By Mehmet Kuzulugil
Between the 1923 Turkish Revolution and the Great October Revolution, there is a striking temporal, geographical, and historical overlap.
Anatolia-centered national struggle against the occupation lasted roughly from 1919 to 1922. In a sense, 1923 marks the date when the century-long modernization process and the prolonged bourgeois revolution were consolidated with the Republic.
This overlap is connected to the outbreak of the proletarian revolution in Russia in 1917, which at times came close to Anatolia.
This can be addressed in another detailed analysis—the struggle against the occupation, an extension of the imperialist war of redivision, coincided with the proletarian revolution that brought about the end of a neighboring empire.
What is striking can also be seen in the historical relations between these two arenas. The crumbling feudal Ottoman Empire was both an enemy and a rival of the Russian Tsardom, which was marked by uneven development. While the Tsarist regime was taking steps to strengthen its imperialist ambitions, the feudal Ottoman Empire — partly due to its geographical constraints — became the prey rather than the predator in the imperialist redivision. Meanwhile, history had delivered its verdict: as the Russian Empire exited the stage, a proletarian power emerged in the same geography.
These two former rivals, former enemies, were now drawing closer through historical steps taken forward.
The whole story offers a remarkable illustration of uneven development. The Soviet Revolution took advantage of this overlap with a strategy shaped both by historical-theoretical assessments and by clear geopolitical necessities.
The remnant of the Ottoman Empire and the prey targeted by the imperialist bloc which is the Soviet Revolution’s current (and soon clearly historical) enemy, Turkey found itself backed by the Soviets as a result of this strategy.
The historical, class-based, and theoretical rationale for the Soviet support of the Turkish Revolution is clear.
While it is certainly possible to link the two processes as revolutionary steps forward in two very close geographies, this link remains limited as a result of the difference between class character of the actors of both revolutions. With the consolidation of different systems in both countries, this theoretical connection almost completely disappeared.
Nevertheless, the Soviet Revolution continued to influence the Turkish Revolution for a long time — if not as a social revolution, then as a model of progress. After more than a decade of speculation about “how long they would last,” these two revolutionary countries entered the 1930s with a newfound confidence in their permanence on the historical stage, and their interaction continued with a different character.
Soviet industrialization and the consolidation of revolutionary government, interestingly enough, contain elements that proved inspiring for the bourgeois government in Turkey.
Before turning to our main topic — the TKP’s relationship with the idea and practice of socialism in one country — let us further develop the groundwork we have been building.
We have already offered a relatively structural description of the interaction between the two revolutionary processes. But there is also a dimension tied to class dynamics.
The Turkish Revolution, which can be defined as the period from 1919 to 1923, unfolded in a context of a social chaos period. The historical birth of the communist party in Turkey took place within this chaos and, in a sense, coincided with the disappearance of the very background that had made that birth possible.
By the early 1920s, the driving force behind the Turkish communist movement was no longer the working classes of the former Ottoman lands, but rather the vanguard dynamics shaped by the influence of the Soviet Revolution: Ottoman army prisoners of war who were first liberated and then organized in Russia under the Bolshevik revolution, and the intellectuals of an empire whose collapse had freed them not only physically but also intellectually from monarchy.
We can go into the TKP and the concept of “socialism in one country” from this perspective.
First, as was the case worldwide, communists in Turkey attached great importance to the internationalist character of the Soviet Revolution, seeing it not merely as an “exemplary revolution in an exemplary country,” but as a spark that could serve as a stepping stone for their own revolutionary liberation.
Within this perspective, “socialism in one country” was understood as the consolidation of the revolution, that is, the fortification of this crucial outpost of the world revolution. At this point, it is worth highlighting the relationship established by the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which had built a highly repressive and authoritarian political regime at home, with the country of the Soviet Revolution and the contribution the Soviets made to the axes of progress in the Turkish Revolution.
Of course, these relations did not create a real space for action for Turkish communists. On the contrary, the kind of fluctuating influence seen in cases such as the Baath Party was experienced in Turkey only as a decline, and relations with the Soviet Union were developed on an axis that almost completely ignored the communist movement in Turkey.
Even so, this distinctive “Soviet influence” was embraced with enthusiasm by Turkish communists. Despite the political monopoly of the bourgeois power, this influence still provided the communist movement with at least a sphere of resonance among young people and intellectuals.
The Communist Party of Turkey regarded the consolidation of Soviet socialism as a priority not only because of its loyalty to the Comintern, but also due to the historical conditions and internal dynamics of the period. It showed no interest in approaches that pits “world revolution” against socialism in one country.
Here it is worth opening a parenthesis on Nâzım Hikmet.
This can be addressed in another detailed analysis—the struggle against the occupation, an extension of the imperialist war of redivision, coincided with the proletarian revolution that brought about the end of a neighboring empire.
What is striking can also be seen in the historical relations between these two arenas. The crumbling feudal Ottoman Empire was both an enemy and a rival of the Russian Tsardom, which was marked by uneven development. While the Tsarist regime was taking steps to strengthen its imperialist ambitions, the feudal Ottoman Empire — partly due to its geographical constraints — became the prey rather than the predator in the imperialist redivision. Meanwhile, history had delivered its verdict: as the Russian Empire exited the stage, a proletarian power emerged in the same geography.
These two former rivals, former enemies, were now drawing closer through historical steps taken forward.
The whole story offers a remarkable illustration of uneven development. The Soviet Revolution took advantage of this overlap with a strategy shaped both by historical-theoretical assessments and by clear geopolitical necessities.
The remnant of the Ottoman Empire and the prey targeted by the imperialist bloc which is the Soviet Revolution’s current (and soon clearly historical) enemy, Turkey found itself backed by the Soviets as a result of this strategy.
The historical, class-based, and theoretical rationale for the Soviet support of the Turkish Revolution is clear.
While it is certainly possible to link the two processes as revolutionary steps forward in two very close geographies, this link remains limited as a result of the difference between class character of the actors of both revolutions. With the consolidation of different systems in both countries, this theoretical connection almost completely disappeared.
Nevertheless, the Soviet Revolution continued to influence the Turkish Revolution for a long time — if not as a social revolution, then as a model of progress. After more than a decade of speculation about “how long they would last,” these two revolutionary countries entered the 1930s with a newfound confidence in their permanence on the historical stage, and their interaction continued with a different character.
Soviet industrialization and the consolidation of revolutionary government, interestingly enough, contain elements that proved inspiring for the bourgeois government in Turkey.
Before turning to our main topic — the TKP’s relationship with the idea and practice of socialism in one country — let us further develop the groundwork we have been building.
We have already offered a relatively structural description of the interaction between the two revolutionary processes. But there is also a dimension tied to class dynamics.
The Turkish Revolution, which can be defined as the period from 1919 to 1923, unfolded in a context of a social chaos period. The historical birth of the communist party in Turkey took place within this chaos and, in a sense, coincided with the disappearance of the very background that had made that birth possible.
By the early 1920s, the driving force behind the Turkish communist movement was no longer the working classes of the former Ottoman lands, but rather the vanguard dynamics shaped by the influence of the Soviet Revolution: Ottoman army prisoners of war who were first liberated and then organized in Russia under the Bolshevik revolution, and the intellectuals of an empire whose collapse had freed them not only physically but also intellectually from monarchy.
We can go into the TKP and the concept of “socialism in one country” from this perspective.
First, as was the case worldwide, communists in Turkey attached great importance to the internationalist character of the Soviet Revolution, seeing it not merely as an “exemplary revolution in an exemplary country,” but as a spark that could serve as a stepping stone for their own revolutionary liberation.
Within this perspective, “socialism in one country” was understood as the consolidation of the revolution, that is, the fortification of this crucial outpost of the world revolution. At this point, it is worth highlighting the relationship established by the revolutionary bourgeoisie, which had built a highly repressive and authoritarian political regime at home, with the country of the Soviet Revolution and the contribution the Soviets made to the axes of progress in the Turkish Revolution.
Of course, these relations did not create a real space for action for Turkish communists. On the contrary, the kind of fluctuating influence seen in cases such as the Baath Party was experienced in Turkey only as a decline, and relations with the Soviet Union were developed on an axis that almost completely ignored the communist movement in Turkey.
Even so, this distinctive “Soviet influence” was embraced with enthusiasm by Turkish communists. Despite the political monopoly of the bourgeois power, this influence still provided the communist movement with at least a sphere of resonance among young people and intellectuals.
The Communist Party of Turkey regarded the consolidation of Soviet socialism as a priority not only because of its loyalty to the Comintern, but also due to the historical conditions and internal dynamics of the period. It showed no interest in approaches that pits “world revolution” against socialism in one country.
Here it is worth opening a parenthesis on Nâzım Hikmet.
Nâzım Hikmet was a prominent figure within the faction that emerged in TKP in the late 1920s, and was even one of its most active and passionate members. Because this period coincided with the suppression of the Trotskyist opposition in the Soviet Union and Trotsky retained prestige among Turkish communists until the mid-1920s, some have assumed that this opposition paralleled the debates within the Comintern. This is a misconception entirely unrelated to the facts.
The continuous pressures on TKP, together with the conditions that prevented it from gaining a significant position in the political arena, caused the party to lose influence. Nâzım Hikmet and a couple of other communists believed that this decline could be reversed through a more dynamic, more organized, and more active party and they worked to restructure the party leadership accordingly.
The crucial point is that this opposition never questioned the authority of the Comintern. It first tried to present its position to the Comintern and explicitly recognized the authority of the “world party” within the internal debates of the TKP.
Indeed, during the years he spent largely in prison, Nâzım Hikmet maintained his loyalty and support for the Soviet Union, the center of gravity of the world revolution, as one of the unchanging pillars of his communist identity.
The picture can be summarized as follows: with the influence of the overlap between the Soviet Proletarian Revolution and 1923 Turkish Revolution, the ideological formation and historical background of the Turkish communists, and finally the fact that Turkey — unlike Germany, Hungary, or Poland — after debated both among the Bolsheviks and the Turkish communists, was not seen as a natural sphere of expansion for the Soviet Revolution, the Communist Party of Turkey committed to the idea of consolidating and defending the Soviet Revolution and turning it into a strong socialist state on its own social foundations.
The continuous pressures on TKP, together with the conditions that prevented it from gaining a significant position in the political arena, caused the party to lose influence. Nâzım Hikmet and a couple of other communists believed that this decline could be reversed through a more dynamic, more organized, and more active party and they worked to restructure the party leadership accordingly.
The crucial point is that this opposition never questioned the authority of the Comintern. It first tried to present its position to the Comintern and explicitly recognized the authority of the “world party” within the internal debates of the TKP.
Indeed, during the years he spent largely in prison, Nâzım Hikmet maintained his loyalty and support for the Soviet Union, the center of gravity of the world revolution, as one of the unchanging pillars of his communist identity.
The picture can be summarized as follows: with the influence of the overlap between the Soviet Proletarian Revolution and 1923 Turkish Revolution, the ideological formation and historical background of the Turkish communists, and finally the fact that Turkey — unlike Germany, Hungary, or Poland — after debated both among the Bolsheviks and the Turkish communists, was not seen as a natural sphere of expansion for the Soviet Revolution, the Communist Party of Turkey committed to the idea of consolidating and defending the Soviet Revolution and turning it into a strong socialist state on its own social foundations.
* Mehmet Kuzulugil is a member of TKP Party Council
