Popular Militia in the Resistance Against the Palace Fascism, Revolutionary Strategy and Partisan War
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Red Dawn / Issue 18 / Winter 2018-19

The communist vanguard uses every means and form of struggle as long as they respond to the needs of revolutionary struggle and in accordance with the given forces. Partisan war is one form of armed struggle and is part of the revolution strategy of MLKP.
As a form of struggle waged by a militarily and physically weaker force against a stronger force, partisan war is based on flexible, widespread and mobile mode of war of small units. Partisan war focuses on politically and militarily battering the enemy with sudden blows without facing with the main forces of the enemy at the front, aims at the hinterland of the front line of the enemy and tries to cut the connection between the forefront and the hinterland. It helps oneself accumulate force in order to turn into an army big enough to prevail when taking the field for a frontal war against the enemy. The forces of partisan war are classified into two categories: the first one is guerrilla, which professionally carries out the politic-military struggle with the enemy and constitutes of the attacking force; and the second one is militia, which is organized more broadly inside the masses and constitutes of the defending force.
Our anti-imperialist, antifascist, sexual emancipating, democratic revolution strategy, foresees that the united revolution of Turkey and Kurdistan will achieve the victory ultimately, through total urban uprisings due to their significance on the result, but at the same time by passing through a civil war or a series of civil wars, and that the whole process will carry a relatively long-lasting character. This means that the course of revolutionary development will not follow a straight line, a total popular uprising will not consist of only one clash, and that the revolution will be realized as an overall of a series of civil wars and uprisings, and "breather breaks" in between.
Thus, in this possible course of progress of our revolution, the partisan war in Turkey and Kurdistan, in urban and rural areas, is a significant means to ripen the subjective conditions of the revolution, to accumulate strength for civil war, to gather and prepare armed forces for popular uprisings in the cities, to reunite these forces in the periods between uprisings, and for the revolutionary will to play its special role in achieving these strategic goals. Since the revolutionary process will advance as a rich combination of struggles of masses, taking legal and illegal, peaceful and violent, unarmed and armed forms, partisan war is in service to develop these struggles all along.
Accordingly, the militia signifies the organization of a channel to realize direct revolutionary violent actions of masses and more effective forms of united popular resistance against the colonialist fascist regime. It also signifies the active preparation of the most progressive sections of the working class and oppressed for total urban uprisings and the creation of massive armed forces to move the outburst of uprisings forward.
The Tactic of Active Defense and Popular Militia
Facing the mass massacres of the fascist political-islamist Palace junta, carried out by means of ISIS and facing the state terror especially aggravated to utmost after the July 15th coup attempt of Gulen movement, the antifascist and democratic mass movement is retreating. Despite this fact, the structural crisis of the regime is continuing with all its current expressions and the struggle dynamics of the masses, which have retreated without experiencing an absolute direct defeat, keep on existing endogenously. Revolutionary conditions remain. As the elements of civil war accumulate during the course of political developments, political-islamist fascist dictator Erdoğan accelerates both redesign of the armed forces of the regime and organizing street gangs inside the AKP basis as striking forces.
As the armed and illegal forms of struggle and methods based on violence gain weight, the conditions of this period require both struggle tools and organizational forms appropriate to this objective reality. The conditions also demand that the communist vanguard uses those more effectively and adapts its organizational structure to this. Therefore, militia organization gain much more political significance today as one of the organizational forms required by the struggle period we are living in.
Antifascist masses who are opposed to the Erdoğan's sultanate are in need of boosting morale and courage by the resistance actions and the militant vanguard stances of the revolutionary and communist subjects in order to participate in the struggle more strongly. They anticipate that the most effective way to take a stand against this unbridled fascist state terror can be materialized by using the forms of struggle based on revolutionary violence, and they understand this from their own experience. Clearly, when such a resistance praxis cannot be executed by the revolutionary and communist subjects as expected by the masses, each unsatisfactory situation will not only push those who talk about this necessity but don't carry out such actions into a terrible opportunist inconsistency, but also pave the way for the deepening of hesitancy of the masses and the fading away of the combatant dynamics.
A critical link of the application of the tactic of active defense against the fascist political-islamist Palace junta, simply putting it, a link that can pave the way for "resistance and victory against the dictator" is now organizing the popular militia in the broadest way possible. Popular militia is the self-defense organization containing the most progressive ranks of the laborers and oppressed. It is the militant force of the resistance against fascism in neighborhoods, the massively characterized organization using means and methods of violence. It is the struggle group composing those who are "casual in the day, armed in the night".
The popular militia groups will be functional in a wide range of tasks, such as carrying out violent actions targeting the official or civil extensions of the Palace fascism and providing security for the mass movement during mobilization and demonstrations. This functionality will be materialized in one case by destroying an AKP representative building or an institution associated with ISIS and in another case, it can be shattering an armored water-cannon vehicle or in often cases, defending political mass demonstrations against the police attack in a vanguard way. It can be sometimes responding the civil fascist mobs at schools with means of violence, sometimes punishing a snitch or organizing illegal "free" propaganda demonstrations in laboring neighborhoods. So, popular militia will express itself in its own language about the current issues of political class struggle, manifest a resistance practice in the unique forms.
Active counterrevolutionary forces concretisized in various examples such as local AKP organs and administrators, the Ottoman Hearths, local MHP organs and administrators and the Grey Wolves, police stations and vehicles, ISIS extension organizations in the appearance of associations, workplaces linked to ISIS, mukhtars and municipality employees who attempt to do public enemy works, trustees in replacement of the elected mayors, collaborators and snitches of fascism, publication services oriented by the Palace, harasser and rapist persons and institutions, high school headmasters applying fascist oppression to students, bosses responsible for workplace murders will be in the crosshairs of the revolutionary violent actions of popular militia.
Each local resistance practice of popular militia will prevent the spreading of the mood, "one cannot resist, one cannot succeed", which the Palace fascism is trying to create. Each one of them will open the gates to position those who tend to resist but wait for a vanguard-gripping praxis, in the ranks of struggle. These practices will play role in breathing determination and trust to masses. And the overall of these resistance practices, on a general basis, will both politically batter the fascist Palace dictatorship and be a lever for antifascist mass movement to revive and grow in the resistance direction.
The Structure of Popular Militia
All the vivid and energetic elements of the antifascist masses must be hailed as the potential forces of popular militia. There is no need for militia constituents to leave their own regular work and life places, on contrary, these groups of people become militia in their daily routine and join the resistance. Undoubtedly, the main human source of the militia groups is the laboring neighborhood youth. These militia groups can be formed in a flexible and inclusive way and as trios. This means that laboring neighborhoods are the primary places for popular militia to organize and spread fastest. However, popular militia is surely not limited with laboring neighborhoods. The aim has to be spreading it to schools, workplaces and everywhere possible. And again, forming self-defense units unique to different social and political struggle dynamics, such as women's liberation militia, Qizilbash-Alevi militia, student's militia, worker's militia, has a great value as a political pathfinder.
Popular militia organization cannot be approached isolated from the antifascist mass movement which manifest itself with legal or de-facto legitimate struggle forms on a general or local level. It must be considered exactly as a form of mass movement. Because, militia is not an organizational model only limited with the organized forces of communist and revolutionary subjects. It cannot be expected that popular militia will spontaneously gain a massive character in practice. In the beginning, the party must organize its bellicose poised basis as militia or form militia cores together with other revolutionary subjects. Yet still, the vivid and especially young sections of the antifascist masses must certainly be attracted to the ranks of the militia. Defending each Kurdistan district where the autonomy was declared via militia units composing hundreds of people, under the name of YPS (Yekîneyên Parastina Sîvîl- Civil Defense Units) and the fact that this whole self-defense process has arisen over the heroic resistance of the militia numbering tens of thousands are just quite fresh examples for popular militia developing as an armed mass movement.
To put a short emphasis, the current issue is not about organizing militia only as a special and narrow underground structure, but beyond that, it is to build a network of popular militia ever growing inside the suitable popular antifascist dynamics popping up at the de-facto legitimate struggle front. Some of these militia groups can be directly bound to MLKP and some other can be bound to the Peoples' United Revolution Movement or locally organized united resistance committees.
Each militia group must have a minimum political and technical capacity without any kind of perfectionism or idealization. This can cover practical training of the militia constituents on basic technical topics such as preparing molotovs and using pistols. But at the same time, it also covers basic trainings for group members to comprehend what kind of enemy targets should be politically prioritized, how to maintain secure connection inside the group, which aspects should be taken into account while preparing an action plan and how to make a stash appropriate for the purpose.
A working and struggle mode based on constant mobilization is vital for militia groups. Militia must never be stuck in a mood of cooling off and must constantly take on new tasks, focus on dashing small but perpetual hits. Being mobile for a militia group must be complemented with an integrity of all aspects, which contains simple trainings, intelligence works, supplying equipments, free agitation works, preparation of some possibilities like house and vehicle, or setting up stash places as well as the planning and carrying out of revolutionary violent actions towards a fascist enemy target.
The revolutionary will of the communist vanguard must be embodied in the successful fulfillment of the tasks augmenting and strengthening the resistance ranks of our peoples against the political-islamist fascist dictator Erdoğan. Here, as much as it develops and spreads, popular militia will become both an icebreaker for the united antifascist resistance of the working class and oppressed, and a big source of fighters for the politic-military front and guerrilla units of the communist vanguard.
 

 

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Popular Militia in the Resistance Against the Palace Fascism, Revolutionary Strategy and Partisan War
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Red Dawn / Issue 18 / Winter 2018-19

The communist vanguard uses every means and form of struggle as long as they respond to the needs of revolutionary struggle and in accordance with the given forces. Partisan war is one form of armed struggle and is part of the revolution strategy of MLKP.
As a form of struggle waged by a militarily and physically weaker force against a stronger force, partisan war is based on flexible, widespread and mobile mode of war of small units. Partisan war focuses on politically and militarily battering the enemy with sudden blows without facing with the main forces of the enemy at the front, aims at the hinterland of the front line of the enemy and tries to cut the connection between the forefront and the hinterland. It helps oneself accumulate force in order to turn into an army big enough to prevail when taking the field for a frontal war against the enemy. The forces of partisan war are classified into two categories: the first one is guerrilla, which professionally carries out the politic-military struggle with the enemy and constitutes of the attacking force; and the second one is militia, which is organized more broadly inside the masses and constitutes of the defending force.
Our anti-imperialist, antifascist, sexual emancipating, democratic revolution strategy, foresees that the united revolution of Turkey and Kurdistan will achieve the victory ultimately, through total urban uprisings due to their significance on the result, but at the same time by passing through a civil war or a series of civil wars, and that the whole process will carry a relatively long-lasting character. This means that the course of revolutionary development will not follow a straight line, a total popular uprising will not consist of only one clash, and that the revolution will be realized as an overall of a series of civil wars and uprisings, and "breather breaks" in between.
Thus, in this possible course of progress of our revolution, the partisan war in Turkey and Kurdistan, in urban and rural areas, is a significant means to ripen the subjective conditions of the revolution, to accumulate strength for civil war, to gather and prepare armed forces for popular uprisings in the cities, to reunite these forces in the periods between uprisings, and for the revolutionary will to play its special role in achieving these strategic goals. Since the revolutionary process will advance as a rich combination of struggles of masses, taking legal and illegal, peaceful and violent, unarmed and armed forms, partisan war is in service to develop these struggles all along.
Accordingly, the militia signifies the organization of a channel to realize direct revolutionary violent actions of masses and more effective forms of united popular resistance against the colonialist fascist regime. It also signifies the active preparation of the most progressive sections of the working class and oppressed for total urban uprisings and the creation of massive armed forces to move the outburst of uprisings forward.
The Tactic of Active Defense and Popular Militia
Facing the mass massacres of the fascist political-islamist Palace junta, carried out by means of ISIS and facing the state terror especially aggravated to utmost after the July 15th coup attempt of Gulen movement, the antifascist and democratic mass movement is retreating. Despite this fact, the structural crisis of the regime is continuing with all its current expressions and the struggle dynamics of the masses, which have retreated without experiencing an absolute direct defeat, keep on existing endogenously. Revolutionary conditions remain. As the elements of civil war accumulate during the course of political developments, political-islamist fascist dictator Erdoğan accelerates both redesign of the armed forces of the regime and organizing street gangs inside the AKP basis as striking forces.
As the armed and illegal forms of struggle and methods based on violence gain weight, the conditions of this period require both struggle tools and organizational forms appropriate to this objective reality. The conditions also demand that the communist vanguard uses those more effectively and adapts its organizational structure to this. Therefore, militia organization gain much more political significance today as one of the organizational forms required by the struggle period we are living in.
Antifascist masses who are opposed to the Erdoğan's sultanate are in need of boosting morale and courage by the resistance actions and the militant vanguard stances of the revolutionary and communist subjects in order to participate in the struggle more strongly. They anticipate that the most effective way to take a stand against this unbridled fascist state terror can be materialized by using the forms of struggle based on revolutionary violence, and they understand this from their own experience. Clearly, when such a resistance praxis cannot be executed by the revolutionary and communist subjects as expected by the masses, each unsatisfactory situation will not only push those who talk about this necessity but don't carry out such actions into a terrible opportunist inconsistency, but also pave the way for the deepening of hesitancy of the masses and the fading away of the combatant dynamics.
A critical link of the application of the tactic of active defense against the fascist political-islamist Palace junta, simply putting it, a link that can pave the way for "resistance and victory against the dictator" is now organizing the popular militia in the broadest way possible. Popular militia is the self-defense organization containing the most progressive ranks of the laborers and oppressed. It is the militant force of the resistance against fascism in neighborhoods, the massively characterized organization using means and methods of violence. It is the struggle group composing those who are "casual in the day, armed in the night".
The popular militia groups will be functional in a wide range of tasks, such as carrying out violent actions targeting the official or civil extensions of the Palace fascism and providing security for the mass movement during mobilization and demonstrations. This functionality will be materialized in one case by destroying an AKP representative building or an institution associated with ISIS and in another case, it can be shattering an armored water-cannon vehicle or in often cases, defending political mass demonstrations against the police attack in a vanguard way. It can be sometimes responding the civil fascist mobs at schools with means of violence, sometimes punishing a snitch or organizing illegal "free" propaganda demonstrations in laboring neighborhoods. So, popular militia will express itself in its own language about the current issues of political class struggle, manifest a resistance practice in the unique forms.
Active counterrevolutionary forces concretisized in various examples such as local AKP organs and administrators, the Ottoman Hearths, local MHP organs and administrators and the Grey Wolves, police stations and vehicles, ISIS extension organizations in the appearance of associations, workplaces linked to ISIS, mukhtars and municipality employees who attempt to do public enemy works, trustees in replacement of the elected mayors, collaborators and snitches of fascism, publication services oriented by the Palace, harasser and rapist persons and institutions, high school headmasters applying fascist oppression to students, bosses responsible for workplace murders will be in the crosshairs of the revolutionary violent actions of popular militia.
Each local resistance practice of popular militia will prevent the spreading of the mood, "one cannot resist, one cannot succeed", which the Palace fascism is trying to create. Each one of them will open the gates to position those who tend to resist but wait for a vanguard-gripping praxis, in the ranks of struggle. These practices will play role in breathing determination and trust to masses. And the overall of these resistance practices, on a general basis, will both politically batter the fascist Palace dictatorship and be a lever for antifascist mass movement to revive and grow in the resistance direction.
The Structure of Popular Militia
All the vivid and energetic elements of the antifascist masses must be hailed as the potential forces of popular militia. There is no need for militia constituents to leave their own regular work and life places, on contrary, these groups of people become militia in their daily routine and join the resistance. Undoubtedly, the main human source of the militia groups is the laboring neighborhood youth. These militia groups can be formed in a flexible and inclusive way and as trios. This means that laboring neighborhoods are the primary places for popular militia to organize and spread fastest. However, popular militia is surely not limited with laboring neighborhoods. The aim has to be spreading it to schools, workplaces and everywhere possible. And again, forming self-defense units unique to different social and political struggle dynamics, such as women's liberation militia, Qizilbash-Alevi militia, student's militia, worker's militia, has a great value as a political pathfinder.
Popular militia organization cannot be approached isolated from the antifascist mass movement which manifest itself with legal or de-facto legitimate struggle forms on a general or local level. It must be considered exactly as a form of mass movement. Because, militia is not an organizational model only limited with the organized forces of communist and revolutionary subjects. It cannot be expected that popular militia will spontaneously gain a massive character in practice. In the beginning, the party must organize its bellicose poised basis as militia or form militia cores together with other revolutionary subjects. Yet still, the vivid and especially young sections of the antifascist masses must certainly be attracted to the ranks of the militia. Defending each Kurdistan district where the autonomy was declared via militia units composing hundreds of people, under the name of YPS (Yekîneyên Parastina Sîvîl- Civil Defense Units) and the fact that this whole self-defense process has arisen over the heroic resistance of the militia numbering tens of thousands are just quite fresh examples for popular militia developing as an armed mass movement.
To put a short emphasis, the current issue is not about organizing militia only as a special and narrow underground structure, but beyond that, it is to build a network of popular militia ever growing inside the suitable popular antifascist dynamics popping up at the de-facto legitimate struggle front. Some of these militia groups can be directly bound to MLKP and some other can be bound to the Peoples' United Revolution Movement or locally organized united resistance committees.
Each militia group must have a minimum political and technical capacity without any kind of perfectionism or idealization. This can cover practical training of the militia constituents on basic technical topics such as preparing molotovs and using pistols. But at the same time, it also covers basic trainings for group members to comprehend what kind of enemy targets should be politically prioritized, how to maintain secure connection inside the group, which aspects should be taken into account while preparing an action plan and how to make a stash appropriate for the purpose.
A working and struggle mode based on constant mobilization is vital for militia groups. Militia must never be stuck in a mood of cooling off and must constantly take on new tasks, focus on dashing small but perpetual hits. Being mobile for a militia group must be complemented with an integrity of all aspects, which contains simple trainings, intelligence works, supplying equipments, free agitation works, preparation of some possibilities like house and vehicle, or setting up stash places as well as the planning and carrying out of revolutionary violent actions towards a fascist enemy target.
The revolutionary will of the communist vanguard must be embodied in the successful fulfillment of the tasks augmenting and strengthening the resistance ranks of our peoples against the political-islamist fascist dictator Erdoğan. Here, as much as it develops and spreads, popular militia will become both an icebreaker for the united antifascist resistance of the working class and oppressed, and a big source of fighters for the politic-military front and guerrilla units of the communist vanguard.