, equality between regions and a unified nation should be put into practice. Under the conditions where banks demanding great interests in the US model, profiteers in the stock-market in US dollars, embezzlers and sheikhs seize the resources of the country, the people face unemployment and impoverishment and terror gets wilder and wilder. Under these conditions there is no solution for terror. Unemployment should be wiped out from south-eastern Turkey with new public enterprises. A new national economy should be established to be able to stand against the foreign forces threatening Turkey. The inequality between different regions should be fought against. The small tradesmen, artisans and industrialists of south-eastern Turkey should be supported with special state loans and their ties with the economy of the rest of Turkey should be developed.
29. Terrorism and separatism cannot be tolerated. The twin laws of betrayal should be abolished. At the present stage, the Kurdish question has been solved in respect to democratic rights. Prohibitions and suppression concerning the Kurdish language no longer exist. Kurdish cultural and educational institutions are free to function. Broadcasting in Kurdish has started. Newspapers and magazines in Kurdish have been published for tens of years now. It is up to the people to furnish the Kurdish citizens with further rights to secure more freedom and equality for the citizens of Turkey and strengthen their unity. Imperialism never brings freedom and equality. The “freedom” of disintegration is imposed on the Turkish people at the door steps of the EU, under the guise of “human rights”. The twin laws of betrayal which were accepted by the government in 2001, by the members of the Democratic Leftist Party(DSP), the National Action Party (MHP) and the Motherland Party (ANAP) should be immediately abolished. Political organizations on the basis of ethnic identity, religious order or community or sect should not be allowed. The Revolutionary Laws which have been secured by the Turkish Constitution should be observed. The greatest human right for the people is living free, independent and united.
30. The people should embrace the philosophy of being a great nation and put it into practice. In order to get rid of separatist terror, firstly, the people need to adopt the right philosophy. The understanding that prevails in our country is that the eastern part of our country “is another territory” and our fellow citizens inhabiting there “are sociologically structured differently”. This understanding is identical with that of the PKK. This narrow minded view-point reduces the meaning of ‘Turk’ into an ethnic group, a racial community. This understanding cannot comprehend the Kurdish citizens but repels them. This understanding which contributes to separatism should certainly be erased from the state mechanism in the first place and then from the society. The definition of the Turkish nation should be placed on its historical foundations. The Turkish nation is not an ethnic group or a race. The historical foundations of the Turkish nation stand on a tradition of empires lasting for thousands of years, its control over the trans- continental trade routes and the strength of the Turkish language. Imperial culture is such that makes different peoples live together. The Turkish nation was created out of a modern revolution which was nourished in this historical heritage of combining different ethnic groups. With this historical and revolutionary background, it is foremost a philosophical matter to unite the citizens from different ethnicities in an understanding that they are all brothers and free and equal citizens. It is not possible to accept the understanding of “us” and “them” in Turkey. A Turk and a Kurd are not “the other” for one another. We are all Turks and we are all Kurds; all together we are the Turkish nation. As Atatürk defined it in his book titled Learning the Civil Life, The Turkish people who founded the Turkish Republic with a revolution, make up the Turkish nation. This process needs to be completed.
31. The power that the Republic belongs to and relies on can only be the people living all over the country including the southeastern Anatolia. The Republic that was founded with a revolution must rely on the peasants who are burning with the need of land in southeastern Anatolia, the petty tradesmen and artisans who do business on the Turkish market; in short, the people. Turkey cannot rely on the landlords and sheikhs in southeastern Anatolia, to resist separatism, because these forces themselves are the representatives of the feudal partitioning and are very similar to Barzani. The main force that will defend Turkey against separatism in the rural areas is the landless peasants.
32. Whoever wins over the people will win the war. The partitioning of Iraq should be taken as a lesson. Losing our Kurds will bring about the threat of partitioning. The PKK can lead some of the people of the region, especially the unemployed and the poor. On the other hand, the Islamic orders under the control of Fetullah Gülen, Barzani and the Western powers are growing in the region. It is our duty to win over our Kurd, organize the Kurds of the Republic and establish truly democratic local authorities of the Republic in our southeastern provinces. We can put into practice this task not in search of support from the reactionary forces but by uniting with the people in a revolutionary attitude.
33. We should mobilize the thousands of volunteers in the eastern and southeastern provinces in a popular campaign. Especially our Kurdish volunteers should reach up to the highest points in the mountains, ask about their needs, listen to their problems, explain to them how dearly they will pay for the terror in the region and also the solution of brotherly unity in a National Government, in short we should comprehend and organize the people.
34. A popular movement which will struggle for the targets of , ‘a unified nation’, ‘territorial integrity of the motherland’ and ‘land for the peasants’ should be created; the local administrations should be founded on popular power. The peasant struggle which springs from the villages, Aslanoğlu and Sinan in Bismil, the village, Akçakale in Urfa, Gürpınar, in Diyarbakır and the villages Elmapınar and Muratçayırı in Erzurum, Çat who shout “Down with landlordism, long live the Republic!” should be developed and spread around. The masses of peasants in the vast rural areas of southeastern Anatolia are waiting for the achievements of these struggles , to join them. The reactionary policies which were based on the conflicts between different tribes, landlords and Islamic sects should definitely be discontinued and the people should be organized against foreign threats and separatism. Democratic local administrations can only be established on these grounds.
35. A System of Ranger Teams of the Republic consisting of peasants should be established. The present system of ranger teams which have turned the tribe chiefs and landlords into an armed force supported by the Turkish state must be changed. The system of ranger teams should be transformed from the armed organization of landlords and tribe chiefs into the ranger teams of the Republic, in a gradual process. The ranger teams of the Republic should be reorganized together with the land reform. The landless peasants who will be given land should make up the new ranger teams of the Republic. Only thus can the masses of peasants become one of the active forces to impose the independence of the country, the territorial integrity of the motherland, the unity of the nation and the security of the region . Vanguard examples showing this can be seen in the villages which are struggling for land.
36. The territorial integrity of Iraq is also Turkey’s territorial integrity. The territorial integrity of Iraq should be assured in cooperation with the Iraqian people and the countries of the region. Turkey should support the Iraqian people and government to secure the equality, freedom and economic welfare of the Iraqian citizens of Kurdish and Turkish origin, within unified Iraq.
37. Cooperation with the countries in the region should be advanced to lead to a West Asia Union. For the independence, sovereignty, unity , territorial integrity ,welfare and peaceful co-habitation of Turkey and the other countries of the region, Turkey should form an alliance with Syria, Iraq, Iran and Azerbaijan and develop this cooperation. This alliance should include the Kurds too on a basis of equality and freedom. Turkey should cooperate with these countries in all respects including security. Conditions of this cooperation should be advanced step by step, starting with the abolishing of the customs at the borders and continuing until a comprehensive cooperation is reached in the West Asia Union.
38. Turkey should take its place among the vanguards of the Eurasian Alliance. With its geographical positioning in Asia and eastern Europe, Turkey should join the Eurasian cooperation which is forming among Russia, the Central Asian Republics, India and the People’s Republic of China and take its honourable place in the forefront of the rising civilization.
IV. THE VİTAL TASK
39. The Justice and Development Party (AKP) in power today which was declared illegal by the Supreme Court, should be brought down. A National Government should be formed to construct a powerful people’s state mechanism which will rely on the people and liberate them. The power behind the present government has become the enemies of the people who collaborate with the USA as their contracted personnel, connected to them with secret agreements. Having shouldered the tasks of the staff of the Greater Middle East Project, they serve to the purpose of defeating Turkey . They even conspire against the Turkish Army in cooperation with the US Army. Within the framework of this cooperation they have even dared to form an armed police force of their own composed of the members of a definite Islamic order. This government which was declared the “focus of the destructive activities directed at the Republic” by the Supreme Court itself, is illegal and must be overthrown and will be overthrown. The National Government which will replace this one and which will embrace the Kurdish citizens too will be the people’s government, will organize the people and liberate them; it will act for the well-being of the people. With the active mobilization of the people, the powerful people’s state will be established.
40. The call for an independent and democratic Turkey is a call to form a united government of the people, including our Kurdish citizens. We are calling our citizens of Kurdish origin to establish an independent, democratic Turkey all together; and live on this land together as equal and free citizens in peace, welfare and fraternity. Spending our energy, courage, our abilities and our youth for enmity, spite and partitioning will bring nothing but regret. On the other hand, our revolutionary unity as a nation will be the source of the great power which will contribute to the new civilization springing from Asian bastions.
The People’s Party (Turkey) promises all the people the greatest freedom as the owners of the new people’s power.
The process we are living through now is the process of establishing this people’s power.
(1) In the Ottoman Land system, all the land was owned by the state symbolized by the Sultan and parts of it were distributed among the high state officials and pashas only for their lifetime to receive the rent from the peasantry but to maintain a unit of soldiers to unite with those of the Sultan whenever the need arose.
(2) İsmet İnönü: General in the War of Independence and M.K. Atatürk’s right hand both in the War and in the establishment of the new Republic. He became the secont President of the Turkish Republic after the death of Atatürk.
(3) Nation’s Schools and People’s Centres: “Millet Mektepleri” and “Halkevler”i. The former were schools aiming at the education of adults among whom literacy was very low. The latter were centres where people could meet and organize and perform cultural activities.
(4) Village Institutions: “Köy Enstitüleri”. These institutions were the best superstructure achievements of the new republic. They were village schools aiming at educating the peasant children in their own villages or in a near vicinity both intellectually and in terms of practical work they were face to face with, in their everyday lives.