WE’LL TEAR DOWN THE POWER OF FASCISM!
The people told the AKP „Enough is Enough!“…
The anger, which step by step accrued over years at least erupted and spread into the streets. Any kind of demand of all parts of the people, any struggle for the gaining of rights was brutally suffocated in gas bombs. Foremost the revolutionaries, everybody who was in opposition to the AKP was sent to prison by plots. At dead of night democratic institutions were raided and the real terror was spread. They wanted to kill ill prisoners in the jails by preventing their release. They sold the mountains of the country, its lowlands, its coasts, its river, brooks, its mines, shortly, they sold the country part by part to imperialism. They destroyed the nature while saying, “We’re going to build hydroelectric power plants“. In the name of urban transformation they put an eye to the houses of the poor population and wanted to relocate them outside the city. They mocked with the life style, with the beliefs and the language of the people. They insulted everyone, who didn’t live like them.
The demolishing of the Gezi Park in Taksim and the plan to construct a mall, was the last straw. The audience was electrified. It was the distributor of the fire, that distended to all parts of the country. Those, who heard that Gezi Park shall be demolished, pitched their tents in the park and started to keep guard. Thousands of people came together and started to wait in the park day and night. The first intervention to the park happened on 30th May. The excavators began with the demolition. But hundreds of people flooded the park and stopped them.
Ten thousands of people who went to Taksim clashed with the police, neglecting the gas bombs and pressurized water of the police. From time to time they retreated, sometimes they fastened and pursued the police from the side roads to the Taksim Square. To prevent the people from entering Taksim, the police closed all streets leading to Taksim. When AKP banned Taksim on the 1st of May, the People’s Front said: “Taksim is the 1st of May Square. The blood of our martyrs is in Taksim. We won’t allow them to invade it.“ For a month it resisted against the gas bombs, sticks and pressurized water of the police to conquer the Taksim Square… As a result of sustained 35 hours clashes the 1st of May Square Taksim was entered on 1st of June. Even though it was one month later, there were hundred thousands of people at the 1st of May Square. The actions weren’t limited to Istanbul. According statements of the Ministry of Interior 2,5 millions of people in 79 provinces joined actions. This wasn’t an ordinary action or protest. It was a people’s uprising. The people, who were oppressed with fascist methods and depoliticized by the media over years had overcome their wall of fear. From 31th May 2013, the Taksim Square and the Gezi Park was in the hands of the activists for 20 days. The police could only enter the square after it attacked several times. Every Saturday hundreds of thousands of people came to the square. All differences and contradictions were left aside. The people united against a common enemy against a common target. At the front line of the people there were revolutionaries. Most of those who clashed with police, who caused them to go back and tried to repel them, were revolutionaries. As in all other branches the members of the People’s Front took place in the first lines of these struggles. They resisted with the people and with other structures, led the masses, made them rush anew when they regressed and sometimes calmed them down when panic was about to break out.
THE PEOPLE’S UPRISING DIDN’T COME ABOUT AT ONCE, BUT THE PERPETUAL DAMMED UP RAGE OF THE PEOPLE HAD BURSTED.
Everybody, including the Left has lost the hope in the people. They said “This people is incorrigible”.
The People’s Front did never think like that. It said “Wether we like it or not, we’re going to make revolution with this people. We aren’t in the position to bring people from the space”. Parallel to its confidence in the people it has started a campaign even before the begin of the people’s uprising under the slogan “We’re going to organize millions”. The millions of people who flocked to the streets all over the country, didn’t just protest for the trees. Taksim is of historical importance. The slogan “Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance” isn’t shouted for avail.
Divide, Dismantle and Conquer
During the June uprising, house raids were made in various cities. Erdogan also tried to collapse the resistance from “inside”. Therefore it targeted the “Taksim Solidarity”, a platform, consisting of around 130 organizations.
The Taksim Solidarity is not an organization, which takes common decisions, or in which every component adheres to that decision. It is unclear, who is a component of this platform and who is not. TMMOB (Turkish Engineers’ and Architects’ Association) represented itself as secretary of the platform. They tried to break the influence of revolutionaries towards the people. Therefore they said “The barricades shall be removed”. They called for “emptying the square”. And without informing anybody in advance, without seeking approval from anybody, they talked to prime minister Tayyip Erdogan. The dialogue with the prime minister was evaluated.
During a meeting which lasted for about 4,5 hours, EMEP, TKP, EHP, ÖDP(reformist leftist parties) and several other organizations wanted to empty the Gezi Park. They said, there should remain a single symbolical tent in Taksim. But the people decided to stay and to resist, they didn’t listen to them. From the first days of July they started to create the propaganda, that the storekeepers were against the activists. From the middle of July, the Taksim Solidarity started to use these sorts of excuses more frequently in order not to take actions in Taksim. When people and crowded groups of the forum started to stay away from the meetings, the influence of the representatives of institutions began to increase.
From the 1st of June they took for the first time the decision, not to go to Taksim and not to hold an action on Saturday, 20th July.
On Sunday, 21st July they marched along with storekeepers from Taksim, not towards Taksim, but turning their back to Taksim.
As it did every Saturday, the People’s Front along with the people clashed with the police in the Istiklal Street on Saturday, 20th of July. Even though the components of the Taksim Solidarity didn’t come, the police attacks and the resistance of the masses at the Taksim Square and in the Istiklal Street lasted until 1.00 a.m. It was again the people, who went for the Istiklal Street and for Taksim.
Uprising and Youth:
All over the world and in Turkey they tried to create an apolitical youth, which doesn’t ask any questions and which doesn’t care about others. But they didn’t succeed. Yes, within the uprising there was a quite high rate of young people, convenient to the spirit of the youth. Young people like 14 year old Berkin Elvan, 17 year old Mustafa Ali Tombul or 19 year old Ali Ismail Korkmaz stood in the front lines of the uprising. They became the honor of the uprising. The bourgeoisie continued to disdain the “young people” as “children” and as always it tried to present them as a group of “deceived children”. But they were neither “children”, nor were they “deceived”. They were our gentle-hearted youth, whom at the age of 14, 17 and 19 challenged AKP fascism and death. The bourgeoisie distorts, it seems as it supports the youth and tries to decontextualize while saying “don’t take common decisions, don’t go further, this is like an amusement”. They try to prevent the youth from organizing and becoming revolutionaries.
„Stop learning more, see, you have revolted, you pitched a tent, you had fun… finally go home…“
Marginal groups, terror organisations
Whenever the columnists and petty bourgeois intellectuals wrote something positive about the resistance in the Gezi Park in the bourgeois media, they wrote that the resistance was “impartial”, that it was carried out by a completely “unorganized youth” who weren’t part of any other action before, that they were “innocent young people”, and that they carried out “peaceful” actions “far from violence”. And they often emphasized the legitimacy of the resistance and that this strong support originated from these features, and that they should put a dividing rule between marginal and illegal groups.
1- Disorganization is not a merit. To organize is the only way to become a power against fascism.
2- Every opinion and ideology which defends disorganization serves the system.
3- Why does the bourgeoisie not want, that the people get organized? Because if they do, bourgeoisie couldn’t exploit and oppress them, at will. It would become a power against itself.
4- In the uprisings all over the country, including the Gezi Park, the people resisted against the terror of the fascist state with stones, sticks and barricades, such as the revolutionaries did for decades.
5- With millions the resistance line of the revolutionaries achieved legitimacy. Today, as hunger, poverty and unemployment is on the rise, as tyranny brought the people to the point of resistance, it is still the disorganization of the people, which keeps up the system. Ahead of fascist terror, the system rules by disorganizing the people.
6- Our duty is to organize the people.
Our slogan „WE’LL ORGANIZE MILLIONS“ is our most concrete task for the future.
The balance sheet of the people’s uprising which star- ted on 31st May 2013 and lasted for about 1 month:
– More than 3,5 millions of people in 79 provinces joined actions.
– 11 people were killed!
– 12 people lost their sight,
– 1 person’s spleen was removed!
– 20 persons suffered concussion!
– 8.163 persons were wounded!
– 4.329 persons were treated in hospitals.
– 4.900 persons were arrested!
– Over 200 people were imprisoned!
– 97 trials were opened against 5.653 persons.
– Thousands of people were tortured!
– 150 thousand gas bombs were shot at the people!
– 3 thousand tons of water mixed with chemicals were splattered.
Source: Halk Cephesi(People’s Front) brochure 2014.
