ABSTRACT
This chapter presents the birth and swift growth of a Turkish resistance movement in Anatolia, which found major international support from the young Bolshevik state. The most important among these was the Communist Party of Turkey (Turkiye Komunist Partisi; TKP) organized and led by Mustafa Suphi who had been in Russia since the beginning of the First World War. The TKP, one of the oldest political parties in Turkey and among the oldest communist parties in the Middle East, was founded in September 1920 in Baku. The Turkish communists played an active part in Comintern affairs. The Soviet leaders, however, continued to support Turkish communists almost until the end of the Soviet Union, financially and politically. The overall goal of Soviet policy was to increase Soviet influence in Turkey at the expense of the Western powers—mainly the British Empire before the end of the Second World War, and the United States.
