The New Left in Turkey’s Long Sixties: The Kurdish ’68ers and the Workers’ Party of Turkey

Abstract

Global 1968 stood in opposition to the two major social movements of the previous two centuries, namely the nationalist movements and the old left. Turkey entered into this epoch as a Third World country with a record of broken promises to various social groups, including the Kurds. This article focuses on the Kurdish ’68ers who protested the systematic oppression, exploitation, and forced assimilation of the Kemalist Republic through new action repertoires and organizational capabilities. It explores their particular subjectivity and agency and analyzes their unlikely alliance with the Workers’ Party of Turkey (tİp). The article’s overarching argument is that the Turkish left’s historical burden of nation-state centrism and a Turkish national identity determined the failure of the New Left in Turkey. In contrast, the Kurdish left was able to carry on the legacy of the New Left and the ’68ers today because of the said historical subjectivity and agency.