DEVRİMCİ HALK KURTULUŞ CEPHESİ

Date: January 13, 2003 | Statement: 293

Is the AKP in government or in opposition?

Are the prisons run by Cemil Cicek or by Ertosun*?

Or by the General Staff?

While the chairs of the justice commission of Turkey’s parliament were visiting Sincan F-Type Prison at the invitation (!) of Justice Minister Cemil Cicek and after extensive observations and investigations it was stated that “there were no complaints from the prisoners”, yet another fighter who was on the Death Fast against isolation has been martyred.

Ozlem Turk, who was in the 7th Death Fast Team in Kutahya Prison, lost her life on January 11 in Numune Hospital as a result of the torture by “Dr. Mengele’s heirs”. She is the 104th martyr of the resistance.

With the death of Ozlem Turk, the number of prisoners martyred under the AKP government has risen to seven.
The burden on the shoulders of the AKP is becoming greater and heavier. The oppression is a burden so great that it cannot be borne by any government, whether fascist or “Muslim-democratic”, and either it will free itself of this burden or sooner or later it will collapse under the load.

The AKP government ought totake a look at recent history. It ought to look at the previous government. Since the AKP government came to power, almost all layers of the people, from the Islamists to the democrats, revolutionaries and all opposition circles have looked to it to solve this problem. But the AKP government, which likes to talk of “participation” and the “will of the nation”, simply ignores them.

It is quite obvious that the AKP only heeds the “warnings and appeals” of the Great General Staff, the USA and the IMF.
The fate of those who remain deaf to the people and do not hear the CRIES OF THE DYING has never been an enviable one at any time. The AKP in its turn is hastening towards the same end as others before them. Starting with the F-Type Prison question and continuing with the subject of war, it has pursued a policy of deception and diversions. If it does not deviate from this path, the label of enemies of the people will become attached to them.

Cicek in the dock

The Justice Minister, Cemil Cicek, defended the December 19 massacre, the F-Type Prison and ongoing isolation while interviewed on a TV programme on the evening of January 12.

But what sort of defence was it? He showed his murderous, hypocritical and mediocre character, resorting to the crudest, most vulgar and most primitive demagogy and seeking tohide behind lies that were exploded a long time ago. What sort of “Justice Minister” does not even know what is going on in the prisons… He has no idea how many people are on the Death Fast and in the resistance. He does not know how many prisoners were “amnestied” and released, and how many are in prison. He distorts the demands the resisters are putting forward.

He is so helpless that he cannot even speak the truth. For if he reported honestly what the resisters’ demands were, the lies and demagogy he has learned by heart would collapse.

He says: “The Death Fasters have all been released.”. And what about the 104 dead in the cemeteries? The mentality that sees these too as having been released is one that we have come across before. As though they themselves were not the ones who compete like howling dogs for the favour of America and the Great General Staff, they try to distort reality with ridiculous statements such as that the Death Fast was carried out “on the orders of the Western countries”… Crude, primitive and mediocre… At best he might manage to become an ordinary, commonplace torturer… Can such a person look
after justice? In addition he expresses his true level with phrases like “we will carry through reforms in justice”. Who are you to use such big words about yourself? The state “would not permit prisons to be places where rallies could be held”. One may note the banality of someone who cannot even represent a “problem” with a point of view of his own.

It is not possible that someone like him can be in charge of the Justice Ministry. This goes far beyond his limited capacities. Three cheers for the AKP. On the one hand it says “zero tolerance for torture” and on the other it puts someone like this in the post of Justice Minister. What an outstanding achievement!

Despite all the demagogy he learned by heart, Cemil Cicek had the mentality of someone who is guilty. He could not escape from that. For in relation to the prisons, he is not in the position of a “referee”, but he is actually in the dock. He is responsible in the first degree for the death of seven people.

The torturing, murderous doctors in Numune Hospital!

Ozlem Turk was taken to Ankara Numune Hospital on August 25, 2002 for forcible medical intervention. She was in that hospital from that point onwards. On January 4 she was force-fed in what was described as “medical
intervention”. Our comrade, whoafter a hunger strike of 400 days only weighed 15 kilograms, was chained by her hands and feet, her veins were covered in needle marks so as to force serum into her in order to break her
resistance.

We have reported earlier the torture practices carried out in Numune Hospital. It is clear beyond a doubt that it is a torture centre. There, torturers in white coats perform their “duty”. All the resistance fighters “entrusted” to them are either killed or turned into the living dead. The guilt of these doctors grows ever greater.

The Mengeles had to give in to the will of Ozlem Turk.

They still could not break the will of a body that only weighed 15 kilograms. Torture, threats and bribery had no effect on a body weighing only 15 kg, for which the designation “consisting of skin and bone” was only too apt. Both the torturers in white coats and those who give orders to them became ridiculous and weak in the face of revolutionary willpower and were defeated! They took a body that only weighed 15 kgs from one place to another in hospital, then jabbed her veins so as to introduce the serum that was meant to break her resistance, and they could not manage to do it.

They are so helpless. It does not matter whether it is their bullets or their intravenous needles. Whether they fire bullets or use intravenous injections to give serum to people against their will, all they have is guilt, the guilt of being murderers.

The unbreakable will of cells that are breaking down!

She weighed only 15 kg; she had no flesh left on her bones. All she had left was pure conviction. And that was why they could not defeat her willpower.

Our comrade Ozlem Turk, whose unbreakable will symbolised the last flag, was 27 years old. She spent seven years of her life in prison.

She was well to the fore in the struggle forthe freedom of her people and against hunger. Ozlem, who was born on April 15, 1975 in Gumushacikoy/Amasya and was of Turkish Alevi origin, was the child of a poor peasant family. She could only make a living from tobacco. As with all tobacco cultivators, she grew poorer as she became older. She got to know revolutionary beliefs in high school. After high school she took up various activities and took part in the struggle.

The martyrdom of very young people moved her. She took part in a three-day hunger strike in protest against the murder of two students, Ugur Yasar Kilic and Sengul Yildiran in 1993 (they were killed by police while preparing banners for May Day). This was the first action in which she took part. She worked in the offices of the magazines”Ozgur Karadeniz” (“The Free Black Sea”) and “Samsun Mucadele” (“Samsun Struggle” – Samsun is a town on the Black Sea coast). She was arrested a number of times. In 1993, the office of the newspaper”Ozgur Ulke” (“Free Country”, a pro-Kurdish publication) was bombed by the contra-guerrillas. She went there to pay a solidarity visit and was detained. Because she issued a special edition opposing the Ciller government’s April 5 austerity and plunder programme, she was detained. She demanded justice, was detained, she spoke out against IMF pillaging and was detained – this is a commonplace occurrence for all the revolutionaries and democrats of this country. This is the source of willpower that makes it possible to endure hundreds of days of hunger.

On February 23, 1995 she was arrested and put in Samsun Prison, then removed to Ulucanlar Prison (Ankara). In the 1996 Death Fast she took part in the Second Team.

In the year 2000, when the F-Type Prisons came on the agenda, and after the December 19 massacre, she wanted to be well to the fore. This is what she wrote in a letter:

“It is a great honour and source of pride to be a Death Fast Fighter. I am quite sincere in wanting to experience this honour and pride again. It is very difficult to define all my feelings. It is a great source of pain to see my comrades melting away day by day, being martyred and us being parted from them. What weighs heavily in particular, however, is, not just with my feelings but with my consciousness and my entire heart, confronting death with, or rather, before my comrades.”

We will answer those who want to intimidate us with death by using the words of our comrade who triumphed over death. Ozlem, whose words were in total harmony with her martyrdom, said:

“I do not say that I am ready for death. Because I would not like to repeat such readiness on an ongoing basis. This preparation, this reckoning was something I completed years ago. At this point I am fully aware. Why? Because I know that the fact of the Party-Front and the fact of living under the flag of the Party-Front always means that one may encounter death. That is not just the case for me, all the followers of the Party-Front think in this way.”

Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi

(Revolutionary People’s Liberation Front)

* A particularly harsh director of Turkey’s prison system in the past

2003.01.13