DEVRIMCI HALK KURTULUS CEPHESI
Date: November 19, 2001 | Statement: 226
OUR WOMEN RESISTING AS PART OF THE GREAT RESISTANCE
THAT HAS GONE ON FOR 13 MONTHS ARE CREATING THEIR OWN LEGEND
OUR 81ST MARTYR IN THE RESISTANCE IS TULAY KORKMAZ, who fell a martyr on the
193rd day of the Death Fast in Bayrampasa State Hospital, and has increased all their legends by adding her own. As part of the overall legend, tens, hundreds of separate legends are being created. The youth have added their pages to the great legend, and women with their own blood and lives, are weaving their part of its tapestry. Tulay, as a representatve of both youth and women, joined the resistance and tied the red headband around her forehead. She was young, at 25 years of age, and to use the phrase often applied to her, was in the garden of her life. In the garden of her life she was in the fight for the people’s bread and justice. She was a young girl, one of those whom the system advised to “get ahead” by “selling yourself” and “finding a good husband”. She had the means to do that but she did not take such advice. She was one of our young women who said, “I will fight for my people and live according to the values of my people.”
She always resisted: in life, under torture, and in prison
Tulay Korkmaz lay down to die on May 11, 2001 in the cells of Kartal Special Type Prison. As part of the Fourth Death Fast Team, she was one of our fighters who continued the march resolutely, proclaiming “Either victory or death!” and taking over the banner as it fell from the hands of others. Tulay Korkmaz was in Umraniye Prison on December 19. The torturers threw her into the cells in Kartal Prison. And Tulay Korkmaz was brought to hospital on about the 130th day because her condition had worsened. For about two months in hospital, she was subjected to the torture of forcible medical treatment. Alone, she confronted the torturers and doctors of the Josef Mengele type.
She had confronted the torturers before on her own. She had been detained many times but had never given in to the torturers. Outside prison, there had been many occasions when she had to face the difficulties and poverty that attend pursuing the illegal struggle on your own. But again, she never gave in and overcame every obstacle, one after the other.
A new human being, a new woman with willpower, culture and morals
She was the opposite of the type of woman the system creates: she was a strong woman. She was creative. She was able to take on the world’s burden on her own, she was able to resist tyranny alone. The people’s fight is able to create a type of woman who is powerful, full of resistance and who strikes blows at the enemy. They are women who resist and fight and who, like those in the Liberation War, are not an “exception”. The barricades the system created for women have already been torn down. Tulay, Fidan, Gulsuman, Sevgi, Zehra and those like them dealt it their last blows. Of the 81 martyrs in this resistance, 30 are women. 30 powerful women. 30 women who resisted. 30 women who demanded a reckoning. 30 who refused to give in. They are women for whom giving in is not part of their vocabulary, whether at home or whether pressurised by the system’s tyranny. They are the leaders of tens of millions of women in our country. They are our women of honour. They are the heroines of our resistance.
The fight creates women who are strong, who resist, who cannot be broken or crushed.
Tulay Korkmaz was born on September 24, 1976 in Iskenderun, Hatay province (southern Turkey). She was of Turkish nationality and her family are Sunnis. She was the child of a reasonably well-off family. As she herself said, she “grew up as a child who got everything I wanted and everything was done for me”. She grew up in a bourgeois or petit bourgeois environment. But later, she began to grow uneasy about such things. She came to dislike bourgeois ways of life and relations. She started at high school. A friend who was a revolutionary wrote letters to her. In the letters to Tulay she “mentioned injustices, poverty and socialism”. But these letters distanced them somewhat. The friend wrote to her again. She felt things were different from what she was being told. She did not know revolutionaries. They were not part of her surroundings. She bought the journal Mucadele (The Struggle) and read it. “In the meantime I kept receiving letters and they told me about the revolutionaries. They explained revolutionary relations and their way of life. Their way of life
very different from how I lived.”
On May Day 1995 she went to a rally. There was a contingent on the march, and there she got to know the revolutionaries. She had to join the struggle, understand it and learn it. She joined in actions like hanging banners about disappearances and to protest against the national elections and she also handed out leaflets. She expressed her views thus: “I wanted to be a revolutionary. In particular, I can say that my revolutionary preferences were strengthened by the 1996 Death Fast.” In 1996, she won a place at Cukurova University to study nursing. As soon as she went to school, she began her duties. She started to interest herself in youth organisations in Adana. A short time later she took her place in the central coordination of youth and became the responsible official for youth in the Mediterranean region. She tried to create and establish youth
organisations in places where they did not exist. On April 28 in Antakya, she was detained but did not give a statement to the police. She developed rapidly. Equally rapidly, she learned, she understood and put it into practice. In this way she was one of our young people who was a model of development and taking on responsibility. There was nothing she could not do. There was a lot she did not know, but her answer in such situations was “I don’t know it, but I will learn it and do it.”
This was her answer and this was what she did. The result was that she united knowledge and experience, was realistic and did not deceive herself. As part of this development, she started to be involved in youth organising in the Mediterranean, the Aegean and Kurdistan. While she learned, her self-confidence grew. She grew stronger. She came to know her people, the movement and the enemy. In the middle of 1998 she carried out illegal work in Istanbul and fulfilled various duties.
On November 17, 1999 she was detained. She was held for seven days. She made no statement to the torturers. She did not say one word to them. To break her resistance they brought her father to the interrogation room. She also said nothing to her father. She left the torturers helpless. She was then held in Umraniye Prison. When the cell attack came, she was ready as always to do her duty. Everything was clear in her mind. This is how she wrote to express her willingness:
“We are going through a difficult period. The enemy wants revolutionary willpower, beliefs and our people to surrender… Another clash is coming… the enemy demands another price from us and in this way our sacrifices will be heavier and we will give many more martyrs. With this resistance it will be seen that once again the enemy will not make revolutionary willpower and beliefs surrender. We will win this battle of wills with our martyrs.”
Tulay and those like her are resisting in cells and in hospitals and with our people are waging a liberation war of the women While Tulay was in hospital, Justice Minister Sami Turk now tried to legalise the torture of forcible medical intervention for those like her. Using doctors of the Mengele type, the orders of Sami Turk and Osman Durmus left Death Fast resisters Savas Dortyol and Erkan Yirdem handicapped with memory loss. But this too was no “solution” for the oligarchy. The will of those like Tulay to win either “death or victory” continued even under this tyranny. In the cells, hundreds of Death Fast resisters are still on the Death Fast, displaying the same willpower. The new laws of Sami Turk cannot break this willpower.
81 MARTYRS: 30 WOMEN, 51 MEN; YOUNG, OLD, WORKERS, STUDENTS, CIVIL SERVANTS, SLUM DWELLERS, HOUSEWIVES ARE TEACHERS IN THIS WAR OF RESISTANCE…
THEY SHOWED THE WAY TO AN HONOURABLE LIFE.
THEY TAUGHT HOW TO BE HONOURABLE WOMEN AND HONOURABLE HUMAN BEINGS, PREFERRING TO DIE RATHER THAN CONTINUE LIFE UNDER TYRANNY AND REPRESSION.
TO OUR YOUTH AND YOUNG WOMEN!
THE EXAMPLE OF TULAY, WHO SAID SHE LEARNED THESE THINGS WHILE SHE WAS IN THE GARDEN OF HER LIFE, IS BEFORE YOU. LOOK AT HER. UNDERSTAND HER. PUT HER BELIEFS INTO PRACTICE!
YOU WILL CAUSE TULAY AND THOSE LIKE HER TO LIVE ON!
THOSE WOMEN AND MEN, LIKE TULAY, WILL LIVE ON IN OUR PEOPLE’S LIBERATION WAR!
