DEVRİMCİ HALK KURTULUŞ CEPHESİ
Date: March 5, 2004 | Statement: 324
Gunay Ogrener has also been martyred…
Gunay is the 109th outcry, and the 109th challenge;
YOU WILL GIVE UP ISOLATION! YOU HAVE NO ALTERNATIVE!
You cannot destroy the right to resist, you cannot make the people surrender, because… THERE ARE PEOPLE LIKE MUHARREM IN THIS COUNTRY! We had said this in our statement five days ago.
One of these people was Gunay.
She was one of the women resisters who started the Death Fast on October 20, 2003 as part of the Gultekin Koc Death Fast Team (10th Death Fast Team).
When she put on the headband, she gave her word to take over the banner of our 107 martyrs and carry it on to victory.
Gunay Ogrener, who had continued her Death Fast for months, brought it to its conclusion by setting herself on fire.
On March 1, our comrade Gunay Ogrener, set herself on fire on the 133rd day of her Death Fast and on March 4 she was martyred in hospital, on the 136th day.
When she put on the red headband she spoke like Gultekin, after whom the resistance teams are named; she warned the tyrants. She was the spokeswoman proclaiming that we will never stop resisting tyranny and demanding a reckoning from it. When she set herself on fire she spoke like Muharrem. What she wrote in the pages of history was, “YOU CANNOT DEFEAT US!”
People like Muharrem and Gunay represent the bankruptcy of all the methods of tyranny on which the government has pinned its hopes.
Ecevit’s tyrannical government left hundreds of Death Fast resisters handicapped under the name of forcible medical intervention, in order to break our resistance, turning them into the living dead. With the release of resisters who had been left handicapped, public opinion witnessed the crime of people being buried alive. But do not suppose that with them being left handicapped, this period came to an end. No, the new government of tyranny headed by the AKP has continued the same methods for a year. And in the 7th, 8th and 9th Death Fast Teams, dozens have been left handicapped by these Nazi methods.
They made a simple and base calculation; a government not able to break the revolutionary will of Front prisoners, and not able to defeat the resistance could leave prisoners handicapped by using doctors of the Mengele type, and by preventing deaths could continue to ignore the resistance. The right of prisoners to resist would be taken away by forcible medical intervention and censorship.
Simple, base and to the same extent, a foolish reckoning. They did not know the resolve of the world’s peoples and the revolutionaries from Turkey. From Kizildere to today, we have taught a lesson thousands of times to those who sought to test our resolve.
Our comrades Muharrem Karademir and afterwards Gunay Ogrener showed the government, the supporters of the government and all fools who suppose that the resistance can be broken and the revolutionary movement liquidated that there are no limits to revolutionary willpower, our resolve and our creativity.
Once again we announce with Muharrem and Gunay; THERE IS NO WEAPON IN TYRANNY’S HANDS THAT CAN BREAK OUR RESISTANCE. From massacres to the death cells of the torturers, from bribery to cooperating with the authorities, from forcible medical intervention t o censorship, from proscriptions to punishments, they have tried every method but our willpower has frustrated them.
There is only one thing for the AKP government to do: remove isolation! Give in to the willpower of the resistance. While the AKP came to power saying that governments were there to provide solutions, it has allowed the lack of a solution to continue and will achieve nothing other than to ensure the continuation of an obvious and base massacre.
Tayyip Erdogan, who speaks about price increases and unemployment during election meetings, and who on the other hand scorns the workers and the people of the slums by saying, “Should I stuff food into their mouths as well?” doesn’t give a damn about human lives. There is no value allotted to the people or to labour. But they will learn. They will see that they cannot govern while not respecting the people, what is right and the right to resist.
And another thing that has proved bankrupt is the shrewd tacti cs used by the EU as the biggest supporter for the AKP on the F- Types. While coffins are exiting from Turkey’s prisons, it has shown once again that it is an accomplice in massacres by deciding it is unnecessary to look into the violation of human rights, on the grounds that there have been positive developments in Turkey. This decision is a blow to those who think they can obtain democracy and human rights from the EU. No, there is only one way to get your rights from the oligarchy and the EU imperialists. By resisting, resisting to the end. And this is the path that we follow. It is people like Muharrem and Gunay who are its standard-bearers. And we will win by following this path.
Life is beautiful if you can live that way, death is beautiful if you can die that way.
Our comrade Gunay Ogrener was born in Mersin on November 18, 1973. Originally they came from Burdur. To be virtuous and seek justice were the two feelings that gave her direction almost all her life. Her father was a policeman. Her father often talked to them of justice, but the justice her father referred to was the justice of the state, the justice of fascism. Her father was a cog in its machinery. Her father was punished in Mersin in 1980 because of his profession. The event greatly shook her family; but in her own words, Gunay Ogrener said that it was not the police who were the epitome of correctness, justice and “model citizens”, it was the revolutionaries: the symmetry of the state had been turned upside down. It was necessary to take the revolutionaries as an example, not the state. Instead of the state’s criteria, revolutionary criteria came forward.
Gunay struggled for justice from that day onward. She took up various duties in the illegal sphere in the Aegean Region. She was detained several times and was familiar with the reality of torture at the hands of the state and the police. In 1995 she was detained and then imprisoned. Our comrade was a prisoner for nine of her 31 years. She stayed in Buca Prison until 1999. She was a witness of the slaughter of three of her comrades in 1995. She was in Usak Prison at the time of the December 19, 2000 prison massacre. Her comrades there, Yasemin Canci, Berrin Bickilar and Sevgi Erdogan, were martyred. And putting on the red headband in the same prison, she became immortal by setting herself on fire to oppose tyranny.
You will see virtue and justice in this resistance. She was released for a period of just six months; for her, there was no essential difference between being inside or outside prison; it was immaterial where you were when opposing tyranny.
As part of the resistance, s he said so in one of her last letters. I trust the Party. I believe in revolution and victory. There are many things for today and these have been experienced, but life is beautiful if you can live that way, death is beautiful if you can die that way. I feel all my honour comes from being a part of this family. Now I will increase the resistance with everything I have.
And she did increase the resistance with everything she had. She increased it with her willpower, her thoughts, her beliefs, her hunger lasting 134 days, and the flames that set her body on fire.Our resistance fighters who were aware that victory could only be achieved with martyrs, concentrated on dying in order to undermine all these methods one by one.
We are fighting for justice, as our comrade Gunay taught.
Those who suppose that they will not have to render an account for 109 deaths are deceiving themselves.
Those responsible for the biggest prison massacre in Turkey’s history will render an account, sooner or later. And those who approved of it by staying silent will also render an account.
It is the oligarchy alone that has an account to render. By ending their silence, various sections of the people, economic and democratic organisations must put an end to their complicity with the oligarchy before history. Today that means patriotism, revolutionism and democracy. Whoever is on the side of the people wages a struggle through putting their lives at stake in the resistance and for the right to resist. Those who do not do this can make no claims and assert no beliefs, either of a political or a humanitarian nature.
THERE IS NO END TO PEOPLE LIKE GUNAY AND MUHARREM!
WE WILL USE OUR RIGHT TO RESIST UNDER ALL CONDITIONS AND IN ALL FORMS!
BY TEARING ISOLATION TO PIECES, VICTORY WILL BE OURS!
