The Communist Party of Turkey | An Anniversary

Mavi Boncuk | The Communist Party of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye Komünist Partisi, TKP) was a political party in Turkey. The party was founded by Mustafa Suphi[1] at 10 September 1920 in Baku when the "1st and General Congress of Turkish Communists" was attended by 74 delegates from Anatolia, Istanbul and Soviet Union. The Congress elected Mustafa Suphi as Chairman, Ethem Nejat[3] as General Secretary and a Central Committee with seven members. TKP was soon to be banned [4][5]. It worked as a clandestine opposition party throughout the Cold War era, and was persecuted by the various military regimes. In the 1988 the party merged into the United Communist Party of Turkey, in an attempt to gain legal recognition.

[1] Mustafa Suphi (1883 in Giresun - 29 January 1921, on the Black Sea). Founder of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP)

Suphi was educated in Jerusalem, Damascus and Erzurum before attending Galatasaray High School. He studied political science in Paris, where he was also a correspondent of the Turkish newspaper Tanin. He returned to Turkey in 1910, where he edited the newspaper Ifham. He also he gave lectures on law and economics. In 1913 he was accused of involvement in assassination of Mahmud Şevket Pasha and was sentenced to fifteen years in exile in Sinop. Here he contributed articles about western philosophy to the periodicals Ictiha and Hak. However in 1914 he escaped from Sinop and fled to Russia, where, following the outbreak of the First World War, Russian authorities regarded him as prisoner of war and sent him into exile in the Ural region.

In 1915, whilst in the Urals he joined the Bolshevik Party. In July 1918, he helped organise the Congress of the Turkish Left Socialists, held in Moscow, and in November became involved in Muskom. He was also elected to the Central Committee of the All Russia Muslim Workers section of Narkomnats. He acted as Mirza Sultan-Galiev's secretary.[2] He was chairperson of the Turkish Section of Eastern Publicity Bureau, and in 1919 attended the First Congress of the Third International as the delegate for Turkey. That year he also founded "Yeni Dünya (New World), which he used to popularize the foundations of scientific socialism amongst Turkish POWs.

At the First Congress of Communist Party of Turkey, held in Baku on 10 September 1920. Suphi was elected President and went to Anatolia. He was one of the 15 Communists that went to Turkey to join the Turkish War of Independence. In Erzurum (in East Anatolia) people was agitated against them. They couldn't go in to the city. General Kazim Karabekir advised them to turn back. To go back to Baku over Batum they were sent to Trabzon (at the coast of Black Sea). Because of the demonstrations they couldn't go in to Trabzon too. However, they were murdered by Sailor Yahya after setting sail from Trabzon on the night of 28 January 1921.

[2] Mirza Sultan-Galiev | Mirsäyet Xäydärğäli ulı Soltanğäliev (1892–1940) was a Tatar Bolshevik who rose to prominence in the Russian Communist Party in the early 1920s. He was later executed for being an independent Muslim leader as part of the purges of former bolsheviks in the Soviet Union.

On 19th January 1921, lots of self-proclaimed communists, leftists in the parliament, as well as militants of the Communist Party in Anatolia ... were arrested, and were condemned by the "Independence Tribunals", a sort of revolutionary court of the nationalist movement, to 15 years imprisonment with forced labour for their efforts to "weaken the feelings for the defence of the fatherland". Sherif Manatov, a revolutionary who had played an important part in the organisation of communists in Anatolia was deported. Manatov returned to the Soviet Union where he was to be murdered sometime afterwards.

[3] Ethem Nejat (1883 - 28 January 1921) was a Turkish revolutionary communist militant.

Nejat worked on education during the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire. Originally a pan-Turkist, in 1918, the Ottoman Government sent him to Germany, where he became a Communist and participated in the Spartacist German Revolution along with the "Workers and Peasants Party" he formed with Turkish students and workers who were in Germany. This group published the paper Liberation. They were recalled in 1919 back to Turkey, where they changed the name of the party to the Türkiye İşçi ve Çiftçi Sosyalist Fırkası | Turkish Workers and Peasants Socialist Party. Members of this party were eventually going to make the bulk of the Istanbul organization of the Communist Party of Turkey. Liberation was published in Turkey, and Ethem Nejat was writing articles about the proletariat, capital, class struggle; the paper also had articles about the October Revolution.

[4] On 19th January 1921, lots of self-proclaimed communists, leftists in the parliament, as well as militants of the Communist Party in Anatolia ... were arrested, and were condemned by the "Istiklal Mahkemeleri | Independence Tribunals", a sort of revolutionary court of the nationalist movement, to 15 years imprisonment with forced labour for their efforts to "weaken the feelings for the defence of the fatherland". Sherif Manatov, a revolutionary who had played an important part in the organisation of communists in Anatolia was deported. Manatov returned to the Soviet Union where he was to be murdered sometime afterwards.

[5] Şefik Hüsnü Dr. Şefik Hüsnü (Deymer) (1887, Selanik-1959, Manisa ) General secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey (1925-1927).

He was born in 1887, in Salonica. He studied natural sciences and medicine in Paris. He participated in the nationalist struggles of the Balkan War in 1912 and the first World War. In 1919 he led the periodical "Kurtulus". In the same year found the "Socialist Party of the Workers and Peasants of Turkey ( TIÇSF ). At the first congress of the Communist Party of Turkey (10 September 1920, Baku) he was elected to the Central Committee. After the death of Mustafa Suphi and the other leaders of the Party, he re-organised the Party. In 1921 he found the periodical "Aydinlik".