The Fascination of the Turkish Left with Palestine: “The Dream of Palestine”

This study analyzes the ideology and worldview of Turkish and some Kurdish militants of the Turkish socialist movement from the late 1960s until the early 1980s based on the memoirs of the protagonists. In these writings, we can observe the exuberance as well as the disappointments of these young militants and their approach to world affairs in general and Turkish and Middle Eastern politics in particular. In their worldview, America and its allies, especially Israel, were the real enemy whereas they purported to aspire to the creation of a socialist state in Turkey. The Turkish left-wing militants got involved in Palestinian politics through their training at the Palestinian camps in Lebanon, Syria, and Jordan as they perceived the Palestinian struggle against Israel as a part of the world-wide revolutionary movement for the overthrow of imperialism and its replacement by socialist governments all around the globe.