page_title: Communist Party of Turkey (historical)
section_title: Early history
hierarchical_section_title: Communist Party of Turkey (historical) / Early history
caption_attribution_description: English: Communist Party of Turkey - Central Committee stamp 1920 - bilingual
context_page_description: The Communist Party of Turkey was a political party in Turkey. The party was founded by Mustafa Suphi in 1920, and was soon to be banned. It worked as a clandestine opposition party throughout the Cold War era, and was persecuted by the various military regimes. Many intellectuals, like Nâzım Hikmet, joined the party ranks. In 1988 the party merged into the United Communist Party of Turkey, in an attempt to gain legal status.
context_section_description: The party was founded at a congress in Baku on 10 September 1920, gathering together elements from three different left-wing tendencies influenced by the October Revolution in Russia. These founding tendencies were the Istanbul-based Workers and Peasants Socialist Party of Turkey (Turkish: Türkiye İşçi ve Çiftçi Sosyalist Fırkası), elements of the Green Army (Turkish: Yeşil Ordu) in Anatolia (which represented the left-wing sectors of the national liberation movement) and a group of Turkish communists in Soviet Russia (largely made up by Turkish prisoners of war, who had been recruited by the Bolsheviks). In total the congress was made up of 74 delegates. The congress elected Mustafa Suphi as the party chairman and Ethem Nejat as the general secretary.
  After its foundation, the party was recognized as section of the Communist International. The founding of TKP occurred in the midst of the Independence War, following the defeat of the Ottoman Empire in the First World War.
  In order to counter the growing influence of Turkish communists, Mustafa Kemal set up a parallel puppet communist party (Turkish: Türk Komünist Fırkası). This provoked the founding of the People's Communist Party of Turkey (1920) (Turkish: Türkiye Halk İştirakiyyun Fırkası). Although technically a separate party, the TKP cadres were also present in the leadership of the People's Communist Party.
  The founders of TKP, Mustafa Suphi and his 14 other comrades, were murdered. It is not known who was behind the assassination. Although many people claim that it was Mustafa Kemal or the Bolsheviks. According to the official version, Mustafa Suphi was killed by the order of the Ottoman Sultan because of his support to the liberation of Turkey.
caption: Stamp of the TKP Central Committee, 1920. It shows a cutlass, hammer, sickle and a star in the emblem in the middle. 'Communist Party of Turkey - Central Committee' is written in Ottoman Turkish and French languages.
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