Disk Trial Begins

Scan page 4

= court room in pruis. ....ON DECEMBER 20, Turkish left winger Dogan Tarkan, who had been threatened with deportation from Britain and probable death at the hands of the Evren junta, received official notification from Home Office Minister Timothy Raison that he has secured political asylum in Britain.

This marks the successful outcome of a defence campaign promoted by the Turkey Solidarity Campaign. Socialist Organiser, which has supported the TSC, spoke to Dogan Tarkan on the lessons of the How successful was the campaign in winning support in the labour movement?

We were probably a bit lucky. We were able to go straight into the TUC Congress and the Labour Party conference, as well as campaigning around the country.

We got a resolution from the TUC and support on a national level from ten trade unions. 34 Labour MPs and ten MEPs -including MEPs from France, Belgium and Denmark - signed the appeal, together with over 50,000 other signatures.

Very many union branches and Labour Parties passed resolutions. And a lot sent them not to use but direct to the Home Office. So the final figures could be as much as double what we know of.

Every time we phoned the Home Office they complained about the number of signatures and motions we were sending them -even at times when we had been holding some back to make more impact.

WHIS: WORKERS The campaign was particularly successful in Scotland, and we made good contacts with the Scottish TUC and Labour Party: a number of Scottish unions and Labour Parties affiliated to the TSC and a new committee was built in Stirling, as well as one in' Cambridge.

During the whole campaign the TSC spoke at over 40 union or Labour Party branches, revealing a concern not only about my case but also more generally on the situation in Turkey Did you intend to campaign only through the Turkey Solidarity Campaign?

Turkey (CD DRishese fem What was the attitude of the Campaign to Defend At first I and my comrades from Kurtulus went both to the TSC and to the CDDRT. Both promised to help:

But when we called a picket on Downing Street a few days later the CDDRT refused to attend. Then on September 12 they would not let me speak at their meeting. They argued that the speakers had been fixed months in advance and that anyway there were hundreds of people being hanged in Turkey, so one individual case made little difference!

We have tried to achieve unity with the CDDRT. At their conference in Decembèr we even won the vote to unite the two campaigns - but they failed even to report this in their conference statement!

What makes unity almost impossible is not the British left but the Turkish left -and in particular Iscenin Sesi, who dominate the CDDRT. They will not unite with others.

ADVERTISEMENTCARI * A - ldl Dogan Tarkan: saved For instance in Germany last year there was a 20,000 strong rally on Turkey: but their group called their own separate meeting of 2,000.

But we must use the new opportunity to reach the labour movement and mobilise the labour movement to force unity of the two campaigns.

In the meantime we are supporting the CDDRT's week of action (6-13 March) What are the next steps in the TSC campaign? How do you see the DISK trial in this?

We will be sending an open letter to all those individuals and organisations who supported the campaign in my defence, thanking them and asking them to affiliate to the TSC. We are also asking them to sponsor a speaking tour by leading members of the DISK union confederation at the end of March.

The DISK trial is of course important. But we must not simply see the campaign as a defence of DISK. The important thing to understand is that the junta is attacking the revolutionary and anti-fascist left wing in Turkey.

Hanged

200 DISK leaders face trial: but there are 45,000 political prisoners in Turkey - and number of the DISK leaders are on trial because they are left by THE TRIAL of DISK trade unionists in Turkev started on December 24.

In a cynical and cowardly move by the military rulers, the trial was timed to coincide with the Christmas break, to minimise the publicity in Europe and the West.

2,000 trade unionists and; some Republican People's Party MPs and officials are to be tried in successive separate court proceedings. The first of these proceedings includes 52 leaders of DISK: the military prosecutor is demanding the death penalty for all of them.

The military judges have agreed to classify the trial under wartime regulations, reducing the rights of the defence, restricting the number of defence lawyers, ruling out opposition to the judges, and closing the door to any appeal against the final sentence by the judges.

In the first two days of the trial, a number of defence lawyers were banned from the court proceedings.

On two occasions, all the defence lawyers walked out of the court room in protest THE ELECTION victory of the left in France has sharpened the political situation and led to serious crises in the French Communist Party. Militant discontent is emerging in the Socialist Party ranks, 100. But the political shakeup has also extended to the revolutionary Left, not only in France but internationally. The Fourth International (International Committee)' ", one of the major would-be Trotskyist international groupings, has split after a dispute over the attitude of the French OCIMitterrand ohnson at the decisions of the judges, but the trial continued without them.

These moves by the military authorities demonstrated the determination of the regime to go for heavy sentences against DISK, in a short, sharp trial.

Second DISK was the second biggest trade union federation in Turkey before the military takeover on September 12, 1980, with a membership of up to one million workers. It organised the most militant and conscious sections of the working class in Turkey.

The military prosecutor alléges, in a 118 page document, that DISK was a 'Leninist organisation with the intention of overthrowing the Turkish state and establishing a Marxist-Leninist regime. It goes as far back as 1970, when DISK organised a general strike against the new industrial relations act which was intended to outlaw DISK. Since that general strike there have been two military takeovers.

one of the two biggest organisations in the FI(IC)-to the government.

Confines

Nahuel Moreno, leader of the Argentine PST, the other big group in the Fl(IC), said (with some justice, as far as l can see) that the OCI was being soft on the government. It confines itself to general statements of the desirability of the government taking anti-capitalist not clearly denouncing its pro-capitalist measures, character and exposing the presence in it of bourgeois ministers.

Explosive

The disagreement was particularly explosive because of the bureaucratic and sectarian nature of the OCI. OCI members supporting Moreno's criticisms were quickly booted out on various pretexts, and the international grouping split, formally over 'how to organise the discussion'.

Since October or November the various national groups affiliated to the FIC) have been choosing sides. The British Socialist Labour Group, it seems, has sided solidly with the OCI.

To organise internationally longstanding the non-Israeli public as being a result of Syria's refusal to enter into peace talks.

What is the significance of these two developments? The "chance to make peace with Israel" was the Fahd Plan, a Saudi Arabian proposal that advocated recog nition of Israel and peaceful relations with it, in exchange for a Palestinian state on the West Bank of the Jordan with its capital in Jerusalem.

The rapid collapse of the Fez summit should not blind us to how close the Saudis were to succeeding.

Before Fez there were widespread rumours that PLO leader Yassir Arafat himself had had a hand in drafting the Fahd Plan.

Yassir Arafat: fu.

by Saudis principle of the socialist movement, though one now honoured in practice only by small revolutionary minorities. And since the difficult years of the 1950s, even the revolutionary internationalists have suffered political disarray and fragmentation.

International groupings have often been little more than diplomatic alliances of one or two relatively strong national groups, surrounded by smaller satellites.

The FI(IC) originated from a crisis in the Trotskyist movement in late 1979 after the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua.

The USFI (the international grouping to which the IMG in Britain is affiliwould go forward to socialism (despite their declarations that they would stay within capitalist limits).

Split off

Two factions in the USFI -the Bolshevik Faction, centred in Latin America and led by Moreno, and the LTT, centred in Europe and very close to the OCI-criticised this policy, split off, and linked up with the OCI and its international co-thinkers.

At first they promised a Trotskyist open conference, before. Nevertheless, one the key words in his deni ciation was "inopportune' "It would be criminal," said, "to play our best ca that of recognising the st of Israel, in the firm kne ledge that the latter had i the slightest intention returning the occupied te tories. or permitting establishment of a Pales ian state."

But European press on the PLO failed to shif to playing its "best ca now, while US pressure Israel did not get it to m the necessary gestures.

Syria seemed key to locking the situation. weight in the Arab world past hard-line positions its ability to lean on Palestinians (above all Lebanon) all made it a target of Saudi pressure.

Russia, another suppc of the Fahd Plan, wer in on the Saudis' side. A no avail: Israel would i to make a placatory ges first.

And what did Israel The opposite.

Having rejected the f Plan on paper, Begin ahead to tear it up in i tice. Annexing the G Heights-a changes little in terms of to day life in the a ensures that for a m period Syria will fin impossible to back a "f plan" that doesn't directly of returning Golan as a precondition.

by Marti and a real effort to d the issues. But the oper ference quietly disappe and the FI(IC) was fc with a great fanfare bu diplomatic alliance ir usual style.

The general attitu the OCI towards Mitte and the French So Party has been well k for years. But the eli victory (plus internal pressures * FI(IC) has forced the to the foré-with exp results.

The lesson is the ni base international re ment on solid political dations, developed , ti honest discussions, than hasty self-proclam OCI leader Lambert

----- pull-quotes -----

ated) lapsed into passively hoping that the Sandinistas