“The Party-Front has opened a school teaching conviction and readiness for sacrifice. We are teaching. We are explaining what willpower and resolve mean.” (Gulnihal Yilmaz)

Our comrade Gulnihal Yilmaz was part of this struggle for 13 years.
She was 34 years old when she fell. Our comrade, of Cherkess nationality, took part in the youth struggle when she was studying law at Ankara University. Within a short time she was the responsible comrade of her unit. She was whole-hearted in everything that involved her. She was tortured several times during her years in the struggle. She always left the torture centres without giving a statement. The torturers never succeeded in making her surrender.

She worked and had responsibility in different areas, both legal and illegal. On July 17, 1993, she was arrested and the long years of captivity began. She continued the tradition of not surrendering in the prisons. In the prisons where she was put, she took on leading tasks in our prisoners’ organisation in various areas.During the December 19-22 massacre she was in Canakkale Prison. She too was ready to sacrifice herself. She volunteered right at the start of the Death Fast and joined the 5th Team.

Throughout her entire revolutionary life, there was no act of self-sacrifice for comrades, people and movement that she would not do. For her, this last act of self-sacrifice was more than just sacrificing herself.

She said:

“The object of this sacrifice we make is the happiness of the entire people. It will raise the morale of all the peoples of the world. It is the glow in the eyes and the hope of those who longed for revolution in the Soviet Union, Vietnam, China, Cuba and the whole world, and who poured out blood and sweat in order to achieve the revolution.”

While her body broke down, cell by cell, and she approached death day by day, she was happy and peaceful because she thought of the happiness and the morale of the peoples.

Gulnihal and those like her tell us: “those who today close their ears will tomorrow not be among the victors but among the defeated.”