Ethem Nejat

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Ethem Nejat (1883 - 28 January 1921) was a Turkish revolutionary communist militant. He was working on education during the Second Constitutional Era of the Ottoman Empire. In 1918, the Ottoman Government sent him to Germany, where he became a Communist and paricipated in the Spartacist German Revolution along with the group he formed with Turkish students and workers who were in Germany as well called Workers and Peasants Party. Ethem Nejat's group in Germany was publishing a paper called Liberation. They were recalled in 1919 back to Turkey, where they changed the name of the party to Turkish Workers and Peasants Socialist Party. Members of this party were eventually going to make the bulk of the Istanbul organization of the Communist Party of Turkey . The party paper, Liberation was published in Turkey, and Ethem Nejat was writing articles about the proletariat, capital, class struggle and the paper also had articles about the October Revolution. Meanwhile, Mustafa Suphi who was a Turkish Bolshevik, exiled in Russia, was planning to get in touch with communist groups in Turkey and form the Communist Party of Turkey by uniting the different communist groups in Turkey. As Suphi was in Baku, Ethem Nejad was the person who worked for getting Turkish communists together. Eventually, the first congress of the Communist Party of Turkey was organized on September 11 1920, in Baku. There were three main factions which were to make the Communist Party of Turkey. First one was Mustafa Suphi's group of Turkish Exiles in Russia. The second one was made up of a unity between People's Liberation Party of Turkey which had managed to get openly communist candidates elected in the national assembly and was publishing a paper called Labour and Anatolian Communists who were united around the Green Army, an Islamic-Bolshevik organization which was protected and supported by famous guerilla leader Cerkez Ethem. The city of Eskişehir was under control of this second faction, thanks to Cerkez Ethem's protection, and it had became a haven for communist propaganda. The Green Army was publishing a paper called New World. The last one was Ethem Nejat's Turkish Workers and Peasants Socialist Party. Ethem Nejat made a speech on the "Workers Struggle in Istanbul" in the congress. At the end, Mustafa Suphi was elected as the head of the central commitee, and Ethem Nejat was elected as the general secretary. After the formation of Communist Party of Turkey, Ethem Nejat's party started publishing the magazine called Enlightened, which became the de facto legal press organ of the party. After spending for months, the leading militants of the Party decided to return to Turkey in order to join the ongoing struggle. One their way to Ankara to meet Mustafa Kemal, they were attacked by the inhabitants of the cities they were passing who were provocated by Kemalists. Finally they decided to return to Baku with a boat from the city of Trabzon. Ethem Nejat and Mustafa Suphi were killed along with 14 comrades in a massacre by forces under the Ankara government's command.

Ethem Nejat was more influenced by Luxemburgism than Bolshevism. In "28-29 Kanunusani 1921" which was printed by Red Eastern Press in Moscow as a tribute to the slain leaders of the Turkish communist movement, it was mentioned that the Bolsheviks weren't too keen on Ethem Nejat's politics because he was influenced by the Spartacist League.