Date: June 16, 2003 Statement: 307

At about 12 noon on June 14, an armed clash took place between one of
our guerrilla units under the Black Sea area command and enemy forces, not far from Yuvacik village in Tokat province’s Resadiye district. Our fighters came under intense fire and we gave two martyrs in the clash.
Our martyred fighters were named Ipek YUCEL and Metin KESKIN.

When people in our country take up arms and go to the mountains, it is not a problem of «terrorism » or «security» as is claimed by the oligarchy, it is a problem of the country’s system.
Our country is a neo-colonial country dependent on imperialism.
Fascism is in charge in our country.
And in such countries, the only solution which makes it possible to drive imperialism from our country, to destroy the oligarchic dictatorship and establish people’s power is to take up arms.
If there are forces which seek to bar the peaceful road to independence, democracy and socialism, these forces are imperialism and the oligarchy.
While our fighters put their lives on the line to put an end to exploitation, repression, injustice and social inequality, while they fight so that we are no longer a colony, all the governments and
armies of this country have murdered revolutionaries in order to continue the exploitative policies of imperialism and the oligarchy.
Today, the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government and the General Staff kill our fighters who struggle for independence, democracy and socialism, and kill them in the name of America.
Issuing a statement, the Gendarmerie Command boasted of having «struck a blow to terrorist organisations» in the Black Sea region.
Why are you boasting? Isn’t it America in whose name you fire your bullets? Don’t the bullets you fire serve to impose IMF programmes?
Don’t the bullets you fire serve to maintain the system of exploitation, poverty, hunger and arbitrary abuses?
You fire on our people’s liberation fighters because we use the mountains of our country as bases in our war of liberation. Will a day come when you aim your weapons at those who use every nook and cranny of our country, our airspace and our coastline for their
imperialist aims? No!
Because you are an army of occupation in the pay of America. The truth of this is not altered by the fact that you call yourselves the «Turkish Armed Forces».
The bullets fired at our fighters have “USA” stamped on them.
And it is the AKP government and the General Staff which shoot at our comrades in the name of the “USA”.
Whatever happens, our war against America and its collaborators will continue. Nobody has managed to wipe out our sacrificial fighters in the people’s liberation war, whether in the cities or the mountains, nor will they be able to. Our war on imperialism and the oligarchy will go on in the same manner since we fired our first shot, that is
to say: Until liberation!

They were of the people and they became immortal as fighters for the liberation of the people!
Our martyred fighter Ipek Yucel was 38 while our comrade Metin Keskin was 34. Ipek Yucel joined the guerrillas when she was living in the shantytown district of Armutlu, while Metin Keskin lived in the poor neighbourhood of Nurtepe (Translator’s note: both Armutlu and Nurtepe are Istanbul districts). Ipek had been fighting the oligarchy for nine years in our mountains while Metin had done so for five years.
They knew the enemy from its demolition of the houses of the poor in the shantytowns. They knew the enemy from the times they were detained and savagely tortured for exercising their most democratic
rights. Finally, they concluded that the only road was to fight for revolution. So they joined the ranks of the Front.
Ipek Yucel had a child. One child among the poor children of Anatolia, for whom she was fighting. Senay (Hanoglu), who died in the course of the Death Fast, had two children. So, in our country,
mothers take up arms for their emancipation. What demagogy about terrorism can cover up the popular character of our liberation war?

Ipek YUCEL (code name Ozlem): She was born in the village of Camdali, in the Almus district of Tokat province, on January 6, 1965. She was of Turkish nationality and an Alevi. She went to the primary school in the village. Like many village girls, she married at the age of 17. At the age of 18, she had a child. When she was 20, she separated from her husband. She faced all the difficulties that most women in our society face when they separate from their husbands. In 1990, she settled in the Istanbul district of Armutlu. Armutlu literally became her birthplace as a revolutionary. She got to know the system there, but she also got to know the revolutionaries. “I got to know everything about life. I learned how to live. I got to know the system…” she said at the time. Confronted by a choice between the system’s attitude to women and the revolutionary and socialist view of women, she opted for the second. «Because» – she said – «in the established order, women who are separated from their husbands are treated like used dishcloths… But I could not accept that. In becoming involved in the struggle I could see the road to liberation.”
She became a revolutionary in the Armutlu resistance. «After leaving primary school, I forgot how to read because of lack of practice» up
until the 1990s, she said. (Translator’s note: in Turkey, education is only free at primary school level and fees have to be paid to go to secondary school and university. Education past primary school
level is beyond the reach of many of Turkey’s poor, and so many remain illiterate or semi-literate.) But by 1993 she was a member of the committee for Armutlu district.
She became a revolutionary to “create a world without classes and without exploitation”. In 1994, she joined the guerrillas. She fought in the provinces of Sivas and Tokat. In our liberation war, Ipek Yucel became immortal as a heroine of Armutlu and of the mountains.

Metin Keskin (code name: Cafer): Originally his family came from Topardic, in Kangal district, Sivas province. His family migrated to Istanbul in 1960. Metin was born on January 6, 1969 in Okmeydani
(Istanbul). Throughout his life, he was a worker. He did his military service with the artillery in Iskenderun. Then there was a great emptiness in his life, a life marked by poverty and exploitation. But he filled the void with the struggle. In his biographical note, here is what he wrote: “I thought that in such a world, everybody would have to fight. I thought I would have to join the fighters and henceforth I could not live as though nothing was going on. And that is how I became involved in the organised struggle.” Later, he added: “For me, the movement gives value to the most unquestionable human qualities and conducts its own fight in the most honourable manner.
Inside the movement we feel pride in the identity of being supporters of the Party-Front.”
Those were his reasons for joing the fight in the ranks of the Front.
He got in touch with our organisation in 1998. He was briefly in prison after that. After leaving prison in 1998, he joined the guerrillas. He became immortal as a people’s liberation fighter.

Our rural and urban war will continue!
War until liberation!

DEVRIMCI HALK KURTULUS CEPHESI