Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi
Date: August 22, 2002 | Statement: 268
672 days in the resistance struggle… We have given our 94th martyr Birsen Hosver, who summed up the call to resistance in one sentence: In these times we have no other choice than to resist!
We live in a time ruled by hunger and tyranny.
We live in a time in which our land is exploited and plundered.
We live in a time in which some people would have you believe that being on the side of the IMF, the EU, the USA and the National Security Council is somehow leftwing. We live in a time in which they want to extinguish all hope of independence. We live in a time in which the slightest attempt to organise the people is obstructed and resistance is met with massacres, bans, F-Type prisons, police raids and torture. We live in a time in which a high price must be paid in order to be a revolutionary, a patriot or a democrat, to defend the interests of the people and to struggle for independence and democracy against imperialism and fascism. Comrades like Semra, Fatma and Birsen resisted in times such as these. At such a time the resistance fighters carry on a struggle for independence, democracy and socialism, even if it costs them their lives. Comrades like Birsen are revolutionaries. The isolation cells were built to destroy their revolutionism. We are continuing to defend the revolution! Nobody can escape from the reality of our country. For that means hunger, unemployment, price rises and oppression. In a land where 18 per cent of the population is condemned to live below the level of absolute poverty, where coffins are carried from the prisons one after the other, in a land where massacres are treated as if they were fate or a natural disaster, the way to change this reality is not the ballot box but through revolutionary struggle. Things can only be changed by resisting and organising. Birsen was in an organisation and was a revolutionary. She defended independence against imperialism, democracy against fascism and socialism against capitalism, and struggled to change the fate of the country and its people. That is why the system is hostile to Birsen and those like her. Patriots like Birsen are opposed to imperialist henchmen like Dervis, Baykal, Ecevit and Cem. While the system politicians are all trying to sell our land to imperialism and are trying to present this treason as leftism, Birsen and those like her are resisting in the isolation cells of imperialism. While the pro-system politicians vie with each other to sell this country and the people in it, Birsen and people like her are resisting. We will not abandon the field to the traitors and the enemies of the people. The only force which can stop the IMF’s programme of hunger and plunder is the strength of the organised people under the leadership of the revolutionaries.
So long as revolutionary beliefs and the revolutionary movement cannot be destroyed, there is still hope. Birsen and those like her defend this hope at the cost of their lives. All patriots, democrats and forces on the side of the people must be on the side of the resistance struggle in order to protect and keep alive the hopes of the peoples of Turkey. Every appeal from us leaves its mark in history There can be no doubt that we have made this appeal dozens, even hundreds of times. And we will continue to do so, even thousands of times if necessary. For these calls are both an appeal for concrete action, for a definite attitudeto be adopted, as well as to put down a marker in history. History is not some unforeseeable future. Later, this resistance too will become history. Those whose hands are covered in the blood of our martyrs, those who have not put their shoulders beneath the coffins of our martyrs, and also those who have done absolutely nothing to defend the right to life and freedom of thought will all have to give a reckoning before the bar of history.
Our call to the new Justice Minister:
Before the new Justice Minister Aysel Celikel accepted her post, she was a teacher. An intellectual who wrote about human rights and democracy. That is an exam that all Turkey’s intellectuals are now sitting. She has a responsibility to the people of Turkey. If she really is against the state mistreating its citizens, as she claims in her writings, then she should end the prison isolation which is tyranny at its worst. If she does not do that, history will not mention her intellectual output but will see her as a puppet of a fascist state’s repression. We know this state well. We know only too well that the mass murderers will tell her that continuity is the essence of the state. That is not true! The fascist state can only continue its repression if it has the strength for it. The history of Turkey bears witness that in every sphere its people have fought hard and eventually won their rights. With their resistance they have forced the tyranny of fascism to give way. It has been proved long ago that the state cannot break this resistance. And sooner or later the resistance fighters will gain their just and legitimate rights. Now it is also up to Aysel Celikel to determine how many state murders it will take before these rights are won. Our comrades Fatma Bilgin and Birsen Hosver fell while she was in the post of Justice Minister. The fact that she is temporarily Justice Minister is not a pretext excusing her from responsibility. She can shake off the responsibility for deaths in two ways – either she can end isolation, or, if she cannot do that, she must resign.
You cannot destroy people like Birsen and you cannot defeat them! Birsen stood for a cause; she was a new human being who gave everything to the people!
Our comrade Birsen Hosver was born in 1970 in Istanbul. Her family came from Pazar, in Rize Province (on Turkey’s eastern Black Sea coast). She was a Laz, and Laz was her native language (the Laz are a distinct ethnic group in Turkey’s eastern Black Sea region, and their language is related to Georgian). She went to elementary and high school in Kartal (Istanbul, on the Anatolian side of the city), then she studied in Ankara University’s faculty of languages, history and geography. She had already taken part in the struggles and organisations of young people. During this struggle she was detained and spent months in jail. After she was released she devoted herself completely to the struggle. She left university in 1995. In the youth organisation she took part in the struggles of the different strata of the people, and in all these areas of the struggle she encountered torture and detention. After she decided to become a people’s liberation fighter, she became a guerrilla in 1997. She joined an armed propaganda unit of the rural guerrillas in Dersim (a Kurdish area officially called Tunceli). She was arrested on February 5, 1999, eighteen months after joining the guerrillas. Her captivity opposing the torturers and mass murderers was a new phase of the struggle. Everything else is explained in the letter she wrote when she volunteered for the Death Fast.:
“On the days around December 19 the days passed differently for me. I saw myself and the situation more clearly. We are part of a mighty and glorious resistance. Nobody would have believed it, but we are achieving it. All that gives me great strength. Above all, our martyrs outside the prisons are beyond powers of description, At this time there is no alternative to resistance. We are dying, one after the other. I am very sad for them. They sacrifice themselves and there are very many of them. When the very young as well as old men and women can be so selfless and die, there is not much more to discuss. I should take part in this resistance. Many of them are so young, they are in the prime of their life. Perhaps in other countries they would be seen as children, but they are so mature that they can take on this responsibility. I can imagine what outstanding people they are and it makes me very unhappy… The resistance had entered a quite different phase, there is great determination. Right up to the last one. That shows very great strength. I have unshakeable faith that we will win. Both in victory and in revolution. In short: human beings should defend their honour and dignity. I am ready, and I ought to do it.”
And like hundreds of comrades, when her turn came, she lay down to die on September 26, 2001 as a resistance fighter in the 7th Death Fast Team. While she was in Malatya Prison she was seized and put in with ordinary (non-political) prisoners in an effort to break her resistance, and finally she was placed in total isolation. But they could not break her. On August 22, in Ankara Numune Hospital, she became immortal as one of the heroines of the great resistance.
Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi
(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)
2002.08.22
