Kemal Okuyan

Kemal Okuyan (born 18 May 1962) is the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP).

Youth
Through his childhood and youth, he was in İzmir and Istanbul. After studying in the Bornova Anatolian High School, he graduated from the Boğaziçi University Political Sciences Department.

Political life
He started his political activities in the Workers' Party of Turkey. After criticising the party's politics based on national democratic revolution, he took part in a splinter group formed around the journal Socialist Power (Sosyalist İktidar) and he was among the first writers of the journal. After the 1980 Turkish coup d'état this group ceased to work. In 1986 he and his comrades founded the Gelenek journal around which they formed the nucleus of a traditional communist party.

In the early 1990s, Okuyan and his comrades founded the Socialist Party of Turkey. This party was banned by the Constitutional Court of Turkey in 1993. That year, they founded the Socialist Power Party. This party changed its name to the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) following the 2001 Congress. After the TKP split in 2014, he resigned as general secretary and founded the Communist Party with Aydemir Güler. Okuyan was elected general secretary of the Central Committee after the Communist Party of Turkey was rebuilt in 2017.

Works
He is a columnist in the soL Portal, a leftist newspaper portal. He also wrote many books about political events in Turkey and former Marxist–Leninist states. His works have been influential on the Turkish left.

Books

 * Texts Against Democracy (Demokrasiye Aykırı Yazılar)
 * What Does The Soldiers' Party Want? (Asker Partisi Ne İstiyor?)
 * Civic Society: Development of the State (Sivil Toplum: Devletin Büyümesi)
 * Understanding Stalin (Stalin'i Anlamak)
 * Socialism's Search for Power in Turkey (Türkiye'de Sosyalizmin İktidar Arayışı)
 * The Book of What Is To Be Done-ists (Ne Yapmalı'cılar Kitabı)
 * Theory of Socialist Revolution (Sosyalist Devrim Teorisi)
 * Anti-Theses on the Dissolution of the Soviet Union (Sovyetler Birliği'nin Çözülüşü Üzerine Anti-Tezler)
 * The Left Stuck Between Ergenekon and AKP (Ergenekon ve AKP Arasında Sıkışan Sol)
 * The Patriotism Exam of The Left in Turkey (Türkiye Solunun Yurtseverlik Sınavı)
 * In The Shadow of Revolution: Berlin-Warsaw-Ankara 1920 (Devrimin Gölgesinde: Berlin-Varşova-Ankara 1920)

Articles

 * Thinking aloud on the "World Communist Movement”