“Communist Police!” The State in the 1970s Turkey (original) (raw)

This article attempts to show the existence of the division of the state apparatus in terms of political polarization in the 1970s Turkey. To reach this aim, the writer eleborates the examples from the Kahramanmaras Events that took place between 22 and 25 December 1978. By emphasizing the polarization in the ideological and coercive apparatuses of the Turkish state, the writer argues that the Turkish state lost its so-called impartiality and autonomy and became a contested terrain of conflicting political sides in the low-intense civil war in the 1970s. At the end, it will be argued that the state employees taking side with these political camps were training to be the parts of a larger civil war that was regarded to be forthcoming.