Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) commemorated the great workers' resistance of June 15-16 1970. Members of TKP gathered at an event to commemorate the 47th anniversary of June 15-16 great workers' resistance in İzmir, an eastern metropolitan of Turkey. The event titled as "The working class is powerful" reinforced the will of the communists that the working class would gain a powerful place in politics.
Kaya Güvenç, who delivered the opening speech of the event, said that although the capitalists are always afraid of the working class, they had been even more scared during the 1960s in Turkey when the struggle of working class heightened and the workers held massive meetings. He reminded that when the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey (DISK) was established in 1967, the then ruling party Justice Party (AP) tried to shut down it, which was followed by the great workers' resistance of June 15-16. Güvenç underlined that this resistance was a threshold in the working class history of Turkey, adding that March 12, 1971, coup d'état was the response of the capitalist class of Turkey to this uprisal.
On June 15-16 1970, the biggest worker protest in the history of Turkey took place against the change of labour union law. Around 150 thousand workers actively participated in the protests by marching and gathering on the streets of Istanbul. The attack of police and military forces resulted in 3 deaths and over 200 injured.
Kemal Okuyan, the first secretary of the CC of Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), soL columnist, underlined that the most important question of our day is why the working class is unable to organise similar resistances. He said "Today's problem is the liquidation of the working class from the political and social arena", adding that the duty of the communists is to lead the working class to the political scene.
Okuyan noted that the world in the 1970s was quite different than that of today, saying:
"The world politics was not determined by the rivalry between Trump and Merkel. The basic contradiction was that of the labour and capital. Even the most poorly educated worker was aware of that. The working class was able to see that a working class rule is possible."
After the collapse of the USSR, Okuyan said, the most basic reference points of the working class were lost, as some of the left-wing thinkers started to propagate that there are other contradictions than that of the labour and the capital, like identity, ethnicity, women question, LGBT, youth, environment and etc. These issues ripped the working class of its own nature. Therefore, the working class should be reunited in the political arena, Okuyan said.
