ABSTRACT
Political terrorism has been used by many social groups: by minorities, by nationalist or anti-colonial movements in order better to attain their ends, and of course by those in power to control unruly subjects. In fact political violence began in Turkey in the 1960s and its first practitioners were students. The character of political violence after 1975 was not markedly different from the 1960s save that it moved much more outside the universities, which after 1971 were under much closer police control. The principal danger of the violence was that it might have spread to engulf more and more of Turkish life. A very significant change occurred in Turkish politics in 1965 when the People's Party established by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, and under the chairmanship of his lieutenant, Ismet Inonu, decided to go 'left-of-centre'. In the conditions of modern Turkey the Ataturkist tradition, which forms an important part of early education, had to be reinterpreted.
