İbrahim Kaypakkaya

Biography

İbrahim Kaypakkaya was born in 1949 to a Turkish Alevi family. In his youth he delivered political magazines in the neighboring villages. Later he was exposed to revolutionary ideas as a student in the Physics Department of Istanbul University’s Faculty of Science. He became a member of the Revolutionary Workers and Peasants Party of Turkey. In 1967 he was one of the founders of a local branch of the Federation of Idea Clubs (Turkish: Fikir Kulüpleri Federasyonu). He joined the foundation of the Çapa Idea Club (Turkish: Çapa Fikir Kulübü) in March 1968 and became the President of the club. In November 1968, Kaypakkaya was expelled from the University for preparing a leaflet against the visiting 6th Fleet of the U.S. Navy.

Kaypakkaya, who adopted the view of National Democratic Revolution, worked for the newspaper İşçi Köylü ("Worker-Peasant"). He wrote articles in the magazines Aydınlık ("Enlightenment") and TÜRKSOLU ("Turkish Left"; not to be confused with the modern magazine Türksolu). Kaypakkaya then split from Doğu Perinçek and his group, as he considered Perinçek to be a revisionist and an opportunist. Kaypakkaya, who participated in the struggle of peasantry, formed TİKKO (Turkish: Türkiye İşci ve Köylü Kurtuluş Ordusu, "Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army"), the armed wing of his Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist.

Kaypakkaya and his comrades interrogated and shot the informer village headman who caused the killing of THKO (Turkish: Türkiye Halk Kurtuluş Ordusu; "People's Liberation Army of Turkey") members Sinan Cemgil and his two other comrades by the state forces during a gunfight.

Capture and death

Following the military memorandum of 1971, the Turkish government cracked down on the Communist movement in Turkey. On 24 January 1973, Kaypakkaya and his allies were attacked by Turkish military forces in the mountains of Tunceli. He was wounded badly, and his comrade Ali Haydar Yıldız died. The military left Kaypakkaya for dead, allowing him to avoid capture. During the winter, the severe weather conditions and snow forced him to take shelter in a cave for five days. Thereafter, he left for a village where he asked for assistance from Cafer Atan, a local teacher. Initially, the man allowed Kaypakkaya to take shelter in a room but then locked the door and reported him to the military.

The letter Kaypakkaya sent to his friends after he got captured by the gendarmerie:

They handed me over to the gendarmerie, and the gendarmerie beat me up terribly. After that, in short: I was delivered from Dersim to Elazığ, and from Elazığ to Diyarbakır. Except for random police investigations, no statements were taken. Now I am under both surveillance and treatment in Diyarbakır.

The wounds on my head and neck healed in just 20 days. By the way, let me state this: While I was injured, they tied both my arms for a week as if they were crucifying me. Upon insistence, they released one of the handcuffs. We were raided on January 26th. On February 22, I had surgery in both my feet. There is no finger left on my right foot. They left my little finger on my left foot as a gift.

The Turkish Government persecuted and destroyed the leadership of the TKP/ML. Kaypakkaya, and several of his colleagues were arrested. On 18 May 1973, he was tortured to the brink of death and then shot and killed by military officers at the age of twenty-four. His corpse was mutilated and cut up. The cause of Kaypakkaya's death was ruled as a suicide.

The National Intelligence Organization (Turkish: Milli İstihbarat Teşkilatı, MİT) reported that Kaypakkaya was the most dangerous revolutionary in Turkey and a serious threat to the anti-communist regime in Turkey.

Aftermath

The killing of Kaypakkaya resulted in a series of retaliatory attacks even many years later; Cafer Atan, the teacher who allegedly handed over Kaypakkaya to the gendarmerie, was shot in the head and killed in front of his wife and two children by three people who raided his house in Sarıgazi in 2000. Before the killing his attackers reportedly stated; "27 years ago, you handed over our leader İbrahim Kaypakkaya, who had taken refuge in Vartinik Village in Tunceli while wounded, to the gendarmerie. Now we are punishing you." Five years later Fehmi Altınbilek, who led the January 24 operation against and later capture of Kaypakkaya's group, was in June of 2015 left injured in an armed attack in Beşiktaş, in which armed assailants on motorcycle and shot at Altınbilek outside of the local gendarmerie command post.