Early in the morning of March 30, 1972 large numbers of commando units, special units and police squads surrounded the town of Fatsa. They wanted to arrest the fighters of the THKP-C and THKO and free the British hostages they had seized.

It was at the time that DENIZ GEZMIS and his friends were to be executed. Mahir Cayan and his comrades, who had escaped from Maltepe prison, wanted to react to this at all costs.

The terror of the March 12 junta was still going on. After Mahir and his friends were jailed, there was a swing to the right in the THKP-C. But the struggle could not be stopped. It had to go on out of responsibility to the peoples of Turkey to light up the road to revolution and secure revolutionary friendship and soldarity.

On March 26, the THKP-C took as hostages three British technicians at the NATO base in Unye. In one of the buildings from which they seized the technicians, a written declaration was left behind with the demand that inside 48 hours the executions planned by the Turkish state should be cancelled. Otherwise the British agents would be punished.

In the technicians’ building, three of the people there were taken as hostages, and the rest were tied up. Then Mahir Cayan, Cihan Alptekin, Ertugrul Kurkcu, Hudai Arikan, Ertan Saruhan, Ahmet Atasoy and Nihat Yilmaz took the technicians’ vehicles and headed for Kizildere.

In cold and windy weather they reached the village in the evening. It was March 27, 1972. With the hostages, they went to the house of the mayor of Kizildere. The police had found out about the action on the morning of the 27th, when another British technician visited the house and found the ones who had been left behind tied up. All military units were mobilised. Planes and helicopters began to search the area.

On the road between Fatsa and Niksar there were operations and arrests. Since all clues pointed to the Kizildere area, gendarmes went to the mayor there on March 30 to obtain information. He gave them a written declaration which had been prepared and left behind by the people being sought.

The house was quickly surrounded. Soon the entire village was blockaded. In the house were the THKP-C members Mahir Cayan, Sinan Kazim Ozudogru, Hudai Arikan, Ertan Saruhan, Saffet Alp, Sabahatin Kurt, Nihat Yilmaz, Ahmet Atasoy and Ertugrul Kurkcu, and the THKO members Cihan Alptekin and Omer Ayna. After briefly evaluating the situation, they made short, clear and final decisions.

 

As was stated in an ultimatum, the hostages would be punished if their demands were not accepted and if they were fired on. They would fight to the end.

This was the decision, even if death resulted.

At the entrances and exits from the house they put up flour sacks and cupboards. They used holes in the roof to survey the surrounding area. The enemy called on them to surrender. Their reply remained the same.

Thousands of soldiers and police were surrounding the neighbourhood. At 1400 in the afternoon they demanded that the people under siege should show the British hostages through the roof holes, so a brief talk with them would be possible. Mahir and his comrades acceded to this.

Shortly after, Mahir Cayan, Cihan Alptekin, Ertugrul Kurkcu and Saffet Alp climbed on the roof to talk with the besiegers. The latter, however, fired on them with sub-machine-guns.

It is twilight. The enemy wants to annihilate the cadres they have surrounded and begins to bring the house under ceaseless fire. It is at this point that one of the heroes is hit in the head. It is Mahir Cayan.

He had played the main part in founding the THKP-C and carrying out its military actions and led us on the road to revolution. And he was the first to die at Kizildere.

Nonetheless, our comrades continued to resist. The leader is shot dead, but there is no thought of surrender. After Mahir’s death, the British hostages are punished as had been threatened earlier.

The enemy fires heavy guns at the house. Machine-gun bullets pierce the lime walls. Omer Ayna is hit in the eye. Cihan Alptekin is wounded in the abdomen. The enemy briefly ceases fire and makes another call on the fighters to surrender. The fighters with their dead and wounded are still struggling on and refuse to talk. They wait at the entrance to the house, grenades in hand, for the next enemy attack.

Bombs and rockets fired from a distance hit the entrance. More THKP-C and THKO fighters fall at this point. Since there are no more shots from the house, the enemy storms it and shoots dead Saffet Alp, who is lying on the ground wounded.

On this day, the sun in Kizildere goes down, shrouding the corpses of 10 revolutionaries. Except for Ertugrul Kurkcu, who has hidden in a stall, all have fallen. The blood of revolutionaries flows into the river at Kizildere, but it flows in the direction of revolution. It is a torrential river.

Those who hoped that the river could be stopped were taught different a few years later by the slogans of the young: “Forward on the road of the Kizildere Manifesto” and “Our road is the road of Mahir Cayan and his comrades.”