Variant 12


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Contents A conversation with James Kelman William Clark zine & comic reviews Mark Pawson United States and NATO inspired 'Psycological Warefare Operations' against the 'Kurdish Communist Treat' in Turkey: Part One Desmond Fernandes and Iskender Ozden Identity and Interpretation in Literary Practice Jim Ferguson Metaphysical Pathos William Clark Tales of The Great Unwashed Ian Brotherhood Contracted Culture Leigh French 20 reviews 20 minutes Mr tayto and Mr Tayto Mistaken Identities Manuel Rafael Mancillas _____________________________________________________ A conversation with James Kelman In September 1999 the first new play by James Kelman for five years was ready for production on a profit-share basis by a small Glasgow-based company, the actor Gary Lewis had already committed to it. At the time Kelman was joint holder of the Scottish Writer of the Year award. Edinburgh's Traverse Theatre was the first venue approached. It was Kelman's choice; during past years three of his own plays and one of his translations have been produced there. The Traverse requested that in the first instance Kelman should submit the play for consideration by the "literature committee". He replied to the effect that he didn't do auditions these days. The Traverse insisted so he withdrew the play and wrote to the Scottish Arts Council to express his feelings about the situation. This is an informal conversation, more than an interview, recorded in late August 2000, which reveals something of what it is to be a writer working in Scotland. William Clark James Kelman When I got involved in this thing last September [1999], almost a year ago, I thought of it as something personal and was wanting to keep it personal. I'd just come home from the States, I had been away about a year so things were kind of hectic and I didn't want to get too involved. I didn't have the time to get involved anyway, I had a lot of stuff to clear up; the new novel, get on with my essays, then the plays. But I thought about going public. There seemed to be a lot happened within the Arts Council in the last couple of years that was detrimental, and it should be taken on. The changes to do with the Book Trust for instance, as I understand it the Book Trust is now responsible for a lot of work the Literature Department used to do. Things that had been the case are no longer the case, such as money. Before, if you were ever taking part in a gig, doing a reading or whatever, where the audience were charged to get in, you'd always be paid a minimum wage. The writer would not take part in something where there was an admission fee and no payment and the Arts Council would not have supported such an event. There was always a basic payment for the writer. That was part of the way things used to operate so there's been a lot of changes, all these rip-off readings from places like Borders and Waterstones, writers never getting a paid a penny, why don't they boycott them. I remember a couple of years back the Edinburgh Book Festival broke the guidelines, they offered me a fee of fifty quid. I couldn't believe it. At that time the minimum Arts Council fee was £80, maybe £70. It was extraordinary they tried to get away with it. They were surprised when I said no! I don't know how it is at the Book Festival nowadays, I haven't been back since. No writer should ever take part in that kind of shit. The public getting charged money to get in as well, why don't they pay the writers a proper fee! The same with financial support to arts magazines, the main reason the Arts Council gave it was so the writers who wrote for them got a payment for the contribution. So there was that, then the way the education department has crept into the Arts Council reckoning as well. Does that mean their criteria will start being used to deal with writers, censoring or suppressing the ones school inspectors don't want to be seen or heard in a classroom? So now writers who are in any way radical are going to stop getting readings? is that what it means? It'll just be all the safe bastards who'll be earning the fees from school or university readings. Of course that is the way it is just now anyway when you look about, I'm talking generally, the ones getting all the 'creative writing' and residency jobs. You just have to look at the literary brochures and flyers coming at you, quite a cosy wee scene, and then there's the usual team that gets all these invitations to British Council events--Burns Suppers in Turkey and Israel, Saudi Arabia, etc. So a lot of different things, I felt there was a lot of questions needing to be addressed. Other writers feel the same. And if I had got too involved in this thing of mine with the Arts Council I thought I would wind up having to address these other issues and I didn't want to, so I was being selfish, no time no energy. I tried to keep it at that personal level, just me moaning. Here was a situation pertaining to myself, one writer, a writer who has done this much work, x-amount. It doesn't have to be good, bad or indifferent work either, just that if this writer gets a new book out people will read it and if he puts on a new play audiences will want to go and see it. Good bad or indifferent. Just because the writer has already done all that work in the past and the audience know it, and now here he's got a new work out, that's why the audience are going to be interested. They might go away and criticise it, condemn it, but they'll go and see it in the first place, because it's a particular writer they know: "Kelman's first play for five years, let's go and see it." The Traverse wouldn't have lost, it was just a profit-share, no wages, but we would've got some expenses. So these kind of arguments, basic arguments, I just wanted to let the Arts Council hear my side of it, I can't get my work on in this country unless I'm prepared to put up with these stupid insults. Not even for nothing! Submit your work for consideration! They're so fucking naive, they don't even know they're insulting you. Or do they? I felt part of the strength of my case was because it was one writer, it didn't matter who the hell you were, to the extent that even somebody who was joint holder of the Scottish Writer of the Year Award, Booker Prize bla bla bla, even a writer like that could not get a play on without auditioning, getting approval from some sort of literature committee, without meeting their criteria, whatever that might be, amazing crap. A profit-share remember, we weren't looking for any commission-type payment from the theatre, just a percentage of the box-office, we were doing all our own rehearsals, finding our own space, in our time, every damn thing, props, the fucking lot, we were asking nothing from them at all except the space to perform the play for a week or two--well, a week, five or six days, they told us there was no chance of a fortnight--nobody gets a fortnight for a touring show, so they say. I thought the strength of the case lay in keeping it personal. A general case could come about but only as an effect of the personal thing. As well as that I felt it was something that could be put right if I explained the situation as clearly as I could, "I cannot get a play on at the Traverse Theatre for nothing, not even for no money," just something like that. William Clark You wrote to the Arts Council? JK Yeah. WC There's an expectation that they can do something. There's also an expectation--you were saying--you assumed that people were aware of your work or that people had made themselves aware of what's going on in Scotland. One makes these assumptions: that people at a certain level within the Arts Council are even aware of these things or aware of real problems within their organisation or even aware of contemporary art, and they tend to be oblivious. JK You're right to that extent, but it took me a while to realise that they didn't know my work. They maybe knew it by repute. And not always by the repute I would have chosen. I mean what was coming across was that they didn't really know my work and some of the attitudes they had to it were the same kind of attitudes you would get from papers like the Sunday Times, not the Scottish edition. WC 'It's not proper literature.' JK Yeah, they regard me as a 'primitive', 'preculture'; writers like me are 'savages'. But it surprised me, even at this stage in your writing life how you still get the vaguely patronising, vaguely irritated attitude coming to you from the Scottish Arts Council. It's an anglocentric thing, quite a common attitude to Scottish art from people in high Arts Council positions. So there are two points there Billy, the first thing relating to what you scoffed at, the idea of the Arts Council being able to have some kind of influence on their own employees, I mean the staff at the Traverse Theatre. Of course they saw the Traverse employees as the ones they're in solidarity with. Whatever the employee says goes, and they'll back them up to the hilt. They see you as being the foreigner, the artist. The artist is the alien figure that they're in opposition to. They don't see themselves as people who are there in order to support and assist artists. They don't see themselves as that. WC Not at all. JK So the first point you made is dead right. Yeah I wouldn't have illusions about that. Except I did have expectations! In relation to the Traverse you've got to remember that I'd already had a play produced there--two plays. In fact it's been four I've had over the years. One play was actually commissioned by them, and I had one translation commissioned from them as well, a play by a French writer, both about 10 or 12 years ago. So what with that and my last play on--One-two-hey with the Blues Poets band--you felt, well, there's no question here, no economic question either because One-two-hey sold out, there's going to be a proper box-office return, it's guaranteed. The Traverse'll know all that stuff already. WC They were aware of that? JK I don't know. I think I wrote to the director of the theatre in the first place just to make sure he was aware. If he hadn't been at that time then I was going to fill him in with the details. I was basically expecting that he was going to put a word in the ear of the Traverse admin staff: "Don't worry, it's James Kelman, he's a known writer here in Scotland and he's already got a track record, people'll go and see his stuff. It's just a profit-share touring thing anyway." Instead of that the director's position to me was "Well I'm backing up the decision already made by my staff and you're out of line expecting anything different. But don't worry, the committee are not going to actually judge your play, it's something else, they just want to see if it fits the Traverse bill." Something like that, just splitting hairs. "You've got to put your work in front of our literature committee the same as anybody else. Do you expect to be treated differently because you're a senior writer?" The Traverse director used that phrase which grated on me, putting me in my place, "senior writer". Not because of the age thing, I don't dispute it, I'm in my 50s. But there was the implication that somebody like me expects to be beyond criticism just because I'm an old bastard, as if I'm saying younger writers should be criticised and judged but not me because I'm beyond it. So that kind of shite. I felt it was important for me to address that. On the one hand I felt yeah, there's elements in what you're saying that are true. But I know my own response isn't just due to egocentricity or perversity or out and out vanity. There is some underlying critical point I want to get to. So I went into it, I tried to work out what the argument was. Why is it that I expect to be treated differently from somebody else. Is that what I was asking? Here's another way of saying it: Why does the 53 year old Kelman expect to be treated differently to the 25 or 30 year old Kelman? It can't just be an ego thing. Or can it? So these kind of questions. I was saying to them the burden of proof is not on me as a writer, that became the bottom line. Look, here is all the work I've produced, it's all out there, it's available, it can be criticised and looked at whenever. If you want to check out my stuff go to the fucking library. I don't have to prove to the Traverse literature committee or any other damn committee that I'm capable of doing this, that or the next thing. I've done all that, time and time again. Here is all my work, it's all out in the open. Just about everything I've ever written is still in print, including three of my plays. So why is it that you want to "consider" my work? What's the context or whatever that makes it valid for you to make that demand? Why do you feel that my work needs to be "considered" by you? Is it to establish that my play will be worthy of being staged at the Traverse? Is it just to see if it'll be "good". What evidence do you have to suggest that I might give you in something that's "bad"? Away and check your records, go and see how my last three or four plays went, my last two plays sold out, you've got the figures, what the hell is it, what's going on here? WC So this is the Traverse Theatre literary Dept.? JK Yeah, literature committee WC Who is that? JK I hear it can be anybody in the Traverse who's around. They weren't going to say it was this individual or that individual. Just whoever was in that committee at that time. I don't know who it is. It wouldn't matter who it is. I wouldn't allow my work to be "considered" by any of the Arts Council bosses, never mind the literary committee at the Traverse. I'm one of the ones who would never apply for these £25,000 grants they're always on about, "Creative-Scotland" awards! For me no one who is a serious artist, who has produced a real body of work, can ever apply for these grants. They're premised on certain attitudes or values in relation to art that very few real artists could support, not honestly, they would have just to kid on. There's a certain way of looking at art, or what equals the 'end' of the art project, it can be seen in the brochure/application thing. It's a kind of end-means way of looking at art that I don't think artists themselves really share at all. Old fashioned reactionary crap, it's 19th century stuff. "How do you expect this work to be valued by the public?" That sort of stupid question Arts Council officers give to artists before handing them out money so they can go and do their fucking work. Naive shite. I would not allow my work to be put in front of any of these people, no, no longer. I might have when I was a young artist, because I had no body of work, fair enough, sometimes I did do that. But sometimes I didn't do it. When Polygon made that first contact with me for Not Not While the Giro, back in 1981 I had already stopped sending my stuff out for "consideration". Even at that time I had stopped it. If they wanted my stuff fine, I gave them it, if they didn't I didn't, I wasn't going to fucking audition. That was then never mind now. But if you have a substantial body of work there's no need anyway I mean what the fuck do they want off you? WC So is it your concept of the artist that is alien to these people. You use the word artist, they use the word, but it's not the same. JK Yeah, not at all. It's weird to meet it head-on like that. WC For them an artist is some form of rent boy or something: you're rented; but sometimes you don't even get the money. JK Yeah, that became quite clear, it becomes clear in the whole phraseology, I got another of the "Creative-Scotland" awards information through the letter-box recently. It came through my agent believe it or not... WC Ha! JK Yeah, "I thought I should make you aware of it." She's right but, of course she should make me aware of it, that's the sort of thing she gets paid for, she's a good agent. The first time I was sent it was in the middle of all the shenanigans, it was from the director of literature or maybe the overall Arts Council director. Probably an obscure form of put-down. You could only apply in a cynical way because like I said it's got certain attitudes towards art which one cannot share in the year 2000. To give the Arts Council the benefit of the doubt, these are very old fashioned attitudes, not beyond first year art theory or something. They make these assumptions about how "we" value art. Its like, What! in order to discover the merit of my work I've got to look at how the audience responds to it! I beg your pardon! The beholder's response to a work of art will define the value of the work of art! That sort of ludicrous shite. You expect it from first year students, not from people experienced in art. But it's very convenient in relation to funding if you're representing a public body dishing out so-called public funds to so-called artists, you get seen as an efficient individual who is putting the wishes of the public totally to the fore, it's pure crap. WC It's just a bureaucratic expediency. They're now getting to the position whereby they prescribe the work: "We will fund a film like..." and then they name a film maker who they like. That makes their job easy, it makes arts administration a very biased phoney rationing of resources. That's all it is. JK There was a Scottish film maker based in New York, a young guy, he was wanting to do a film of my novel The Busconductor Hines, a few months ago. So I did the first draft screenplay to get things moving, it was long, 250 to 300 pages, a full piece of work. Later on in the process the guy approached Scottish Screen. I didn't know he was doing that, but when he told me I went along with it. I thought there must be something in it, maybe a change in policy, maybe they were starting to support actual writers... Then I was asked along to an interview with the Scottish Screen people. I liked the guy I met there and quite respected what he was saying at first. But then I realised that the only reason I was there was they were wanting to work out if I was worthy of being given a wee up-front sum of dough in order to complete a second draft, or maybe take it a stage further, get it finished, I can't quite remember. That was all it was, all that palaver, just to see if they would throw me a few quid to do more work on the screenplay, they wanted to see if it was merited or not. To give me the fucking money I mean! I was supposed to submit the first draft of the screenplay to them so they could say whether or not I was worthy of getting this small up-front sum of dough. I said "No, you're not judging me at all, what are you talking about?" They were wanting to "consider" my first draft and chat about whether or not the project was merited or some such shite! I had already done all the work--the slogging stuff--for nothing, for no wages, that first draft like I said, I done a full job on it. Remember as well that this was a film based on my own adaptation of my own novel. So all this crap was just if they would deign to give me a wee sum of dough in order for me to go away and work on it some more. The public's dough! This is Scottish Screen right. The guy who's interviewing me, he's got my entire first draft screenplay in front of him. It was to be a three person committee. So who's to be involved in that? How are they going to do their judging? Are they going to read my novel and then read the first draft screenplay, and if so then what, what does that tell them? And who's to do it anyway, who is there in Scottish film that's work a fucking button, who is there to respect as an artist, is there anybody at all, maybe one or two. But really, it's hard to think of anybody in Scottish movies you could trust as an artist, they all compromise, they go for easy options, else they just sell out altogether, and now they're going to sit and "consider" my work! Fuck off. I just find that extraordinary, I'm talking about six months ago. At this stage in my life my work is going to be judged by people like that to get a couple of thousand quid to go away and work on the next stage of the screenplay. It is fucking unbelievable. This is public money for christ sake it's for artists, to help them do their work, let us do our fucking work, it's just a wage, you'll get it back. What right do they have to stop us doing our work? That's what happening. The same as happened to the play, that film project has finished, like every other film project I've ever been involved in, nothing. WC But a great deal of the public money is tied up by the administrators of public money. You mentioned Scottish Screen. It emerged that previous director, gave himself a million pounds of Scottish Screen public money, over and above his salary as an administrator, for his own project. Some people are administering these things to try to get at the money first. JK Well they're succeeding. WC The government policy may or may not be well-intentioned, but all they can ever produce ends up as an opportunist's charter. Certain perennial problems of government exist. We're asked to believe that with prohibition in America they couldn't foresee the rise of...well, look at the drug laws now: they actually pretend they're working. They can't admit that corruption will destroy any system. JK It was foolish of me to get involved. It was a misunderstanding. You see I hadn't realised that the guy in New York who was going to get things moving had approached Scottish Screen at this trivial level. I thought there was a new approach going on and they were saying, "Right, Kelman is going to do an adaptation of one of his novels at long last and he's already done a full first draft screenplay. The project's got x-amount of dough ready to come in from Canada and New York and wherever, once it's up and running, so if we give them such and such an amount that'll get the thing moving, once we stick in something the overseas money'll start coming in." That's the level I thought the discussion was going to be at. Then I found out no, it was the same old story, it was back to that old stage where I was going to have to audition my work for a committee of three just to see if I was worthy of the chance to develop my fucking screenplay. And not even to get proper dough, just a wee personal sum so I could revise the fucking script! there's a good boy, a pat on the head. I felt oh christ I'll call this off immediately. The way I see it over the years Scottish Screen was always just a corrupt body, intellectually bankrupt, like the telly or something. All you have to do is see the people involved in writing the shoddy third rate work that comes out. It never uses real writers. Why is that? Maybe once in a blue moon. It gives a lot of money to actors, directors and all these other people to do screenplays. How come they never pay real writers? The bottom line is they don't want real writers. It's like Hollywood in the 50s or something. WC But a lot of American writers did work for the movies, Faulkener... JK Yeah there was a good period. But the 50s was a time when they started to get rid of real writers, the McCarthy era. What you saw was how the directors became the main figures, real writers were too political. So Scottish Screen in that sense is just part of the usual Scottish Arts scene. All they want is working-class sentimental shite, a kitchen-sink fantasy land, fucking hopeless. What a waste of time, all the emotional energy. For me now it's finished, Scottish theatres like the Traverse as well, finished in a personal way. I should've known that a while back when the Traverse refused to let me, Tom Leonard and George Gallacher's blues band use their space to play a one-off night, they didn't think we could get an audience--for a one-off night performance! Fucking hell man. Another profit-share thing. That was less than three years ago, just before I went to work in Texas. Of course theatre's been finished for a while now anyway and I should have realised that. I'm finishing this new book of essays of mine and there's a big diatribe I wrote back in 1987 or something, caused by the shit that went on trying to put on another play of mine, In the Night. So here I am just now fighting a battle I wouldn't have wasted my time fighting twelve or thirteen years ago. I wrote a bit about it in the introduction to that book of plays of mine, Hardie & Baird. Fucking waste of energy. It's shocking, but at the same time... WC Earlier on we were criticising the history of Scottish theatre and now with all the closures and 'privatisation' there's no future. Some people would say there's been a lot of things: some sort of reputations and ultimately it's come through. Theatres have come through 'Thatcherite' arts council policies whereby it's complete commercialisation and forget anything else. I felt that via the Arts Council the government pushed this managerialism--organisations were swayed through that, because it was presented as purely administrative. Now it's all up in the air again: it's still totally tied in with government policy, there's no two ways about that. To get funding from the Arts Council you must follow and like the government policies and views or put up a believable impersonation of that. But what are the models for that kind of thing: Stalinist Russia? Who exactly is being helped along here? There's also the law of diminishing returns. How many plays that say the government's policies are fantastic would you want to go and watch in a year? What defence is there against that, what awareness of it even, on the part of the SAC? With Magnus Linklater-- an appointee of the previous administration--the arts suddenly became an opportunity to negotiate a salary straight from the word go. For everybody else its take it or leave it. JK I suppose with myself when I wrote to Magnus Linklater I also wanted things to be on record. So I don't really regret all the time I've spent, because I have this correspondence here and the idea of making it known like just now. Plus nobody can say I didn't try, like when I tell people in the States I can't get a play on and they look at me, well, here it is, I was stopped at this level and that level, this is me being stopped. I still can't get a play done at a place like The Traverse without doing a clown routine for the bastards, and I'm talking about for nothing, no wages. WC Maybe you didn't really see it but at the time of the Booker Prize a lot of the coverage--like the Times and so on--would say it's an insult to the Booker Prize, you get Waugh or Julia Neuberger or Greer, somebody like that and their tirade of gibberish. But it must be quite effective. In some ways it colours some people's views of your work. JK Yeah...well it did up here too, MPs obviously, they took the Neuberger line and supported the hostility against me. Brian Wilson and other ones, Donald Dewar, they attacked, every Labour MP who opened his mouth--apart from Gordon Brown, he was the only one I saw that came out in print without attacking me. Like The Glasgow Herald as well, after I won the thing just about the entire bunch that write for it came out and attacked, they all found their own wee way of doing it, it was like tossing coconuts, it was so bad the fucking editor was reduced to defending me, Arnold Kemp. What was interesting too was that bodies like the Saltire Society attacked. They just took the Neuberger line on language as having some truth in it. I remember the quote from the Saltire Society was something like "Oh yes, Scottish writers tend to shoot themselves in the foot." Something like that. So here you've got people who are directly associated with contemporary writing in Scotland just taking up that uncritical hostile position to a Scottish writer, basically on the word of an English tabloid, and you would have that hostility from a lot of the Scottish educational system, yeah, and people involved with the SNP of course, they came out and attacked the novel as well, Paul Scott... WC What because everyone else was? JK Perhaps it was that. It was also because the conventional wisdom being peddled was that my work was "primitive writing" and they wanted to be seen as being on the side of "matters of the intellect" or something, the SNP, they didn't want to be seen as 'parochial'! They were wanting to be seen as mature persons, they're big enough to attack a Scottish work written in a Scottish kind of working class dialect bla bla bla... It's part of that colonial mentality again, inferiorisation, plus the usual anglocentric attitudes from the Scottish establishment. That would have been part of the crap that was going on from them, I don't know. One of the points that you were making earlier in relation to Thatcher and 1979, there certainly were shifts in the arts. One of the ways it happened during the next ten years was the way funding went, American style Corporatism... WC The "if the private sector aren't funding you we're not funding you" routine... JK ...the whole attitude of Ian McGregor and the people who came in the 70s. Remember the title of McGregor's autobiography? The Enemies Within. A typical Thatcher/Reagan Cold War line. But before the Thatcher government we were already being put into that way of thinking so it's a mistake to say "Thatcherism". But between that and also as a way to control the arts--move it out of the public sector and into the private sector as a means to suppress or censor etc. BP [British Petroleum] was one of the major sponsors of theatre, they had the Young Director of the Year awards and so on. So as soon as you have groups taking control like that, funding becomes a functional thing. There's obviously ways in which slowly but surely avant garde theatre--never mind left-wing, radical political stuff--will slowly but surely... WC ...know they're not wanted. JK What's wanted is the Kings and Lyceum Theatre, the Citizens... Shakespeare and P.G.Wodehouse, foreign writers and Noel Coward, pantomimes--and style as well, what's cool, can I join the gang, give us a fucking Nike stripe. But what I was going to say is it is an error to fall into that way of thinking that says how before 1979 things were okay. It's crap. What you're talking about, the 7:84 company, Wildcat, that sort of thing... Really, it was just what you would say Labour Party. And it was probably Manifesto Labour Party, it wasn't even Tribune. None of that stuff was left-wing at all, not if you step outside the Labour Party. In some ways it was really reactionary theatre. As far as they were concerned, political theatre...as a musician friend of mine used to say... "If you walked out, sang a song and said Fuck the Queen, then you'd get described as political theatre, and you'd get funding." That was what it was about at that period. Or so he said, I don't actually believe you could've said that. It was mainly shit though. Real radical art, genuine left-wing art, I don't think it was a possibility. There was nothing much going on then. Maybe not all shite. But as far as being at the cutting edge of literature, christ, theatre's so old fashioned, it was then and it is now, compared to straight prose fiction, give us a break... No. Whereas it might be nice to see maybe John Byrne's work, The Slab Boys or something, it's not ever going to be accused of being too radical. Or like John McGrath's work. It has a place and all that but it's surely not going to be regarded as radical theatre! Or is it, who knows. You had a lot of pseudo stuff then, as you still get, like Scottish movies it's full of pseudo left-wing stuff. It's "working class"--it gets sold as that anyway, so called working class--and that gets equated with left-wing. But is it? A lot of it's just old fashioned naturalism, and naturalism is only a sort of weird fantasy. In literature that kind of stuff was out of date in the early 1950s for christ sake but this is what gets supported and funded in the year 2000 in the World of Drama, theatre and movies. It's fucking hopeless, apart from one or two exceptions, okay. WC So you're saying you're never going to get a play on in Scotland? JK The Tron theatre didn't even reply to the letters we sent them. Maybe the Arches would have been interested, they did One-two-hey. But we just felt this particular play should go to particular places. Theatres are different, the spaces are different. I remember that play of mine Hardie and Baird, it would have been great to see it at the Tron. I couldn't imagine it at the Arches but who knows. It ran two weeks at the Traverse and it was selling out, and then that was that, it just finished, it never went anywhere else, it just died a death. I found that amazing. I know at that time in Glasgow...I'm sure nobody in theatre wanted to be at loggerheads with the Labour Party and Glasgow District Council--a major funding body--and that would've been that, putting a play of mine on, because of the situation at that time. Myself and you and a few others were anathema in those days Billy, Glasgow 1991... WC Not just at that time! JK Of course, and they've got longer memories than us. There's only been two plays of mine ever on in Glasgow, then the wee revival of The Busker a couple of years ago, the same company that were wanting to do this new one that's caused the bother. There would have been no chance of Hardie and Baird playing there in 1991. But maybe it wasn't political at all, nobody's got a right to get a play on, including me. I've got three plays just now, new ones, the one we've been talking about plus another two. Where do I go with them. I don't blame people like the Tron or the Citizens for not trying to stage my work because maybe they just don't want to stage it and they're entitled to that. In relation to what you're saying, I could see them putting on Hardie and Baird after I'm dead. WC What because it's historical? JK Yeah probably, that makes it safe. A couple of critics were amazed there was so much religion in it, they thought it was too much. But maybe that would make the Labour Party feel even more safe, if it was just religion, they would think there was no politics. I don't really know what's going on in Scottish theatre these days, I don't go very much. It's not just Scotland of course, it's elsewhere in the UK. A lot of things have happened. People down south are worried as well, it's not even politically radical, or experimental theatre, sort of "mainstream radical" where they're just trying to put on a new play or something. WC Certainly there has been depressing changes in theatre and I think a lot of this is due to notions of nationality. The Arts Council want to devolve power--and that's quite laudable in some respects--but all that comes down to is you cut touring companies and rep. because you don't have a national body to encourage that. The National Companies receive about half the total funding budget. Moves that came in the wake of the Audit report which castigated all the big Lottery projects--it was really the Tories' appointees fault so you can't blame the present administration, well you never can, can you? perhaps that's why they change. Well it all centred on the Royal Opera House in '97, the failings there and the vacuum that created in the Arts Council, the ACE was on the brink of collapse. This occurred as the new government came in with all their new ideas as to where the money should flow. A lot of people react against them but for fuck's sake they gave these people millions and when they needed more they gave them more. But a lot of that was obviously politically motivated. Opera got the money, but they did it through unusual ways and got caught and fell out at a bad time. Important people had their chance first. They blew it. That's what happened. The report showed that the big companies fucked things up for the wee ones. Meanwhile a lot of cuts were made and the entire ACE Drama committee just packed it in, which saved them getting rid of them. I don't understand these resignations. They should have stayed and said "We're going to make life fucking difficult for you bastards," but they just resigned. JK Are they not part of the career structure themselves, part of that group? I'm resisting using the term 'class'. WC No. They're a committee to create the illusion of democratic decision-making. They have no power really. They realised that. That's the real reason why they resigned. Minutes were being withheld from them--the usual thing--decisions were taken behind people's backs. JK I always feel that these kind of committees are doing their bit for their own kind of class. WC That's certainly a motivation. It's all got to be seen as "we're all in it together." JK If you think about the dispensation of Arts Council money in terms of class, the artists in a sense tend to be treated as working class. One of the ways that operates is like--take the £25,000 "Creative Scotland" bursary, the best I've ever seen for Scotland--the money would be the equivalent of an excellent working-class wage, a top tradesman. Whereas the bureaucrats are getting a middle class wage, an officer's wage, probably that starts from the £25,000 or just below. The arts administrators are the cultural officers, paid at the middle class level, but the artists get a working class wage, a hundred quid for a writer's fee, it's like an emergency call out for a plumber, a writer-in-residency, it's working class dough, fair enough. Part of it gets carried through with entire groupings so Scottish Opera, or Scottish Ballet or big Scottish theatres maybe, they get treated in middle class ways whereas other groups aren't, they'll be treated in a working class kind of way where they'll get the crumbs and fight for scraps, "community art". WC TAG Theatre did commission an Edwin Morgan play then the SAC cut TAG's money. There are divisions of labour, but even the notion of being an artist and a writer. You know 'art critics should work for a nice responsible magazine', but I think there are tiers within tiers as well. Surely the lowest of the low are the poets and visual artists. JK I don't think so. Well, it depends... WC In Scotland? JK Well it's often assumed that if you're a poet you're an academic or you're making a good income anyway, Robert Crawford or Eddie Morgan, Douglas Dunn. An interesting thing to look at is the level of award that Tom Paulin got in England, to go away and write a poem or work at a poem, he got about 75 grand, something like that, to go away for a year's sabbatical. Because he is assumed to be on their upper middle class level. In some establishment quarters they see a poet as somebody who is sort of dilettante--I hate that term, but to define it economically... These kind of poets have a huge income anyway in terms of the day-to-day work they do, and they create art in their spare time... So not the lowest of the low, the opposite from scum. WC Well I think there's something in what I'm saying. JK Yeah, I'm not generalising, most poets get treated badly WC If I think about the visual arts, and I go into an art gallery, say the CCA in Glasgow. There's going to be a person sitting inside behind the desk, now I know that's an artist, that's somebody who's just left art school. And they're sitting there getting paid what, a fiver? Its almost like they're on display, "look, this is what happens to you if you become an artist," as if they are in the public stocks or left hanging on the gallows at the at the entrance to a city. Then there's the serious artist having an exhibition, but they're probably not really getting any money. Then there are all these people who hang the shows, they will probably be artists on the dole who also sit at the desk. Maybe people aspire to this sort of thing. It's replicated throughout all the major cities in Britain. Peculiarly verybody's getting paid, the person who cleans etc., except for artists. In the visual arts that's the way it works. Until as you say, you get to a certain level where you cross some kind of class aspiration thing... JK Sometimes no, you think that's the case, but then it comes back and haunts you, as with this latest thing, you might get to a level but you never make that crossing, all the stuff you've done as an artist, as a writer, it's not opening these sorts of doors at all, you're still fighting all the time, I'm talking about just to do your work. So, you're back to--well...to introduce other people into that equation, I don't particularly want to, but if I was thinking really off the top of my head it would be people like Alasdair [Gray], Tom [Leonard] and Agnes [Owens], Jeff Torrington, Janice Galloway, even Crichton Smith before he died, people who either have no money to get on with things or else still have to chase around. There's no harm in artists like having to earn a living etc. but I don't see why at a certain stage they still have to be chasing around the country for paltry eighty quids here and a hundred quid there, people who have produced all that great work. I think that's a scandalous thing. Alasdair not being able to finish The Book of Prefaces because he didn't have the money, meanwhile the Arts Council are dishing out...I mean where the fuck are the...who's getting it? Where does all the money go when someone like Alasdair, he couldn't finish the 'Prefaces' at that time because he didn't have enough money to get him through another year, he had to find private sponsoring, what's the fucking Arts Council for. These kind of questions which I don't really want to get into. Tom chasing up and down to England every week to survive, and Janice couldn't even do that, having a kid, and of course Jeff couldn't, and Freddie [Anderson] who's in his mid 70s. That brings you into other areas. WC The funding culture, the Arts Council stuff: its obviously a deeply bourgeoisie, middle-class, don't rock the boat, status quo values...that's it. JK And also Billy, the rent boy thing, that point you made--for them ultimately there is no belief whatsoever in art. And somebody whether it's myself, as with the theatre carry-on, it's how they have absolutely no belief in what you do. They put no value in the art you create. They still think that if they were to give you a bursary for example, it's just Kelman or Gray is getting £10,000... WC You'd see the error of you're ways... JK They would just...no, it's just how for them they're giving you ten thousand quid and somehow you're "getting away with something", you're just getting the money, it's not for anything, it's not even old rope, it's just a game, there's no value in what you do. There's no value in it, the Arts Council don't see it. Some people might talk about your work in a pub or something, yeah, the Arts Council officers know that, or maybe at least they'll see a book you've written on a shelf in a library, but they don't put any real value on the stuff you do, not in itself, they don't see it as art, not real art, there's no value in it WC I don't think so. I don't think there is. If you look back to the original thinking with Keynes, it was Keynes that thought it up as an extenuation from ENSA, you know to help the troops (which gave us Stanley Baxter and Kenneth Williams), that was for the lower orders right. And CEMA was this thing which basically was designed to fund the big opera houses. The financial methodology was loans. It was never ever intended to be 'here's money on you go we will support you'... JK Yeah that's a 70s thing. WC Exactly. The notion of continuing funding. Now they're attacking that again. Keynes' notions are largely taken from an article in The Listener. His notion of artists were pretty muddled actually. The analogy is that they are like butterflies in a jar, give them money and they have freedom. It's quite flowery, apolitical...no social responsibility whatsoever. If they do still believe that they have also come to believe that if you let the butterfly out of the jar it'll go straight to the pub. That's what they think. If you give artists money they will spend it on their lives [laughter] they'll waste it, they'll pay bills with it. There is an anomaly there. I think at a very high level in the arts they have got to rediscover that the values of what we would call the 'counter-culture', all these things that were wrongfully ditched by the establishment, actually revivified art. They refuse to deal with certain sets of issues because they call their own roles into question. Until they address these sorts of things and stop putting nutcases in charge because they're 'good businessmen' I can't see anything changing and remember they're doing themselves out of a job. Look at the BBC for instance. It's ethos has been commercialised. So it will compete with all these commercial imperatives. If that's what it's doing then why am I paying the license? It will only do-in the whole basis of the thing. You pay your license fee so that it doesn't have to be ruled by commercial imperatives and it's the same with art's funding. I can't see any real way in a 'modern democracy' where they could say "we're going to have this fund which will force people to go along with the government's hastily constructed views on culture." That just doesn't make any sense. I want to believe there's a chance for them. I support the idea of an Arts Council in the same way I support the concept of the BBC. If you look at the ACE's website it says we will try and challenge this 'historical bias': they're penitent. But they're right for the wrong reasons, they're just saying that because they're told to say it. They actually admit historical failure. But they're still not going to change things. Departments and individuals within the Arts Council are very different, but I don't think I've ever read anything which honestly conveys what it's like to encounter the sheer crippling madness of the bureaucracy...most people just give up. JK You know I fought that damn thing for nine months, nine months wasted energy. WC ...yeah see there's the time scale of these things. The day in day out... JK One of these letters I wrote took about five or six days work--because I'm watching my back...you have to be careful... See I knew the attitude was going to be "Well what does he expect, he acts like the theatre's his or something I mean what right does he have to come walking in here!" That sort of attitude. These theatres are theirs, they belong to the admin officers, they've got nothing to do with us, the artists, that's the point. Well we knew that anyway that's just fucking banal. I landed myself in banalities for nine months. I got slapped down and put in my place. And how many times that has happened in the past for myself in this country, trying to get...you know...just get your work done. WC What is the root cause? JK What in other people's eyes? WC Well if somebody as you say hasn't got a track record well they'll say maybe later. Somebody in the middle position who's getting treated like shit can themselves say 'aye maybe one day'... JK When they're up there winning Scottish Writer of the Year Awards! ...No but it is outrageous. So just to try and get it made public, that this is the reality here, this is what we're actually talking about, I can't get a play on for fucking nothing, this is what it is like to be a writer in Scotland. None of that is discussed. Meanwhile we get the usual crap from The Herald and The Scotsman, or Scotland on Sunday, attacking writers about this...what's that one by Tom, their "feather bedded life of luxury..." WC Yeah 'they're all getting funded and they're all moaning'. But that's just sad wankers who haven't got a clue... JK Well they do have a clue... WC What are you trying to tell me that they're saying this to create a... JK Well some of the media are, yeah. And attacking people in a very underhand way. Just about every time I read a column about contemporary Scottish literature in The Herald we're getting attacked, in one way or another. I'm talking about the exciting stuff--all the reactionary crap gets supported. Look how they attacked Janice Galloway and Alasdair Gray in The Scotsman, or was it Scotland on Sunday? And when Janice and Alasdair replied they didn't even publish the letter they sent but again they attacked them, and they used bits of the letter for that purpose, imagine it, cowardly bastards. This is the kind of thing they do in Scotland. Imagine these little shits attacking writers like Alasdair and Janice! Christ almighty. Magnus Linklater is a former editor of The Scotsman anyway, but that's the Andrew Neil team nowadays and Linklater is nowhere near as bad as that, I don't think so, if he had been I wouldn't have written to him in the first place. Who knows. He's an ordinary kind of right-wing guy, I suppose, in a position of authority. Another one! But take people like...what's her name...writes for The Herald and does stuff all over the place, for the BBC... Her that's in the Labour Party, she's attacked me in the past because of Workers City, her that always backed up Pat Lally and whoever, the three stooges... WC Oh what Ruth Wishart! JK Yeah, people like Ruth Wishart, who have quite a strong position within the arts... WC ...She's the Labour Party hatchet for the arts... JK But these people really are the enemies in a sense, they try to hurt you and all that, and they succeed. I don't get so hurt because I'm maybe in a stronger position, I regard myself as quite strong, and yet for people who are less...in a worse economic position...they can get hurt really badly you know, they get stopped, they can't do their work. At least I know next year will not be as bad because I'll be in Texas, Texas half the year, England the other half. back to top _______________________________________________________ zine & comics reviews Mark Pawson Apologies if you missed this column in the last issue, I had a late summer break and popped over to New York to search out and track down some interesting print creations... Weird N.J.--Your Travel Guide to New Jersey's Local Legends and Best Kept Secrets is a round up of odd architecture, forgotten theme parks, urban folklore and just plain weird goings on in New York's ugly sister state. Issue 14 features the Palace of Depression--a quirky landmark built in the 1930s out of junk and old car parts--and has a round up of boat-shaped buildings, a Cemetery Safari round-up, local Pirate tales, Roadside weirdness, kid's attractions and telegraph poles mysteriously adorned with sculptures. There's lots of lively input from their readers--always the sign of a good zine--but it's odd that they're not wise to the Andre the Giant graffiti campaign. Immensely readable, Weird N.J. is an engrossing look at an American state that rarely receives anything other than bad press. Tuli Kupferberg, best known as a member of The Fugs, is an East Village counter culture survivor. On previous visits to New York I've always spotted him selling tapes and booklets on SoHo street corners, but this time around he was nowhere to be seen, maybe Mayor Giuliani's zero tolerance policies have driven him off the streets. Tuli finally gets his very own Teach Yourself book, this collection of 200 collages and cartoons is called Teach Yourself Fucking. It's idiosyncratic, loosely drawn and scrappily thrown together--just like his booklets always were, but maybe losing the sharper edge of his earlier publications and with a heavy focus on New York politics. 'The old Fucks at Home' is his continuing series of two oldsters trying to make sense of the world as it comes through their TV. There's also the satirical 'Great Moments in the History of Politics, Art, Literature, Journalism and Capitalism' cartoons. A couple of my favourites; cockroaches standing around discussing the merits of 'People Motels--where people check in, but don't check out' and Tuli's ad for the Village Voice personal column; 'Beautiful Woman! I saw you walking down village streets in the sixties. I should have spoken, but didn't. Please contact me.' Public Illumination Magazine, celebrates 20 years of publishing with issue 46, this 'non-occasional' print oddity is tiny--just larger than a business card. Each issue is themed, 'Busts' this time around, 'Luxury' for the next issue, and contains a mix of bite size prose, drawings, sketches and haikus. Originally New York based, editor Zagreus Bowery has relocated to Italy and continues to assemble this cute curiosity from works by contributors with equally unlikely, and obligatory pseudonyms; Crispy Prawns, Rank Cologne and Gulley A. Rosebush all feature in this issue. I've got a treasured collection of previous Public Illuminations stashed away, picked up on previous visits to New York and bought here in the 80s when copies were on sale in London, and look forward to rediscovering them when I file this copy... Cool (comics for you) is a free tabloid showcasing recent and forthcoming books by some of today's most interesting independent comic publishers from the US, UK and Canada. It's a collaboration between Top Shelf, Drawn and Quarterly, Highwater Books and Slab-o-Concrete. The low cost newspaper format means there's plenty of space to print sample strips from all of the books featured, some in full colour. It's a great idea that they could easily charge money for, and let's be honest, it's always better to see work for yourself than have it filtered and part-digested by some reviewer! Vice is a freebie skate/hip hop lifestyle magazine out of Canaduh & Brooklyn that distinguishes itself with a varied range of articles to amuse, offend and puzzle. Interspersed between the ads for overbranded leisure clothing and skate shoes for non-skaters (it is, after all produced by a chain of clothing stores...) there's articles on 'The Joy of Eavesdropping', an interview with a Strawberry Farmer (a real farmer not a band name), A Backstreet Boys Impersonator, Horror Rap? (there's a whole lot more where chart-topping 'Nem' came from), "I didn't wear a shirt for a month", East Timor and Porno Reviews, plus there's a glossy colour comics section with short strips from Kaz, Kochalka and Fiona Smyth. Vice have a helluva lot of fun with their do's and don'ts pages, featuring photos of cute guys and girls on the 'do's' page and mercilessly picking on style atrocities on the 'don'ts' page. Vice embodies an anything goes spirit, occasionally going too far, but they've got their name to live up to. Paper Rodeo, is another tabloid freebie, out of Providence, Rhode Island. A collection of some of the most disconcerting, dream-like, tripped out comics to be seen since the demise of Brighton's Watermelon Comic. I honestly can't tell if the strips are all by the same artist or ten different people! Ultra scratchy drawing styles are reminiscent of Gary Panter's Jimbo and with a nice touch, the adverts for local Providence cafes, galleries and bookshops are all done in matching styles. Apparently they have a whole catalogue of other work by the artists involved. Roctober is one of my favourite music zines, previous themed issues have focused on Masked rock'n'roll, Monkey rock'n'roll and Midget rock'n'roll! I missed the last few issues, so was pleased to find this one in the racks at See Hear, New York's zine shop. Roctober #28 maintains their track record for outstanding cover artwork coupled with refreshingly low production values of the interior pages! This issue has a long feature on the risque comedy records of Redd Foxx--who also starred in the US TV remake of Steptoe & Son, and an exclusive interview with wholesome whitebread crooner Pat Boone! Plus there's articles on Dolemite, The Dickies, Andre Williams, Swamp Dogg, Maceo Parker and Brazilian superstar Xuxa. Roctober has a knack for finding interesting offbeat musicans neglected elsewhere and always has a dauntingly long reviews section. I haven't reviewed any of Mark Gonzales' zines here, much as I'd like to, sorry Mark but at £20/$20 a pop they're too expensive, hey but feel free to send review copies. Paul in the country by Michel Rabagliati, is a delightful story which intersperses memories of the author growing up in french-speaking Quebec with a trip to the country, accompanied by his partner and young daughter, to visit his aging parents. Beautifully drawn in a clear-line european style, this is only the first comic book from Rabagliati-who has worked as an illustrator and graphic designer for the past 20 years. It's up to publisher Drawn and Quarterly's usual high standard, and on the basis of this comic I'm waiting eagerly for Rabagliati's forthcoming graphic novel Paul has a Summer Job. Back in the UK now, Weird Zines, is a new reviews zine, Issue 1 covers some zines you'll be familiar with from this column (Infiltration, Book Happy, From Parts Unknown) together with an unhealthy dose of zines focussing on trash, sleaze and exploitation cinema. Titles such as Mansplat, Streetcleaner, The Exploitation Journal and Cashiers du Cinemart give you a good idea of what these guys are into! Just 22 reviews seems a bit scanty, they could easily have squeezed a few more in here, but there's plenty of illustrations, and heck its only the first issue. Publishing a reviews zine is a thankless task at best, and previous attempts have fizzled out or floundered under mountains of mediocre zines sent to them, for this reason alone Weird Zines deserves your support. Everything's a Pound, a survey of books weighing sixteen ounces avoirdupois, is both a practical examination of the size and weight of books (extremely pertinent to small publishers who rely on mailorder and are at the mercy of postage costs) and a hommage to the Great British Pound Shop--which these days seems to be a global phenomena with every country having its equivalent, ¥100 shops in Japan and Americas 99¢ stores. Everything's a Pound is a balanced mixture of artists' books produced specifically for the project and existing publications which happen to weigh a pound or have been chopped down to size. Rodger Brown contributes a set of books weighing 8, 4, and 2 ounces--which can be used as weights, a slightly overweight copy of 'SPAIN-the rough guide' has a corner sawn off by Martin Rogers to arrive at the correct weight and in the process gets retitled 'PAIN-the rough guide'. Everything is in the catalogue, including work that fails miserably to adhere to the theme from contributors who couldn't be bothered to read the instructions properly and work from metric-minded Europeans who don't know what a pound is! This book weighs in on target but seems overpriced at £5.00. UK small press comics' stalwart John Bagnall's A Nation Of Shopkeepers, takes us on a walk down an early 1970's northern high street, calling in at the supermarket, chip shop, butchers and boutique along the way. Each tableau is crammed full of accurately observed period details and hideous seventies styles, fish and chips wrapped in real newspaper, green shield stamps in the supermarket, listening booths in the Record Shop, Jimmy Saville hairdos, carcoats, tanktops and flares are regulation issue. It's a very British and decidedly unglamorous trip down memory lane. The latest book from the original badly-drawn boy, Scottish doodlemeister David Shrigley, Grip, is his largest yet and even has a colour section. This selection of drawings, ponderings, wonderings and meanderings seem bleaker and loopier than his earlier work, if that's possible. Shrigley's work deserves a book this size, so you can flick back and forth through it several times choosing your favourite pages and gradually working round to the rest of the book, just reading from start to finish doesn't seem appropriate. Buy a copy so he can afford some more packs of felt-tip pens off the market. Grip is published by Edinburgh's pocketbooks; steered by Alec Finlay they've built up an interesting, eclectic list of titles in a short time, several come with accompanying CDs, check out their catalogue. contacts A Nation Of Shopkeepers, John Bagnall, 16 pgs, A5, £1.50, Beechnut Books. marc@corncob.co.uk Everything's a Pound, A survey of books weighing sixteen ounces avoirdupois, 84 pgs, A4, £5.00. RGAP, Britannia Mill, Mackworth Road, Derby, DE22 3 BL. rgap@derby.ac.uk Roctober Comics and Music, A4 80 pgs, $4.00, 1507 E.53rd Street #617, Chicago, IL60615, USA. www.roctober.com Grip, David Shrigley, 200pgs, £7.99+£1.20p+p, pocketbooks, Canongate Venture (5) New Street, Edinburgh, EH8 8BH. www.pbks.co.uk Paper Rodeo, tabloid, 16pgs, free, send $ for postage & a catalogue, Box 254, Allston, MA 02134, USA. Weird N.J.A4 80pgs, $4.00+postage,PO Box 1346, Bloomfield, NJ 07003, USA. www.weirdnj.com Paul in the country, Michel Rabagliati, comic 32 pgs, $3.50, Drawn and Quarterly, PO Box 48056, Montreal, Quebec, Canada, H2V 4S8. www.drawnandquarterly.com. Teach Yourself Fucking, Tuli Kupferberg, A4 192 pgs, $15.00, Autonomedia, PO Box 568, Brooklyn, New York 11211-0568 USA. www.autonomedia.org Public Illumination Magazine, $1.50, 24pgs. Casa Sorci, 06044 Castel Ritaldi (PG) Italy. casasorci@krenet.it Weird Zines, A5 24pgs. £1.50+an S.A.E. Justin Marriott, 159 Falcondale Rd, Bristol, BS9 3JJ Cool (Comics for You), tabloid, 28 pgs, free, 1536 West Randolph Street, Chicago, IL 60607, USA. www.coolbooks.com Vice, Free, look out for copies in likely central London Record shops, or send £ for postage to Vice, 43 Lexington Street, London, W1R 3LG See Hear, 59 E 7th Street, New York back to top ______________________________________________________ United States and NATO inspired "psychological warfare operations" against the "Kurdish communist threat&" in Turkey Desmond Fernandes and Iskender Ozden1 The sheer extent to which the United States and the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) have been responsible for consciously and structurally providing aid, training and technical expertise to Turkish contra-guerrilla death squads, repressive state forces and far right fascist groups makes for chilling reading. In pursuit of US governmental and NATO Cold War and post Cold War agendas, secretive and often publicly unaccountable initiatives have been undertaken in order to organise, protect and support repressive and anti-democratic Turkish state military mechanisms in their targeting actions against the internal 'communist threat'. The internal 'communist threat', observes Chomsky, is "used here in the technical sense (which) has (been) assumed in American political discourse, referring to labour leaders, peasant organisers ... organising self-help groups, and anyone who has the 'wrong' priorities and thus gets in our way."2 Kurdish 'nationalist' and/or pro-democratic/pro-socialist movements which have sought to defend peoples' labour and human/cultural/political rights within the region, and/or query the 'colonial/neo-colonial/pro-NATO/repressive' orientation of the militarised Turkish state, have similarly been targeted as 'communist threats'.3 The Truman Doctrine, the Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) and psychological warfare initiatives. With the Truman Doctrine of 1947, millions of dollars worth of military equipment assistance was provided to the Turkish terror state to counter the internal and external 'communist threat.' As President Truman's address to Congress on March 12th, 1947, made all too clear: "I believe that it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures ... Should we fail Greece and Turkey in this fateful hour, the effect will be far reaching to the West as well as to the East. We must take immediate and resolute action."4 By the end of fiscal year 1950, resolute action had been undertaken: Over US $ 200 million in military aid had been received by Turkey, "along with 1,200 US military advisers."5 Between 1950 and 1979, a further $ US 5.8 billion in official military aid was forthcoming: "Arms supply and training programmes helped to integrate the Turkish military, police and intelligence services into those of the United States. Under the Military Assistance Programme, 19,193 Turks received US training between 1950 and 1979."6 Lord Kinross, indeed, suggests that a much higher number of Turkish troops were, in fact, trained. By 1954 alone, "the American Military Mission claim(ed) to have trained, in the Turkish army, a force of thirty thousand technicians."7 US advisors also assisted Turkish authorities with their covert monitoring activities of Kurdish political prisoners. Musa Anter, for example, confirms--in his Memoirs--that a 'Special Team' from the US was sent in 1959 to the Turkish prison he was in, to assist the authorities with the decoding of messages between Kurdish prisoners.8 Turkish Interior Ministry reports further reveal that Turkish governing circles clearly understood that they would be provided with economic support and US military and political encouragement in their implementation of the on-going Kurdish genocide9 as long as they could keep officially identifying the Kurds as a 'communist threat' to American officials (even at times when they clearly did not represent such a threat, and could not produce any evidence to the Americans to that effect): "This (Kurdish targeting) operation should be used ... to obtain economic aid from the US. The event should (merely) be represented to the American authorities as a 'Communist Kurd Movement'. To the relatives of the suspects (targeted), the event should be explained as a 'Communist Movement' (despite the fact that) ... so far, there's no evidence that can be used against the suspects."10 Ghassemlou and Kendal have also established that the US government, which was "in control of all (the) military decisions"11 of a Cold War Central Treaty Organisation (CENTO) Pact between Turkey, Iran, Pakistan and Britain, had decided that a central purpose of this pact was to assist the Turkish and Iranian governments with their psychological warfare operations against "any attempts on the part of the Kurdish people."12 As Randal has confirmed: "In the 1950's, the Baghdad Pact--rebaptised CENTO when Iraq dropped out following the overthrow of the monarchy in 1958--amounted to Western approval of anti-Kurd animus, enshrined in the Saadabad Treaty of 1937."13 Besikci further argues that US government supported 'psychological' research projects were conducted in the 1960's in order to strategically assist the Turkish state with its assimilation and anti-Kurdish policies: "In 1962, Professor Frei, an American, carried out a survey throughout Turkey, in conjunction with the Bureau of Research and Testing at the Ministry of Education, and the US government's Agency for International Development (AID) ... From the information provided at the end of the research project, it becomes clear that American government officials proposed to the Turkish government that the best way to fight against the spread of the Kurdish struggle was through the creation and institutionalisation of a party based on religion."14 As Besikci confirms, this advice "was taken seriously by the Turkish government."15 There was also an apparent offer by the US government in 1962 to establish a 'Kurdish' radio station--costing US $33 million--which would broadcast psychological warfare propaganda which would be anti-communist, anti-Kurdish nationalist in nature, and in keeping with "the USA and Turkey's ideology."16 The CIA's role in covert action operations. The Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), moreover, began to covertly fund and train fascist paramilitary right wing gangs and virulently anti-Kurdish organisations in Turkey--including the Organisation to Fight Communism and the National Action Party (NAP/MHP)--along the 'successful' lines of the Bicchierai 'anti-communist' paramilitary gang in Italy. As Christopher Simpson has ascertained, "the role of this (Bicchierai) band"--which was financed by the CIA using 'black currency' which "came from captured German Nazi assets, including money and gold that the Nazis had looted from the Jews"17 --"was beatings of left wing candidates and activists, breaking up political meetings and intimidating voters. Bicchierai's troops became the forerunners of a number of other similar paramilitary gangs funded by the CIA in Germany, Greece, Turkey and several other countries over the next decade"18 which were used to destabilise wider democratic initiatives which were perceived to be inimical to US interests. The ex-Director of the CIA, William Colby, has further conceded, when pressured, that "there is a possible CIA backing of (such) anti-Communist organisations to stop Turkey falling into the hands of communism."19 Clearance to actively proceed with covert 'psychological' warfare of this nature was provided at the highest level. Through National Security Council (NSC) Directive 4-A in 1947, the CIA was "secretively authorised ... to conduct these officially non-existent programmes and to administer them."20 As Simpson clarifies, "the NSC action removed the US Congress and public from any debate over whether to undertake psychological warfare abroad. The NSC ordered that the operations themselves be designed to be 'deniable,' meaning 'planned and executed (so) that any US government responsibility for them is not evident to unauthorised persons and that if uncovered, the US government can positively disclaim any responsibility.'"21 National Security Council Directive 10/2 (NSC 10/2), which replaced NSC-4A in 1947, similarly authorised the Office of Policy Co-ordination (OPC)--"the covert action arm of the CIA"22 --to carry out "any covert activities related to propaganda; preventative direct action including sabotage ... (and) assistance ... (in) support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world."23 As Frank Wisner, the head of OPC (dubbed the United States' Psychological Warfare Organisation by the NSC)24 has since conceded, these operations were "conducted in a covert or clandestine manner to the end that official US interest or responsibility" in these terrorist 'anti-Communist' actions could be "plausibly disclaimed by this government."25 The OPC's psychological warfare objectives, according to Wisner, included: "1. Political warfare including ... support of indigenous anti-Communist elements in threatened countries of the free world. 2. Psychological warfare including 'black' and 'grey' propaganda.26 3. Economic Warfare. 4. Guerrilla and partisan-type warfare. 5. Sabotage and counter-sabotage. 6. Other covert operations."27 It is important at this juncture to also clarify just what 'psychological warfare', as termed above, actually meant. To Christopher Simpson, who has analysed much declassified material related to the above issues: "the primary object of US psychological operations during this period was to frustrate the ambitions of radical movements in resource rich developing countries seeking solutions to the problems of poverty, dependency and the entrenched corruption ... At heart, modern (US) psychological warfare has been a tool for managing empire, not for settling conflicts in any fundamental sense. It has operated largely as a means to ensure that indigenous democratic initiatives in the Third World and Europe do not go 'too far' from the standpoint of US security agencies ... The problem with (US) psychological warfare is ... its consistent role as an instrument for maintaining grossly abusive social structures ... "Several points should be underlined. First, psychological warfare in the US conception has consistently made use of a wide range of violence, including guerrilla warfare, assassination, sabotage and more fundamentally, the maintenance of manifestly brutal regimes in client states abroad. Second, it has also involved a variety of propaganda or media work, ranging from overt (white) newscasting to covert (black) propaganda ... " Re-examination of (the US) record, even as it applies to Turkey, Guatemala, Nicaragua, El Salvador, the Philippines, Indonesia and Panama, inescapably leads Simpson in short order to an heretical conclusion: "The role of the United States in world affairs during our lifetimes has often been rapacious, destructive, tolerant of genocide and willing to sacrifice countless people."28 In the case of Turkey, there are clear indications that the US government directly facilitated the Turkish government's genocidal programme against the Kurds through its endorsement of the CENTO pact, its provision of military equipment and its training of state backed 'anti-Kurdish' psychological warfare death squads, intelligence gathering organisations and 'commando' groups.29 Marcus Raskin, an NSC staffer, has conceded that these psychological warfare "activities around the world ... were criminal by other nations' standards as well as criminal by our own."30 To George Mc Govern, US senator between 1963-81: "We were involved in assassinations, assassination attempts. We were operating paramilitary operations with mercenary forces hired in other people's countries with no knowledge on the part of our own Congress, our press or the American people. All of these things are alien to a system of constitutional democracy."31 Recently declassified 'Psychological Warfare' methods used by the US Army and CIA advisers during the early Cold War years again confirm that the army's operational definition of the 'psychological warfare' it was actively engaged in--be it in Turkey, Italy, Greece or Iran--clearly did include terrorist acts of "warfare" that "employs all moral and physical means, other than orthodox military operations ... Psychological Warfare," as recommended and practised, must "employ any weapon to influence the mind of the enemy. The weapons are psychological only in the effect they produce and not because of the nature of the weapons themselves. In this light, overt (white), covert (black) and grey propaganda; subversion; sabotage; special operations; guerrilla warfare; espionage; political, cultural, economic and racial pressures are all effective weapons. They are effective because they produce dissension, distrust, fear and hopelessness in the minds of the enemy."32 Psychological warfare 'special operations' were defined in the above context to additionally include "miscellaneous operations such as assassination (and) target capture."33 According to Philip Agee, a former senior CIA secret operations officer, CIA stations regularly used "offensive weapons of psychological and paramilitary operations" which involved surveillance measures and "include(d) the placing of anti-Communist propaganda in the public media, the frame-up of ... officials for police arrest, the publishing of false propaganda attributed to the revolutionary group in such a way that it will be difficult to deny and damaging as well, the organising of goon squads to beat up and intimidate ... (people) ... using ... harassment devices to break up meetings, and the calling on liaison services to take desired repressive action."34 "Within the US governmental bureaucracy itself," notes Peter Dale Scott, "intelligence agencies and special warfare elements have recurringly exploited," trained and even protected "drug traffickers and their corrupt political allies" to facilitate these types of "anti-Communist and anti-subversive operations."35 As Adams has concluded in 'Secret Armies', the US military and "the CIA ... under the single OPC umbrella ... managed to embrace every aspect of covert warfare from espionage to psychological operations and subversion."36 Widespread and chilling actions and atrocities against Kurdish communities and 'radical' human rights and 'leftist' activists in Turkey/North West Kurdistan were clearly committed as a consequence of these 'anti-communist' inspired US-CIA-NATO linked 'psychological warfare' training and operational programmes.37 To Jeffrey Bale, writing in the Berkeley Journal of Sociology and Lobster, the CIA was "instrumental in establishing the contra-guerrilla" death squads in Turkey.38 By 1969, moreover, Turkish "commandos, who had been trained by American specialists in counter-insurgency," were despatched into Kurdish regions "under the pretext of a general 'arms search'" to terrorise the population.39 These commando actions "rapidly became associated with arbitrary brutality and torture that had marked the suppression of Kurdistan four decades earlier."40 According to the journal Devrim, one commando report which focused upon its anti-Kurdish psychological warfare operations, ran along the following lines: "Since the end of January, special military units have undertaken a land war in the (Kurdish) regions of Diyarbakir, Mardin, Siirt and Hakkari under the guise of hunting bandits. Every village is surrounded at a certain hour, its inhabitants rounded up. Troops assemble men and women separately, and demand the men to surrender their weapons. They beat those who deny possessing any or make other villagers jump on them. They strip men and women naked and violate the latter. Many have died in these operations, some have committed suicide. Naked men and women have cold water thrown over them, and they are whipped. Sometimes women are forced to tie a rope around the penis of their husband and then to lead him around the village. Women are likewise made to parade naked around the village. Troops demand villagers to provide women for their pleasure and the entire village is beaten if the request is met with refusal."41 These actions, which have mirrored those of other US inspired and trained commando groups in El Salvador, East Timor, Indonesia, Guatemala, South Vietnam and Nicaragua, followed a "general pattern ... A village is surrounded by armoured cars and helicopters move ahead; all the villagers are rounded up without any explanation, then herded into specially prepared camps. They are then called upon to surrender their weapons. Should a peasant declare that he has none, he is severely beaten and humiliated. The Turkish troops force both men and women to strip; often they rape the women. 'Suspects' are hanged by their feet from a gallows. Sometimes strings are attached to the genitals of naked men whom the women are then forced to lead through the streets in this manner. Many die under torture."42 Kendal confirms that these targeting actions continued throughout the 1970's: "During the more or less fascist period which followed the military coup on March 12th, 1971, the commandos' activities were considerably extended and became a real 'Kurd-hunt'. The troops raked through the Kurdish provinces one by one: several thousand peasants were pursued, arrested and tortured ... in counter-insurgency centres which had been set up by Turkish officers trained by the US in Panama ... (When) Demirel (who went on to become president of Turkey) returned to power ... commando operations started up with renewed intensity in Kurdistan. In the towns, the state police and the fascist militias assassinated sixty people from March 31st, 1975 to April 10th, 1976 ... Even under the 'democratic parliamentary regime' of the late seventies, the commandos were still at work in Kurdistan. There were more than 10,000 of them patrolling the frontier province of Hakkari from October to December 1975."43 Despite being aware of such atrocities, US-NATO funding, active training and protection of racist and fascist, genocidal, anti-Kurdish psychological warfare teams and militias continued. One such militia was "the CIA/drug-linked terror gang known as the Grey Wolves," the "paramilitary arm" of the National Action Party (NAP/MHP).44 According to Berch Berberoglu, "attacks by the CIA trained and equipped death squads of the fascist NAP intensified during 1979."45 A report by the Turkish Internal Ministry acknowledges that these NAP death squads were ideologically "akin to Hitler's Nazi organisation."46 NAP supporters, for instance, were clearly encouraged in a 1977 party leaflet to act in the following fashion: "Those who destroyed (the Ottoman Empire) were Greek-Armenian-Jewish converts, Kurds, Circassians, Bosnians and Albanians. As a Turk, how much longer will you tolerate these dirty minorities? Throw out the Circassian, that he may go to Causasia, throw out the Armenian, throw out and kill the Kurd, purge from your midst the enemy of all Turkdom."47 As Kendal has clarified, "the NAP is violently and militantly anti-Kurdish ... The liquidation of the Kurds is thus an integral part of their agenda."48 Investigative research by Celik has uncovered the following details: "The intelligence services of (NATO ally) Germany and other European countries ... protected the NAP/MHP,"49 despite being fully aware of the ideological slant and character of the organisation. "This protection continues to this day. The CIA openly protected the NAP/MHP in Germany ... One of the 'protectors' was the CIA man Ruzi Nazar," who had previously "collaborated with German Nazi occupation forces in the Second World War ... NAP/MHP militants were used in hundreds of murders, became very professional, and were used by the CIA in international terrorism."50 According to Counterspy,51 the CIA--as part of its ongoing psychological warfare training strategy in Turkey--also "assisted Milli Istihbarat Teskilati (MIT)," the notorious Turkish national intelligence agency, "in 1960-69 in drafting plans for mass arrests of opposition figures similar to the pattern followed in Thailand, Indonesia and Greece. In a single night, generals ordered 4,000 professors, students, teachers and retired officers (to be) arrested. They tortured (many) ... The coup" in Turkey in 1971 "was also carried out by counter-guerrilla, the CIA, the Turkish military and Turkish military intelligence (MIT)."52 From its station in Athens, Greece, the CIA Technical Services Division (TSD) support group provided particular psychological warfare operational expertise to its staff operating in Turkey. "TSD assistance," Roubatis and Wynn conclude, "included electronic monitoring devices, various gadgets for surveillance, special weapons for clandestine operations, drugs for use in such operations, forged documents and other similar material ... The TSD activities involved aggressive operations."53 The CIA's role in assisting MIT in targeting actions against the 'Kurdish' and other 'internal communist' threats was publicly exposed in 1977 when Sabahattin Savasman, the deputy director of MIT, acknowledged that "the CIA has a delegation of at least 20 people who co-operate in the MIT with the CIA and who occupy high positions inside the MIT. They supply information, contacts and they participate in operations ... All technical equipment is supplied by the CIA. A lot of personnel was trained by the Americans in courses abroad, the buildings were constructed by the CIA, the instructors were supplied by the CIA ... The employees have been working for years as CIA agents for the benefit of the American secret service."54 He further stated that "MIT personnel have been accepting payments and taking part in operations with the CIA for years."55 Zurcher confirms that MIT's operations against 'internal threats' during this period were clearly and publicly known to be of a brutal nature: "Widespread reports of torture" of Kurds and other 'communist activists' "in so-called 'laboratories', torture chambers of the MIT," exist.56 Aldrich Ames, a former CIA officer who was stationed in Turkey, has also acknowledged that "the Turkish intelligence service (MIT) was cash-strapped, so we gave it half a million dollars worth of wiretap equipment and taught its people how to use it"57 against its 'internal threats'. MIT's own leader, General Ziya Selisik, confirmed in 1962 that its internal "communist" threats even included "all Kurds who were studying."58 It should also be noted at this point that Sait Elci, who was the leader of the underground 'Kurdistan Democratic Party--Turkey' (KDP-T) during the late 1960's, had--just before his assassination by Dr. Sait 'Siwan' Kirmizitoprak--accused the latter of acting as a Kurdish double-agent for the CIA. Elci was convinced that Dr. Sait 'Siwan' Kirmizitoprak was working to fulfil the agendas of a joint CIA-MIT operation.59 Jeffrey Bale further confirms that "there are numerous connections between the CIA and (the fascist) MHP (NAP), both in Turkey and Europe. It seems clear that the CIA and US military intelligence"--via these 'collaborative' psychological warfare operations with the virulently anti-Kurdish MHP--"made use of civilian 'idealists' (fascist hard-liners) by recruiting them into the contra-guerrilla (death squad) organisations, and former Turkoman SS man Ruzi Nazar has been identified by several investigators as the liaison between CIA personnel, including Henze (a CIA Turkey Station Chief) himself and the MHP Leadership in West Germany."60 It is also worth noting at this point that the successive CIA directors who were involved in initiating and overseeing these disquieting psychological warfare operations were well suited to their additional tasks of 'covering up' these actions from the public gaze. According to Loftus and Aarons, for example, CIA Director Allen Dulles'61 "State Department files show that he was the man (previously) assigned to cover up the Armenian massacre (genocide) ... Simpson's research62 (also) fully documents the equally repugnant cover-up engineered by Dulles and his sources during the Jewish Holocaust of World War II."63 The Pentagon and NATO'S 'stay behind' network Under the Pentagon's confidential 1948 plan for the formation of a North Atlantic Treaty Organisation (NATO) styled structure, it is also instructive to note that one of the five major objectives of the emerging military alliance would be to ensure that no internal or external threat to the current "political independence (sic) or territorial integrity of Turkey"64 would be entertained. Kurdish aspirations for basic cultural and political rights--within a democratic, federal, Turkish or independent Kurdish structure--would clearly, under these criteria, have been considered psychological 'threats' which needed to be eradicated using all necessary means. With the eventual formation of NATO in 1949 and Turkey's membership of the alliance in 1952, Turkey's military forces and several right wing fascist organisations were concretely provided with even greater covert support in their 'anti-Communist' war against Kurdish cultural and political rights and other pro-democratic 'liberal', 'leftist' and trade unionist movements. General Sir Walter Walker, former NATO Commander-in-Chief of Allied Forces, Northern Europe, confirms that "Kurdish activists" were, indeed, being identified as "Marxist" communist 'internal' threats to the 'territorial integrity' of the Turkish Republic: "Turkey's Kurdish leaders have refused to be assimilated. The (Kurdish) revolt in the eastern provinces was the single most challenging security problem in the country, and in addition to that, it was notable that Kurds were playing a leading role in Marxist-Leninist groups that were ideologically ... based."65 Through the protective curtain and secretive cover of a wider 'anti-Communist' NATO 'Gladio' styled 'Operation Stay Behind' Psychological Warfare network--which was "spearheaded by the CIA ... (and) conceived by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff according to a 1976 senate report on the CIA by Frank Church which first revealed its existence"66--a 'contra (counter) guerrilla' force called Seferberlik Taktik Kurulu (STK--'Tactical Mobilisation Group') was funded, organised and allowed to operate from the same Ankara building that housed the US Military Aid Mission.67 According to Roth and Taylan, the training of officers assigned to this Psychological Warfare Group "begins in the US and then continues inside Turkey under the direction of CIA officers and military 'advisers'."68 By 1959, a further military accord between the US and Turkey agreed upon the 'use' of the contra-guerrillas "also in the case of an internal rebellion against the regime."69 Six years later, with the restructuring of the STK into the OHD (Ozel Harp Dairesi--Special Warfare Department),70 the contra-guerrilla psychological warfare and death squad structures were placed under the authority of the president of General Staff.71 Significant US funding of this structure, at least until 1974, was confirmed by the current Turkish Premier Bulent Ecevit, who additionally stated that "patriotic volunteers were members of the group. They were trained specially to launch a counter guerrilla operation."72 These 'operations', Turkish army spokesmen have recently conceded, were explicitly involved in anti-Kurdish actions.73 A directive by General Sabri Yirmibesoglu,74 who was a leading figure in the OHD during the 1970's, describes the types of psychological warfare activities which were being actively encouraged at the time of CIA 'grant-funding' and training: "Use 'open' as well as 'covert' activities, murder, bombing, armed robbery, torture, kidnapping; encourage incidents which invite retaliation; take hostages; use sabotage and propaganda; disseminate disinformation (and) use force as well as blackmail."75 With ex-CIA director William Colby's admission that "there is also such an organisation ('Gladio--Stay Behind') in Turkey,"76 General Dogan Beyazit (President of Turkey's General Staff) and General Kemal Yilmaz (Commander of its psychological warfare 'Special Forces'), were forced to confirm that this secretive and 'special' NATO organisation--which had been plausibly denied by Turkish officialdom and military sources until 1990--did exist.77 Ecevit further revealed on November 13th, 1990, that "I was told that it was financed by the United States ... I was also told that the organisation had secret weapons depots. Its members were trained in special warfare techniques."78 In a more recent interview with Julie Flint, Ecevit clarified issues further: "Certain unhealthy kinds of measures were taken for internal security. Too many covert actions obviously took place. I'm afraid such events have taken place in many other NATO countries also."79 As Celik and others have ascertained, training of death squads was clearly undertaken by the OHD-CIA-NATO linked structure, and US psychological warfare and contra-guerrilla manuals were used80 --as they were in other 'Gladio - Stay Behind' structures elsewhere in Europe--after having been translated into Turkish: "The 'special war methods' which (were) taught supposedly for the prevention of a communist occupation include among others 'assassinations, bombings, armed robbery, torture, attacks, kidnap, threats, provocation, militia training, hostage taking, arson, sabotage, propaganda, disinformation, violence and extortion.'"81 Investigative research has also established that "selected elements of the(se) Turkish contra-guerrillas, together with the generals, were all trained in contra-guerrilla" and psychological warfare "schools in the USA ... During their training, the contra-guerrilla forces ... learn how to handle explosives under the supervision of Green Berets in Matamoros near the Mexican border, and they are taught how to kill, stab or strangle somebody silently, etc.82 Other places where Turkish officials are trained are the Escuela de los Americas in Panama, which is attached to the US base Southern Comfort, the Police Academy near Washington and the Schongau and Oberammergan bases in Germany."83 According to a report by Republican Peoples Party (CHP) deputy, Fikri Saglar, "the links between the illegal right wing organisations and the Turkish security should be traced back to Gladio."84 Reports in the Turkish Daily News (13 July 1994),85 furthermore, confirm that OHD linked Turkish military officials, commanders and Chiefs of Staff continue to be briefed, advised and even awarded 'Legion of Merit' medals by US Pentagon staff, high ranking members of the US armed forces and psychological warfare organisations including the US Army 'Special Operations Command'. The US Army 'Special Operations Command' houses "such specialised psychological warfare command groups as the Army Rangers, Navy Seal Teams, Special Boat Units and the 23rd Air Forces 'Special Operations Force'."86 OHD linked officials such as Karadayi (until recently, Turkey's Chief of Staff) have officially liaised with senior US counter-insurgency 'experts' and officers at Fort Bragg, Fort Knox and Goldman Army airfield.87 It has also been established that Huseyin Kocadag, Chief of the Special Forces in Hakkari (in South-East Turkey/North West Kurdistan) and Deputy Chief of Police in Diyarbakir, who has been identified as "one of the most bloody enemies of the people who organised the units of the 'head-hunters' in Kurdistan ... was trained at a CIA school in the US."88 The Human Rights Watch Arms Project has additionally exposed the way in which "US troops, aircraft and intelligence personnel have remained at their posts throughout Turkey, mingling with Turkish counterinsurgency troops and aircrews in southeastern bases such as Incirlik and Diyarbakir ... throughout Turkey's wide-ranging scorched earth campaign" against Kurdish civilian settlements and PKK hideouts/encampments.89 This campaign, indeed, has assumed genocidal proportions.90 Human Rights Watch's concern over this type of support has led to its public request to the US government to "order an inquiry into all training, joint manoeuvres, liaison and other interforce activities undertaken since 1990 by US military special operations forces with Turkish forces, with a view to identifying the Turkish units involved and the nature of US special operations training and doctrine imparted to them."91 Brigadier General Kemal Yilmaz, head of OHD, has also recently conceded that the OHD co-operates with NATO on 'technical issues' and that, at times, it has joined NATO's training programmes in Turkey and abroad.92 Its psychological warfare operations function, under the redesigned term Special Forces Command (SFC), according to Yilmaz, "is to support the operation of the Turkish Armed Forces with its 'irregular warfare activities' by preparing plans and executing the activities of war preparedness during peacetime. During wartime, SFC is responsible to establish the irregular local forces and to 'manage and control' these forces under the directives of the Chief of Staff's Office ... The units also are trained regularly by various NATO-member countries. SFC commandos are trained with the most advanced weapons of the world."93 The nature of the SFC's establishment of psychological warfare 'irregular local forces' (i.e. assassination squads) and of their 'management and control' structures were partly revealed in a 1995 report by a commission of Turkish MPs which sought to investigate more that 600 assassinations which had taken place in the south east of the country (north west Kurdistan) between 1991-1995. The report, which hard-liners sought to 'cover up', quoted a police chief in Batman as acknowledging that assassins ('contra-guerrillas') at war with the 'Marxist-Leninist' Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), had, indeed, received training from Turkish military units. There was also a clear acknowledgement that assassins and irregular forces were said to be living in security forces accommodation, from where they committed murders. "Sometimes they were arrested, but most of these incidents were covered up," it concluded.94 US-NATO 'psychological warfare' connections with anti-Kurdish agencies, 'death-teams' and fascist organisations MIT Deputy, Sabahattin Savasman, has confirmed that the intelligence service of Turkey's NATO partner, West Germany, regularly liaised with MIT and held meetings with the organisation in Munich and Ankara to discuss and evaluate operational matters and Turkey's "internal" problems.95 NATO countries, moreover, have apparently actively engaged in the training of anti-Kurdish "death-teams",96 called 'Special Teams'. A recent Celik investigation uncovered the following: "In 1985, a force was set up to counter Kurdish guerrilla warfare. It was known as the 'Special Team'. Even at the beginning, the unit numbered 5,000 ... For 9 months, the personnel were trained in the use of the most effective weapons and in the use of guns, torture, sabotage, plotting, interrogation, camouflage and learning about the culture and traditions of the people in the regions they were to serve in ... "Some Special Team members were trained in other NATO countries such as Germany ... An army officer from Germany, Hauptmann Weygold, was interviewed by a Turkish newspaper called 'Tercuman' on 1st February, 1987. He informed the paper that he had 'trained 2 groups of Turkish Special Team units at St. Augustine in GSG-9 camp, near Bonn.' The German newspaper, 'Suddeutsche Zeitung', in its 31st March-1st April, 1987 edition, also stated that 3,000 Special Team members from Turkey--also known as 'Black Insects'--were trained in West Germany ... Special Teams were trained ideologically and in militaristic terms to look upon Kurdish people as enemies ... In their manifesto, Special Teams are described as 'Special Activity Teams'. They may join in with Turkish army units in operations. They also had other different assignments. An army unit might surround a group of guerrillas in a village but the Special Teams were trained to then take over the operation. It was usually their job to carry out extermination operations ... or ... mine ... or set traps on roads, interrogate, torture and lead operations in disinformation. There are hundreds of people in Kurdistan disabled as a result of the treatment and operations of the Special Teams ... Special Teams have also executed guerrillas even though it was clearly possible to arrest them. In raids, they have raped women, seized gold and money and treated people brutally."97 Randal confirms that "the so-called Special Teams, whose members often wore civilian clothes ... were feared as the cruellest of the cruel."98 Turkish state collusion with anti-Kurdish, fascist and Nazi collaborationist criminal gangs also appears to have been actively encouraged and promoted by the US and NATO 'Gladio-styled' Stay Behind Network. As Simpson's study, 'Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazi's and its Effect on the Cold War', has ascertained, events in "Greece in 1947 and Italy in 1948 also taught the CIA that it could employ former Nazi collaborators" and other fascists "on a large scale in clandestine" and psychological warfare "operations and get away with it. US national security planners appear to have concluded that extreme right wing groups that once collaborated with the Nazis should be included in US sponsored anti-Communist coalitions, for the participation of such groups became a regular feature of US covert operations in Europe in the wake of the Greek and Italian events."99 In Turkey, this resulted, in the opinion of Supreme Court Justice Emin Deger, in the endorsement of a close working collaboration between the fascist and anti-Kurdish Nationalist Action Party (NAP/MHP) armed 'commandos', or 'Bozkurts', and the Turkish state's CIA and NATO linked 'counter guerrilla' units.100 This collaboration directly led to "NAP commandos" being "trained by the CIA."101 The leader of NAP, observes Lee, was Colonel Alparslan Turkes, an "enthusiastic supporter of Hitler during World War Two."102 As Harris has ascertained, "during the Second World War, he had been leader of the Pan-Turkish movement which backed Hitler in exchange for financial support from Berlin and in the hope that a victorious Reich would allow Turkey to annex those parts of the Soviet Union inhabited by people of Turkish origin."103 It is also known that "Turkes established close ties with Nazi leaders in Germany in 1945 and ... maintained his contacts" in the post Second World War period "with the German neo-Nazi underground."104 Despite clear awareness of his pro-Nazi past and highly disturbing, fascist and racist anti-Kurdish leanings, it is instructive to note that NATO welcomed and did not seek to dispute his placement as Head of the NATO Department of the Armed Forces Headquarters in Turkey by 1960, or his role as a principal liaison officer between the Turkish General Staff and NATO in its operational activities.105 CIA inspired support for the NAP and Grey Wolves' objectionable and murderous activities has been detailed in a number of investigative reports. Brodhead, Friel and Herman, for example, draw upon a number of reports which detail the way in which "Frank Terpil, the CIA agent and international arms dealer, had supplied the NAP and the Grey Wolves with weapons and explosives in the mid 1970's"106 to proceed with their terrorist 'activities'. These activities, Kendal and Celik observe, had resulted in the murder of over 200 Kurdish and Turkish 'leftist' students by 1978, as well as a number of trade unionists, teachers and influential thinkers.107 NAP, in return for this type of 'psychological warfare support' in its anti-Kurdish and 'anti-communist' offensives, had, not unexpectedly, "pledg(ed) to abide by accords with international organisations like NATO."108 It should additionally be noted that Grey Wolves fascist paramilitary groups, which were engaged in terrorist actions against Kurdish community groups and 'Kurdish/Leftist activists', were further encouraged to forge active and collaborative operational links with the Anti-Bolshevik Bloc of Nations, another CIA backed 'anti-communist/anti-radical' coalition led by former fascist World War Two collaborators from Eastern Europe.109 Colleagues of Turkes were, equally disturbingly, placed in control of a Turkish chapter of the World Anti-Communist League (WACL), "an umbrella group that functioned as a cat's paw for US intelligence" and US psychological warfare operations "in Latin America, Southwest Asia and other Cold War battlegrounds."110 Celik has also ascertained that "the German writer Jurgen Roth had information obtained from the German police and claimed in his book, 'Die Verbrechen Holding', that MHP (NAP) was a branch of the Turkish (CIA-NATO) Gladio Organisation."111 In this capacity, MHP/NAP has been able to obtain support and protection from the intelligence agencies of NATO countries: "With very few exceptions, no court cases have been opened against the Party in Western European countries. It is protected in Europe, even though it is at the centre of the drugs trade. This protection is particularly strong in Germany. Right-wing German politicians, especially those in Bavaria, protect the Party. It is impossible that German intelligence should be ignorant of this, since it has been proven that they gave support to the Party in the 1970's. Turkes used Germany as his base before he died, visiting it several times a year and holding big meetings there. These meetings have never been the subject of German legal proceedings ... The German authorities ... have shown no concern over the Nationalist Action Party. It is clear that there is organised protection. The Party also finds Belgium, Holland and the UK to be countries in which it can comfortably organise."112 Recent revelations after the Susurluk car incident further point towards a 'Turkish Gladio' US-NATO connection with the late Abdullah Catli, a Grey Wolves-NAP 'anti-Kurdish', anti-Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) contra-guerrilla/OHD death squad organiser,113 who was also a convicted drug smuggler and dealer114 and colleague of the Italian Gladio and Aginter Press terrorist, Stefano Delle Chaie.115 According to an Italian investigative journalist "who had helped uncover the international Gladio network ... Catli was affiliated with the central figures of Italy's notorious (CIA-NATO linked) Gladio organisation. Catli, Agca and Celik ... an old friend of Abdullah Catli who had been implicated in several cases of political killings along with Catli and Mehmet Ali Agca, 'the man who shot the Pope', ... were operating under CIA guidance."116 An Aydinlik investigation further reveals that "French journalist Jean-Mari Stoerkel said that he had determined beyond any doubt that Abdullah Catli and Oral Celik ... had been used by Western secret services. He said that Catli and Celik had been doing business with another Turk, Bekir Celenk, who in turn was working with Henry Arsan, a man who co-operated with the CIA and with a number of secret organisations, fascist groups and terrorist gangs."117 CIA agent Frank Terpil is also reported to have publicly confirmed his involvement in helping to illegally release the extremist Grey Wolf, Agca.118 According to Herman and Brodhead, there can be no denying that "there was a close tie between the counter-guerrilla and the CIA. Deger charged further that the CIA, acting through MIT and the counter-guerrilla, promoted right-wing" psychological warfare "terrorist actions to destabilise the Turkish government and to prepare the way for the military coup of 1971. It also seems quite clear that the United States and the CIA ... assisted in the coup of that year. According to former US diplomat Robert Fresco, (the) government had simply become incapable of containing the growing anti-US radicalism in Turkey ... There are indications that the US, and particularly the CIA, exercised influence in the right-wing political sectors that included the Grey Wolves"119 in order to effect the necessary governmental changes and subsequent psychological warfare 'anti-radical', 'anti-Kurdish' targeting actions. Berberoglu has additionally drawn attention to "Turkish press reported 'rumours' of a meeting on March 11th between the (1971 coup) commanders, (US) Ambassador Handley and Richard Helms, Director of the CIA, at the US Embassy in Ankara--thus implicating the CIA directly in the March 12th (coup) intervention."120 Similar US-NATO inspired psychological warfare tactics were again utilised to effect the 1980 coup. As Harris observes, "it is important to be clear that this analysis is not just a matter of speculation, or of 'the inevitable results of mob violence.' ... It remains the case that the tactics of those who helped to justify and organise a coup d'etat ... succeeded in Turkey ... It cannot be seriously denied that in the case of Turkey, it was perceived by NATO that western interests would best be served by the overthrow of democracy."121 The US government's role in inspiring and covertly facilitating the coup has been charted by Savran, Tanor and Vassaf: "According to the ... journalist (Mehmet Ali Birand, the) US Secretary of State ... phoned (the US) President ... on the day of the coup to tell him: 'Your boys have done it. Those who were to intervene, have intervened.' One of the 'boys' was General Sahinkaya, Chief of the Air Force and one of the five members of the (junta's) National Security Council (NSC). He had a series of high-level meetings in Washington in the week preceding the military intervention."122 Saley Aay elaborates: The coup "was engineered not by fringe groups with fringe agendas but by the web of security agencies that had been woven by the CIA. Following the coup, the disappearances, murders, arrests and tortures" of Kurdish and other 'radical activists' "increased in volume and intensity. Henze's (CIA) coup--which was engineered by his good (NAP) friend Turkes--had a triple (inspired) goal: a) To combat the growing (Kurdish) unrest in Kurdistan, b) To combat rising Islamic fundamentalism, c) To counter Soviet expansionism which had set a beach head in Afghanistan."123 The effects of this 'inspired' psychological warfare policy were devastating: The "group of army generals (who) carried out (the) coup d'etat ... made it clear that they intended to brook no expression of the Kurdish movement or identity whatsoever."124 In response to these and other positive assurances, the US Secretary of Defence, Weinberger, expressed his desire "to be of as much assistance as we can be" to the military junta.125 "Endorsements of the coup" were also made by NATO's overall commander, US General Bernard Rogers, who visited Ankara four times in early October, 1980, and General David Jones, Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of staff, who visited Turkey in early November."126 As US-NATO psychological warfare and other 'regular' military assistance continued, no fewer than eighty one thousand Kurds were detained between September 1980 and September 1982, and two thirds of the army's total force was mobilised in the Kurdish southeast to repress Kurdish society in the region.127 "Villages and homes were raided by the army, and tens of thousands of people, primarily Leftist activists and Kurds, were arrested and interrogated, frequently under torture."128 At least 1,790 suspected members of the clandestine Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) were captured, including several members of its central committee,129 and several "leading PKK members were killed in detention."130 "In the case of the PKK itself, 122 death sentences were passed and some 150 were demanded."131 Legislation, moreover, was passed which clearly sought to intensify the process of cultural genocide of Kurds.132 In response to these targeting actions, Weinberger, US Secretary of Defence, noted with satisfaction that "the Turkish military government has fulfilled our highest expectations since assuming power. We particularly admire the way law and order has been restored (sic)."133 Notes 1. Desmond Fernandes lectures in Human Geography and Tourism Studies at De Montfort University, Bedford, England. He has written extensively on issues relating to Turkish state terror, genocide, 'deep politics', tourism and the environment. He is the author of Beyond the Paradise of Infinite Colours: Turkish State Terror, Tourism and the Kurdish Question (London/Bangalore, KIC/R&B Books, 1996), Tourism Boycotts of Turkey and Burma (London, KIC, 1996), The Kurdish Genocide in Turkey (Reading, Taderon, forthcoming) and editor of Ismail Besikci's International Colony (Reading, Taderon, forthcoming). Iskender Ozden is a Kurdish analyst and has translated Musa Anter's Hatiralarim (My Memoirs) and Selahattin Celik's Olum Makinasi: Turk Kontr-Gerillasi (Death Mission: The Turkish Contra-Guerrilla) into English. 2. Chomsky, N. (1991) Terrorising the Neighbourhood--American Foreign Policy in the Post Cold War Era. Stirling, AK Press, p. 32. 3. Refer, for example, to Kinnane, D. (1964) The Kurds and Kurdistan. London/New York, The Institute of Race Relations/Oxford University Press, p. 33. For a wider debate on the 'targeting' activities of the 'colonial' and 'repressive' Turkish state, refer to Besikci, International Colony, and Anter, M. (1991) Hatiralarim (My Memoirs--Volume One). Istanbul, Yon Ayincilik. 4. As cited in Cook, D. (1989) Forging the Alliance: NATO, 1945-1950. London, Secker and Warburg, p. 74. See also Truman, H. (1947) 'The Truman Doctrine', in O'Tuathail, G., Dalby, S. and Routledge, P. (eds.) (1998) The Geopolitics Reader. London/New York, Routledge, p. 59. 5. Kolko, J. and Kolko, G. (1972) The Limits of Power. New York, Harper and Row, p. 413. Refer also to Herman, E. and Brodhead, F. (1986) The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection. New York, Sheridan Square Publications, p. 61. 6. Herman and Brodhead, The Rise and Fall of the Bulgarian Connection, p. 61. 7. Lord Kinross (1954) Within the Taurus. London, John Murray, p. 101. 8. Anter, M. (1991) Hatiralarim (My Memoirs--Volume One), p. 54. Translated into English by Iskender Ozden. 9. For further details on the nature of the Kurdish genocide, refer to Fernandes, D. (1998) 'The Kurdish Genocide in Turkey, 1924-98', Armenian Forum, Vol. 1 (4), p. 56-107. 10. Excerpts from a Turkish Ministry of Interior Affairs Report, dated 31st July, 1959, as quoted in Meiselas, S. (1997) Kurdistan: In The Shadow of History. New York, Random House, p. 228. 11. Kendal (1980) 'Kurdistan in Turkey', in Chaliand, G. (ed) People Without A Country: The Kurds and Kurdistan. London, Zed, p. 73. Kendal notes, for instance, that "a US officer headed its military committee," p. 73. Miles Copeland, a CIA officer and US Vice Consul in Syria in 1949, also notes in his book, The Game Of Nations: The Amorality of Power Politics (London, Weidenfeld and Nicolson, p. 180), that "the Egyptians and everyone else knew very well that the (Baghdad) Pact"--later to evolve into the CENTO pact--"was (US) Secretary Dulles' brainchild." 12. Ghassemlou (1965) Kurdistan and the Kurds. London, Collet's, p. 251. See also Kendal, Kurdistan in Turkey, p. 73 and Ghassemlou, Kurdistan and the Kurds, p. 228, 251. 13. Randal, J. (1999) After Such Knowledge, What Forgiveness? Boulder, Westview, p. 269. Cihat Baban, a journalist for 'Ulus' newspaper, and an MP for the Peoples Republic Party (CHP) of Turkey, has also confirmed the anti-Kurdish basis of CENTO's strategy--See Anter, Hatiralarim, p. 193. Translated into English by Iskender Ozden. 14. Besikci, I. (forthcoming) The International Colony (English translation from the original). Reading, Taderon Press. 15. Besikci, I. (forthcoming) The International Colony (English translation from the original). Reading, Taderon Press. 16. Anter, Hatiralarim, p. 184. Translated into English by Iskender Ozden. Anter notes, however, that the Turkish state chose to "turn down this suggestion" as it would indirectly have the negative effect of promoting and legitimising the Kurdish language (p. 184)--a process which military and 'Kemalist' political circles found unacceptable. 17. Simpson, C. (1988) Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War. London, Weidenfeld and Nicholson, p. 91. 18. Simpson, Blowback: America's Recruitment of Nazis and its Effects on the Cold War, p. 94. 19. Celik, S. (1995) Olum Makinasi: Turk Kontr-Gerillasi (Death Mission: The Turkish Contra-Guerrilla). Cologne, Ulkem Press, p.67. Translated into English by Iskender Ozden. 20. Simpson, C. (1994) The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare. Oxford, OUP, p. 39. 21. Simpson, The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, p. 39. 22. Adams, J. (1988) Secret Armies: The Full Story of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz. London, Pan, p. 28. 23. Paddock, A. (1982) US Army Special Warfare. Washington DC, National Defence University Press, p. 73, also as cited in Adams, Secret Armies: The Full Story of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz, p. 28-29. 24. Simpson, The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, p. 60. 25. Adams, Secret Armies: The Full Story of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz, p. 29. 26. According to Agee, "white propaganda is that which is openly acknowledged as coming from the US government, e.g. from the US Information Agency (USIA); grey propaganda is ostensibly attributed to people or organisations who do not acknowledge the US government as the source of their material and who produce the material as if it were their own; black propaganda is unattributed material, or it is attributed to a non-existent source, or it is false material attributed to a real source."--Agee, P. (1975) Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Harmondsworth, Penguin, p. 70. 27. As cited in Adams, Secret Armies: The Full Story of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz, p. 29-30. 28. Simpson, The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, p. 7, 8, 13, 116, 117. 29. For a detailed insight into the nature of the Kurdish genocide in Turkey, refer to Fernandes, D. (1999) 'The Kurdish Genocide in Turkey, 1924-98', Armenian Forum, Vol. 1(4), p. 56-107. 30. As quoted in Lewis Lapham's investigative documentary American Power: Episode 4--Omnipotence, screened on Discovery Channel, 1999. 31. As quoted in Lewis Lapham's investigative documentary American Power: Episode 4--Omnipotence, screened on Discovery Channel, 1999. For a further account of the use by the CIA of mercenary forces and criminal syndicates/masonic lodges (such as Aginter Press, World Service, Paladin Group, P-2, the Organisation Armee contre le Communisme International) throughout Europe, refer to Christie, S. (1984) Stefano Delle Chaie: Portrait of a Black Terrorist. London, Anarchy Magazine/Refract Publications. 32. As cited in Simpson, The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, p. 12. Simpson interestingly notes that the army's definition of 'psychological warfare'--quoted here--"was classified as top secret at the time it was promulgated (early 1948) and remained officially secret until (as late as) the early 1980's," p. 12. 33. See Simpson, The Science of Coercion: Communication Research and Psychological Warfare, p. 12. 34. Agee, P. (1975) Inside the Company: CIA Diary. Harmondsworth, Penguin, p. 61. 35. Scott, P.D. (2000) 'Washington and the Politics of Drugs', Variant, 2 (11), p. 3. 36. Adams, Secret Armies: The Full Story of the SAS, Delta Force and Spetsnaz, p. 30. 37. See Celik's Turkey's Killing Machine: The Contra Guerrilla Force (http://www.hatford-hwp.com/archives/51/017.htm); Deger, E. (1978) CIA, Kontr-Gerilla ve Turkiye. Ankara, Calgar; Roth, J. and Taylan (1981) Die Turkei: Republic unter Wolfen. Bornheim, Lamuv; Genc, S. (1975) Bicagin Sirtindali Turkiye: CIA/MIT/Kontr-Gerilla. Istanbul, Savelli. 38. As quoted in Lobster--The Journal of Parapolitics, Issue 18, 1989. 39. See Kendal (1993) 'Kurdistan in Turkey', in Chaliand, G. (ed) A People Without a Country: Kurds and Kurdistan. London, Zed, p. 78. 40. Mc Dowall, D. (1996) A Modern History of the Kurds. London, I.B. Tauris, p. 409. 41. Devrim, no. 36 (23rd June, 1970), and quoted in Mc Dowall, A Modern History of the Kurds, p. 409. 42. Kendal, 'Kurdistan in Turkey', p. 78. 43. Kendal, 'Kurdistan in Turkey', p. 78. 44. Burghardt, T. (1998) 'Editor's Introduction', Antifa Info-Bulletin, Special Edition, May 12, 1998, p.1. For a detailed description of the drug linked terrorist activities of the Grey Wolves and NAP, refer to Celik, S. (ed.) (written in 1998) Gangster State: The Susurluk Crash and the Entanglement of the State, Underworld and Counter-Guerrillas in Turkey (The English Translation, as yet unpublished). 45. Berberoglu, B. (1982) Turkey in Crisis. London, Zed, p. 119. 46. Poulton, H. (1997) Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic. London, Hurst and Company, p. 161. 47. As quoted in Poulton, Top Hat, Grey Wolf and Crescent: Turkish Nationalism and the Turkish Republic, p. 153. 48. Kendal, 'Kurdistan in Turkey', p. 96. 49. Celik, Olum Makinasi: Turk Kontr-Gerillasi, p. 69 (As translated into English by Iskender Ozden). 50. Celik, Olum Makinasi: Turk Kontr-Gerillasi, p. 69 (As translated into English by Iskender Ozden). 51. Counterspy, Summer 1980, p. 14, as cited in the 'CIABASE files on Death Squads supported b