Red Army Faction

Author: Anne Steiner, Löic Debray

In the second half of the 60s, a major wave of student movements emerged in the USA, Japan and Western Europe. These movements radically questioned industrial society and all forms of domination. The guerrilla groups that emerged after these movements, with their practices reminiscent of the anarchists of the late 19th century, pushed aside all "traditional" revolutionary schemes and rebelled against the traditional Old Left. In this way, they aimed to disrupt the current political game by revealing the fragility of "social peace" in metropolitan countries.

The Red Army Faction is an organizational sociology book about one of the leading organizations, the RAF, which was mostly called the "Baader-Meinhof group" in the early 70s. The authors of this unique book in Turkish literature, which we published with the idea that it can be evaluated by associating it with the experiences experienced in Turkey in the same years, say the following:

"The perspective of the state and the media is not helpful in understanding what such an armed struggle organization is and what it is not... For this study, we thoroughly scanned the German press between 1968 and 1977; we carefully examined the Stammheim Case file opened against Raspe, Baader, Meinhof and Ensslin. We have read and examined all the texts written by RAF militants between 1970 and 1984, including interviews with former members of the group, relatives of the first militants of the RAF, their lawyers and sympathizers... This study focuses on economic reasons rather than assigning a single determining reason to the facts. "It was the product of an effort to understand how an armed struggle group could form at a certain moment in a country with developed and democratic institutions, what stages it went through, and how it ensured its continuity."

(From the Promotional Bulletin)

Prepared by: Kaya Şahin
Prepared by: Haldun Bayri

Dough Type: 2nd Dough

First Printing Year: 2000

Size: 13x20

Number of Printings: 2nd Edition

Number of Printings: 1st Edition

Number of Pages: 200