The histories of bourgeois states are the history of massacres against oppressed peoples. It is full of crimes against peoples. The fascist Turkish state was also established through massacres. Since the day the Turkish state was founded, on the backs of oppressed peoples, it implements a policy of massacre and promotes ignorance against Armenians, Kurds, Assyrians and Alevis. The massacre of revolutionary-socialists was made a state policy. In the last 40 years, dozens of massacres have been carried out.
When the reactionary fascist state was built on denial and ignorance, Armenians, Kurds and Alevis were forbidden to express themselves and organize, as well as to have a culture and language. The denialist and assimilationist policy of the Turkish state, which was founded on the denial of the peoples, continues. As a result of this policy, dozens of massacres were committed against the Kurds. The Alawites were massacred every ten years. Today, the fascist state continues its policy of massacre by including Rojava and Bashur Kurdistan.
The month of December was engraved in the memories of the massacres against our peoples. The atrocities and massacres committed against our people from the Alevi faith in Maraş and the massacre of our Kurdish people in Roboskî left unforgettable traces in our memories. Despite the massacres, our Alevi people did not give up their demands for equality and freedom, nor did our Kurdish people give up their struggle for national freedom. Neither the Alawites nor the Kurds were destroyed.
Before the fascist coup of September 12, it was a period in which the revolutionary struggle and the struggle of the working class gained momentum in Turkey and Northern Kurdistan. Revolutionary organizations lead the developing struggle, in which they develop their organization among workers and toilers. Revolutionary struggle was developing among the Alevi masses, whose existence the state ignored and whose faith and worship were forbidden. In order to prevent the development of the revolutionary struggle and the awakening of the masses, the MHP organized a massacre by civilian fascist forces/counter-guerrilla. Militarist forces recruited and armed from other provinces carried out a massacre that lasted a week on December 19-24, 1978. Our Alevi people, from babies in the womb to grandmothers and grandfathers, were massacred. As if that wasn’t enough, thousands were expelled from their homes. Their property was confiscated. Those who carried out this massacre in Maraş were not held accountable. Some of the hordes of hitmen were imprisoned for some time. Afterwards, he was rewarded as a deputy, bureaucrat and administrator. The prime minister of the time, Ecevit, MIT officials and other state bureaucrats confessed that this massacre, which was carried out by the state, was carried out in an organized manner.
The Maraş massacre was also used as a justification for the military coup of September 12, 1980. On December 28, 2011, the fascist state, which carried out countless massacres against our Kurdish people, massacred 34 Kurds, including 17 children, in the village of Roboski in Uludere. The Roboski massacre is the result of the fascist Turkish state’s policy of ‘The best Kurd is a dead Kurd’. The villagers packed the mutilated bodies of their children into bags and carried them to the village on mules. The Roboskî massacre left a deep wound in our Kurdish people. This massacre of the Kurdish nation by the fascist Turkish State was neither the first nor the last. The Air Force Commanders of the Turkish army, the Chief of General Staff of the Turkish Army at the time, the command echelon and the fascist Erdoğan and his team, who tore the Kurds to pieces with planes in Roboskî, were not held accountable. As in the massacres before and after, our people in Roboskî continued to be blamed and the murderers were protected.
These massacres, which the fascist state has adopted as a policy, continue today in new forms: With these attacks, they aim to break the will of the peoples and make them give up their just struggles. The policy of massacre and ignorance that it has implemented against the masses, Alevis and other oppressed peoples in Northern Kurdista, is the same policy now slaughtering the Kurds and Alevi people of Rojava with the SNA gangs that it has trained and equipped. As in Roboskî, they commit war crimes. In Bashur and Sinjar, the state’s hostility to Kurds continues. No matter where it is, it cannot tolerate the slightest gain in the name of Kurds, Alevis, Armenians, Assyrians, Assyrians, Yazidis and oppressed peoples and beliefs. It goes hand in hand with the policy of denial, assimilation, liquidation. Only the united struggle of the peoples can stop these ongoing massacres.
Our peoples living in Turkey-Bakur, Rojava and Bashur should join forces. They should be a barricade against the fascist massacre policies with the united struggle of the peoples. We can hold the murderers accountable through united struggle. On the anniversary of the Maraş and Roboski massacres, we call on the people of Syria and Northern and Eastern Syria to take to the streets, to protest and to demand accountability in order to hold fascism accountable against the new massacres and occupation attacks against the peoples. We will defeat fascism. Forward!
HBDH Executive Committee – December 24, 2024