Evaluating Social Movement Impacts: Comparative Lessons From the Labor Movement in Turkey by Brian Mello

Author:Brian Mello [Mello, Brian]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Comparative Politics, Political Science
ISBN: 9781441190727
Google: qgKxAgAAQBAJ
Goodreads: 17188168
Publisher: Bloomsbury Academic
Published: 2013-08-15T00:00:00+00:00

Figure 4.1 Public sector, private sector, and total union membership, 1960–80

Those opposed to political unionism drew inspiration from their American counterparts. Halil Tunç, for example, said that he did not support TİP because there needed to be “union consciousness” before political organization. “In those years,” he recalled, “you could find Justice Party unions, CHP unions.” Consequently, politics would have to wait until unions could be “independent from political parties.”35 In late January and early February, 1964, at its fifth general convention, Türk-İş moved toward the adoption of an official policy of remaining “above party politics” (partiler üstü politikası). The actual implication of this stance was not a complete avoidance of political concerns. In fact, in the 1965 general elections Türk-İş published a blacklist in Milliyet Gazetesi that opposed ten candidates for parliament. Subsequently, the confederation waged an active campaign against nine of them because of their opposition to workers and unions.36

From one point of view, the adoption of an “above party politics” stance was inspired by TİP and the uneasiness of some Türk-İş leaders with members who sympathized with the party. From another point of view, remaining nominally above party politics made a good deal of strategic sense to Türk-İş’s leadership, as it allowed the confederation to continue to force the parties in power and in opposition to compete for its support. Indeed, social science theory tells us that when labor mobilization comes to challenge the state, state actors will be more likely to move to co-opt and/or repress labor.37 In relation to the Turkish labor movement during the 1960s and 1970s, various actors within the Turkish state increasingly engaged both in strategies of contingent inclusion and repression. Efforts to incorporate unions into the state were central to the Democrat Party’s successor, the Justice Party (Adalet Partisi—AP), which sought to harness the electoral support of the working class, while simultaneously stifling the potential for labor unions to exhibit autonomous political power.

To be sure, the leadership of Türk-İş demonstrated a keen awareness of the potential material and political benefits that amicable ties to the dominant political party might elicit. That Türk-İş leaders’ strategies (especially during the 1960s) were influenced by this set of incentive structures is evident in at least three ways: First, through the decision to remain nominally above party politics. Second, recognizing the chance to enhance their material and political goals, Türk-İş’s leadership supported the Justice Party’s effort in the 1970 revisions to the laws governing union representation. This legislation, which will be discussed at greater length below, required a union to represent at least one-third of the workers in an industry in order to gain status as a legal representative, strengthening the position of Türk-İş as the largest confederation of labor unions in Turkey. Finally, the leadership of Türk-İş was careful to distance itself from militant union actions. In particular, the leadership of the national confederation moved to purge perceived socialist influences from the mine workers’ union responsible for the wildcat strikes in Zonguldak in 1965 and punished

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