What Was Said After Kanlı Pazar

This two-page pamphlet, dated 27 February 1969 and held in the TÜSTAV archive, was prepared and distributed immediately after Kanlı Pazar. The pamphlet combines photographs of the attack, images from the march, police cordons, and various frames from the aftermath of the event, and includes the views of DİSK Chairman Kemal Türkler and Deputy Chairman Ehliiman Tuncer.

The pamphlet's headline — "The American Sixth Fleet Has Done Its Job Once Again, Setting Its America-Loving Tools Upon the Patriots" — reads like a summary of how the massacre was understood. The opposition was framed as one between "patriots" and "America-lovers," with the government of the day characterized as a mere "tool." The pamphlet also names these "America-lovers" directly; beneath a photograph showing attackers, together with police, beating a demonstrator they had caught among them, the following words appear: "What is national, what is Turkish, what is student, what is unity about these men."

The document does not merely offer an assessment of Kanlı Pazar; it also shows how the period's youth — the "socialist revolutionary" leftist youth in particular — framed the events, which slogans they foregrounded, and what kind of political narrative they were trying to construct in the public eye.

ON BEHALF OF THE T. İ. P. GROUP, SADUN AREN (continuing) — This reactionary brute force — that is, this reactionary brute force encouraged and organized by the Justice Party government — targeted, at first, only the socialists and the Workers' Party. But as this reactionary force grew stronger — and it has grown rapidly stronger over these three years — it has also widened its target, and has begun attacking every kind of contemporary thought.

SEDAT AKAY (Kocaeli) — Against the provocation of communism, nothing else.

SADUN AREN (continuing) — No, sir. Their definition of communism covers everyone except themselves.

CELÂL NURİ KOÇ (Kars) — We will attack the communists.

CHAIRMAN — Mr. Celâl Nuri Koç, do not interrupt.

SADUN AREN (continuing) — The Istanbul events, the recent Istanbul events, the bloody Istanbul events, are clear proof of this.

TAHİR YÜCETÜRK (Adana) — Were you there too?

SADUN AREN (continuing) — I was at that march, I took part in that march.

TAHİR YÜCETÜRK (Adana) — You too, as part of the organization.

SADUN AREN (continuing) — Of course the march was organized, but..

CELÂL NURİ KOÇ (Kars) — Why did you take part, I wonder?

CHAIRMAN — Mr. Koç, please do not interrupt, sir. Whatever his reason for joining, he is explaining it. Do not interrupt; why are you interrupting? Good Lord..

ON BEHALF OF THE T. İ. P. GROUP, SADUN AREN (continuing) — This was a march for which legal permission had been obtained, and I too took part in it, and it reached Taksim Square; I am relating to you what I saw. The march entered Taksim Square in formation.

TAHİR YÜCETÜRK (Adana) — You too, included..

SADUN AREN (continuing) — Yes. A moment later, a moment came when, after around a thousand people had entered Taksim Square from Gümüşsuyu, the Riot Police began throwing bombs — noise bombs, ones that make a loud sound. And there was panic; from Gümüşsuyu, together with the reactionary forces and attackers behind the police, in the marching column and toward Gümüşsuyu.

OSMAN SARAÇ (Tokat) — That was the Turkish Nation.

CHAIRMAN — Mr. Saraç; please, sir, do not interrupt. Friends, please, we are in deliberation. Mr. Saraç, please, sir, do not interrupt, you may respond when you take the floor.

OSMAN SARAÇ (Tokat) — Given the chance, I would respond a great deal.

CHAIRMAN — Give your material to your Group Deputy Chairman.

ON BEHALF OF THE T. İ. P. GROUP, SADUN AREN (continuing) — A small part of the marching column, around a thousand people, was trapped in a pincer, and the Riot Police played the primary role in this trapping. I saw this with my own eyes. Had they thrown the bombs at the reactionaries when they attacked, the reactionaries would have scattered — but they did not do this; they threw them toward Gümüşsuyu instead, and closed off that area, preventing more of the marching column from entering, and I was able to see the other events that unfolded only through photographs, just as you were, because I could only see the spot where I myself was standing. This is what happened at the spot where I was.

NAZMİ ÖZOĞUL (Edirne) — Did you prepare the Molotov cocktails yourselves?

SADUN AREN (continuing) — And here, of course, the managers of domestic politics — the Minister of the Interior above all — bear great responsibility, sole responsibility. And the Governor of Istanbul was, 4–5 years earlier, the Governor of Bursa at the time of a similar event that took place in Bursa — he is quite experienced in these matters. Now, an investigation is being carried out into these matters. Of course the truth will come to light. Our country, thank God, is a country developed enough for this. Nothing can be covered up. But as long as the Minister of the Interior and the Governor of Istanbul remain in their posts, this investigation cannot be carried out properly. If they want it carried out properly, let them be removed from their duties. Let them either resign of their own accord, or let the Government remove them from office.

This brute force, the brute force in Taksim, attacked everyone but itself. It pinned something like a small red flag to its own lapel, so as to recognize one another..

OSMAN SARAÇ (Tokat) — The Turkish Flag, not something like a flag — the flag itself.

SADUN AREN (continuing) — And it attacked everyone not of its own kind, everyone without a flag on their chest. This is what this brute force is.

After that, we come to the beginning of these events. These events begin with a red flag being raised on the Beyazıt Tower. For six days now, in the country — in Istanbul especially — there has been an unending stream of marches, an unending stream of rallies, unending goings-on..

Fine, we say nothing against these — but one must think: how much tension are these creating in the country.

(...)

What did the police do in Taksim Square? They set up a cordon, cleared the square. Those who came to the square, those with a legal right to speak there under the law, would speak. That is how all of this has been explained... In the end, a scuffle broke out, and this scuffle unfortunately ended in a distressing way. But why should all this be hung around the government's neck? Consider the atmosphere, consider the state the citizen's nerves are in. How do you know the citizen won't think, "If occupying land is allowed, then other kinds of lawbreaking are allowed too"?

The group, marching legally, ignoring the police cordon, moved to follow the direction of the square toward Harbiye, all the while raising and lowering a banner reading "Sixth Fleet Get Out" in a provocative manner and making hand and arm gestures toward the crowd, and Molotov cocktails and stones began to be thrown. In the face of this unexpected conduct on the part of the marching group, individuals belonging to the opposing group, gathered here and there within the larger crowd, broke through the police cordon at one or two points in a sudden fit of rage, and responded to those marching legally with the stones, clubs, and various implements that had appeared.

(…) Events carrying within them various problems and the accumulated weight of provocations that had continued for years were brought to a close — thanks solely to the devoted efforts of the security forces — with as few casualties as possible.

Those who raised the red flag on the Beyazıt Tower, those who threw soldiers of the Sixth Fleet into the sea, have carried their provocations and their disrespect toward the nation to their absolute limit, in Taksim.

The Turkish nation has now fully understood the intent behind this conduct.

The Taksim incident has clearly shown that national consciousness will always triumph over the left and the sellouts.

Let us first note this: it was, above all, the provocations of the leftist press that brought the Taksim events to such a bloody point. Indeed, the deliberately staged photographs and news items published in these newspapers after the event once again gave away the true culprits.

It is clear from the published photographs and declarations that among the organizers and managers of the rally were TİP members or persons convicted of communism, such as Vecdi Özgüner, Sevinç Özgüner, Rasih Nuri İleri, Deniz Gezmiş, and Fadıl Barkan. Here are their declarations, here are their signatures…

Let no one be in any doubt: our nation has now learned the aim and purpose of those who wished to camouflage themselves under the mask of "Revolutionary," "Leftist," and "Socialist."

In short, the Taksim incident was the uprising of the communists, the fury of the patriots. This should be a lesson for them.

In recent days, developments that shake the very foundations of the state have unsettled every reasonable and patriotic person. It is quite plain that the communists' daily attempts at some new move have finally caused the people to fly into a rage and attack. The true provocateurs behind the street clash that caused two deaths are the communists. Those who stage a street action every single day knew, and wanted, that such a reaction would come, and that the blood of brothers would be spilled.

Those who assess even our national struggle in class terms, calling it a "bourgeois revolutionary" affair — if these are not communists, then who is a communist in Turkey? Those who label rightists' call to jihad as the resurrection of the caliphate are themselves trying, under the name "call to a second war of freedom," to exploit Atatürkist youth for a "Red Jihad."

Turkish youth condemns every kind of provocation of enmity liable to cause a clash between brothers. The so-called "youth rally" is far from representative of Turkish youth. The Marxist group that dared to raise the red flag, through the exploitation of workers, is attempting, with a skillful maneuver, to pin these actions on the whole of Turkish youth.

Our fellow university students, who wage the intellectual struggle within the democratic order, must remain neutral and cautious in the face of any invitation to clash, from right or left alike. Genuine Turkish youth is the advocate and accomplice of no bloc outside its national interests. And the handful of rabble and children who joined the recent red marches are incapable of representing this youth. Genuine Turkish youth is dignified, noble, and faithful to Atatürk's principles. Those who fill the streets every day for nothing — thoughtless, degenerate lackeys of the Muscovite who unsettle the nation and the people — can never, and must never, represent Turkish youth.

I call on Atatürkist, nationalist youth to unite against these red slaves of imperialism.

The University: In our universities, crumbling on every side and having already lost the power to remain standing, though this diagnosis is shared by right-wing and left-wing groups alike, it is more often than not the idealists who find themselves obliged to defend this sick institution against the materialists. Consider that sorrowful obligation: spiritually minded, traditionalist youth find themselves under a duty to protect an institution that admits of no defense — one that, in the future, will itself be their own target — from a leftist assault. When the lion sees a hyena pouncing on the prey it means to seize, it will naturally turn against the hyena, rather than stoop to the disgrace of sharing its prey with it. The field cannot be left to the crows.

The Left's Conduct: The same contradiction found in the university question — traditionalist youth being placed under an obligation to defend an institution they neither love nor find compatible with their own spirit — manifests itself, in exactly the same way, in the leftist camp's stance of siding with the American. Otherwise, no Turk who has downed a couple of whiskies and then torn up the Turkish Flag, and who thinks of nothing beyond a harsh policy of imperialism, could ever be loved by any Turk. But once the provocation of communism enters the picture, the matter changes character entirely. Today, America stands in the position of a D.D.T. against the Muscovite world. D.D.T. is used to be sprayed on insects, not drunk like strawberry syrup… And naturally, there is no such tendency as finding D.D.T.'s taste pleasant and coming to love it. To attempt to chase the American away with "Go home, get lost!" is to invite in the Muscovite and communism, and to break the D.D.T. bottle for the sake of the germs. It is the people and the youth, sensing this subtlety at a deep level, who showed their finest response to the left's conduct in the Taksim incident. To identify the true spirit of the incident, let us note this: what was effective in this matter was neither the M.T.T.B., nor the A.P. Youth Branch, nor the commandos, nor this, nor that! It was the people themselves, directly — the traditionalist masses… The day has now come to acknowledge that a people's and a nation's front has begun to establish itself on Turkish soil, and that it is this front that protects itself, its government, and its national policy! What fell to the government after the Taksim incident was to declare the following:

"You see that in Turkey, the nation is beginning to become a nation! Even if, as a government, we do not condone the incident and the unlawful acts, we must point out that the people, whose conscience-engine has now begun to run, have, after half a century of slumber and disorder, finally reached the point of proving their own existence — even if their vehicle strikes a few obstacles along the way, and even if they accept the penalty for this. We characterize this same people as having stepped onto the most fortunate of paths, under the warning to obey the laws, and we advise the traitors to the nation to open their eyes!"

The government's understanding did not run deep enough to deliver such a declaration, and the traditionalist Turkish people, as always, were once again left orphaned. But they can manage on their own.

The Real Culprits

After the bloody incident in Taksim, wanting it to be even bloodier, every leftist newspaper opened a second front in their columns against us. They accuse the AP. They accuse the Prime Minister. They accuse the Minister of the Interior. They accuse the Governor of Istanbul, even the police force…

We are deeply saddened by our fallen brothers. But the organizers of these demonstrations did this knowing full well what would happen. Has this not been the case in previous demonstrations as well? It will be so in the ones to come, too.

Every leftist newspaper is attacking us because blood was spilled in Taksim. It is they who prepared the ground for the spilling of blood. Did they issue the slightest warning to the leftists? Among the blood spilled were our own innocent victims too.

Our fellow photojournalist Bahattin Şenol has only just come out of a coma. The son of our esteemed editor-in-chief was hospitalized after being wounded in the head.

Read the leftist newspapers! Our spilled blood is of no account to them! Not even worth mentioning. Have you seen it, in even a single one of them? Poor Şenol, lying dazed in a hospital bed? For the leftists, their own blood is precious — but it is they who prepared the ground for this catastrophe.

To listen to the leftist writers, you'd think these people had gone to Taksim for a festival. That, while singing national songs, they were set upon by enemies of the Turk! Whereas in reality, they went to Taksim to bring anarchy to Turkey, to bring communism to Turkey. The commotion they raised is too repugnant for the national conscience ever to accept. They attack the Sixth Fleet, calling it Turkey's ally. This Fleet is ours, part of our defense force. Does one attack the naval forces of a guest ally in one's own nation's harbor?

No nation's conscience could accept this. And what manner of attack, so utterly outside the bounds of national decency. Let me repeat, if you will pardon me, one of the placards they carried: "American Bastard. Beat It, Sixth Fleet!"

They say they were assaulted by religious zealots. It is they, again, who provoked using religion. Here, look, is the title of the joint declaration distributed by all the leftist unions: "To the American Infidel!"

One need not be a legal expert to understand this. Anyone can understand it. Put your hand on your conscience and decide: who deserves to hang. Please, tell me — in a gathering formed proudly, for this purpose, with this intent, would a fight not break out? Would there not be wounded, would there not be dead? We owe thanks to the Minister of the Interior, the Governor, the police, the government. They spared us this calamity to the extent that they did.

To the leftists and all their lackeys, I cry out, in the name of the Turkish nation, with the voice of the İstiklal Marşı: "You cannot bring the Bolshevik yoke upon this nation. You cannot enslave this people!"

Who are those who turned Taksim's sunny Sunday into "Kanlı Pazar," who filled this country's squares with the slogans of Soviet imperialism, who tried to blow thousands of citizens sky-high by planting a bomb at the İzmir Mosque, who finally wore the people's patience so thin that they were forced into self-defense?

(…) I am addressing no one but the reasonable members of the CHP. In this country, anarchy and communism will not be allowed to survive, no matter what, and will be crushed. But if they truly want to "protect domestic peace, the constitutional order," let them look carefully. Let them see who is cooking up these vile words in the Party Executive Board. Let them know full well that İsmet Paşa has already been pushed aside. Tomorrow even Ecevit will be pushed aside. Those responsible for these attempts, preparing their own party for a red revolution, are Muammer Aksoy and his accomplices — the far leftists. The CHP will either free itself from these people, or it will merge with TİP and go down with it. But the country will not go down.

Let Us Unite Against the American Infidel

Hundreds of thousands of workers, peasants, and young people are marching against American colonialism and its partners within our midst!.. They march because they do not want the cruel Sixth Fleet, watchdog of the colonialist American companies, the usurers, the plundering merchants, and the landlords!.. They march for an independent Turkey where the infidel American flags do not fly, for a Turkey without unemployment, where working people receive their due rights!..

Unable to enter our midst by force of arms, the American infidel deceitfully brought more than 35,000 soldiers into our homeland under the name of "friend." On our soil, watered by the blood of our martyrs — soil our own officers and soldiers cannot even enter — more than 100 American military bases have been established. Alongside this, the American infidel has begun bringing his Sixth Fleet into our territorial waters, using our harbors as a bed of prostitution for his sailors!.. While our unemployed wander the streets, our sick cannot find a hospital bed, and our children waste away for want of medicine, hotels are being closed off so that American sailors can engage in prostitution. The American Sixth Fleet's depraved commander, Admiral Charbonatt, dances the belly dance with a dancing girl's skirt tied around his waist, as if mocking our poverty!.. Our poor brothers in uniform stand guard for the Americans in the cold, so that they may do their jobs well!..

Our deceived Muslim brothers, having prayed against the infidel American Sixth Fleet, are being set upon our other Muslim brothers marching for independence!.. Muslims do not pray beneath infidel flags. Muslims fight until they drive out those flags. Jihad is not declared against brothers who demand independence, but against the plundering infidel, America!.. For our freedom, our bread, our honor, let us unite against the infidel America and its partners, let us fight.

The anti-imperialist march the workers set in motion had, by the time it approached Taksim, grown — with the people joining in — into an independence army 30,000 strong. This independence army, whose aim was to explain the ugly wheel of exploitation in which our people found themselves caught, was naturally unarmed and had not formed up for combat. Even so, the anti-imperialist struggle that had begun in major cities such as İzmir, Ankara, Trabzon, Adana, and Gaziantep, and that was gradually coming to be embraced by the peasant masses, created a terrifying panic among America and its collaborators. This panic is what led them to organize the attack in Taksim. Those who organized it thought they could extinguish the anti-imperialist flame blazing in Taksim Square. For this reason, once only a small portion of the 30,000-strong crowd had entered the square, the rest were cut off by the police and left outside it. Stones were thrown at the independence fighters who entered the square, and they were attacked by police, brainwashed racist militants, and reactionary groups representing the intellectual plane of the feudal remnant. In this attack, pistols, low-trajectory fragmentation bombs, bottles, hatchets, axes, clubs, and truncheons were used. In carrying out this attack, the deceived — who had prayed against the Sixth Fleet and counted themselves Muslims — did not shrink from wounding to the point of death, and from killing, those they managed to seize. In the clashes that broke out in the side streets, the independence fighters, for their part, gave the sellouts and the deceived who fell into their hands the lesson they deserved.

In this affair, the press, too — controlled by finance capital — fell into the very same trap America applies everywhere. The events were presented as a simple clash between progressives and reactionaries, between the religious and the communist. It was never made clear that this was, in fact, a fight between our people, waging a war of independence, and the deceived forces sold out — in mind and in stomach — to imperialism. This is American imperialism's classic tactic. In the countries it exploits, it tries to set the people against one another by forming armies, among classes whose interests coincide with its own, in the service of its own interests. The moment true nationalists, anywhere, begin destroying these fabricated forces, it sets its own cruel armed forces into actual motion, under the cover of the outcry "I am protecting freedom, I am preventing conflict." This is exactly the game slowly being played out in Turkey. The recent Taksim incident is this same game. Behavior of this kind will not intimidate the independence fighters — on the contrary, it will send them into action even more determined, even more convinced. The imperialists and their lackeys, by persisting in their folly, will accomplish nothing but pitting this mass — organizing itself into a single fist — more powerfully against themselves. In truth, the lackeys of imperialism, with their every new move, are shooting themselves and locking themselves into darkness. The tragic end of the collaborators at the close of the First World War is the most concrete example for these same collaborators. As the imperialist battleships left our country, the great majority of the collaborators, searching for a hole to escape through, were left to the mercy of the fighters of the War of Independence. The lesson Mustafa Kemal gave them should be taken as an example. Minds must be gathered and focused. Our war against the imperialists and against those who fight on their behalf has begun. Our watchword is independence or death.

In this affair, the press, too — controlled by finance capital — fell into the very same trap America applies everywhere.

Before the march, many friends were assigned to bring it under control. Controlling the march was an important problem. Because a provocateur could appear at the least expected moment and make the crowd do something wrong. To prevent this provocation and to carry the march through as intended, bringing the protest to a proper close, students were assigned in groups. These friends were chosen mostly from among the students themselves, because they were students experienced in marches. And we were more familiar with the students, and could find reliable people among them… We had a general grasp of the situation. But there was no unity among ourselves, either, on every front. On the contrary, there were many friends among us playing to a junta. What mattered to them was preparing the ground for a junta intervention. And the path to this ran through reducing the government to helplessness. Yes, in their view, what needed to be done was to frame the country's and the world's problems in a way opposed to the government but in keeping with the country's interests, and in the process, to wear the government down. As the government wore down, a "Revolutionary Junta" (!) would arrive, and the problem would be resolved at its root. So the whole effort, in their view, ought to be aimed at wearing down the government. We, however, believed no junta would ever be beneficial, and took a stance against every action aimed at a junta. Our aim was to bring the country's problems to the people and to enable the people to take ownership of their own problems. This was a long road, one demanding sustained effort. In other words, they were against the government, while we were against the system. The distinction between being against the government and being against the system was one we used among ourselves during 1968–69. Yes, in the final analysis, for the MDD-ists of that period, who were at bottom junta-minded, the government needed to change and patriots needed to come to power. We, however, did not believe a change of government imposed from above would do any good. Besides, every junta movement was, in our view, a movement that, while containing many well-intentioned, decent people within it, also contained, to a greater or lesser degree, the hand of an agent. Throughout all the protest events, a friction — small, but persistent — continued between us and the MDD-ists. One group of friends favored arming themselves, even if only with stones.

The march in Istanbul, remembered by the name Kanlı Pazar, was prepared jointly with other youth and labor organizations. The aim was to protest American imperialism and the Sixth Fleet. With the people joining in, the marching column reached 25,000–30,000 people. At the mouth of the narrow uphill road entering Taksim, the police left the small portion at the front of the marching column to the reactionaries' trap, and dispersed the rest of it themselves. Two people died, hundreds more were wounded, and the rally could not be held in Taksim. This failure had several causes. For one thing, the defense of this enormous marching column had been left to just one group of FKF youth. And their preparations were not enough to overcome the armed reactionaries, who vastly outnumbered them. The union representatives and other youth representatives had not prepared their own groups. Second, the leaders, seeing a crowd of 25,000–30,000, fell into a great complacency without considering that the crowd was unprepared, and walked into the trap. On top of this, since nothing like it had occurred before in Turkey, they were not expecting an armed attack of this kind. They had calculated that this crowd could never be dispersed. Their calculations proved wrong.

Sunday's events, and the events unfolding in other cities across the country, show that the counter-demonstrations in every province are the government's own doing. For this reason, we say: the government must resign. We further believe that these latest events could only have been carried out by none other than Komer, the specialist in intimidating and crushing peoples, the CIA Agent. We likewise characterize the latest repressive laws as the government's effort to protect American interests.

To the People of Turkey

The sellout government continues its performances all across Turkey. In these performances, the greatest prompting role belongs to American-CIA agents and their go-betweens of affection. Their savage dogs, fed on blood, also come out on stage to bark, sinking their teeth into anyone who stands against imperialism and exploitation. These dogs, herded by the police, carried out their most savage attack yet on Sunday, 16 February 1969, in Taksim Square. They beat, with pistols, knives, and clubs, to the point of coma, anyone not wearing a KIRAT badge on their lapel. They killed. We list here the concrete examples that confirm our claims:

1- The oaths sworn on Friday at the rally the "There Is Only One Path: Islam" crowd held in Beyazıt Square — vows to "kill leftists in order to open the gates of paradise" — were the workings of the strings of the government's and America's dominion over Turkey.

2- The statement given by the Governor of Istanbul on Sunday morning, "The police are tasked with protecting everything lawful," makes clear that the attacking mob acted in accordance with the government's Laws. Because the Police protected and assisted the attackers.

3- The role played in the fray by AP provincial and district chairmen, bought for a pack of American cigarettes, is a large one. For example: it has been learned from close circles that the red Anadol-brand automobile that distributed Stones, Clubs, Knives, and Pistols to this savage mob gathered in Taksim Square belonged to a person on the AP Beyoğlu District executive board.

4- While the Fleet's American Admiral belly-danced and handed out dollars in bars, the forces at the government's disposal served as his protection detail.

5- To the Honorable Prime Minister Demirel's statement to the newspapers, "We cannot tell the Sixth Fleet not to come," we say, "You cannot even say welcome."

6- To Minister of the Interior Dr. Faruk Sükan's statement, "Citizens cannot be beaten in police stations," it would not be wrong to add the confirming addendum: "Nor can they be beaten in Taksim Square."

We call out to the people of Turkey: "Attaining independence" and "freeing ourselves from exploitation" is a cause belonging to all of us, and in this fight, all of us have a place. In this fight, ever more new Vedat Demircioğlus are being buried in history as martyrs of the revolution. We remind you that it falls to us to take our place in the Second War of National Liberation, opened under the leadership of the Great Ata, and we declare our trust in the people of Turkey, who gave the first War of Independence to history. Long live the true patriotic people of Turkey, fighting for their independence against imperialism.

We strongly condemn the attacks organized in Istanbul against a legal rally. In any future events, revolutionary youth will exercise their right to self-defense. The youth movements in Turkey are not, as some claim, mere imitations of the West. Turkish youth, in fact, behave with greater maturity than Western youth in bringing solutions to problems. Some have come forward to characterize the recent events as a fight between brothers. We do not accept this. The recent events are not a fight between brothers. Those who collaborate with American imperialism cannot be our brothers. We will seek ways to drive out those who hold this stance. We have entered a long-term war. Our struggle will continue even after the Sixth Fleet leaves. We will give many martyrs, but we will reach our goal. Even should American Ambassador "Butcher Komer" be replaced, we will continue our resistance against imperialism.

To pile blame mercilessly on the security forces, on the city's governor, in every incident — to lay the whole of the responsibility on them by rote — is not a view we support. And we accept that those charged with maintaining public order in Istanbul yesterday faced great difficulties: the beauty of the weather had already brought tens of thousands of people pouring into the streets and squares. Nerves worn thin for days, feelings that had been stirred up, had brought the crowds to a state in which they were ready to clash with one another at the first opportunity. And once such an opportunity presented itself, it was naturally difficult for the small cadre responsible for keeping various simultaneous incidents (as at football matches) in different parts of the city under control to secure the oversight expected of it.

Yet despite all these difficult circumstances, however much tolerance we extend, it is simply not possible to excuse those responsible in the face of yesterday's disaster. Because everything unfolded in a manner that was expected, known, even, one might almost say, desired, and it is clear that not a single one of the necessary measures to prevent it was taken. Consider the following:

Those emerging from the communal prayers held at the Dolmabahçe and Beşiktaş mosques were seen heading straight for Taksim Square, even before the march — organized in accordance with the law under the name "Workers' March Against Imperialism and Exploitation," announced to begin at Hürriyet Square and end in Taksim — had even begun. It was plain for all to see that a large crowd, prepared to attack, clubs in hand, had gathered in Taksim together with the thousands who joined them. Thus, hours in advance, it was known to everyone that an attack was being prepared in Hürriyet Square against those who would be arriving. What was done in response? Absolutely nothing… They made do with a handful of police supposedly holding the large assembled crowd within a cordon. Not only was no effort made to disperse them, but not a single measure that could have been taken against the scuffle that was plainly coming was resorted to. It was not even considered to request help from military units, at the very least — to erect an effective barricade between two crowds that had worked themselves up against one another.

The situation is so extraordinary that it appears highly probable that such a clash was wanted, even encouraged. (That these events broke out precisely while a bill to remove — or at least restrict — freedoms was being submitted to parliament is a further point that heightens the suspicion of encouragement in this matter.) If this terrifying possibility is correct, then a tactic that has until now been the subject of speculation will have been definitively exposed, and it will become clear that the government has been pursuing a calculation of intimidating leftists and rightists by setting them against one another, so as to establish a kind of balance.

As we have tried to point out before, this calculation is as dangerous as it is terrifying… If those responsible have still not come to their senses after the blood shed and the lives cut short yesterday in Taksim Square, they will bring still greater disasters upon this country's head.

The ominous events that bathed Taksim Square in blood are neither the product of coincidence, nor an unexpected surprise, nor the result of helplessness on the part of those in power.

Just like the stone-and-club attacks we have already seen so many rehearsals of, the raids on parliament, the lynchings — this is the execution of a plan prepared with the cold-bloodedness of a professional killer.

You can find this plan's earliest longing for preparation in Demirel's speeches about "arming two hundred thousand people," and its final touches in the warships America knowingly sent to provoke an incident, and in the arrival of Komer, famed by the name "the butcher of men."

The Konya uprising was staged in exactly the same fashion. The attacks in Trabzon, İzmir, Adana, and Ankara all carry the unmistakable stamp of the same tailor's hand.

Political mosque gatherings. The arson attacks on theaters staging plays the AP government took offense at, the appearance, at the Kurtuluş Rally in Ankara, of club-wielding, thick-mustached, long-coated fifty-year-old savages attacking under the cry of "Nationalist youth," who later turned up as ushers at the AP's Grand Congress, the fact that everyone arrested as a suspect in the Ödemiş attacks turned out to be an AP member — these are all frames cut from different reels of the very same script.

Open yesterday's newspapers and look… You will see a knife raised over a young man writhing on the ground, and a helmeted police officer, club in hand, watching this scene with indifference… I wonder, had that same knife been raised over Demirel or Sükan, would that police officer have stood by so indifferently? It must be, then, that the order was given for him to stand by so indifferently…

Yesterday's newspapers, too, carry photographs showing how police dragged wounded young people. A method for hauling a wounded man to hospital by dragging him along the ground could only have been invented on Sükan's orders.

The AP, America, the gang of plunderers, and the green turban, hand in hand. They have joined forces in Turkey, in the mad pursuit of creating a second Vietnam against all independent and revolutionary forces.

By these calculations, either Demirel's bill, securing the dictatorship of the comprador class, will be adopted, or blood will flow in rivers. The local administrators whom the U.S. State Department spokesman described as being "in a state of excellent cooperation" are now doing somersaults on this double-pronged fork…

(…) It was known in advance that events would break out in Istanbul. Journalists had already given the necessary warning to Governor Vefa Poyraz. The Governor's reply amounted to nothing more than: "Nothing will happen, the necessary measures have been taken."

I wonder, had the young people and workers' legally permitted rally instead been an AP rally, and had preparations to attack that rally begun as early as morning, would the Governor have appeared so indifferent?

Sunday's bloody events are being characterized as the largest reactionary uprising in Istanbul since 31 March. Just as the 31 March incident was orchestrated by Abdülhamid, this uprising, too, was orchestrated by certain hidden hands. That these hidden hands are complicit with the government is established, in the clearest possible way, by the photographs published in the newspapers.

The Menderes government created the Topkapı incidents, prepared 6–7 September, attacked the universities — but it never sank to this degree of being caught red-handed. Indeed, a comparison of the death toll under the 10-year Menderes government with the death toll under the Demirel government demonstrates this.

Workers shot dead, young people killed by being thrown from windows, beaten with clubs — these belong to the Demirel era.

By now, even if Demirel and his cronies caught birds with their bare mouths, they could not escape this responsibility… The responsibility for the American fleet's ever-recurring visits lies plainly with them. The responsibility for the attacks on lawful rallies lies plainly with them. The responsibility for these young, bloodied graves lies with them. The responsibility for the bill they have prepared lies with them.

This is not a right-versus-left clash. In many American colonies, these events are deliberately staged, after which "anti-right and anti-left" pro-American dictatorships are established. We hope Turkey will not fall into this trap. The clash in Turkey is between the forces standing for the Constitution and for independence, and certain sold-out circles that the government has made common cause with in crime. It is these circles that organize and finance the mosque gatherings, the stone-and-club assaults. A little investigation will reveal exactly whose hand is pulling the strings. Just as it did in the Konya uprising, in the Ödemiş attack… The AP government will go down in history stamped with the blackest stain among all governments… By now, it is beyond anyone's power to prevent or reverse this…

Osman Bölükbaşı is one of the important representatives of the nationalist camp in Turkish political history. He entered politics in 1946 through Adnan Menderes's Democrat Party, left the DP in 1947 to pursue a harder line of opposition against the CHP, took part in founding the Millet Partisi in 1948, and, in 1950, was elected as the Millet Partisi's sole deputy from his home province of Kırşehir. When his party was shut down in 1953 on the grounds that it "produced policy contrary to secularism," he founded the Cumhuriyetçi Millet Partisi in 1954 and was elected its chairman; when he was again elected as a deputy from Kırşehir in the 1954 elections, the DP government responded by demoting Kırşehir from a province to a district and attaching it to Nevşehir.

He became chairman of the Cumhuriyetçi Köylü Millet Partisi (CKMP), formed in 1958 through the merger of the CMP and the Türkiye Köylü Partisi; when the CKMP joined the coalition government formed by İnönü in 1962, he left the party together with 28 deputies and refounded the Millet Partisi. The CKMP, meanwhile, passed after Bölükbaşı to the leadership of a group that included Türkeş, who in 1969 renamed it the Nationalist Movement Party (MHP).

At the time of Kanlı Pazar, Osman Bölükbaşı was a Millet Partisi deputy. In a speech he gave in parliament days after Kanlı Pazar, on 24 February 1969, he accused the Justice Party government under Demirel of "stepping outside the bounds of legitimacy," of "seeking an ally in the street against the street," of "using masses that had enjoyed its tolerance and support, and that it had provoked, as a striking force," and of "turning our sacred mosques, through overt and covert incitement, organization, or toleration of certain individuals, into headquarters for political assault units."

Bölükbaşı's remarks underscore the assessment that Kanlı Pazar was a planned operation, and place responsibility for it directly on the Justice Party under Demirel's leadership.

Taking this possibility into account, we are obliged to lay out, in the form of a table, several other facts that will further clarify the government's mentality and conduct. In drawing up this table, we will once again demonstrate that the true source of danger lies in the government's mentality, and in the person of Mr. Demirel, who represents this mentality with such consummate skill and competence.

The government says there is no such thing as stepping outside the bounds of legitimacy, yet it disregards numerous Council of State rulings despite the Constitution's command; it places, in the state's key positions, people who will serve its own purposes, and partisans; it establishes a partisan administration; it says those who are with us are bound for Heaven, those who are not are bound for Hell; through its various acts falling outside the Constitutional Court's oversight, it paralyzes parliamentary and oversight life; it defies from the rostrum, silences its rivals through motions to end debate, escapes the floor, denies its rival the chance to speak, and, should even this not suffice, resorts to brute force; it turns the state's resources into a banquet table for its friends and cronies, and imagines it can cover up its sins simply by shouting "example" as if it did not know better; as if what it has done in Turkey were not enough, it forgets — as we have set out from this very rostrum — that it has turned even the organization established to protect Turkish workers in Europe against subversive currents, communism above all, and to defend their rights, into a door of favors for useless friends and cronies who are of no use otherwise; it imagines that no one else knows which friend and which crony, unable to be reelected, it has granted high-earning, salaried notary posts and administrative-board sinecures to.

It melts together, in the same crucible of pretended devotion to service to the nation and unity of thought and ideal, people who call one another thieves; it enters into political marriages with chauvinists over its own ideas and actions, and, should these not suffice, over its own past and pedigree, and presents even this as consistent with political morality; wherever it sees the need and the opportunity, it steps outside every kind of legitimacy; it recklessly disparages the very Constitutional institutions that stand in the way of its whims and designs; it lays the burden of its own failure and lack of conviction upon the innocent Constitution; it sets, as a vote-trap, the slander that the Constitution supposedly prevents it from doing good work; and, on matters concerning the Constitution, it whispers into people's ears illegitimate and unrealizable promises.

It says a theocratic State cannot be founded in Turkey, but it does not say the words "a State based on Islamic law cannot be founded," because it knows the people would understand that. Faced with the Millet Partisi, which challenges it to an open reckoning on the Constitution from the parliamentary rostrum, it flees the ring, retreating into the shadow of a statement of unknown content along the lines of "if we secure the majority we want, we will change the Constitution"; wherever it finds the opportunity, it wishes to revive an era, and its Constitution, that dragged the Turkish Nation into the 27 May Revolution and its aftershocks; through its conduct and its actions in every domain, it prepares a favorable climate for every subversive current, communism foremost among them; it signs dangerous cultural agreements with communist Romania, and then claims to be the country's guardian angel against the communist danger; it lends unprecedented boldness and scope to treacherous currents working to destroy the state's integrity and the nation's unity; while guarding certain party interests against the roofs under which these currents unite, it fails to set the state's legitimate organs into motion; it cannot resolve a single one of the country's fundamental domestic or foreign problems, and when all this is laid bare, it meets thought and logic not with argument, but with sacks of votes; it presents itself as free of fault and sin, and even mocks the very people it has deceived with the taunt that "the citizen is not fooled"; it speaks of its love of service to the nation, yet in truth thinks not of the nation and of future generations, but of tomorrow's elections; it complains of the street, yet seeks an ally in the street against the street; it uses masses that have enjoyed its tolerance and support, and that it has provoked, as a striking force; it sets the most guilty examples of disrespect toward the very laws for which it demands respect from others; unaware that jihad had been declared in the newspapers, and that tens of thousands of people had gathered unlawfully in Taksim Square after the jihad prayer to do battle, it feigns an inability to discover their purpose in gathering; it makes itself so ridiculous as to claim that the Turkish police, whose vigilance is known to all, could not grasp this intent, and could not be aware of the existence of thousands of clubs too large to fit in any pocket; and thus it takes upon itself the responsibility for the bloody events; it cannot overcome a handful of red gangs despite the state's all-powerful legitimate forces and resources, or does not wish to take that path; for persons it has, through open and covert means, incited, organized, or tolerated, it turns our sacred mosques into headquarters for political assault units; it pays no heed to the warnings of the President, who reminded it in his message of 30 August 1968 that such actions are contrary to the law, and even enters into apparent conflict with him over the matter; when the abhorrent incident of the burning of the American Ambassador's car at the Middle East University constituted a crime and the suspects were arrested, it says, with an unlawful and irresponsible mentality invoking university autonomy, that the police could not intervene in the incident because they had not been given permission; yet less than a week later, it circulates to the governors a directive stating that university autonomy does not prevent the police from entering universities without permission where a crime has been committed; it pays no heed to our recommendation that an Interior Minister — one who inspires confidence in no one, given this strange and inconsistent conduct and his past — should not be kept within the Government out of concern for what lies ahead; and, in the end, knowingly and deliberately, it takes upon itself the responsibility and the burden of the bloody Istanbul events.

This is the mentality, this is the cadre, governing Turkey today.

Esteemed deputies; it must not be forgotten that whenever those in power step outside legal and moral legitimacy, or extend their tolerance and protection, for their own gain, to those who do so, there will always be those eager to imitate them — and no one can ever predict how far such imitation will go.