Bulletin No. 17 | Date: December 18, 2001
FROM DECEMBER 19, 2000 TO DECEMBER 19, 2001
In order to destroy our beliefs they said, Surrender or die!
We sacrificed our lives so our beliefs would live on!
THE STATE LEAVES PEOPLE HUNGRY AND KILLS!
IN THE FACE OF STATE TERROR, OUR PARTY APPEALS FOR THE PEOPLE TO EXERCISE THEIR RIGHT TO SELF-DEFENCE AND TO RESIST HUNGER AND TYRANNY!
IT RAISES THE BANNER OF BREAD AND JUSTICE!
December 19 – 22, 2000 were days when a massacre happened in Turkey. When confronted with a massacre, the revolutionary prisoners transformed these days into days of heroism by not surrendering, by refusing to abandon their belief in independence, democracy and socialism, by refusing to betray their people and homeland, and by showing unlimited self-sacrifice and valour in the face of the massacre.
The horrors of December 19 – 22, 2000 were days when a campaign of lies on a scale we never saw before was unleashed. Facts were turned upside down, brains were muddled and distorted. They even tried to alter so obvious a truth as the identity of the attackers and the attacked. But the events of December 19-22 are clear enough. The state did the murdering, the prisoners did the resisting. On December 19-22, 2000, 28 prisoners were killed by a rain of bombs and bullets or burned to death by incendiaries. Hundreds of prisoners were wounded by bombs and bullets. Even those who know how the state kills in its operations and torture centres thought and said things like the state wouldn’t do something like that, why would it? But the state did do it. It carried out this massacre after reaching decisions in the highest mechanisms of the state and after months of preparation. Still, it is necessary for us to answer those who ask the question: why did the state commit such a massacre?
A system that murders more and more, that makes more and more people hungry and plunders on a greater and greater scale
To answer why they carried out such a massacre, we must examine the economic and political situation of Turkey in the year 2000 and we must remember developments in the days leading up to December 2000. It was not a problem of the dormitory system in the prisons. The aim was not simply one of throwing the prisoners into the F-Type prisons. Turkey is going through the deepest crisis in its history. Turkey has entered the most dependent period of its history. Everything must be plundered, the imperialists must be given all those things which they are not entitled to receive. The IMF’s programmes are put into effect, and it orders the people to be even more hungry, even more impoverished. The eve of the December 19, 2000 massacre was a period when they were preparing to put the IMF programme into effect. The massacre plan was a part of the IMF’s programme. To be able to exploit and plunder more relentlessly, the most important pole of resistance in the country, the most basic opposition forces, that is, the revolutionaries, especially those in the prisons, have to be eliminated physically, a process that has to be accomplished so as to intimidate the people. December 19-22 was the most essential statement of this. A year has passed since December 19, 2000 and this intention has become more and more clear. In the course of a year the hunger and poverty of Turkey’s people has been made worse. The law codes are filled with new bans. New undertakings are being made to the IMF.
Now there is a crisis, and you are meant to remain hungry, you are not to want your rights, you are not to come out against servility towards imperialism; now there is a crisis, it is treason to the homeland if you oppose our participation in America’s war. For a year we have been listening to such statements from the front of the ruling class. And that is right. This state has not always been as murderous as it is now. For example, the September 12 (1980) fascist junta did not carry out such great massacres in the prisons. But in every succeeding period of civilian rule, not just in the prisons, executions, disappearances and torture cases have grown in number. There is certainly a logical explanation for this. It is this: the violence must grow in order that hunger and poverty can be deepened and dependence increased. And each year you find yourself longing for the previous year, both from the economic viewpoint and from the viewpoint of rights and freedoms.
Who has slaughtered, who has committed atrocities, who has practised terror?
To oppose this massacre and its terror, revolutionary prisoners tried to stop the horror by setting themselves on fire. But the horror had become so great that those committing it did not refrain from shooting even those who had set themselves on fire. One of those who gave a response to the December 19-22 massacre was the Front fighter Gultekin Koc who carried out a sacrifice action in Sisli Security Department. There were those who engaged in propaganda about the horror and violence both of those who set themselves on fire in the prisons or carried out sacrifice actions, but such people remained silent when it was proved that the state burned people alive in Bayrampasa Prison. The hypocrisy of such people was exposed, their true face revealed.
This hypocritical propaganda means that the state can massacre, torture and carry out executions, but the people cannot defend themselves. While such hypocritical propaganda sees the state’s violence as legitimate, the people’s right to resist is not seen as legitimate.
This hypocritical propaganda is none other than a defence of imperialism’s ideology throughout the world. This is an attitude that says, Do not oppose the American Empire even though its policies leave billions to go hungry. This is an attitude that can see the Palestinians in the occupied territories dying day after day under a rain of Israeli bullets, but can tell the Palestinians not to use violence! We oppose a state that constantly practises violence. The state is trying to remain standing on its feet by using violence. Everyone must ponder how to oppose such a system, and how to cope with such a system’s oppression. What kind of state, what kind of struggle?
Everyone must think about this in conjunction with December 19. Saying we are opposed to state violence and the violence by the organisation, means saying nothing about the nature of the system. The state practises violence whether you are against it or not. What lies behind its practices is that the state’s very existence depends on terror. So what is to be done against this terror? How will the struggle be conducted, how will the system be changed? What kind of horror must there be that causes people to set themselves on fire? What kind of hunger and tyranny must there be for people to turn themselves into human bombs? Those who debate about sacrifice actions must ponder that. But in such a system, those who say, let us have discussions, you should engage in discussion are actually prevented from debating. This is what has happened with regard to September 11 in the USA and the attack on Afghanistan. Terror is practised and those who wish to debate about it are prevented with renewed terror. In these conditions it is necessary to accept the social and historical truth: it is legitimate for the people to resist and defend themselves in the face of a system that practises terror against the people. It is legitimate to demand a reckoning from plunderers, murderers, from those who murder the people and cause them to go hungry. Those who surrender this right are not on the side of the people. Those who surrender this right want our people to bow down like slaves to a government in Turkey who are servants of the IMF and allies of the USA and Israel; they want to support America against Asia and the peoples of the world, and Israel against the Palestinian people. The opposite of submission is opposition. We defend opposition and reject submission. We work to organise our people to stand up. Those who understand the December 19, 2000 massacre correctly will also understand why we have worked since the 1970s to organise our people’s resistance and armed struggle. And they will see that there is no other road than the armed road against the plunderers and the murderers and that the most legitimate right is the right to organise our people to rise up against this system.
It is not the prisoners that they tried to crush with terror on December 19, and to suffocate with torture and isolation in the F-Type prisons, but rather the hope and the war for an independent, democratic and free future that the prisoners represent!
They wanted to destroy us with a massacre. In destroying us they sought to destroy the hopes of the people and to be able to continue the system of exploitation by leaving the people hopeless and helpless. The system leaves people to go hungry. If you resist and organise against hunger, it says you should be crushed. Later they have tried to accustom the people to charity and beggary by means of soup kitchens and telethons. This is the greatest goodness of which the system is capable: beggary at the doors of the soup kitchens. It is impossible to solve the problems of the people with a programme that operates within the system. The solution to the people’s problems must be found outside the system. It rests on changing the system. We stand for changing the system. And it is to bring about this change that we are organised. We are showing the way to bring about this change. And with this conception, on December 19 this fight and confrontation with the system rose to the highest level. We are against the system and comprise an alternative. This alternative is Turkey without the IMF, without torture and without exploitation. On December 19 we were killed for wanting a system that is independent, democratic, free and in which the people do not go hungry. This is why they are trying to suffocate us in the F-Type prisons. We showed with our resistance on December 19 that our beliefs are not weak and our ideals not without roots, and we are showing that the resistance continues inside the F-Type prisons. The people of Turkey will never surrender to hopelessness and helplessness. With our 30-year traditions of struggle, our deep roots within our people and the strength of our beliefs and convictions, we will not allow this to happen. As long as we exist, hope will never be destroyed. And no matter how much they planned, those who planned the massacre on December 19 were not able to destroy us. By paying the price of such a great resistance, including death, we showed that we could keep hope alive. Hope is alive, along with the revolutionary movement. When the revolutionary movement is present, inevitably it drives away helplessness. This country, this people for which so many have died is not helpless and never will be. There are always those ready to die for this country and people, and there always will be. Whether inside prison or outside it, there are thousands ready to sacrifice themselves for independence, democracy, bread and justice.
The state destroyed its own prisons on December 19, levelling all the walls to the ground in an attempt to frighten our prisoners and make them think, What will happen to me?, they left the peoples of Turkey a valuable inheritance!
Nobody should think, the state doesn’t kill anyone for no reason? why don’t they kill me? This is an error. It is true that if you do not want what is right, if you do not want bread, if you do not want justice, if you give your consent to hunger, injustice and beggary, then perhaps you can save yourself (!) from the F-Type prisons and the police truncheons. But you cannot save yourselves from death. They are also killing non-oppositional people; they are killing us with hunger, poverty, with a shortage or absence of medical care, with corruption. It was officially registered in our country that people like Mervan died of hunger. Forty thousand of our people in this country were buried under earthquake ruins. The system kills. It kills when it reduces people to beggary or humiliation. The system, which is based on exploitation and bribery, kills people during earthquakes and floods. It kills people by dragging them through suicide, prostitution, drug addiction and depression. Every day, every hour, the system commits murder. Sometimes it kills our bodies, sometimes our minds, our hearts, our beliefs, our future. In our minds it kills the values of the people. It kills feelings of patriotism. It kills feelings of solidarity and honour. In the 1980s it started to change the mentality of society. People became more selfish and were more ready to let others go hungry. It became more and more ruthless in dividing people from one another. The heroes of the December 19-22 resistance, in the F-Types and those who lay down to die on the Death Fast and sacrificed themselves outside the prisons are the ones who are the vanguard, the teachers and those who show our peoples the way. In a place where tyranny threatened them with hunger, they lay down and were hungry. When they were threatened with death, they were not deterred and knew how to die courageously. The system could not make those who were isolated in one-person cells surrender, despite constant torture. Because they were not selfish people who only thought of themselves. They are resisting and fighting for the people and the homeland.
In the F-Type prisons, we are defending the bread of the people who have been left hungry, in need and reliant on soup kitchens. We defend the honour of people forced into bribery, drug abuse or prostitution. We defend the independence of a homeland, every corner of which is being given to imperialist monopolies that are not entitled to it. This resistance has gone on for 15 months and given 82 martyrs up to the present. About 200 Death Fast resisters, whether in the F-Type prisons or outside, are continuing the resistance with the same determination. No matter how relentless tyranny is towards those who want bread, those who want justice and rights will show the same relentlessness. The system of tyranny and oppression is trying to silence everybody. Under these conditions, you only have to be a democrat, an oppositionist or a human being to be shut in the F-Type prisons. Making the system of hunger and tyranny take a step back means opening the way for victories in other areas of life. We must come out and unite against tyranny. By supporting the resistance going on in the F-Type prisons, you pay the debt of honour and conscience of our people.
Supporting those who resist means supporting the future of our people. The oligarchy wants to condemn us to hunger with its policy of divide them, partition them, weaken them, make them selfish, crush them; we must uphold the demands to end isolation, close the F-Type prisons and as honourable, honest people of this country, be on the side of labour and the people so as to prevent the oligarchy’s policy from being carried out and so as to frustrate its games.
