I read your text on Turkey and “Turkish” Marxists and just wanted say a couple of things as a criticism. I guess that, as a Marxist, you are open for fair criticisms.

Let’s start from the beginning…
First of all, one thing we the Marxists in Turkey avoid to say is “Turkish Marxism”. Because all the revolutionary organizations in Turkey accept that Turkey is not only composed of Turkish but also Kurdish people who are fighting for more than 30 years for their independence. Although this fight turned into an armed revisionism, their existence makes the phrase “Turkish Marxism” a nationalist argument. Also, It cannot be claimed that, there’s a pure **Turkish** or **Kurdish** revolutionary (PKK became somewhat revisionist) movement in Turkey, for all of the revolutionary organizations include both Turkish & Kurdish people (we have Armenian, Laz, Cherkes comrades also) both as militants and as theoreticians. Many of them struggle for the emancipation of both nation’s proleteriat. One must keep in mind that extremely important point when talking about a “Turkish Marxism”. Because some of the movements can neither be labelled as Turkish nor Kurdish. It’s not surprising that our academicians totally ignored this point, and are still complaining the nationalism of the Turkey’s left.

Secondly Mr. Proyect, and that’s my personal suggestion, please think twice when you are taking information from academicians in Turkey about the Left. Even they are leftists in some sense, many of them avoid taking part in the class struggle. Especially after the military coup in 1980, the Marxist academicians were driven from the academies, some of them had been killed, and left their positions to their petit-bourgeois equivalents.

In this Turkey example, the left’s split between the Kemalists and AKP, namely the split between the nationalists and the liberals is something valid only for social democratic movements which are merely struggling to win the parliamentary elections. Now yes, our academicians only considering the social-democratic part of the struggle, because of their point of view; but it’s my responsibility to say that, there are movements and parties in Turkey, which stood against these discussions and are continuing their struggle. I can comfortably argue that, the real left has no doubts that both the nationalists and the Islamo-liberals are bourgeois, and hence, our enemy in essence.

But I know what do they mean by this split. We have some bourgeois scholars, journalists and parties which held the centre-left position before 1997. But they compelled to choose their side between two conflicting capitalist groups during the process and some became nationalist, many became liberals. But the revolutionary organizations in Turkey were constantly repeating that, since the beginnings of the process, this split was and is an artificial one. I have to say that, the analysis carried out by Ercan, Guzelsari and Oguz, as far as I read here, is a very shallow one, in terms of understanding the dynamics of Turkey’s left which is still actively struggling against the fascist militants and liberals in the country. Their analysis is “trapped”, in one word, inside the moderate leftist positions in Turkey.

Best wishes.

p.s. I also sent this text to you via e-mail, Mr. Proyect…

Anyway, on a website called “Particracy”, they have a “random quote” at the bottom of the page. One that recently appeared: “The answer to global warming is in the abolition of private property and production for human need. A socialist world would place an enormous priority on alternative energy sources. This is what ecologically-minded socialists have been exploring for quite some time now.” – Louis Proyect

Apparently you’re famous enough to be included in this quote reel

http://www.columbia1968.info