A Challenge to the Narrative of Difference: A Contrastive Approach to the Experience of Türkiye...

A Challenge to the Narrative of Difference: A Contrastive Approach to the Experience of Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi and Sendero Luminoso

Michael ERDMAN School of Oriental and African Studies

Introduction Narratives of difference are essential to state-building. Whether implicit or explicit, they function both to validate the existence of the particular State, and to build loyalty among citizens to the values and doctrine of the State’s ruling groups and cadres. The nation-State has accomplished this task with admirable efficiency, as it identifies the State in terms of the nation, thereby cloaking the State in the same irrational and immaterial essence with which the nation has been imbued since the early 19th century. The relationship is a symbiotic one. The State captures the eternal nature of the nation, and the nation, in turn, takes on characteristics of the State: classless or pertaining to a particular class; militarist or pacifist; democratic or authoritarian.

Consequently, state narratives may mask parallelisms in the natures of different contemporary societies. When investigating the similarities between the societies of different States, it is useful to take into account the narrative of those on the margins of the State. These groups react to the logic of the State without recourse to the exclusionary and isolationist language of the State’s discourse. In Turkey, Maoist groups of the 1970s can be considered agents of such criticism. As Marxists whose ideology had not been co-opted by the founders of the Kemalist creed, they faced no ideological or practical dilemma in criticizing the narrative of the State without contradicting their own intellectual foundations. A prime example is the Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi (the Workers’ and Peasants’ Revolutionary Party of Turkey, TİİKP), which emerged in 1973 from the Proleter Devrimci Aydınları (Proletarian Revolutionary Intellectual; PDA) movement of the 1960s, a Kemalist-tinged collection of university-based Marxists. It is thus TİİKP whose ideology provides a Turkish node for comparison with a similar criticism of another State.

While a number of states forming part of the developing nations of the 1970s might provide suitable candidates for comparison with Turkey, it is Peru that provides an optimal counterpart within the paradigm of contrastive analysis of the writings of the discontented. Both nations suffered crippling economic crises during the 1970s, and both witnessed repeated military interventions of both leftist and rightist orientations. More importantly, in both Peru and Turkey, avowedly Maoist groups emerged from a lively yet fractured left wing of the political spectrum. The group that most radically exemplified the Maoist response to the State and its discourse was the Partido Comunista del Perú – Sendero Luminoso de José Carlos Mariátegui, commonly known as Sendero Luminoso (Shining Path; SL). Similar to the TİİKP, the SL’s roots were in intellectual circles that first took shape in a university. Unlike its Turkish counterpart, however, SL engaged in full-fledged People’s War against the Peruvian State. Both

Michael ERDMAN – A Challenge to the Narrative of Difference

2

the TİİKP and the SL chose to pursue their struggles outside the State’s bounds of legality, but it was SL that decided to follow the path to its logical conclusion of armed insurrection.

This paper argues that the similarity of Turkey to Peru, and thus to other developing states in general, in the 1970s can be established through a comparative analysis of the ideology of both TİİKP and SL. In particular, it posits that the opposition of the two parties to their respective States’ ideologies and institutions highlights the similarities between Turkey and Peru as states characterized by failed inclusion of citizenry into statal structures and imperfect integration of the national economy into the global marketplace. This conclusion becomes apparent through the analysis of three particular aspects of the parties’ writings:

1. Their respective historical analyses of Turkish and Peruvian independence struggles

identify the failure of dominant classes to create inclusive states or functional capitalist systems.

2. The failure of both TİİKP and SL to identify rapid social and economic change as a source of peasant hardship highlights the manner in which such processes, characteristic of developing economies, were present in both states during the 1970s.

3. The weight of education and justice in the programs of both groups stresses the importance of such concepts to the peasantry in both countries as means of social integration and mobility.

Prior to an examination of the three aforementioned aspects of TİİKP and SL ideologies, background information on both Turkey and Peru, as well as Maoist ideology, will be provided. First, brief outlines of both nations’ political and economic histories in the 1970s will be undertaken, followed by a more detailed analysis of the social classes identified in each state at the middle of the 20th century. Finally, a brief overview of the Sino-Soviet split, and the emergence of Maoist doctrine as a rival to post-Stalinist Soviet thought, will complete the background framework for the current study.

A brief overview of Turkey and Peru in the 1970s Turkey’s turbulent 1970s truly began on 12 March 1971, the date on which the leadership of the military forced the collapse of the elected government headed by Süleyman Demirel.1 The second military intervention since the foundation of the Turkish Republic in 1923, this event marked the end of an era, at least in the minds of many Turkish leftists. The military was no longer perceived as partially progressive or favourable to left-leaning reform projects.2 The left had seriously overestimated the effect of workers’ protests in September 1970. This, in turn, resulted in three years of soul-searching and intellectual and structural reorganization between the coup of 1971 and the amnesty for guerrilla activity announced in 1974.3 Left-wing politics flourished both inside and outside of the parliamentary system, as legislative power shifted between right-wing parties (always under the Prime Ministership of Süleyman Demirel) and left-wing parties (under the leadership of Bülent Ecevit).4 Despite the near-constant collapse and reconstitution of governments on both the left and right, little attempt was made at altering the

1 Zürcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History (London: I. B. Tauris, 2012), p. 258.

2 Samim, Ahmet, ‘The Left’, in ed. Benatar, Rezan, Irvin C. Schick and Ronnie Margulies Turkey in

Transition: New Perspectives (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987), p. 160. 3 Ibid., pp. 160-161.

4 Zürcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History, p. 261.


3

country’s general adherence to Important Substitution Industrialization, until levels of inflation, labour unrest, balance of payments problems and productivity stagnation reached crisis proportions at the end of the decade.5 A structural reform package backed by the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank was announced in January 1980 under the leadership of Finance Minister Turgut Özal, but was not implemented until after the military coup of 11 September 1980, when ideological violence both inside and outside of the parliamentary system was largely quashed.6 Peru, on the other hand, saw its turbulent decade begin in 1968, when a military coup disposed of the democratically elected government of Fernando Belaúnde.7 The military régime was avowedly left-wing, pursuing a nationalization program of sensitive industries (petroleum, banking, import/export) as well as land reform.8 The results were initially positive, especially given the spike in global oil prices in 1973, but the country’s economic fortunes began to decline rapidly afterward as oil prices collapsed.9 A clear policy of state-directed industrialization and bureaucratization of the economy created considerable fiscal difficulties for the régime, which resorted to greater and greater use of censorship and suppression of peaceful opposition in order to maintain its grip on power. The crisis was most acute in the agricultural sector, where the government’s policies of price controls on basic goods ensured that farmers would not benefit from the oil bonanza in the same measure as urban producers.10 Internal economic difficulties, ballooning external debt and ever-more strident criticism of the régime pushed the military to convene a consultative assembly for a new constitution in 1978, allowing for the peaceful transfer of power to civilian politicians in 1980.11 Despite the military régime’s initial leftist propensities, its increasingly authoritarian nature post-1974 galvanized leftist opposition. This rejuvenated and vociferous front of Marxist parties of varying shades participated in the 1980 elections under the banner of the Izquierda Unida (United Left).12 The decades of crisis in both Turkey and Peru had differing effects on the various social classes of the two countries. The opportunities and hardships of the 1970s allowed for the expansion and contraction of the classes that existed in both countries, and put some classes in direct opposition to one another. While there is no universally agreed-upon definition of a class, Marxists, relying on the works of Lenin, generally define it as groups of individuals within a historically-determined system of social production with a determined relationship to the system of production and a particular role in it. These classes are further defined by their appropriation of the work of others, as well as the relative share of social wealth they receive and the means by which they receive it.13 In both Peru and Turkey at the mid-point of the 20th century, four different broad groupings or classes had been identified: the bourgeoisie, landlords, workers and peasants. In Turkey, the concept of the bourgeoisie was further refined into three sub-categories:

5 Ibid., pp. 267-268.

6 Ibid., pp. 278-281.

7 Pease G. Y., Franklin, Breve historia contemporánea del Perú (Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica,

1995), p. 244. 8 Ibid., pp. 245-246.

9 Ibid., p. 249.

10 Ibid., pp. 253-256.

11 Ibid., pp. 259-260.

12 Degregori, Carlos Iván, ‘“Sendero Luminoso”: I. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros; II. Lucha armada

y utopia autoritaria’, Documento de Trabajo No. 4 y 6 (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos: Lima, 1985), p. 38. 13

Iziga Nuñez, Roger, ‘Peru: Clases sociales, estructura y proceso’, in ed. Roger Iziga Nuñez, Peru: Sociología, clases sociales y sociedad (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1994), p. 21.


4

the national bourgeoisie, who, following the War of Independence in 1923, acquired capital in the form of banks and financial concerns, factories, rolling stock, means of transportation and other capital goods and productive facilities;14

the comprador bourgeoisie, who acted as agents for foreign capital within Turkey and were largely members of ethno-religious minority groups;15

and the petite bourgeoisie, a motley group consisting of artisans, teachers, students, intellectuals, small and ambulant merchants, middle managers, small consumer goods producers, rich and middling peasants, and state officials.16

To these three groups were added the landlords, who were owners of agricultural land and relied on the labour of others (peasants and workers) to produce agricultural output. Some landlords were ruling members of traditional formations, such as clans or tribes, and relied on these relationships in order to retain their control of agricultural productive capacity. Others were capitalist landowners, for whom agricultural land was but another class of investment asset. In practical terms, the difference between the traditional landlord and the capitalist landlord was often manifested in whether he collected his profits in kind (pre-capitalist structures) or cash (capitalist structures).17 On the opposite end of the spectrum were the labourers, a category that included both workers (proletariats) and peasants. The proletariats were forced to sell their labour to survive, having access to no other means of production.18 Peasants worked the land to which they had ownership claims. Poor peasants, those not included in the petite bourgeoisie, were of various types. Some were sharecroppers, required to provide labour and/or part of their produce to the traditional landlord. Others provided their labour to large landholders in order to supplement the meagre incomes of their own plots of land.19 The 1960s also saw the emergence of village labourers, a form of landless poor peasant forced to provide labour to landholders for want of any holding of his or her own.20 A similar social structure was observed in Peru, with important differences in the compositions of the various classes. The landlords were largely aristocratic families who had retained their landholdings from the colonial period. The bourgeoisie, in turn, was characterized by the same division present in Turkey: industrialists and financiers, capitalist agricultural producers, and comprador capitalists linked to foreign concerns.21 The petite bourgeoisie, concentrated primarily in the coastal region and in the towns, mirrored the Turkish composition, with the presence of the state official gaining in importance only during the 1960s.22

With respect to the proletariat and peasantry, a similar structure of urban and rural workers,23 medium and poor peasants engaged in both capitalist and pre-capitalist modes of

14

Türk, İbrahim, Türk Toplumunda Sosyal Sınıflar (Istanbul: Öncü Kitabevi, 1970), p. 46. 15

Ibid., p. 49. 16

Ibid., p. 68. 17

Ibid., p. 111. 18

Ibid., p. 149. 19

Ibid., pp. 137-138. 20

Ibid., p. 145. 21

Bustamante y Rivero, José Luis, ‘Clases, grupos o agrupaciones sociales’, in ed. Roger Iziga Nuñez, Peru: Sociología, clases sociales y sociedad (Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1994), pp. 79-82. 22

Pease G. Y., Franklin, Breve historia contemporánea del Perú, p. 267. 23

Bustamante y Rivero, José Luis, ‘Clases, grupos o agrupaciones sociales’, pp. 100-101.


5

production existed in Peru.24 In addition to this, however, a pre-Columbian form of social organization, in which private property was exploited in a collective manner by an entire village, provided a distinct social class that was found largely in the Sierra, the mountainous area of the country in which European culture had had far less of an impact than on the coast.25

Concepts of Class Struggle and the Sino-Soviet Split

The struggle between these classes has largely been the concern of the revolutionary

Left since its inception in the 18th century. Although the goal of Marxist-Leninist parties has been the dictatorship of the proletariat, the means by which such a transition state to Socialism is achieved is a contentious topic within Marxist-Leninist thought. Until the success of the Chinese Revolution under the leadership of Mao Zedung in 1949, Soviet concepts of proletarian-led revolution dominated discussions on socialist struggles.26 The success of the Chinese model, however, challenged Soviet paradigms, particularly with respect to the spread of Communist ideology and activism to developing and colonial societies.27 The split became a bitter one in the early 1960s, as the Chinese and Soviet Communist Parties offered competing visions for the direction of the global socialist revolution. In particular, the Chinese line argued that in colonized countries, a national liberation struggle should be waged that would be led by the revolutionary classes (proletariat, peasants, intellectuals and petite bourgeoisie), but that could include other sections of the population should these groups submit to the leadership of the revolutionary classes. Moreover, unlike the Soviets, the Chinese view held that it was the peasants, and not the workers, who were the primary base of any revolutionary movement in countries that had not experienced widespread industrialization.28

The Chinese Communist Party’s conceptualization of the socialist revolution was of a two-step process to be applied to colonized or semi-colonized regions: a national liberation struggle that might include non-revolutionary segments of the population; and a post-liberation conflict between revolutionary and reactionary forces, intended to cleanse the liberation movement of its non-revolutionary elements and prepare the country for transition to socialism.29 In practical terms, the Chinese model, with the peasantry as its base and an appeal that went beyond the revolutionary classes, called for a People’s War or guerrilla-style combat intended to capitalize on a symbiosis of the revolutionary intelligentsia and the agriculturally-focused peasantry. It was intended to provide out-armed and out-manned revolutionary forces with a plan for the use of both weapons and the peasants’ agricultural production to weaken and defeat the forces of imperialism and reaction, bringing the revolution from the countryside to the cities, rather than the inverse, as was the Soviet model.30 It was a model that appealed on both a theoretical and practical level to many revolutionary groups in the developing world, including both Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi and Sendero Luminoso.

24

Ibid., pp. 85-87. 25

Ibid., p. 26

Lüthi, Lorenz, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 19. 27

Ibid. 28

Keesing’s Research Report, The Sino-Soviet Dispute (London: Keesing’s Publications Limited, 1970) pp. 24-25. 29

Ibid., pp. 30-32. 30

Lüthi, Lorenz, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World, pp. 25-26.


6

Wars of Liberation that Failed to Liberate It was the Chinese experience, rather than their own countries’ wars of independence, that provided the TİİKP and SL with the motivation to seek radical changes in their respective societies. While the Peruvian experience was rooted in 19th century struggles for fair representation inspired by Enlightenment philosophy and Napoleonic rhetoric, the Turkish War of Independence was firmly ensconced within the transition from an age of empires to one of nation-states that was the product of the First World War. Both struggles bore hallmarks of their respective contexts, and thus are not directly comparable on their own. It is, however, the analysis of the TİİKP and the SL of these events, and their failure to create cohesive and inclusive political societies, that is fertile ground for the establishment of parallel interpretations. The Turkish War of Independence began with the Greek invasion of Asia Minor in May 1919 and intensified with the signature of the Treaty of Sèvre by the Imperial government in 1920, which greatly reduced the territory under the control of a sovereign Ottoman government.31 The War began as a reaction of Ottoman military and civil officials to the dismemberment and occupation of the Empire, but soon developed into a challenge to the Sultan, permitting its leadership to imbue the struggle with revolutionary, as well as nationalistic, overtones. Although the leadership of the War fell to Mustafa Kemal (Atatürk) and members of the Ottoman military command, participation in battles went far beyond members of the Ottoman Army and drew in Muslims of various ethnic, linguistic, regional and professional backgrounds. As the War ground on, this heterogeneous fighting force was gradually regimented and organized by Mustafa Kemal and his followers. Opposition to his direction both on the battlefield and in the Turkish Grand National Assembly was first sidelined and then crushed.32 The Treaty of Lausanne of 1923 officially ended the War between Greece and the Ottoman Empire, completing the deliverance of the government in Ankara and the Turkish people from the threat of occupation and annexation. The proclamation of the end of the Sultanate on 29 October 1923, in turn, liberated Turkey from its Ottoman past, ending the last vestiges of the old State’s temporal power and paving the way to a republican and democratic form of state. The Turkish War of Independence would appear to furnish the TİİKP with the first half of the Maoist struggle which culminates in the dictatorship of the proletariat: a war of national liberation in which an enlightened leadership leads all the classes willing to accept its progressive leadership against a collection of Imperialists and Irridentists. Atatürk’s destruction of the old system of power through the proclamation of the Republic, the elimination of the Caliphate, and a host of modernizing reforms touching all aspects of urban life would be evidence of his progressive inclinations and the revolutionary nature of the War that he led. On the contrary, TİİKP viewed the market orientation of the Turkish economy and the aloofness of the political élite as indications of the ultimate failure of the War of Independence to liberate fully all sectors of society, especially the workers and peasants. The immediate aftermath of the War, in which reformist legislation was overshadowed by economic programs intended to encourage the accumulation of capital by a native, that is Muslim, bourgeoisie, eliminated the

31

Zürcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History, pp. 146-147. 32

Kayalı, Hasan, ‘The Struggle for Independence’, in ed. Reşat Kasaba, The Cambridge History of Modern Turkey Volume 4: Turkey in the Modern World, (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2008), p. 137.


7

possibility that the War of Independence could have acted as a springboard for social and economic revolution for the benefit of the workers and peasants.33 For the TİİKP, the War of Independence was, at its inception, a people’s reaction to the collapse of imperial rule and the threat of foreign domination. The democratic nature of the revolt against invasion could not be sustained as a revolution because of the lack of organization of the workers and extreme poverty in the countryside.34 The initial just and equitable characteristics of the War of Independence were preserved through the organization of the Grand National Assembly in Ankara in 1920. This open and democratic spirit, however, did not survive the onslaught of the national bourgeoisie. They seized the opportunity to coopt the peasants and workers’ struggle and dispossess the comprador bourgeoisie of their accumulated wealth, thereby securing their and the landlords’ position within a post-conflict entity.35 Their success relied on their ability to encourage the leadership of the struggle to crush left-wing opposition both on the battlefield and in the Assembly. This anti-Communist program eventually led to compromises with the French and the British, ensuring continued foreign interests in the Turkish economy in exchange for an armistice.36 TİİKP’s final confirmation of the national bourgeoisie’s cooption of the War of Independence and its outcome is found in the comportment of the Republican government during its first five years. Despite the sacrifices of the laboring classes for the liberation of the nation, Ankara sided with the landlords, rather than the peasants, during the Şeyh Sait Rebellion of 1925,37 and the owners, rather than the workers, on the regulation of working conditions and syndicalization.38 In the analysis of the TİİKP, what began as a popular bid for democracy and freedom ended as an entrenchment of conservative forces within the apparati of the State. In the Peruvian case, the formation of the State was, in a certain respect, a corollary of a continent-wide wave of revolutions inspired by the liberal ideas of the Enlightenment and the Cortes of Cádiz of 1810. Indeed, the call for independence was considered to be an option of last resort for most leading circles in Lima, and was only made in 1814, when the Spanish Crown failed to implement its earlier promise to abide by a liberal constitution promulgated in Cádiz.39 The initial bid for independence was crushed by loyalist troops soon after it started, and it was not until 1820 that the liberator of Argentina, José de San Martín, sought to renew the struggle for Peruvian independence. The new state would have been a monarchy supported by Spanish troops and would have guaranteed greater Creole participation in internal affairs while safeguarding the interests of the aristocracy against Mestizo and indigenous revolt.40 San Martín was able to convince the upper classes of Limeño society of the benefits of independence, but not those of a monarchical system,41 and it is in part for this reason that Peruvian independence was not secured until 1825 under the leadership of Simón Bolivar. Bolivar too was unable to convince the élite of Lima of his plans for a union of Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador and Colombia. Instead, they wrested control of the newly independent nation from Bolivar and firmly established sovereignty within the Peruvian Congress.42

33

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi Davası: Savunma (Ankara: Aydınlık Yayınları, 1974), pp. 188-189. 34

Ibid., p. 170. 35

Ibid., p. 171. 36

Ibid., p. 172. 37

Ibid., p. 193. 38

Ibid., p. 195. 39

Pike, Fredrick B., The Modern History of Peru (London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967), pp. 44-45. 40

Ibid., pp. 47-48. 41

Ibid., p. 51. 42

Ibid., pp. 60-61.


8

The new state was less progressive than Spanish colonial rule had been, particularly with respect to the welfare of the indigenous population. It was also ineffectual in its attempts to build up Peruvian industry, preferring instead laissez-faire policies that greatly benefitted British and French interests along the coast,43 while the country’s political system was plagued by instability, factionalism and military intervention. The modern Peruvian state did not take shape until 1894, when a sham election spurred civilian intellectuals to take action. President Cáceres was duly overthrown by Nicolás de Piérola following a bloody civil war.44 President Piérola established a new statal infrastructure imbued with the positivist ideas of the 19th century, chief among them the importance of state intervention in the economy and society. He encouraged the development of industry and capital accumulation through direct fiscal measures.45 Piérola’s régime also sought to strengthen the democratic system in Peru through the promulgation of direct elections and the creation of a professional officer class with technical and professional skills of use to the country’s infrastructure projects during times of peace, as well as to the defense of the nation in times of war.46 It is this later revolution – a revolution against military intervention and laissez-faire economics – that Sendero Luminoso challenged most stridently. It is perhaps because Piérola’s administration is credited with the formation of the nucleus of a modern capitalist economy in Peru through state intervention that the Party saw in his administration the seeds of modern Peru’s plight.47 SL’s leader, Abimael Gúzman (also known as Presidente Gonzálo), characterized this era as the start of “bureaucratic capitalism” in Peru.48 In Gúzman’s words, the Piérola régime was the period in which the bourgeoisie captured control of the State, and used the institutions and powers of the State to direct economic development for their own benefit. As the State did not expropriate or socialize the factors of production, the positivist policies of the new government could not be characterized as progressive or revolutionary.49 This top-down application of capitalist growth, moreover, allowed for the persistence of feudalism in sections of the country. As capitalism did not emerge from the breakdown of feudal relationships of production, but rather existed side-by-side with them, the result was a dual system in which foreign capitalists and the bourgeoisie – both industrial and comprador – allied themselves with the feudal landlords and exploited the levers of state power for their own economic benefit.50 The failure of the revolution of 1895 to deliver beneficial changes for the labouring classes, in Gúzman’s view, was not just a question of economics. Piérola also strove to implement changes to the electoral system, doing away with limited suffrage and electoral colleges and replacing them with universal male suffrage and direct elections. The vote, however, was not secret, and the net effect was that landowners and industrialists were able to use their labourers as voting blocks, effectively controlling the outcome of elections in particular districts.51 For the SL, this system was the beginnings of corporatist political culture in Peru, one in which decisions were made in discussions between the executive power of the state and the

43

Ibid., pp. 65-67. 44

Ibid., pp. 157-158. 45

Ibid., p. 171. 46

Ibid., pp. 173-174. 47

Ibid., p. 171. 48

El Diario, Interview with Chairman Gonzálo (Berkeley, CA: Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, 1991), p. 55. 49

Ibid., p. 57. 50

Ibid., p. 56. 51

Pike, Fredrick B., The Modern History of Peru, p. 173.


9

representatives of the various industrial and agricultural blocs.52 It was thus a small logical step that was required for the SL to extrapolate from the Peruvian reality to Maoist doctrine, and to insist, dogmatically, on the counterrevolutionary nature of participation in institutionalized, electoral politics.53 For Presidente Gonzálo and his disciples, Peruvian democracy had already condemned itself to irrelevance. Despite the considerably different trajectories of Turkish and Peruvian history, common elements can be gleaned from the two parties’ interpretations of the respective countries’ independence struggles and state formations. In particular, both reconcile the standard narrative of the foundation of a modern, inclusive state with the sense of alienation they perceive amongst the labouring classes by positing that the bourgeoisie have in fact captured the levers of the state in order to further their own interests. Both TİİKP54 and SL eschewed parliamentary democracy on dogmatic grounds as well as on the perceived experience of democratic, or semi-democratic, rule in their respective countries. For both groups, however much the State might strive to be seen as inclusive and representative, it was largely the expression of the will of the bourgeoisie and the landholding classes: incapable, if not unwilling, to advocate for the betterment of the condition of the labouring classes. Beyond this, although the State took the form of a bourgeois liberal democracy in both countries, it is clear that both TİİKP and SL viewed the wars and revolutions that created their respective states as having endowed their nations with imperfectly capitalist economies. Rather than being expressions of the triumph of the bourgeoisie over the feudal aristocracy, as in France, these statal structures reflected a compromise between the landowners, some of whom remained in feudal production relationships with the peasants, and the bourgeoisie, whose interest laid in the development of a proletarian class. It is this compact that, according to the logic of the TİİKP and the SL, gave credence to the semi-feudal label that they applied to Turkey and Peru, while the respective régimes’ openness to foreign trade and agreements with foreign commercial powers merited the appellation of semi-colonial. The fact, or myth, of Turkey and Peru’s semi-colonial status alone would not have provided the impetus for the adoption of Maoist prescriptions. It was, however, the semi-feudal characterization, and the insistence on the importance of the peasants, that made the Chinese model more attractive than the Russian one. It is thus to the relative weight of the peasants as part of the population, and their struggle for existence, that provided the foundation for both parties’ programs for their respective societies.

Declining Peasant Masses The retarded development of a nation’s industrial base, and its relative openness to foreign direct investment, do not necessarily imply that that particular nation’s economy will be characterized overwhelmingly agrarian.55 Its cheap labour and the relatively poor organization of the working class – usually a product of legislation and state repression – might permit its inclusion in the global marketplace as a manufacturer rather than agricultural producer. The key to this development is not the relative industrialization of a particular economy, but the willingness of the State and the local bourgeoisie to promote and engage in manufacturing,

52

El Diario, Interview with Chairman Gonzálo, p. 60. 53

Degregori, Carlos Iván, ‘“Sendero Luminoso”: I. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros; II. Lucha armada y utopia autoritaria’, p. 37. 54

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi-Köylü Partisi Dosyası I (Ankara: Töre-Devlet Yayınevi, 1973), pp. 26-27. 55

Poulantzas, Nicos, La crise des dictatures, (Paris: François Maspero, 1975), p. 20.


10

rather than agriculture, and the presence of urban workers to supply the labour necessary to accomplish such production.56 In the cases of Turkey and Peru, low levels of capital accumulation need not have condemned the two countries to remain agrarian, peasant economies. Rather, reasons for the preponderance of peasants as part of the population should be sought within the broader historical contexts of the two countries. Moreover, the declining fortunes of the peasantry and their gradual exclusion from the centres of political and economic power must be explained within the dynamics of the two economies in the late 1960s and the 1970s. In particular, they should be considered together with the momentous changes undergone in both states caused by both domestic and international factors. That Turkey and Peru were predominantly agrarian economies in the 1970s is both evident from statistical data and somewhat misleading. It is true that both countries’ workforces were dominated by agricultural sector workers: 67% in Turkey 57 and 47.2% in Peru in 1970.58 Not all of these individuals should be classified as labourers (whether agricultural workers or peasants). Such a category would be hard to make precise, given the imprecise distinctions between small and medium-sized farms. Nevertheless, Sunday Uner estimates that 73% of all landholdings in Turkey in 1973 were small landholdings,59 while, in the same year, 20% of all agricultural families were landless.60 The case of Peru is slightly more complicated, as a comprehensive land reform was implemented by the military régime between 1968 and 1977. In 1972, 78% of all landholding units (including self-employed farmers and cooperatives) were less than five hectares.61 Itinerate farm labour did not benefit from the land reform, implying that the military régime’s reforms did not eliminate the class of migrant agricultural labour.62 Thus, although exact figures cannot be provided, it becomes evident that a considerable portion of both the Turkish and Peruvian labour forces could be classified as peasants or agricultural labourers at the start of the 1970s, and that peasants and rural workers formed a significant segment of both national populations. The problem, however, is that this view of the two economies fails to capture the contribution of agriculture to either gross domestic product or its rate of growth. In Turkey, agriculture accounted for only 26.21% of national income in 1970, compared to 25.96% for manufacturing and construction industries and 23.08% for services.63 Similarly, in Peru, the figures for 1970 are 15.1% for agriculture, 23.8% for manufacturing and 27.7% for commerce and services.64 Agriculture’s importance falls further when considering annualized growth rates of the three sectors. In Turkey, these amounted to 3.1% for agriculture and 10.2% for

56

Ibid., p. 23. 57

Uner, Sunday, ‘Migration and Labor Transformation in Rural Turkey’, in ed. Alan Richard, Food States and Peasants: Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986), p. 237. 58

FitzGerald, E.V.K., The Political Economy of Peru 1956-1978: Economic Development and the Restructuring of Capital (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979), p. 87. 59

Uner, Sunday, ‘Migration and Labor Transformation in Rural Turkey’, p. 228. 60

Ibid., p. 230. 61

FitzGerald, E.V.K., The Political Economy of Peru 1956-1978: Economic Development and the Restructuring of Capital, p. 107. 62

Ibid., p. 109. 63

Barkey, Henri J., The State and the Industrialization Crisis in Turkey (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990), p. 80. 64

FitzGerald, E.V.K., The Political Economy of Peru 1956-1978: Economic Development and the Restructuring of Capital, p. 69.


11

manufacturing between 1968 and 197265, while growth rates in Peru for the period 1970-75 were 1.8% for agriculture, 7.1% for manufacturing and 6.3% for tertiary activities.66 It becomes clear, therefore, that despite considerable weight in terms of the national work force, agriculture, and therefore the peasants, were gradually losing their economic importance, particularly in the face of the rapid growth in manufacturing. Productivity in manufacturing was obviously higher than in agriculture, and it was therefore in manufacturing jobs that workers might hope to gain most in terms of income and wage bargaining power. As a result, peasants migrated en masse to the manufacturing centres. In Turkey, many men sought higher remuneration and more regular work in the cities, leaving in the villages mainly women to perform agricultural labour.67 In Peru, the collapse of opportunities in traditional agricultural communities in the middle of the 20th century accelerated migratory trends in the poorest regions of the Sierra, particularly among those with some level of formal education and literacy.68 The 1970s were a far cry from the heyday of agriculturalists in Turkey and Peru. Both TİİKP and SL recognized these trends in their respective countries, but their analysis of such phenomena relied less on the dynamics of the national economy, and much more on applications of Maoist dogma. Both groups’ perceptions of the situation were undoubtedly skewed by their entrenchment in heavily rural and underdeveloped regions. TİİKP, although founded by urban intellectuals and present in a variety of cities across Turkey, was most active in the south-east of the country.69 This region, which is heavily Kurdish, was characterized by the absence of capitalist agriculture, and the predominance of traditional or proto-capitalist production relations in the primary sector.70 The connection of SL to the Peruvian agrarian hinterland was even stronger. SL was formed in the Universidad Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga in Ayacucho, one of the least developed regions of the Peruvian Sierra.71 The members of this movement were deeply affected by the isolation of the region and recruited heavily from radicalized local students. These recruits were largely Mestizos and steeped in the values and culture of the poor agricultural region, as opposed to the cosmopolitan atmosphere of Lima.72 It was thus this relative isolation from the anti-establishment fomentation of the urban working classes and immersion in the hardships of rural agrarian existence that shaped and moulded the TİİKP and SL’s interpretation of, and possible solutions to, the dramatic socio-economic transformation experienced in both Turkey and Peru in the 1970s. TİİKP’s specific interest in the peasantry, rather than the workers, stemmed from its belief that Turkey was a semi-feudal nation, characterized by pre-capitalist production relations. Moreover, the preponderance of peasants in the Turkish population (65% according to the

65

Barkey, Henri J., The State and the Industrialization Crisis in Turkey, p. 67. 66


Aresvik, Oddvar, The Agricultural Development of Turkey (New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975), p. 133. 68

Degregori, Carlos Iván, Ayacucho 1969-1979: El Surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso (Instituto de Estudios Peruanos: Lima, 1990), pp. 39-40. 69

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi-Köylü Partisi Dosyası I, pp. 83-86. 70

Aricanli, Tosun, ‘Agrarian Relations in Turkey: A Historical Sketch’, in ed. Alan Richard, Food, States and Peasants: Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986), pp. 47-48. 71

Degregori, Carlos Iván, ‘“Sendero Luminoso”: I. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros; II. Lucha armada y utopia autoritaria’, pp. 29-30. 72

Taylor, Lewis, ‘Maoism in the Andes: Sendero Luminoso and the contemporary guerrilla movement in Peru’, Working Paper 2 (Centre for Latin American Studies: Liverpool, 1983), pp. 19-21.


12

Party), and the labour-intensive nature of Turkish agricultural production compared to other European nations, implied that the peasants, rather than the proletariat, were those on whose backs the profits of the bourgeoisie were generated.73 In light of the statistics above, such an interpretation is not entirely logical: agriculture did not generate the same proportion of national income as the share of agricultural workers in the labour force, and profit was also much more likely to be generated by manufacturing, with its relative capital intensive production.74 The peasantry’s numerical strength was not the only reason for TİİKP’s insistence on their characterization as the revolutionary class. In the Party’s view, Turkey was witnessing not a transition towards capitalism but a growth in feudal structures, as evidenced by the increasing number of peasants who were either landless or held uneconomically small plots of land (estimated at 83% of the peasant population75), and sharecroppers. Such situations were exacerbated in the south-east by the presence of traditional tribal structures, binding the peasants in socio-cultural, as well as economic, relationships of exploitation.76 Oddly, TİİKP also decried signs of creeping monetarization of peasant agriculture and the spread of capitalist forms of trade and production to the rural hinterland. Capitalist middlemen and “loan sharks” were increasingly taking advantage of the peasants’ worsening economic conditions, exploiting their inability to access formal credit and thereby cheating them of their fair earnings in those cases in which the feudal relationship had broken down.77

TİİKP had thus identified concrete aspects of peasant suffering – declining share of national income, destabilization of employment, and sharply reduced bargaining power – but it had not attributed these to a dynamic within the wider context of Turkish economic development. Indeed, agriculture as a whole was not in crisis, but given both domestic and international trends, conditions for small farmers were not favourable, and state support was forthcoming primarily for large producers.78 In addition, population increases in the villages contributed to the reduction of plot sizes, more landless peasants and sharecroppers; all these factors resulted in a decline in the fortunes of small farmers.79 TİİKP’s writings gave voice to the despair and frustration of a class squeezed into irrelevance and further poverty by economic development. Unfortunately for the Party, however, the pitiable plight of the peasantry was not the product of a war by the bourgeoisie and the landlords on peasantry, as it claimed, but a clear component of Turkey’s transition to an economy exposed more and more to the incentives of the global marketplace. The lack of written tracts by the SL on Peruvian conditions makes similar analyses of its interpretations of the status of the peasantry difficult, but certain indications can be gleaned from both its actions and its statements to the press. SL had a long tradition of peasant-focused left-wing activism on which to base its own ideology. Throughout its early existence, SL engaged in increasingly more dogmatic readings of the Peruvian Socialist José Carlos Mariátegui, who argued that Peru in the 1920s and 1930s was a semi-feudal economy.80 Mariátegui claimed that

73

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi Davası: Savunma, pp. 372-373. 74

Uner, Sunday, ‘Migration and Labor Transformation in Rural Turkey’, p. 237. 75

Ibid., p. 375. 76

Ibid., pp. 379-380. 77

Ibid., pp. 383-385. 78

Öztürk, Murat, Agriculture, peasantry and poverty in Turkey in the neo-liberal age (Wageningen, NL: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2012), p. 65. 79

Aresvik, Oddvar, The Agricultural Development of Turkey, p. 137. 80

Degregori, Carlos Iván, ‘“Sendero Luminoso”: I. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros; II. Lucha armada y utopia autoritaria’, pp. 31-32.


13

the perseverance of feudal structures (both of the European and Incan types) and the predominance of agriculture as part of the national income permitted the characterization of the country as such.81 The isolation of SL in the region of Ayacucho, as well as the local provenance of many of its members, permitted the group to ignore the dominance of capitalist agriculture on the coast and focus more on the semi- and quasi-feudal relationships that continued to exist in the Sierra of the country.82 These factors – reliance on the works of Mariátegui, isolation, and immersion in a region not representative of broader agricultural production relationships – allowed the SL to extrapolate the situation of Ayacucho up to the national level. They relied on the weight of peasants within the general work force to bestow the title of revolutionary class on the plurality, rather than on the group traditionally perceived as endowed with class consciousness, the proletariat.83 The problems with SL’s selection of the peasants as the revolutionary nucleus are made clearer by its rejection of the military régime’s land reform program, enacted in 1969. The program sought to distribute lands in the form of cooperatives from holdings of over 30 hectares in the Sierra to those who worked on the land.84 It was thus designed to break the cycle of feudal relations by removing land from the landowning class and distributing it to the peasants, and promoted the socialization of land through the creation of cooperatives rather than transfer of small plots to individual farmers. The Party rejected such proposals based on the assertion that such projects would only benefit new groups of landlords and local strongmen, rather than the peasants themselves.85 In other words, it would only further the corporatization of the peasants, and delay the emergence of true democracy in Peru.86 The actual effect of the land reform, in terms of agricultural productivity, highlights the error of SL’s insistence on even greater collectivization than that implemented by the military régime. The late 1970s witnessed a crisis in the agricultural sector, particularly with respect to yields of staple agro-food products, in comparison to the early period of the land reform (1968-75).87 It is obvious that the lot of the peasants, and indeed the country as a whole, was tied to something other than land distribution and feudal production relationships. TİİKP and SL’s perspicacity with respect to the deteriorating lot of the peasant in their respective society made Maoism seem like an ideal guide to the betterment of the working classes. The two parties’ analyses of the roots of the problem, and the appropriate solution for it, however, evidences their inability to contextualize peasant realities within broader economic changes, and their relative isolation from urban class tensions. On the one hand, both groups refused to acknowledge that the crises experienced by their respective peasant societies were the effects of a shift of economic power to the cities and regions dominated by capitalist agriculture. On the other hand, their entrenchment in the segment of society most adversely affected by integration into the global capitalist economy is instructive in itself. While their interpretations might have been faulty, they championed the interests of marginalized communities that were increasingly excluded from the advances of the State. Both Turkey and Peru had their own damnés de la terre, of whom both TİİKP and SL had nominated themselves

81

Granados, Manuel Jesús, El PCP Sendero Luminoso y su Ideología, (Lima: 1992), p. 113. 82

Ibid., pp. 21-22. 83

Lora, G., Sobre Sendero Luminoso (La Paz, Bolivia, 1984), pp. 19-20. 84


Granados, Manuel Jesús, El PCP Sendero Luminoso y su Ideología, p. 76. 86

Degregori, Carlos Iván, Ayacucho 1969-1979: El Surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso, p. 189. 87

Pease G. Y., Franklin, Breve historia contemporánea del Perú, pp. 255-256.


14

saviours. The solutions that they offered were not to provide the peasants with the outcome they desired, but in the struggle they correctly identified, and thereby publicized, two of the most important yearnings of the disenfranchised: justice and education.

Bread, Knowledge and Justice In order to mobilize a class identified as revolutionary, a Maoist party must, in part, reflect the desires of the designated class. TİİKP recognized explicitly that educational cadres intended to raise class consciousness among the labouring classes were to represent their needs and wishes, and to make use of their practical experience and knowledge.88 In the case of Sendero Luminoso, familiarization with peasant life was a core component of its identity, as the organization first coalesced in the turbulent atmosphere of the University Nacional de San Cristóbal de Huamanga in the 1960s, when it was a nexus for the organization of grassroots citizen movements.89 For both TİİKP and SL, the results of such interaction with their main constituencies are clear in the doctrine of the former and the actions of the latter: the peasants clamoured for access to quality education and justice, and both parties echoed this. In his study of Anatolian villages, Aresvik identified that among the most pressing issues facing Turkish peasants were the lack of access to education and available social services. He claimed that in 1969 only 36% of villagers were literate and 10% had completed primary schooling.90 This low level of education was only exacerbated by the seasonal and permanent migration of men to the cities. Women exhibited even higher rates of illiteracy than men, and thus it may be expected that the permanent agricultural labour force and population benefitted far less from education than the statistics on literacy and schooling suggest.91 Beyond this, the writ of the State, at least in the form of social and court services, was unevenly spread in these communities. There was a dearth of infrastructure projects, connections to the electricity grid, and schools and health clinics in the rural areas.92 Moreover, villagers generally preferred to rely on traditional law and Shar’ia for the resolution of disputes, rather than the State’s system of justice. This reluctance to participate in State-sponsored justice was linked both to the cost of State courts, and to the villagers’ lack of trust in the State’s representatives.93 These trends intensified as one moved eastward, and were self-perpetuating. Widespread rural illiteracy and alienation from the State discouraged the peasantry from participating fully in electoral and parliamentary politics, ensuring that their voices and needs were, at best, imperfectly represented in the machinery of the State.94 TİİKP’s response to this situation was to make both education and justice core components of its platform. At issue was not simply the expansion of current systems, but their reorientation towards revolutionary goals and peasant needs. The Party recognized that the State system of education in Turkey was heavily biased against those from rural backgrounds and the poor in general: it perpetuated the existing class structure through reinforcing social norms, and it imposed prohibitively expensive costs for school books, uniforms, extra lessons,

88

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi-Köylü Partisi Dosyası I, pp. 28-29. 89


Aresvik, Oddvar, The Agricultural Development of Turkey, p. 135. 91

Ibid., p. 133. 92

Ibid., p. 136. 93

Ibid., p. 134. 94

Ibid., pp. 138-139.


15

and opportunity costs on the labouring family. Moreover, schooling provided no benefit to those who might be inclined and able to study, as the education system was designed to prepare students for employment in government services, not agriculture or industry. Universities, in turn, focused on memorization of topics such as divan literature, providing students with neither the skills nor the knowledge necessary for the country’s economic development and the spread of social justice.95 Similar biases were to be found in the State’s concept of justice and equality, which disadvantaged not only the poor and the working classes, but also women. It was oppressive because it was staffed by bourgeois judges and predicated upon their values and mores, while concepts of acceptable behaviour and social interaction were adulterated through the influence of imperialist culture and the perpetuation of backward customs such as a the blood feud. Women were the most disadvantaged in this situation, as the State had failed to act upon its promise of emancipation from the violence of traditional society, and instead tolerated their objectification within Western-influenced bourgeois culture.96 The solution, according to TİİKP, was the creation of new systems of education and justice based upon the values and aspirations of the class-conscious labourers. Judges and juries were to be drawn from the workers and not simply the élite, and police and gendarmes would be replaced by popular defense committees. Serious criminal offences, such as murder, rape and robbery, would disappear with the advent of the new, revolutionary and democratic people’s culture. On a less idealistic note, the motivation of the correctional system would shift from punishment to rehabilitation, utilizing education, work placement and existing family and community networks to reintegrate the offender into society as a productive member of the system.97 The policy on women was far less dogmatic, and promised simply to implement the guarantees of equality and freedom current in the Republic, and to encourage greater female participation in both education and the leadership of the revolution.98 Education was to see a much more comprehensive reform, no doubt because of the power of educational institutions to foster a new sense of inclusion among the young and to reshape social institutions on a generational basis. The new State system of education would be gratis and bereft of classist, racist, religious, linguistic or gender prejudice, seeking instead to instill Marxist values in all students. It would encourage creativity and the study of subjects deemed useful to the nation, such as agronomy and engineering, thereby creating cadres of students – selected on merit – specialized according to the needs of the nation. Most importantly, university students would be encouraged to spend time among the peasants and rural populations. In this way, students would be imbued with the importance of work and productivity, the fundamental bases of all successful Marxist-Leninist development.99 On the issue of Kurdish rights, the Party insisted upon the end of “racist and assimilationist” policies and attitudes that had been the hallmark of the Republic. Cultural and linguistic autonomy was to be granted to the Kurds, and the Kurdish workers and peasants were to decide the fate of their nation – including its continued presence within the Turkish State.100 For the Party, therefore, the concepts of justice and useful education were applicable not only on a class basis, but also on a national one. TİİKP would have found little difficulty in incorporating an opening of the systems of education and justice to the issues of ethno-linguistic

95

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi Davası: Savunma, pp. 491-493. 96

Ibid., pp. 479-482. 97

Ibid., pp. 479-480. 98

Ibid., p. 483. 99

Ibid., pp. 495-497. 100

Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi-Köylü Partisi Dosyası I, p. 46.


16

identity based on the precedence of Lenin’s recognition of the right to self-determination. Indeed, the acceptance of cultural and political rights for the Kurdish minority highlights the Party’s conceptualization of peasant problems as having been borne from exclusion and marginalization. Fair and equal access to education and social justice was to be more important in the new Turkey than nationalist myths of ethno-linguistic homogeneity, a core tenet of early Republican state-building. In Peru, the active engagement of Sendero Luminoso in university politics and the creation of so-called liberated zones allow for the analysis of its implementation of policies on education and justice. The regions in which the Party was most active had some of the highest rates of illiteracy in the country,101 and were plagued by acute shortages of State-supplied health and welfare services.102 This disjunction between peasants and the State, particularly before the arrival of a greater number of bureaucrats in the 1970s, estranged the former from statal systems of jurisprudence, and perpetuated the sense that justice meted out by the State was arbitrary and rarely beneficial to the peasants, especially those of indigenous origin.103 The desire of the peasants, then, was greater access to education, perceived as crucial to social mobility and poverty alleviation, and a more even distribution of justice inclusive of peasant and indigenous values. On these issues, SL was most successful in reaching out to its target audience, and expanding the appeal of its revolutionary ideology. SL’s coalescence as an independent organization greatly shaped its ideas on education. The group emerged among radicalized students and staff at the UNSCH during the late 1960s. The University offered education tailored to the needs of the Ayacucho region and its agrarian character, and sought its students develop close ties with local communities. They were encouraged to spread their knowledge amongst the peasants of the region and to understand better their problems. In the early 1970s, those students and staff who adhered to SL ideology also sought to open the University to the families of Ayacucho, providing gratis, self-organized education to peasants and workers.104 After SL partisans lost control of the University’s administration in 1976, they scattered to other universities in the region,105 eventually beginning an armed struggle in 1980. Much of their initial peasant support was due to their educational activities throughout the 1970s, and the gap they filled, with respect to the provision of education and the fight against illiteracy, among the labouring classes of the Sierra.106 Indeed, after the commencement of their People’s War, it was often school teachers who acted as SL recruiters and organizers in the villages, and their pupils who eventually become new members of the organization.107 SL was less successful in its attempts to bring people’s justice to its liberated zones, but this was not for lack of interest on the part of the peasants. The third part of SL’s plan for securing liberated zones, after the founding of people’s schools, was the establishment of civil administration, which included justice.108 In addition to economic and political crimes, moral

101


Bonner, Raymond, ‘A Reporter at Large: Peru’s War’, The New Yorker, 04 January 1988, (New York: New Yorker Publishing), p. 31. 103

McClintock, Cynthia, ‘Why Peasants Rebel: The Case of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso’, World Politics, Volume 37, Number 1 (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, October 1984), p 72. 104

Degregori, Carlos Iván, ‘“Sendero Luminoso”: I. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros; II. Lucha armada y utopia autoritaria’, p. 35. 105

Ibid., p. 36. 106

Ibid., pp. 41-42. 107

Bonner, Raymond, ‘A Reporter at Large: Peru’s War’, p. 35. 108

Granados, Manuel Jesús, El PCP Sendero Luminoso y su Ideología, p. 77.


17

ones, such as laziness, alcoholism and infidelity, were punished by SL. First offences usually met with corporal punishment, while recidivism generally incurred the sanction of immediate execution.109 Peasants appeared to approve of such dispensing of justice, particularly if violence was directed against the members of the police in areas that had traditionally been neglected by or hostile to the power of the State. However, the SL failed to incorporate fully peasant values and morals into its program of people’s justice. The Party’s relationship to the indigenous question was less straightforward than TİİKP’s to the Kurdish issue, despite accusations by some critics that SL was pro-“Indian”. 110 Many of its members were Mestizo, and although they spoke Quechua and promoted its usage, they also clung to the dogmatic view that traditional power structures were as reactionary as the bourgeois State. 111 As its rulings began to infringe on the customs of the Sierra, popular support for the movement waned, and SL began to be perceived as yet another tyrant imposing its concept of justice from above.112 Thus both TİİKP and SL, despite their misinterpretation of the broader peasant realities in Turkey and Peru, were successful in identifying two of the primary grievances of labouring rural communities: access to education as a means of social mobility; and social justice to counter class-based, and occasionally racial, prejudice. In neither case can their actions be seen as a straightforward implementation of Maoist doctrine. TİİKP formed as a reaction to the Left’s failures in the 1960s to address frustration with both the staid atmosphere of Turkish universities and the pedantic nature of Turkish Communism.113 SL was formed by and recruited from Peruvian youth disenchanted with the manner in which higher levels of education had failed to secure them social mobility.114 In both cases, frustration was symptomatic of a wider social issue, the inability of segments of the population to utilize the State and its institutions to arbitrate conflicts within society; in other words, the unavailability of State justice. Both groups’ doctrines and actions, then, were responses to the State’s failure to address grievances of disadvantaged groups within the process of rapid socio-economic change in the 1970s. In this light, TİİKP and SL should be viewed not as entirely unique phenomena produced by the cultural and historical peculiarities of their respective nation-States, but rather as a broader attempt at utilizing radical and extreme ideologies to address socio-economic alienation arising from rapid change common to many developing countries in Latin America, Africa, the Middle East and Asia. They are examples of the narrative of difference of the nation-State breaking down, and the search for universal solutions to shared problems.

Unified solutions for a disparate peasantry This paper has demonstrated that the ideologies of Türkiye İhitlalci İşçi Köylü Partisi and Partido Comunista del Perú – Sendero Luminoso highlight the similarities between Turkey and Peru with respect to the alienation of the peasants from the State and the imperfect integration of the national economy into the global marketplace. It has done this through a review of the two parties’ analyses of the formation of their respective States; their shared misinterpretations of the root causes of peasant malaise and its implications for the nation; and their successful

109

Ibid., p. 79. 110

Lora, G., Sobre Sendero Luminoso, pp. 19-20. 111



Türkdoğan, Orhan, Sosyal Şiddet ve Türkiye Gerçeği (İstanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 1996), p. 109. 114

Granados, Manuel Jesús, El PCP Sendero Luminoso y su Ideología, p. 82.


18

identifications of education and justice as the two core demands of the peasantry vis-à-vis an indifferent state. The success or failure of TİİKP and SL is a factor not only of the salience of their ideas to the national situation, but also of the reaction of the State, and socio-economic factors including the penetration of mass communications, the spread of literacy, and the presence or absence of competing ideologies. This work has not attempted a discussion of the relative success of either group in their implementation of their respective programs or the support that these doctrines garnered among any particular segment of the Turkish or Peruvian populations. Indeed, such a discussion would be tangential to the core issue investigated. TİİKP never implemented its policies in liberated zones, and was crushed as a political force during the 1980 coup. SL began its first anti-state actions in 1980 and by the middle of the decade controlled large swathes of territory in the Peruvian Sierra, while both civilian and military authorities struggled to combat the group and maintain the coherence of the State in other parts of the country. Such developments point to the differing power of the State in the face of non-state opponents, but they cannot deny the fundamental similarities that existed during the transition of Turkey and Peru to neo-liberal economies, and the common complaint of development’s malcontents. The presence of Maoist ideology in both countries was an attempt at addressing such complaints by going beyond the State’s narrative of difference towards a rhetoric of universalist values.

Works Cited Aresvik, Oddvar, The Agricultural Development of Turkey, New York: Praeger Publishers, 1975. Aricanli, Tosun, ‘Agrarian Relations in Turkey: A Historical Sketch’, in ed. Alan Richard, Food,

States and Peasants: Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986.

Barkey, Henri J., The State and the Industrialization Crisis in Turkey, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1990.

Bonner, Raymond, ‘A Reporter at Large: Peru’s War’, The New Yorker, 04 January 1988, New York: New Yorker Publishing, pp. 31-58.

Bustamante y Rivero, José Luis, ‘Clases, grupos o agrupaciones sociales’, in ed. Roger Iziga Nuñez, Peru: Sociología, clases sociales y sociedad, Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1994, pp. 79-110.

Degregori, Carlos Iván, Ayacucho 1969-1979: El Surgimiento de Sendero Luminoso, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1990.

Degregori, Carlos Iván, ‘“Sendero Luminoso”: I. Los hondos y mortales desencuentros; II. Lucha armada y utopia autoritaria’, Documento de Trabajo No. 4 y 6, Lima: Instituto de Estudios Peruanos, 1985.

El Diario, Interview with Chairman Gonzálo, Berkeley, CA: Committee to Support the Revolution in Peru, 1991.

FitzGerald, E.V.K., The Political Economy of Peru 1956-1978: Economic Development and the Restructuring of Capital, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1979.

Granados, Manuel Jesús, El PCP Sendero Luminoso y su Ideología, Lima: 1992. Iziga Nuñez, Roger, ‘Peru: Clases sociales, estructura y proceso’, in ed. Roger Iziga Nuñez, Peru:

Sociología, clases sociales y sociedad, Lima: Universidad Nacional Mayor de San Marcos, 1994, pp. 11-70.

Kayalı, Hasan, ‘The Struggle for Independence’, in ed. Reşat Kasaba, The Cambridge History of Modern Turkey Volume 4: Turkey in the Modern World, Cambridge: Cambridge


19

University Press, 2008, pp. 125-147. Keesing’s Research Report, The Sino-Soviet Dispute, London: Keesing’s Publications Limited,

1970. Lora, G., Sobre Sendero Luminoso, La Paz, Bolivia, 1984. Lüthi, Lorenz, The Sino-Soviet Split: Cold War in the Communist World, Princeton, NJ: Princeton

University Press, 2008. McClintock, Cynthia, ‘Why Peasants Rebel: The Case of Peru’s Sendero Luminoso’, World Politics,

Volume 37, Number 1, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, October 1984, pp. 48- 84.

Öztürk, Murat, Agriculture, peasantry and poverty in Turkey in the neo-liberal age, Wageningen, NL: Wageningen Academic Publishers, 2012.

Pease G. Y., Franklin, Breve historia contemporánea del Perú, Mexico: Fondo de Cultura Económica, 1995.

Pike, Fredrick B., The Modern History of Peru, London: Weidenfeld and Nicholson, 1967. Poulantzas, Nicos, La crise des dictatures, Paris: François Maspero, 1975. Samim, Ahmet, ‘The Left’, in ed. Benatar, Rezan, Irvin C. Schick and Ronnie Margulies Turkey in

Transition: New Perspectives, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987. Taylor, Lewis, ‘Maoism in the Andes: Sendero Luminoso and the contemporary guerrilla

movement in Peru’, Working Paper 2, Centre for Latin American Studies: Liverpool, 1983.

Türk, İbrahim, Türk Toplumunda Sosyal Sınıflar, Istanbul: Öncü Kitabevi, 1970. Türkdoğan, Orhan, Sosyal Şiddet ve Türkiye Gerçeği, İstanbul: Timaş Yayınları, 1996. Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi-Köylü Partisi Dosyası I, Ankara: Töre-Devlet Yayınevi, 1973. Türkiye İhtilalci İşçi Köylü Partisi Davası: Savunma, Ankara: Aydınlık Yayınları, 1974. Uner, Sunday, ‘Migration and Labor Transformation in Rural Turkey’, in ed. Alan Richard, Food

States and Peasants: Analyses of the Agrarian Question in the Middle East, Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1986.

Zürcher, Erik J., Turkey: A Modern History, London: I. B. Tauris, 2012.

A Challenge to the Narrative of Difference: A Contrastive Approach to the Experience of Türkiye...

Documents

Transcript of A Challenge to the Narrative of Difference: A Contrastive Approach to the Experience of Türkiye...