DEVRIMCI HALK KURTULUS CEPHESI

Date: August 11, 2002 | Statement: 266

WE WILL BUILD THE FUTURE WITH PEOPLE LIKE FATMA

“I was born in Kuzeytepe village, Antakya Province (in southern Turkey) in 1972, the second child of a not too well-off family. I am an Alevi and an Arab by nationality (in southern Turkey, especially near the Syrian border, there is a significant Arab minority). I completed primary school. Since I was the oldest daughter in the family I was loaded with responsibilities after leaving primary school. Since I was 13, I have worked in a wide range of jobs, in cotton fields, factories, using a mattock in granary silos or working in workshops.

I was always affected by injustice and inequality and I set myself against these things. I worked in places where injustices such as poor and severe working conditions and low wages prevailed and because I sought to alter them, and gave direction to other people around me, I had problems with the bosses in my workplaces, and from time to time I was sacked.”

This was how Fatma’s life began. And it continued in the same way. This life revolutionised Fatma. As she was revolutionised, she changed and changed others.

This life, these conditions, this country changed Fatma, directing her to become organised. The Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party and Front gave a name to the hopes and longings of Fatma. Fatma was struggling to be a revolutionary. Like every revolutionary, like almost everybody struggling for the independence of the country and the freedom of the people, detention and imprisonment awaited her. She confronted everything, and she knew the enemy. She experienced prisons, torture and massacres. Fatma continued to change and to change others. Changing herself and changing others, she passed through battles and resistance. Fatma was resisting and fighting.

Fatma Bilgin became the 93rd martyr of the Death Fast resistance!

My mind was always clear.

I never saw any problem before me as an obstacle. The 1996 Death Fast resistance affected me profoundly. I volunteered for the Death Fast but was not accepted. I grew more confident in myself, especially in resistance, and I comprehended the reality of imprisonment. The peculiarity of the Ulucanlar resistance (1999) was that mature, sensitive and broader reflections developed with it. These grew deeper and more important and I expended efforts in this direction. Fatma is the people. Fatma is part of life and the struggle. There were no simple or personal concerns or reckonings in Fatma’s life and struggle. She came from poverty and her fight was to put an end to poverty. She took up her place in the fight, in all its plainness and determination. In Fatma’s life and struggle, there was also no place for demagogy about life and death, individualism, selfishness or nonsensical discussions.

Everything was clear and simple. From December 1995, Fatma Bilgin was in the oligarchy’s prisons as a DHKP-C prisoner. She was imprisoned in Antakya. She had confronted the prisons in a new form and she experienced the Umraniye massacre. After that she was transported to Malatya. She personally experienced torture and attempts to conduct a massacre. They tried to put an end to Fatma Bilgin with the December 19-22 massacre, the F-Type prisons, forcible medical intervention and rigid censorship, but she became the 93rd martyr of the Death Fast resistance, a resistance that they could not end!

“I had the same wish and desire to volunteer for the 4th Death Fast Team, and I took my place in the fifth one. I had a sense of great pride and honour. Henceforth, I concentrated all my feelings on death and whatever happens, even if I am on my own, I will resist with joyful enthusiasm until either victory or death. I feel very strong. My leader, my Party and my people are my life and my honour.

My Party and the struggle are everything. My people and the comrades of my homeland are my values. There is nothing else. I will be worthy of the duties incumbent on the Death Fast and I will be worthy of our values and our martyrs. My only wish is to fall martyr with the objective of achieving victory.”

With my infinite respects. Fatma Bilgin, 5th Death Fast Team, the 30th day, July 7, 2001.

The period is a difficult one and not everyone could be a hero in this period. But I will be one.
Fatma is life, Fatma is the struggle, Fatma is a call. She handed out her first leaflet when she was 20 years old, when she still had no connections to an organisation, but with other women workers she both printed and distributed leaflets. The day was March 8, International Working Women’s Day. Later she learned of Devrimci Sol (Revolutionary Left) and Mahir CAYAN (revolutionary leader in Turkey, martyred 1972). I heard of Devrimci Sol and Mahir CAYAN for the first time. I felt that a great many things would change in my life. And that was quite correct. Fatma followed what was correct. She was a defender of the Kurtulus (Liberation) newspaper as part of this correctness. She was a journalist for Kurtulus. But defending what is right and correct means paying a price in this country. During five months working as a journalist, she was detained five times. She continued to defend what is right and correct even though she was expelled from nine villages and exposed to torture and imprisonment. And when she was imprisoned, she continued to resist. She had to continue to change herself, to change others and to issue her appeals.

She had a cause: the cause of ending evil, inequality and injustice. She learned and she believed in the cause whose name is revolution. A cause like revolution could not be defended half-heartedly or by blowing hot and cold. She was one of the people. She was one of those whose word is their bond. She would uphold the cause to the end. If she set out on a road she would pursue it to the end. This is what it means to have a cause, and Fatma was a human being with a cause. Fatma Bilgin started in the 5th Death Fast Team on June 3, 2001 and she became immortal as the 93rd martyr on the 434th day of the Death Fast, on August 10, 2002.

“Hello, my Party and my comrades.

You have done me honour by making me a Death Fast fighter. You have shown confidence that I will be worthy of this historic duty to the end. I feel grateful towards you. I know that I should not give you thanks but should instead acquit myself well with this great responsibility. I will not besmirch the trust that our family has placed in me. I will increase this trust further. Because my Party has created me anew. It has given me a strong and honourable personality. It embraced me, together with my errors. It educated me with labour and with patience. The debt of my values, love and fidelity to human beings is a great one. I will remain faithful and true and support the Party-Front to my last breath. This period has taught me many things. During my life in the struggle, I learned to understand concepts that it was necessary for me to learn but which I could not comprehend before. I was not afraid, I did not despair, I was not pessimistic, because I was aware of our strength. I did not see or experience the fidelity and resolve towards self-sacrifice as something destructive but as something that gave strength. My confidence in myself grew. Certainly my strength comes from the Party and it has created heroes. I have never felt as close to my leader, my Party and my comrades as I do now. The enemy has never been able to affect my love for my people and my homeland. With all these things I have experienced, while my love and devotion has grown, so has my anger towards the enemies.¦ There have also been traitors who turned back. They had no effect on me other than to make me stronger but I drew a lesson from them. The period is a difficult one and not everyone could be a hero. But I will be one.

Those who thought they could put an end to it erred. The resistance is growing with our martyrs: each one of our martyrs breaks down the walls of the cells and tears isolation apart! Fatma is life. Fatma is the struggle. Fatma is resolve. Her appeal is to show the same resolve. Look at Fatma and at those who thought they could break the resistance with massacres and forcible medical intervention. Listen to Fatma at a time when there are those who are hopeless, intimidated, who say a lot about strategy and tactics but who avoid analysing the period. What she says is about life and the struggle.
From now on, I am a Death Fast fighter. I have locked up all my feelings. I say that I absolutely must be a martyr. I want this very much and I believe in victory. I am impatient to become a carnation of victory that opens and embraces our martyrs. To achieve this, my aim is not to be taken to hospital and not to be hooked up to serum and similar things. I will do what is necessary. Even if I am all alone I will continue as though all our comrades are with me, I will never give in or do anything that gives pleasure to our enemies. We will march on to our great victory. For me the criterion of victory is remaining honourable and believing in the revolution. I believe in it and I will show this with the willpower with which I resist. I too will strike a blow at the enemy by lying down to die. I too will tear down the cells. And by itself this makes me feel enthusiasm and I feel that I am demanding a reckoning for my comrades and my people… The band on my forehead is the honour of my leader, my Party, all our martyrs and comrades of my homeland and people. I will remain faithful to these sacred values. I will remain faithful to my honour under all conditions.

With all my respect.

Fatma Bilgin, June 22, 2001″

The Liberation Front is the front of rebellion against tyranny and poverty! Those who are like Fatma are the liberation fighters against tyranny and poverty

Fatma is the people. Fatma is one of us. Our resistance and our war are for the cause of people’s liberation and they continue in every area of life. The F-Type prisons were built as part of plans to destroy the people of Turkey’s war against imperialism and the oligarchy. They were built to destroy the hopes of people like Fatma. We are resisting in the F-Type prisons to keep hope alive. Those who are against evil and inequality like Fatma was belong in the liberation front. Our comrade Fatma Bilgin achieved immortality. All those like Fatma have bequeathed a testament with their lives, their fight and their resistance. This testament is an appeal to the peoples of Turkey to wage a war of liberation.

The meaning of this appeal is contained in a few lines by her to our Front which encapsulate the inheritance left behind by someone aware that they would probably be a martyr in the Death Fast: I request that if my 40th day meal is prepared (a traditional custom in Turkey, 40 days after someone’s death), people from my village and poor children in particular should be summoned to it, and also for the meal at my wake and at my burial. I love children very much. In my view, poor children go through a lot of bitterness. It moves me to greater anger. To be able to give them something at least once and make them smile makes me happy.

These were her thoughts as she lay down to die. This was because she was one of the people. This was because she was involved in the struggle. This was because her struggle was the people’s cause. This was the essence of the appeal she was making. This is our promise to Comrade Fatma Bilgin and to all the Fatmas and our people who live in poverty:
There will not be a child in our country who goes hungry or is unable to laugh.

Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi

(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)

2002.08.11