Serdar Demirel

Anatolia has never been hope- and helpless. … And as well it isn’t hopeless and helpless today. … We exist and continue to resist and to keep alive hope.

“We continue the biggest and most splendid resistance of the close history, in which our lives turned into seeds that were spread all over Anatolia, with the same determination”. As long as there are people like Serdar, who speak out these words and as long as the seeds are sprouting, it is for sure that the walls of isolation won’t remain as an obstacle before the struggle of the people of Turkey.

Our comrade Serdar Demirel has been one of these seeds as well.

The seeds been scattered to his heart in the second half of the seventies, during our heroic struggle against fascism and imperialism.

Serdar was born in Cankiri, as child of a middle stand clerk family in 1964. But he spent a major part of his life in Istanbul. He has been always close to revolutionary ideas because of the revolutionary and democratical background of his family and the people arround him. He was arm in arm with the revolutionaries during his time at the ‘Yeni Levent’ grammar school. He wasn’t organized but involved in the struggle. He took part in the resistances and boycott actions. But his revolutionary life was actually strengthened after the period of 12th September.

His elder brother was imprisoned during the years of the 12th September junta. He told everyone who asked: “I’m Devrimci Sol sympathisant through blood bond. The death fast in the prisons of 1984 has left a great influence with him. The determination, courage, the conviction in justice and legitimacy of this will struggle, began to become concrete in his own personality. Since then he wasn’t just revolutionary from blood bond. In 1989 he has been an organized Devrimci Sol member. Shortly after he was instructed within the Armed Revolutionary Units. He took his place as representative of the people against the enemies of the people.

He was imprisoned in June 1991. He was tried at the State Security Court of Malatya for “membership in the Armed Revolutionary Unit of Devrimci Sol” and punished with severe life sentence. Until the massacre of 19th December 2000, he had been in the prisons of Malatya, Bursa, Yozgat, Ordu and Bartın. He spent 14 of 17 revolutionary years of his life in captivity. For 5 years he stayed in the cells of the Sincan F-Type prison.

As hundreds of our comrades, who sacrificed their lives for the freedom of our people and the independence of our country, he was also voluntary for the death fast. When he said good-bye to his comrades, with whom according to his own words he has ‘shared a warm conversation, a draught tea, a piece of bred and the struggle’, he was filled with anger towards tyranny.

His love to the people and the homeland was growing.

The oligarchy wants to destroy such a love.

The state of the oligarchy, the AKP government, aren’t able to break Serdar and people like him! The AKP government, which denies its thoughts and beliefs and constantly changes its mask in order to stay in power, forces the revolutionaries to bend down as itself. And so it hopes that it can break the revolutionaries and the resistance.

Serdar and all his comrades didn’t choose this struggle for individual interests but for the freedom of our people and for independence. By taking this decision they have taken to account a big price and they face it heroical and courageous. The road we march is the road of liberation for our people.