International Viewpoint Archive

The Fourth International’s English-language review, from 1982

The Rise and Crisis of the Turkish Workers Movement

· International Viewpoint No. 6, 10 May 1982 · pp 21-25 · 5,473 words

MOVEMENT What the military dictatorship is trying to do is reverse the historical rise of the workers movement that has confor two decades and represents fundamental changes in Turkish society. This constitutes a historic tragedy for the country and for the masses of working people. Let us sum up what is involved in

Going into the 1980s, the Turkish working class had attained considerable numerical strength. According to the statistics published at the end of 1981, the number of insured workers in Turkey was 2,154,000. However, that figure represents only a part of the Turkish industrial proletariat, because it does not inworkers who have not claimed social insurance coverage as a result of pressure from the bosses, in particular the threat of losing their jobs. Such workers are to be found especially in the very widespread small companies related to the building industry, and they certainly

For example, according to the official statistics, the number of workplaces where workers are not covered by social security is about half a million. gives an idea of the number of workers in small industry.

Moreover, the 2,154,000 workers mentioned above do not include the hundreds of thousands of workers in state suenties or seated operatiations issued. suant to a series of regulations since 1975, have been put in the category of civil servants. Likewise, the large numbers of workers temporarily employed in mine prospecting operations and sonal industries are not included in that

If all these categories are taken into consideration, the industrial working class can be estimated to account for more of the economically active population in Turkey. In view of the growth of industrialization in Istanbul and the major regional industrial centers, this percentage must be even higher.

Moreover, if we add the semiproletarians, who have never been counted but must number in the millions, and the 1.5 million civil servants, the proportion of wage workers in the economically active population must be over 50%.

### UNIONIZATION

The process of unionization among these masses of wage workers is as fol-

The uninsured industrial workers and agricultural workers are unable to join unions. That is true de facto for the banned by law from joining unions.

However, a large majority of the 2 million insured workers do belong to unions. Of the two big union confedera-

Turk-Is has about a million and a half members. DISK has about 300,000. The fascist MISK (Milliyetci Isci Sendikalari Konfederasyonu-Confederation of National Trade Unions) and the Islamic HAK-Is have been able to recruit only a few tens of thousands of workers. In addition, independent unions can be estimated to have hundreds of thousands of members. (Since the membership figures given by the unions themselves cannot stand up to the slightest examination, I have made a rough estimate, allowing for the exaggerations in the official statistics

which is certainly much closer to the key. The "working-class clubs" that had relatively sluggish country such as Tur- were passed. A labor minister was estatruth.) The membership figure given for DISK by the leadership varies between 800,000 and a million.

The biggest danger involved in such exaggerations is that they tend to show the Turkish workers struggle as weaker

If DISK had had a million members in the period before September 12, 1980, the conditions leading up to the would have been very different. The 300,000 strong section of the working class organized by DISK was in fact a small minority but it assumed major role and raised the level of the entire working-class movement.

WORKERS MOBILIZATIONS IN MODERN TURKEY In comparison with the Western countries in particular, strikes, unions, socialism, and so forth are relatively new concepts and experiences for the Turkish working class. They have in fact become part of the daily lives of the workers only in the last twenty years. If you go further back than that you find quite a different picture.

The founding of the Turkish repubbrought no notable acceleration of capi-

For decades after 1923, Turkey remained an agricultural country with an insignificant industrial sector. In a few centers, there was some notable growth of the mainly workers employed in food processing, mining and textiles.

In 1934, in workplaces covered by the industrial development law there were 66,247 workers. (Of course, workers at workplaces not covered by this law are not included in this figure, but it corexisted up to that time were abolished. In a few months time, tens of thousands of workers began to organize in unions.

However, this spring was a short After six months in which there was freedom to organize trade unions, martial law went into effect. All the unions and the two left parties were banned. The leaders and a section of the members were arrested, charged, and given heavy

In 1947, a new "trade-union law" went into effect. It was made legal to or-

But it took 16 years before the right to strike was granted by

In 1950, the 27-year period of one-party rule came to an end. The following period was one of rapid capitalization of agriculture and urbanization. same time, although it became rapid after 1960, industrialization showed only relative growth. In this period, Turkey's economic, political, and military ties with imperialism became stronger. The inflow of foreign capital increased. joined NATO and the Bagdad Pact (CENTO), sent soldiers to fight in Korea,

At the beginning of this period, the largest labor confederation, TURK-Is, was founded. In 1946, after the first rise of unionization was beaten back, were formed under government and po-

A trade-union bureaucracy was formed out of U.S. educated trade unionists, labor police, and lumpen pro-

Then, in 1951, TURK-Is was founded as a national labor confederation in close collaboration with the Interna-

Confederation of Free Trade However, there was a contradiction blished, a Labor and Workers Institute, and laws were enacted on healthy working conditions, retirement, and one providing for yearly and weekly days off as

At the time these laws were passed, their application was limited to a rather small minority of the working class. Atter 1963, broader sections of the working class.

### TOWARD FULL-SCALE

CLASS CONFRONTATION For the country as a whole, the coup of May 27, 1960, was a historic moment, opening the way for economic, political, and social changes. most of the young officers involved in the of the many-sided and far-reaching changes that it made pos-

This coup could be said to be in conformity with the general character of the army's involvement in politics in Turkey. For example at the beginning of this century, during the Ottoman empire, the especially the young officers, played the decisive role in the bourgeois democratic currents that developed and also later in the founding of the republic.

The 1960 coup determined course of the society for the next 21 years. The avowed intention of the 1980 coup was likewise to determine the future course of social, economic, cultural, and political relations by giving a new content to the social institutions. coup of March 12,1971, tween the May 1960 and September 1980 coups can be described as a trial run for the recent military takeover.

The May 27 rebels did not have any clear program. They were relatively inderesponds to the category of insured work- in the tasks the period between the two world wars, there were no unions but various workers clubs built up organizaembracing tens of thousands of strikes were outlawed, they nonetheless took place from time to time. The period of Kemalist one-party rule from 1923 to 1946 was one in which the workers movement was subjected to heavy pressure and legal coercion. It generally remained in a stag-

But this stagnation was a reflection of the general torpor of the so-

For example, from 1923 to 1950, the relationship between the urban and rural population did not change by more than one percent.

Nonetheless, in this thirty-year period, there were occasional workers up-

For example, in the beginning of 1930s, Izmir, the country's second biggest industrial center at the time, became the scene of big workers mobiliza-

In 1946, there was a second big upsurge in the workers movement. The destruction of fascism on a world scale and the advance of the workers movement could not fail to have an impact even on a assigned to the gangster Just as an army that is used against the people can find itself forced to teach the working people how to use weapons, the trade unionists of the 1950s workers together and give them an impetus to learn trade-unionism. The working class was to take this unity seriously. By 1963, 30% of the insured workers were members of trade unions.

However, the 1950-60 period was still a relatively quiet one for the workers movement. There were strikes but only occasionally. But an upturn began building up before 1960. An increase could be seen in strikes and attempted strikes, as as in labor conflicts in general. For example, from 1939 to 1950, only 41 labor conflicts were taken to the High Court (the Yuksek Hakem Kurulu); in 1954 alone 160 conflicts were taken to the High Court. In the following six years, an average of 110 conflicts were to the court annually. these figures reflect only one side of the economic struggle of the working class, that broader and broader sections of the working class were becoming involved in struggle.

In this period also many labor laws pendent of the social classes and outside the hierarchical chain of command. In the military men who carried out the September 12 coup were in the high command. From the first days, the makers of the latter coup unhesitatingly applied the program of local and international finance capital. However, the May 27 revolution led to the 1961 constitu-

The new basic law established by the May 27 rebels introduced the right to organize and strike, and thereby created a new sort of relationship of forces between the bourgeoisie and the working class. By establishing relative freedom of speech, thought, expression, assembly, and organization, it gave a new form to political, cultural, and social relations in the entire society. For the next twenty years, up until the time that it was broken, this constitution provided the legal framework for social developments.

The sort of labor relations defined in general by the 1961 constitution were enacted by a series of laws passed over an approximately two-year period.

Then, after power was handed over to the first of a series of civilian coalition governments in September 1961, a strong peaceful workers movement developed.

Workers participated in a number of what for the first time were legal activities, such strikes, sit-in marches, rallies, "beard growing strikes" (refusal of the workers to shave in accordance with the regulations in force since Kemal's modernizations), and circulating petitions. For the first time in Turkish history there was a mass meeting for workers rights, to which more than 100,000 workers came. All these actions demonstrated that the working-class was determined to force the implementation of the rights established on paper in the

Although the laws that were passed had important limitations, the workers movement was given a new momentum. Trade-union organization spread rapidly. By 1963, about 300,000 workers were members of unions. Five years later, union membership was approaching square demonstrations and strikes began to increase.

But alongside the strikes, forms of action going beyond the laws appeared, unofficial strikes and factory occupations. In the conditions of Turkey, such actions had a special meaning. In order for a strike to be considered legal, a very involved process of giving advance notice had to be followed. obstacle diverted the workers toward ac-

So, in assessing the post-1963 workers mobilizations, the number of unofficial strikes is as important as the number of official ones, and sometimes more so.

In this period, workers undertaking actions faced the loss of their jobs, arrest, true for the vanguard workers. Moreover, unofficial strikes always involved the possibility of clashes with the police and genBetweens were in lved in one legal strikes. In the same period, about 70,000 workers were involved in 38 unofficial strikes. (Like the figures for official strikes, those for unofficial strikes are not very accurate. They certainly understate the real numbers.)

This period of the first sustained rise of the workers movement was one of hard struggle. For example, in 25 of the conflicts mentioned above, there were confrontations police and gen-

There were two unofficial the first involving five thousand workers in 1965 and the second in 1968 involving 25 thousand. In both, and four workers in all were It was in this period, moreover, that DISK was formed as a reaction against the gangster unionists of TURK-Is. 1968, the Turkish Workers Party (TIPTurkiye Isci Partisi) was founded, and it, together with the workers vanguard, founded this second union confederation.

At the start the new organization had 25-35 thousand members, whom worked in private concerns. The 24 private sector was to remain the base of

Since the 1950s, TURK-Is had been well entrenched in the state concerns. Important factors in this were the continuing tradition of the state bureaucracy, the relatively backward production technology, and the fact that a large proportion of these state enterprises were scattered

The growth of private industrial was a phenomenon of the These were concentrated in the big cities, such as Istanbul and Izmir. Such plants had a relatively advanced production technology.

Along with these features, in private enterprises there were continual layoffs of workers, that is reduced job security, as well as an intensification of labor, a general push to increase the absolute surplus product. (These two features were nonexistent or much weaker in state enterprises). Thus, the conditions in private industry were a strong incentive to unionization and to higher forms of union activity. And as the workers in such circumstances came into contact

La few years after it was formed, DISK began to grow rapidly, and it was the engineering workers in private enterprises that formed its backbone.

On the political level, this acceleration of the working-class movement was shown by the rapid growth of the TIP. In the 1965 parliamentary elections, it got about 3% of the vote. Benefitting from a relatively favorable electoral system, it got 15 seats in parliament.

But despite the relatively rapid growth of the left, knowledge of Marxism remained confined to a handful of 1930sgeneration radicals. In fact in this period the works of Marx, Engels, and Lenin began to be published for the first time since the 1930s. But this was on an extremely small scale in comparison with rise of workers actions. Table I gives an indication of this.

Works of Marx, Engels and Lenin published In the same period, one book each by Kuusinen, Baby, Politzer, and Plekhanov were published. sum total of Marxist literature available up to 1968. (The publication of Marxist periodicals and other original works began in 1970-71 but only really began to

The publication of Trotskyist literature in Turkish essentially belongs to the period after 1974)

In the 1970s, factory occupations begin to appear, alongside the other actions. In 1968, of the 40,000 workers who participated in actions, 80% were involved in unofficial strikes and occupations, and only 20% in legal strikes. In the following year 23 thousand workers participated in occupations and unoffi-

The number involved in official strikes was about the same as in the previous year. But the workplaces affected by occupations and unofficial strikes had an average of more than 1,500 workers. Moreover, a large majority of those involved in such actions were engineering and mineworkers.

The year 1970 marked the high point of the post-1961 workers movement. In this same year, the mass moveof the student youth A hundred thousand teachers participated in a first attempt at a general strike. The unionization of civil servants accelerated. time in the history of modern Turkey, a peasant movement appeared. also the year of the third great devaluation in Turkish history. In August 1970, the value of Turkish money dropped by 70% (The previous big devaluations were in 1946 and 1958.)

The balance sheet of the workers mobilizations for 1970 is indicated in

Number of Number of The level that the workers movement had reached is also indicated by the workers demonstrations of 15-16, 1970. On that famous date, more than 150 thousand workers came into the streets to protest a change in the law that would hinder DISK's organizing. Istanbul, workers assembled at various places to march. At a lot of points, police and army barricades were broken up. All of Istanbul was swept by an unprecedented working-class explosion.

This two-day-long wave of demonstrations was halted by a declaration of martial law in two cities, Istanbul and Izmit, followed by arrests, prosecutions, and mass firings. But even such repression was able to halt the workers movement in the Istanbul region only for a period.

On the eve of the March 12 military coup and the declaration of martial law in eleven provinces in April of that year, more than twenty thousand workers participated in unofficial strikes. Moreover, in the first four months of 1971, the number of workers involved in official strikes was close to that figure.

Besides their numerical strength, the workers mobilizations rose to a higher qualitative level. In this period, the workers movement showed a dynamic that was going beyond the framework of trade-union activity.

In DISK, the union bureaucracy

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had not yet established firm control and domination over the workers. Moreover, the bulk of active workers had a strong sympathy with the youth movement that was on the rise in this period. 1968-1971 were marked at the same time by campus occupations and the adoption by the advanced sections of the working class of factory occupations as a major form of struggle. the workers, of the students who began to carry out occupations, must not be minimized. The fact is that factory occupations were virtually unknown in the workers movement before 1968 and were relatively rare after 1971. That is the index of the influence that the revolutionsmovement of the time Over the decade after the May 1960 coup, the working class had been able to transform many of the rights it was given on paper into realities. Examples are of the eight-hour day, an increase in paid vacation time, regulation of working conditions and regularization of health services for workers, an increase in real wages, and so forth.

The March 12, 1971, semimilitary dictatorship made a number of exertions to roll back these working class gains. But since the relationship of class forces in the country was not favorable for that, it did not succeed.

THE WORKERS MOVEMENT IN THE 1970s In the period 1971-1973, the workers movement literally came to a standstill. In this period, thousands of revolutionists were jailed. The revolutionary struggles they had led were extinguished. Three revolutionary students were executed. In comparison with the extent of the terror after the September 12 military coup, this wave of repression was relatively limited. But it dealt a severe and lasting blow to the sort of movements that were developing in relative freedom during the previous ten years.

After remaining in power for more than two years, the semimilitary dictatorship retired. period by calling general elections, which resulted in the CHP (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi-Republican Ecevit's party) gaining a large plurality but less than what it needed to form a government by itself. The CHP formed a coalition government together with the

Partisi-National Salvation Party, an Islamic populist partial political amnesty cided with the military occupation of and left movements were just beginning to revive, the occupation of northern Cyprus brought Turkish chauvinism to a crescendo. It also provided an excuse for a new period of martial law. Strikes were postponed, banned Despite this in 1974, workers mobilizations achieved a considerable scope. More than 80,000 workers took part in official and unofficial strikes. Once again the average number of workers in workplaces affected by workstoppages was over 1,500. case of official strikes, the average was

In 1915, in particular, there was a jump in the number of unofficial strikes. More than 60,000 workers participated in 105 unofficial strikes.

A feature of this new wave of unofficial strikes was the activization of the masses of workers outside the big industrial centers. Those sections of the working class that had been ward before 1971 went into action to catch up with the gains that had been won by the workers in the big private enterprises. Thus, in these unofficial strikes demands for job security and the right to choose your trade union were put ahead of demands for higher wages.

On June 16, 1975, TURK-Is organized a small general strike in Izmir, in which 60,000 workers participated. This development indicated which the ten-year-long struggle of the working class had succeeded in turning the gangster unionists toward classical mid-1970s brought a further acceleration in the growth of the left currents and parties. The sort of revolutionary mobilizations that had developed in the period leading up to March 1971 in cultural, economic, and political centers like Istanbul and Ankara, spread to the small industrial and regional centers, in a sense to the countryside and the pro-

But this extension of the movement had a drawback. It meant a lowering of the political level. On the national scale, it was the most backward, the most ideologically confused groups, those that reduced all questions to a few slogans and formulas, that showed the most extensive

This backwardness of the revolutionary movement was a major reason why when at the end of the 1970s the working class was emerging from its illusions in the CHP, instead of turning in a positive direction it fell back into demoralization.

One of the most active years in the 1970s was 1976. In that year about 500,000 persons participated in the May Day commemoration and more than 200,000 in official and unofficial strikes. More than 100,000 participated in a general strike against the establishment of the State Security Courts.

In this period, the great majority of the strikes were victorious, raising the morale of the workers movement. Once again, in 1976, the number of workers involved in official strikes was a small proportion of those engaged in all forms of

In the following year, 1977, however, the proportion of official strikes increased relative to unofficial ones. In all, some 93,000 workers engaged in strikes that year. However, the death of 37 people as the result of the provocation staged at the May 1, 1977, demonstration in Istanbul was a severe shock.

At the time, also, Turkey was in the midst of a turbulent election campaign. In the big industrial cities, the CHP rallies in fact were workers rallies. The working class saw putting in a CHP government as the culmination of the preceding ten years of struggle.

THE WORKING-CLASS MOVEMENT

GOES INTO DECLINE The installation of a CHP government in January 1978 marked the beginning of a certain ebb in the working-class upsurge that had been going on

By comparison with the previous year, the number of official and unofficial strikes dropped. The primary reason for this was that people thought that any thing that they might win in a struggle would be given anyway by the CHP gov-

In its short time in government, the CHP managed to disillusion the workers. And this was an important factor in the slowdown and decline of the workers

About a hundred thousand workers did participate in a two-hour protest strike called by DISK against the killing of seven students. But aside from this, the number of workers participating in official strikes was only about 10,000.

In these years, among the workers affiliated to DISK, distrust of the union bureaucracy increased considerably. This of the working-class movement, which had gone through ten years of experience in hard-fought strikes was starting to turn against the bureaucracy. Among the relatively backward sections of workers, disinterest in trade-union activities and a feeling of alienation from the trade unions grew.

However, the potential for the development of a revolutionary opposition in the unions was diverted. As a result no serious challenge to the union bureau-

It became clear that in trade-union assemblies and actions and even official strikes, the workers were less active, less militant, less enthusiastic. The militant workers were unable to lead the struggle in the full sense, that is, give direction, but they did not abandon it either. Thus, they left the leadership to a large extent to the trade-union bureaucracy.

The most eloquent indicator of this evolution was stagnation followed by decline in the membership of DISK. fact, in the engineering industry itself, breakaways from DISK occurred.

These breakaways did not result in a corresponding increase in the membership of the other confederations. In any case, an internal struggle was accelerating in many unions affiliated to TURK-Is.

Thus, independent unions limited to one workplace became an alternative,

However, I would stress again that since this period lasted only a short time it did not open up the way for any new situation or change in the relationship of forces. was significant in that it represented a shift away from the tendency that ap-

among the workers in the late 1960s to look beyond workplace and trade to a movement of the working class as a whole. places, they turned away from the trade-union organization of whole sections of the working class, becoming trapped in the four walls of the factory, in a narrow one-factory outlook.

This general evolution was an important factor in the dispersion and demoralization of the revolutionary forces on the eve of the September 12 coup

Most importantly, the workers saw that after a certain point in economic struggles the bureaucrats treated. Especially after 1974, with the end of the semimilitary dictatorship, the bureaucracy found itself in a good posi-

Since this stabilization of the bureaucracy coincided with a sharpening of the class struggle, the reactionary character of the bureaucracy could not fail to make itself felt, no matter what kind of revolutionary or Communist trappings the bureaucracy assumed or what radical sounding names it called itself.

The workers saw that these trade-union bureaucrats and the lett politicians they controlled could not tolerate dem-

They saw them irresponsibly dividing workers. These bureaucrats tried to keep workers with dissident views out of trade-union activities (sometimes using Ultraleftists"). Sometimes they worked with the bosses to get such workers out of the workplace. They kept out of the leadership of DISK. Moreover, as the economic crisis deepened, and the workers creasing economic difficulties, the luxury and waste indulged in by the union bureaucrats became more glaring.

This material luxury, on the other hand, to a high degree went hand in hand with an elevated social status. The trade-union leaders in the left political currents enjoyed considerable credibility, though they were not entitled to privileges according to the union rules.

Even in conditions of a very sharp class struggle, a very advanced class conserious organizational monitoring, and democratic rules are necessary to prevent workers leaders from acquiring such a material and social position. the DISK bureaucracy, on the contrary, armed themselves with a highly undemocratic body of statutes. union officials were united in support of this tramework, whether they were Communists, Social Democrats, liberals, or just gangsters. claimed their hostility to the trade-union bureaucracy did not fail to use these statutes in order to increase their influence in certain areas in the trade-union move-

In the area of democracy, the trade-union bureaucracy was in tune with the traditional antidemocratic attitudes of the Turkish revolutionary movement and was able easily to sidestep any attacks on ground, as on many others, the bureaucracy never failed to demonstrate tactical

On the other hand, the illusions that had been sown by unionists and their allies about the CHP rebounded against the bureaucracy, becoming an important factor in the rising hostility and distrust toward the union

As soon as the CHP government started carrying out an economic policy that was not out of line with the directives of the IMF, freezing wages, and taking a neutral position toward the fascist attacks, the workers rapidly lost their il-

Naturally, this rude awakening had an effect on the way the workers saw the trade-union bureaucracy.

However, the average workers, who despised the bureaucracy, still thought that the workers could not do without it. The currents not directly tied to the bureaucracy were new and lacking in tradi-

They could not inspire confidence among the workers. In particular, the great majority of the basic cadres of these currents were outside the working class. Their feeling of identification with the workers had a very weak material base. Since there was no revolutionary outlet for the reaction of the workers against the bureaucracy, the way was opened for

All these developments in DISK were to find an echo in the working class

ON THE EVE OF THE COUP In the last months of 1979, the government was nearing its reaction of the working masses against the CHP government's actions over the preceding twenty months was reflected in a series of local elections and

The support of the working people for the CHP declined con-

For example, in the 1977 elections in Istanbul the CHP got 981,000 votes, but this time it got 493,000. Moreover, in Istanbul the combined vote for the left parties was a derisory 56,000. What is more, in the last elections the highest percentage of participation was 55%.

In these months, despite the state of siege proclaimed in December 1978 in a large number of provinces, unofficial strikes continued. The number of workers who participated in official strikes in 1979 was 40,000.

In Istanbul, ten thousand workers in the state tobacco factories and brethe decisive part of the state sector, went on an official strike demanding "safe-guarding of life against fascist at-

In Izmir, nearly 5,000 workers occupied the Taris textile factory. Once again the reason for this action was that the factory management had tried to bring fascists onto the premises. And the fight against this had gone on since 1975. These struggles indicated a new upturn, but it did not last long.

the street demonstrations that occurred in some parts of the city in support of the Izmir Taris occupation were mercilessly suppressed, the movement came to an end.

An openly rightist bourgeois government was formed in December 1979, under the premiership of Suleyman De-

In January 1980, it announced new economic measures, which were in fact to be applied fully later by the junta that came to power on September 12 of

These measures constituted a violent economic attack on the working class and all the toiling masses. It did not take months or even weeks before the effects were felt by the workers in their daily

Inflation reached its highest level in Even the official government statistics showed that the workers' real wages fell considerably. On the other hand, according to the 1978 statistics, 581,000 workers were getting the minimum wage. This represented 27% of insured workers. And the minimum wage was the maximum wage for the millions of uninsured workers.

In these conditions a powerful wave of official strikes developed. strikes were considerably less numerous than in previous years. This reflected the retreat in the workers movement. But despite all its dispersion and demoralization, as a last resort, the working class clung to the weapon of the legal strike.

In the eight months before the Sep122,000 workers were declared, but then the government and martial law authorities imposed a postponement. Of the 78 strikes postponed, 28 were frozen for the

These were especially in the petrochemical and engineering industry.

Of the strikes postponed, 35 were declared by unions affiliated to TURK-Is, and 42 by unions affiliated to DISK.

As September 12 neared, 54,200 workers were on strike. Some 48,491 of them were affiliated to DISK. The great majority of the strikers were engineering, foundry, and textile workers. But these were extremely standpoint of organization and morale.

the bureaucrats, who kept saying that the union coffers were empty, could just wait for the workers' patience to be worn out and for the moment when they were ready to accept a bad contract.

In these months, unions involving nearly a million workers were in contract negotiations. Finding these talks a blind alley, hundreds of thousands of workers affiliated to TURK-Is-in particular, auto workers, railroad workers-seemed on the verge of striking. It was in this situation that the military resorted to a coup.

How effective have they been in breaking the workers movement, one of the most powerful and experienced in the underdeveloped world? That will be the subject of a subsequent article.

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