ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that indirect diffusion is at play regarding the Turkish case, since there were hardly direct and organizational connections between Turkish and Western students in the sixties. It considers the simultaneous rise of political violence in the Turkish context, not merely as a result of diffusion but as the operation of similar mechanisms triggered by similar protest movements shaped by diffusive mechanisms. The escalation of violence between students and police forces and right-wing groups, following the massive 1968 occupations, took place almost at the same time as the movement radicalization in Western countries. The Turkish student movement first came to the agenda in 1960 as the most important oppositional movement to the governing Democratic Party and its authoritarian measures. The counteraction of police forces to stop and punish the disruptive activities of the students, developed in anti-Sixth Fleet demonstrations and campus mobilizations of 1968, would lead to a spiral of violence, as would happen in many Western countries.
