INTERVIEW. FAMILIES OF POLITICAL PRISONERS AND MARTYRS OF PARTIZAN (TURKEY)
Previous Comment
The struggle of the peoples faces not only the bourgeois-oppressive State but also counterinsurgency policies, repressive apparatuses and fascist policies whose tools are torture, state terrorism and political imprisonment. The regimes allied to imperialism develop all these policies with total impunity and in the complicit silence of the mercenary press. Turkey is one of the most dramatic examples where fascism has been present since the very foundation of the republic and has transcended the centuries and survived Hitler and Mussolini. The struggle of the martyrs and their families to vindicate the struggle for justice is exemplary. That is why we have interviewed the Families of Political Prisoners and Martyrs of Partizan, Turkey.
The Interview
First of all, can we get to know the Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families? How did it emerge? When was it founded? What are its aims and functions? Who is a part of it? What was the political context in which the Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families were established?
Every organization emerges as a product of a need. The organization of Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families emerged as a result of the need to organize our families who got to know Partizan politics through their closest relatives. Coming together, sharing our problems, uniting and showing the will to solve them were the first steps of our organization. Before we publicized ourselves as Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families, we had many activities in which Partizan families acted together and stood out in various fields of struggle. The Grand National Assembly of Turkey, the Ministry of Justice and in front of prisons are known for the resistance actions of families of prisoners against oppression and torture, especially after the September 12 Military Fascist Coup. The families of Partisan prisoners have also taken their place at the forefront of these resistances. In the protests we organized to claim our relatives who were imprisoned in the struggle, who were murdered by the fascist dictatorship, and to make their voices heard, sometimes families were also detained and arrested. We used many tools to make our voices heard. In this process, the need for institutionalization became more urgent. We first expressed ourselves in an organized manner at the funeral ceremonies and protests held after the extrajudicial killing of 4 of our comrades in a vehicle by the state’s law enforcement forces on the Tuzla Bridge in Istanbul on October 7, 1988.
The leading subjects of our struggle were the mothers of prisoners and martyrs. We carried out our work through the New Democratic Women’s Association for a while. In a short time, when our association and our activities became active and became a place for our families to organize, the state’s attacks were not delayed. Our association was raided by the police, our members were arrested and after a while our association was shut down. However, these attacks made the organization of families much more important, especially in that period when the social struggle gained momentum again after September 12, when extrajudicial executions, torture and disappearance policies increased rapidly. In the face of the attacks, we never stopped embracing our sons and comrades. As Partizan families, as a result of the discussions we held, we decided that the name that would best express us was Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families. We decided that this was the most appropriate name to bring together the families of our comrades who were immortalized and imprisoned in the struggle on the same ground. After that process, we started to use the name Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families in the actions and events we participated in. At every opportunity, we expressed that we are the sustainers of the just causes of our relatives.
In countries ruled by fascist dictatorships like Turkey, torture, massacres and arrests of communist-revolutionaries, democrats and patriots have always been methods of surrender used by the state. Because the state knows that it cannot take over the society without dominating the prisons. That is why prisons are one of the important positions of the class struggle. The role of families is very important in the resistance of prisoners breaking the prison walls and reaching outside. That is why organizing families, supporting the struggle of their relatives, being comrades to their children is the biggest goal of Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families. As long as the oppression and resistance continues, the families of prisoners and martyrs are among the groups that pay the highest price in this system, and therefore their organization will always continue as a need.
Because it is our pain, our anger, our hope and our struggle that brings us together and organizes us… We do not limit ourselves to being the owners of our relatives who were lost, immortalized and imprisoned in this struggle, and being active defenders of their struggle. Our aim is also to be a subject, a part of this struggle.
The state does not want families to come together, to organize, to take care of their children. That is why it uses every means to separate us from our closest ones. While attacking prisoners inside, it does not hesitate to attack us families outside. While it imposes isolation on prisoners inside, it tries to isolate us families outside. It differentiates the days and hours of visits in order to prevent families from coming together in front of prisons and to prevent us from raising our voices together against the usurpation of rights. We know very well from our past experiences that the best way to frustrate this attack is to act in an organized way, and that the voices we will make individually will remain weak. Especially in 1996, during the death fast and indefinite hunger strike action for the closure of Eskişehir prison, known as the coffin prison, which triumphed with the immortalization of 12 revolutionaries, there were strong and effective actions of prisoners’ families. In this process, the families also became the voice of the prisons outside with very strong and various actions, including the hunger strike action outside to support their children.
As Partizan Martyrs’ and Prisoners’ Families, we actively took our place as Partizan Martyrs’ and Prisoners’ Families among the Saturday Mothers in Galatasaray Square, where we met to commemorate those disappeared in custody and to ask about their fate.
In 2000, when the Cell Type Prisons came to the agenda, our activity in TUYAB (Union of Relatives of Prisoners and Prisoners), which we established jointly with the families of many components of the Revolutionary Movement, is full of many experiences of struggle. In that period, as TUYAB, we organized many resistances and actions in which the families participated strongly. Similarly, in the following processes, we established joint platforms and organized joint actions against the isolation in prisons.
Even in times when it was impossible to even take to the streets for a press statement, when the slightest protest was met with detentions, torture and arrests, the families did not give up taking to the streets. Galatasaray Square, the meeting place of the relatives of the disappeared, turned into a place of resistance of the families against the Type F Prisons in 2000-2001. As Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families, we actively took our place in these resistance and actions.
Today, with an organization called the Initiative for Solidarity with Prisoners, which was established as a product of a joint work with many components of the revolutionary movement, we are trying to embrace our imprisoned sons against the counter-revolutionary policies implemented by the state, especially in prisons, and to be their voice outside. Our work in this regard is not yet at the desired level. However, the necessity of common struggle against the common enemy has enabled us to gather and struggle under such a roof.
To summarize, as Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families, we, as the Argentine Plaza De Mayo Mothers, accepted the discourse of the Argentine Plaza De Mayo Mothers “First we were defending our children, now their thoughts…” as our general slogan. And we carried out our struggle with this perspective.
You said that you are families of martyrs. What would you like to tell us about martyrs?
Yes, we are organized as both the families of prisoners and the families of our comrades who were immortalized in the struggle for revolution and communism. We do not separate the families of prisoners and the families of martyrs. Because the price we pay and our enemy are common. Our families are also a part of this struggle and the 52-year history of the Proletarian Party is full of the struggle experiences of the families of martyrs and prisoners. In the class struggle, our closest ones were either murdered or imprisoned by this fascist state. Since the establishment of TKP / ML, nearly 400 leaders, cadre members, militants and supporters have been immortalized. Comrade İbrahim Kaypakkaya was imprisoned very soon after founding the party in 1972 and was murdered after 90 days of torture. In the clash in which İbrahim Kaypakkaya was imprisoned wounded, TIKKO’s first Commander Ali Haydar Yıldız was immortalized on January 24, 1973 as the first martyr of TKP / ML. Again on January 25, 1973, Comrade Meral Yakar, the first female member, was immortalized. After İbrahim Kaypakkaya, the founding leader of TKP / ML, three more general secretaries were immortalized in the war. From Ali Haydar Yıldız to our last martyrs Cumhur Sinan Oktulmuş and Ferdi Tosun, hundreds of cadres, members, militants and supporters were immortalized in the class struggle. For example, Elif Külekçi, Güzel Şahin, Hatun İldem, Nesibe Kaş were among the families of martyrs and prisoners who were active in the struggle and were comrades to their children. They were immortalized in the struggle.
All the prices we have paid are our honor. We know that keeping them alive will be possible first and foremost by embracing their cause. Because those who pay the price know the true face of this system best. As Victor Hügo said, “every day is the first day for a mother who has lost her child.” It is our duty as Partizan Martyr and Prisoner Families to organize our families, with whom we have common pain, and to hold the fascist system to account. Because the fascist state punishes the families of our comrades at every opportunity. For example, our families whose children were killed in the guerrilla are not given their funerals for months, sometimes years, and buried in the cemetery of orphans, and this process is turned into torture for the family.
Just a few examples are enough to document this brutality of the state. In 2017, the bones of an immortalized guerrilla named Agit İpek were delivered to his mother in a cargo box. In 2016, the bones of Hakan Aslan, who was murdered in the Diyarbakır Sur resistance, were given to his father in a sack exactly 7 years later. Again, the bodies of Ali Kemal Yılmaz and Gökçe Kurban, who were immortalized in an airstrike on October 1 and 4 in 2020, one of the last martyrs of TKP / ML, were delivered as a result of our persistent and organized struggle after being buried in the cemetery of orphans for months. When the families received the bodies, they realized that Ali Kemal Yılmaz and Gökçe Kurban had been beheaded. Even this was a form of intimidation over the bodies. Decapitation and ear cutting were counter-guerrilla methods that the state had practiced in the 90s. This is still going on today. The state fears not only the thoughts of our sons but even their dead bodies. In short, families who claim their children’s funerals against all kinds of attacks are being intimidated by pressure, torture, detentions and arrests.
The organized action of the Martyrs’ and Prisoners’ Families is also important for the families to take a stronger stance against these attacks of the state. Families whose relatives disappeared in custody, who were subjected to abduction, torture and rape, whose bodies were mutilated, who could not bury their children, who spent years at the prison gates while their relatives were in isolation, summarize the picture of the class struggle in this country.
You are also families of prisoners. How many political prisoners are there in Turkey? Which organizations do they belong to? How many are women and how many are men? Are there children and young people like in “Israel”?
It is difficult to give a precise number since reliable data on this issue is not published. However, approximately 20 thousand revolutionary, communist and patriotic prisoners are imprisoned or convicted in prisons. Most of this number belongs to the Kurdish National Movement (PKK). Because arrests, especially against the Kurdish National Movement, have become almost continuous.
Detentions and arrests against the Communist and Revolutionary movement, the revolutionary, socialist, patriotic press, workers and laborers seeking their rights, women, youth and intellectuals are frequent. Almost every month, houses and legal institutions are raided and dozens of people are arrested. People can be arrested for social media posts or even for depositing money for their children in prisons. Recently, many people have been detained and arrested for dancing the halay to Kurdish music or listening to Kurdish music. Many opposition journalists and intellectuals were arrested on arbitrary grounds.
Political prisoners in prisons other than the Kurdish National Movement are mostly male and female prisoners from TKP/ML, DHKP/C, MLKP, TKEP/L, MKP, TIKB, DKP organizations.
Likewise, it is difficult to clearly state the number of women arrested or convicted from communist, revolutionary, democratic and patriotic organizations. The overall number of women prisoners in Turkey is over 10,000 and there are 15 women-only prisons. Political women prisoners are generally held in high security prisons, Women’s Closed Prisons or E-type prisons. There are hundreds of revolutionary and patriotic women prisoners in these prisons.
The number of revolutionary and patriotic youth and children in Turkish prisons is also very high. According to the data of the Ministry of Justice, the number of child prisoners and convicts between the ages of 12-18 is over 2000. Among them are hundreds of Kurdish children, especially those who confronted the police during protests, throwing stones and shouting slogans. Children are also subjected to torture, detained and arrested during home raids and protests.
According to IHD data, as of November 30, 2023, there are 1,517 sick prisoners in prisons, 651 of whom are seriously ill.
There is currently a lot of talk about Enemy Criminal Law, which involves the removal of all the basic rights of the detainee and all the elements of a fair and impartial trial. This is the replacement of a legal trial with a political trial, where the detainee is seen by the State and the courts as an enemy of the State, because he does not want the State to collapse. He is an enemy of society. Is there Enemy Criminal Law in Turkey?
“Enemy Criminal Law” has existed since the establishment of the Republic of Turkey. Although its names have changed in various periods, it is applied especially to anyone who opposes the system. In the early years of the Republic of Turkey, the Independence Courts stood out as extraordinary judicial bodies that imposed punishments, including execution, on the people to ensure the authority of the fascist dictatorship.
The State Security Courts, which were also established after the 1980 Military Fascist Coup, are the continuation of the Independence Courts and are the courts where the right to defense was usurped, statements taken under torture were considered as evidence and death sentences were issued, especially against communists, revolutionaries, democratic patriots. In order to suppress the social opposition that developed and would develop after the coup, everyone who opposed the system was punished. Large-scale detentions, torture, extrajudicial executions and executions were the most prominent practices of the period.
According to official data, 517 people were sentenced to death only during the September 12 process and 50 of them were executed. 650 thousand people were detained and 230 thousand people were arrested. Again, according to official records, 171 people were tortured to death and 299 people lost their lives in prisons due to inhumane practices.
The Anti-Terror Law, which was enacted as a method of struggle in the 1990s as a result of the development of the class struggle, the strength of the spontaneous social opposition, the strengthening of revolutionary actions in the cities and the guerrilla struggle in rural areas, and the Kurdish National Movement (PKK)’s leap in the guerrilla struggle in the same period, has gone down in history as a law that grants wide powers to punish any opposition to the state by considering it within the scope of “terror”. In addition to communists, revolutionaries, democrats and patriots, a wide range of people from intellectuals and artists to students, trade unionists and women have been punished on terror charges.
Especially in the 1990s, abductions, disappearances in custody, torture, extrajudicial killings, village evacuations in Turkish Kurdistan, village burnings, forced migration, etc. practices, the state has most clearly shown its fascist face hostile to the people under the name of “fight against terrorism”.
Again, after the 2000s, the state’s policy of completely eliminating social opposition took on a new dimension with isolation and treatment. With the aggravated life sentences (life imprisonment) imposed by abolishing the death penalty, prisoners were put alive in cells called coffins.
Punishment continued in prisons as well. Prisoners who could not stay in prison, including sick prisoners who were on the verge of death, were not released and inhumane practices were made up with legal covers.
With the State of Emergency Law enacted in 2016, all the rights gained were usurped. A large section of the population was declared potential criminals with the Decree Laws issued. Tens of thousands of public laborers were dismissed with decrees. Trustees were appointed to opposition municipalities, members of parliamnet and mayors were arrested. Massacres took place in the streets.
These attacks continue today with a much wider scope. In addition to these, people are now arrested and imprisoned for months and years on the grounds of their social media posts and the words they say in street interviews. Prisoners whose sentences have been completed are not released from prisons due to arbitrary decisions of the Observation and Administration Boards.
As you say, all these are concrete examples of the fact that prisoners and all those who oppose the system are seen as enemies by the state and that trials and punishments are carried out within this framework.
The fascist character of the Turkish State does not begin with Erdoğan, but with its foundation in 1923, so can it be said that there are several phases or periods of political imprisonment? If there are several stages in the history of political imprisonment, what would they be? What are the differences between the different stages?
The history of prisons in Turkey, as Albert Camus stated, is a manifestation of the approach “If you want to understand how a country is governed, look at its prisons”. In a geography where we talk about the continuity of fascism as a form of government, of course prisons, one of the most fundamental institutions of the state, are used as a means of attack against the whole people in a context shaped by fascist understanding and fascist policies.
It would be correct to evaluate your question in two frameworks. First, what is the strategic approach of the ruling classes in the history of prisons, and second, what are the tactical stages appropriate to this strategic stage? In total, what is the positioning of the Revolutionary Movement of Turkey and the social opposition at this point?
First of all, it is necessary to briefly emphasize the following. It would be incomplete to read the prisons policy of the ruling classes in Turkey only as the political orientation of the Turkish ruling classes (comprador bourgeoisie and landlord classes). It is necessary to say that it is the product of the economic-political-military orientation dependent on imperialism that directs the policy of prisons in Turkey in view of the country’s semi-colonial structure and the fact that the Turkish ruling classes are deeply dependent on imperialism.
Accordingly, the reflection of the weak economic structure on the life of the working class and laborers as conditions of heavy exploitation, the continuity of the fragile political governance crises of the rulers, makes the social opposition against them continuous and lively. This situation threatens the sovereignty of the Turkish ruling classes as much as it openly threatens their imperialist masters, of which they are the servants. Because the contradictions caused by the structure dependent on imperialism also keep the anti-imperialist struggle alive and create conditions that intertwine the anti-imperialist struggle with the revolutionary struggle. As such, the policy of intimidating and surrendering the class-social opposition, whose potential for development and growth is always alive, but the policy of surrendering the revolutionary will, which is the will to transform this opposition, which they perceive as the main threat, into an organized power, is one of the most fundamental goals of the fascist system. This is where the strategic importance of prisons for the ruling classes and their masters, the imperialists, stems from, and the main goal is to be a means of surrender, intimidation, intimidation and fear.
Of course, it shapes the prisons in accordance with its own political-economic-military orientation of the process in accordance with these goals. This has a historical background and continues in various forms in the current orientation.
In this sense, the sovereigns see prisons as the biggest threat and one of the biggest means of attack in every historical process, especially under the name of architectural structure, but mainly shaping them in a way that they can apply isolation and isolation in the strongest way, they follow a policy of prisons in such a way that revolutionary-communist-patriotic forces and all social opposition segments are cut off from the outside.
While responding to the stages of the history of prisons in Turkey, it is also necessary to evaluate the period of regularly recurring military coups within these stages. The periods of March 12, 1971 Military Martial Law and September 12, 1980 Military Fascist coup d’état were periods when military courts were directly in charge, revolutionary prisoners in prisons parallel to the military dictatorship were tried to be taken over by the fascist military rules with the most brutal methods and were massacred.
With both civilian and military fascist administrations, the ruling classes have tried to surrender and destroy revolutionary prisoners with prisons, which we call the ward system, but they have never succeeded in surrendering the revolutionary will. In this process, death fasts, hunger strikes and de facto resistance took place in many prisons for the abolition of the One Type Dress, which was wanted to be implemented in prisons. In 1984, four revolutionary prisoners were immortalized in the death fast action. The policy of prisons, which came to life as a mechanism of attack, has always been shattered by the communist-revolutionary-patriots seeing prisons as an important position of the class struggle in every period and organizing prison life with this approach, and the rulers could not turn prisons into a means of surrender.
With both civilian and military fascist administrations, the ruling classes have tried to surrender and destroy revolutionary prisoners with prisons, which we call the ward system, but they have never succeeded in surrendering the revolutionary will. In this process, death fasts, hunger strikes and actual resistances took place in many prisons, especially in Metris, Davutpaşa, Hasdal and Amed (Diyarbakır) Prison No. 5 in Istanbul, in order to abolish the Uniform Dresses that were wanted to be applied in prisons and to end the pressure and torture. In 1982 and 1984, 8 revolutionary-patriotic prisoners were immortalized in the death fast actions. During these resistances, many prisoners, including TKP / ML prisoners Sedat Özkaradağ and Ali Sarıbal, who were in actual resistance against the attacks, were also murdered. The policy of prisons, which came to life as a mechanism of attack, has always been shattered by the fact that the communist-revolutionary-patriots have always seen prisons as an important position of the class struggle and organized prison life with this approach, and the rulers could not turn prisons into a means of surrender.
This situation, of course, led the ruling classes to new prison policies and aimed to put into practice the F-type Cell system consisting of cells for 1 and 3 people from ward-type prisons as areas where it could implement its isolation-treadman attacks more strongly. The F-type cell prisons, which it started to build since the mid-1990s, were constantly frustrated by the deadly resistance of revolutionary-communist prisoners. In 1995 and 1996, 3 prisoners in Buca Prison, 4 in Ümraniye Prison, 10 in Diyarbakır Prison; In 1999, 10 prisoners in Ulucanlar Prison were immortalized in massacre attacks on prisons.
By 2000, the economic and political crisis was creating a serious social opposition dynamic in Turkish political life. The crisis of the ruling classes’ inability to govern was growing day by day. There were suggestions from their imperialist masters both to intervene in the crisis and to intervene in the social opposition that had the potential to develop and grow. Of course, one of the most important areas of this intervention would be the prisons. As a matter of fact, just before this process, revolutionary and communist prisoners, who foresaw these attacks, responded to the political orientations of the rulers preparing for the transition to F-type prisons with the Death Fast resistance.
This great resistance lasted for seasons. The rulers, on the other hand, began to strongly accelerate their offensive moves against prisons. By December 19, 2000, prisons became one of the first areas to be intervened in terms of combating the current economic-political crisis. In the same period, the Death Fast resistance of revolutionary prisoners inside had become an intense agenda with the practice of revolutionary and communist forces, especially the families of prisoners outside. Just before December 19, 2000, the statement made by Bülent Ecevit, the prime minister of the time, saying “we need to solve the problem of prisons in order to implement IMF policies in our country” pointed to a great massacre preparation for the prisoners in prisons.
As a matter of fact, on December 19-22, 2000, one of the bloodiest massacre attacks in the history of prisons took place. With the simultaneous state attack on 20 prisons, the step of transition to F Type Prisons was taken. Of course, this transition marked a new period in the history of prisons for both the rulers and the prisoners. Prisoners showed great resistance. Nearly 150 prisoners were immortalized while resisting both the Death Fasts and the December 19 – 22 massacre attack. This historical process marked the transition to a new stage in prisons. Prisoners were de facto forcibly transferred to F-type prisons. However, from that day until today, the state’s attacks to surrender the will, which it mainly targets, have not succeeded despite all kinds of policies and attacks. For revolutionary-communist prisoners, cell-type prisons continued to be a position of revolutionary struggle.
The rulers, who did not succeed in this move, entered into a new wave of attacks with Y-S and T-type prisons, which contain isolation within isolation and are called coffins, in order to further strengthen isolation and treadmill.
Let us underline one point here. The history of prisons is a history of resistance for revolutionaries and communists as much as it is a tool of surrender and isolation attacks for the rulers. This was the case yesterday and it is the same today. Prisons are one of the important positions of the revolutionary struggle. No matter what form the ruling classes attack, they have always encountered and will continue to encounter the resistance of revolutionaries and communists.
Ultimately, what matters is revolutionary consciousness and revolutionary will. The revolutionary movement in Turkey has the power to frustrate all kinds of attacks with the will of having historical experience in this position of struggle.
Erdoğan’s government has recently become the most repressive government in Turkey. How has this affected political prisons and the fundamental rights movement?
The situation of prisons in our country is changing in proportion to the rise of social opposition. We said that the state aims to surrender the political prisoners, whom it imprisons as the most advanced section of society, in prison and to depersonalize them through isolation and treadman method. This is state policy and although the size of the attack has changed with the change of governments, its essence has not changed. Throughout the entire history of the Turkish Republic, prisoners have confronted the state’s attacks in prisons many times with de facto resistance, hunger strikes and death fasts, and gained various rights by paying the price. Practices such as one-type dresses, the imposition of standing counts, hair and beard regulation, etc. were tried to be implemented as a means of capturing prisoners in the past, but these attacks were thwarted by revolutionary prisoners. While hunger strikes and death fasts continued in prisons against Type F prisons, after the massacre carried out in 20 prisons at the same time on December 19-22 under the name of “Return to Life” (28 revolutionary prisoners were killed in this massacre), Type F prisons based on the cell system were switched to Type F prisons and isolation and treadman attacks on prisoners gained a new dimension after this process. Hundreds of new prisons were opened during the period of the AKP government, which came to power right after this process, and people from all opposition groups were arrested and Turkey was transformed into a semi-open prison. The Type Y prisons, which are on the agenda recently, are the increased capacity of high security or F-type prisons. They were built for prisoners sentenced to aggravated life imprisonment, that is, prisoners who will be in prison for life, political prisoners who are seen as “dangerous” and most of whom are revolutionary and patriotic prisoners. In the last period, 36 Type Y prisons were opened. According to the data of the Human Rights Association, the number of prisoners and convicts in Turkish prisons has now exceeded 350 thousand.
Today, as in the past, even the most human needs of prisoners in prisons are won as a result of resistance and struggle.
Although their sentences are over, the release of prisoners is arbitrarily prevented on grounds such as disciplinary penalties or lack of remorse. Even prisoners who have been sentenced to life imprisonment and completed 30 years of imprisonment are not released on arbitrary grounds. Prisoners’ communication rights are prevented through disciplinary penalties. Although it is forbidden for soldiers to enter the prisons, military searches are carried out in the form of raids, prisoners’ cells are dispersed, their belongings are confiscated, prisoners who resist are tortured, prisoners are forcibly exiled to other prisons. Prisoners are tortured and sometimes murdered in the padded rooms in prisons. The deaths are covered up as suspicious deaths or suicides.
Seriously ill prisoners are not released despite “cannot stay in prison” reports, and those who are released are left on the verge of death. Many prisoners released in this way died shortly after their release. Many sick prisoners also died because they were not treated in prison.
The state resorts to every means to prevent families from organizing. On the one hand, while attacking prisoners inside, it attacks their families and comrades who embrace them outside. Every statement and action in support of prisoners is punished with charges of “terrorism” and “terrorist organization propaganda”. Despite being sick and elderly, many families have been put in prisons for embracing their children. Especially in the last period, families were raided and detained for depositing money to their relatives in prisons, and some were arrested. Although all these attacks weakened the resistance outside, they could not and will not end it. Because as long as the persecution continues, the struggle and resistance will not end. We will never give up being the voice of our relatives.
The fascist character of the repressive policy has an anti-communist basis, but it is also directed against the Kurdish movement fighting for independence and self-determination. Does the repression go beyond these two dimensions and movements? Is it also directed against labor, youth, etc. movements? Is it widespread?
As we have emphasized in our answers to previous questions, since its foundation, the Republic of Turkey has tried to silence all voices opposing it, assimilate various nations and nationalities, and destroy them through massacres. The history of the Turkish Republic is especially full of Kurdish massacres. The massacres of Ararat, Zilan, Dersim, Koçgiri, Lice and the recent Roboski massacres took place directly against the Kurdish nation.
The seeds of the struggle for communism in Turkey were sown during the founding years of the Turkish Republic, but in 1921 the founding members of the Communist Party of Turkey, Mustafa Suphi and his 15 comrades were murdered by the Fascist Kemalist Dictatorship in the Black Sea. Under the influence of the Great Proletarian Cultural Revolution in China at the end of the 1960s and the social and national liberation struggles around the world, the revolutionary movement developed in our country, and THKO, THKP/C and TKP/ML emerged in this process. Especially after the military martial law in 1971, armed revolutionary outbreaks created revolutionary and communist leaders such as İbrahim Kaypakkaya, Mahir Çayan and Deniz Gezmiş. İbrahim Kaypakkaya was wounded and imprisoned in the mountains of Dersim, where they started the guerrilla war on January 24, 1973, and was later murdered in Diyarbakır after 90 years of tortured interrogations.
Mahir Çayan was immortalized in Tokat’s Kızıldere with 10 comrades, while Deniz Gezmiş, Hüseyin İnan and Yusuf Aslan were executed. The class struggle, which suffered a great wound with the immortalization of revolutionary and communist leaders, has continued continuously with new leaders and militants, although it has experienced setbacks from time to time.
Fascist oppression in Turkey is not only applied against revolutionaries, communists and Kurds. As we have expressed and given examples before, it is applied against anyone who opposes the system. It is systematically applied against intellectuals and artists, journalists, trade unionists, workers and laborers, women and youth seeking their rights. All those who oppose the policies of the state and demand change are wanted to be silenced and subjugated through oppression, torture, detention, arrests and massacres.
A fascist state is also a counter-guerrilla state. How is this expressed in Turkey?
Various definitions are used by revolutionary democratic circles about the nature of the state in Turkey. Definitions such as “counter-guerrilla state” and “deep state” are among the prominent ones. However, while defining the nature of the state in general, we consider it right to emphasize its fascist character and the continuity of fascism as a form of government. “According to Marx, the state is an organ of class domination, an organ of oppression of one class over another class” (Lenin).
The ruling classes in Turkey use the state mechanism with its fascist character as an instrument of oppression and power over the working class and laborers as well as oppressed nations and minority nationalities. However, it realizes this through various means and methods. In this sense, the fascist Turkish state is itself the organ of exploitation, oppression and power of the Turkish comprador boss-agha rulers. It resorts to the most brutal methods to suppress, destroy and restrain the social and class struggle against this goal of exploitation, oppression and power. The counter-guerrilla method you mentioned is one of these tools of the fascist state mechanism. This mechanism organized within the state, which dates back to the “Hamidiye Regiments” in the Ottoman Empire, was modernized especially in 1947 with the method of struggle organized by the imperialists under the name of the Truman Doctrine against the “Red Terror(!)” in parallel with the strengthening of the “Socialist Camp”. As is known, with the Truman Doctrine, US imperialism pledged financial and military aid to countries under the “threat of communism”. In this context, as a result of the policies shaped within the framework of the relationship between the Turkish state and the US imperialists, some Turkish officers, police and civil fascists were trained by the CIA in the counter-guerrilla centers in the USA. The first foundations of the institutionalized counter-guerrilla activity in Turkey were laid at this time. Historically, counter-guerrilla practices, which have carried out many massacres and inhumane brutal practices on behalf of the state, have been used intensively by the Turkish state against the revolutionary-communist-national liberation struggle and democratic social opposition.
Throughout this whole process, the counter-guerrilla organized massacres and sabotage by using official and civilian forces against popular movements, workers’ strikes, marches and rallies, and the activities of revolutionary-patriotic-communist forces with counter-revolutionary warfare methods. The counter-guerrilla played an active role in the Maraş, Çorum Sivas and Gazi Alevi massacres. They also played an active role in the 1977 May 1st Taksim Massacre and carried out massacres on behalf of the state. During the March 12, 1971 Military Martial Law and the September 12, 1980 Military Fascist Coup, counter-guerrilla interrogation teams were also formed and the most brutal torture methods were applied on prisoners. However, more prominently in the early 1990s, especially against the developing guerrilla struggle in Turkish Kurdistan, the counter-guerrilla, as the name of the fascist organization positioned at the forefront, carried out massacres on behalf of the state against both the guerrilla forces and the people with methods that do not recognize any rules-laws, with inhumane practices, murders that we know were organized by the counter-guerrilla on behalf of the state, they were the main perpetrators of disappearances in custody.
In short, the counter-guerrilla has been the name of the mechanism that acts as the triggerman of the counter-revolutionary practice applied with the most brutal methods on behalf of the state.
Finally, recently the crackdown on the alternative press has intensified against both the Kurdish press and Partizan. There are many comrades who have been detained. What can you tell us about this? How are they doing?
In Turkey, the repression against social opposition has been harshly applied not only to communist, revolutionary, democratic and patriotic organizations, but also to the press and media organizations that try to make their voices heard. Since its foundation, the Republic of Turkey has targeted oppressed nations and nationalities with its policy of “one state, one nation, one language” and has practiced all kinds of persecution and massacres, especially against Armenians, Greeks and Kurds. In the face of the developing Kurdish National Struggle, it implemented all kinds of policies involving annihilation and denial, especially targeting Kurdish identity and culture, and implemented policies aimed at preventing the expression of this identity. In this context, the Kurdish press has always been subjected to state repression; newspapers have been closed down, journalists have been detained, tortured, imprisoned and even murdered.
Attacks against the revolutionary, democratic, socialist and patriotic press were especially considered within the scope of the “fight against terrorism” and every voice opposing the system was tried to be silenced by saying that it was “spreading terrorist propaganda”. Especially during military coups and periods of crisis, these pressures have intensified. Especially the revolutionary, socialist and Kurdish press faced serious attacks during these periods, newspapers were bombed, newspaper offices were raided and their employees were frequently arrested.
Today, there are dozens of revolutionary, democratic and Kurdish journalists in Turkish prisons and these pressures continue systematically.
Partizan has also received and is receiving its share of these attacks. Partizan, which has been publishing since 1978, has faced many attempts to shut down, ban and repress it, but has continued its resistance despite these pressures. Magazines and newspapers published in the line of Partizan have continued to exist despite the intense pressures of the state in every period. In this process, their employees and editors-in-chief were detained, tortured and arrested. Attempts to silence Partizan’s publications and actions continue today. The recent detentions and arrests are a reflection of these pressures.
In the recent period, Partizan activists were tortured, detained and arrested on the grounds of the Partizan pennants with the silhouette of İbrahim Kaypakkaya that they carried in demonstrations. One of the latest examples of these pressures is that 17 Partizan activists who wanted to march from Saraçhane to Taksim on May 1 were detained under torture, and after 4 days of detention, 6 Partizan activists were arrested and put in prison on the grounds that they were carrying Partizan pennants with the silhouette of İbrahim Kaypakkaya. Similarly, on May 1, 2024, over 70 people were arrested on arbitrary grounds for insisting on marching to Taksim Square, historically the site of May Day. All this shows how systematic and determined the ongoing repression against the revolutionary press and political movements in Turkey is.
However, despite all these repressions, the revolutionary, democratic and patriotic press continues to make its voice heard and to enlarge the social struggle. The partisan and system-opposing revolutionary, democratic and patriotic press continues to exist despite the state’s efforts to silence it, and continues to be the voice of social opposition.
Finally, is there anything you would like to say?
First of all, we would like to thank you for giving us the opportunity to make our voices heard, to introduce ourselves and to explain our struggle through this interview.
Our struggle, which we continue by saying “First we were defending our sons, now their thoughts”, will continue with determination until the day when all kinds of fascist aggression, exploitation and oppression disappear. This struggle, in which we are comrades of our relatives who paid the price in the revolutionary struggle, is the struggle for the liberation of the people. We call on all oppressed, ignored, exploited and exposed to the aggression of the state to shoulder this struggle and become its subject.
Link:
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