Exactly 11 years ago, peoples, workers and laborers, women and youth; In short, the last great united resistance of all oppressed people was written in history, leaving traces that will never be forgotten. Those traces can still be seen today in the metropolises of Turkey, where it was born, on the streets of Northern Kurdistan, in Rojava and in the Medya Defense Zones. It remains the last bastion of hope for freedom, democracy and justice that is being sought to be destroyed. In Turkey and Kurdistan, as in many parts of the world, the only true history written by the oppressed still continues to be written.
Gezi was the last turn in the story of resistance and the quest for winning for free tomorrow; with this spirit and with the goal of a united revolution that was once thrown away and is now resurrected from its dead soil. So much so that on this long and arduous road, it quenched our thirst, gave us breathe, added strength and showed us once again that we have no other way than this path. By saying, ‘This is just the beginning, we continue the struggle,’ it paved the way for re-participation in the resistance and locked us in victory. It has shattered the stick of fascism, which does not want to be lost even for a moment from the peoples of Turkey and Kurdistan. Gezi proved the fact that the united revolution, which the fascist, genocidal and colonialist Turkish state claimed to have ‘eliminated even the possibility’ with the coup d’état on March 12, 1971, was the greatest fear of fascism.
And the AKP-MHP fascism, which has been living with this fear for eleven years, all kinds of chauvinist and reactionary understandings and middle-of-the-road, opportunist, pseudo-left appearances, are in a state of despair in the face of the legacy left by the Gezi Resistance, the line it represents and the truths it reveals.
We are in a period where fear does not help. We are witnessing the last struggles of fascism and its supporters and those who give way to it. For the oppressed, this period is to fearlessly continue and grow the resistance to fascism. In this sense, Gezi is an instruction and is the name of the uninterrupted rebellion that must be carried to victory. It is seen that poverty, torture, theft and murder are increasing day by day. It was known that the state and all the fascist and reactionary elements clustered around it had no choice but to do this, especially after Gezi. Not only that, but it has also declared an all-out war on the Kurdish people. He wanted to abolish the Rojava Revolution, in which the pioneers of the Gezi Resistance shed their labor and blood. It wanted to close labor and sweat cheaply and oblige the toiling masses to itself, moreover, to abandon it to the tyranny of capital not once but every day, and to make the exploitation of labor endless. It has not neglected to cover up the fact that women are the only subjects of life, and to carry its male-dominated mentality to the place where there is the slightest light on women’s freedom. It has put into use all the dirty ways to corrupt young people, to detach them from reality and to kill their sense of freedom, democracy and justice. It has opened every place from Mount Ida to Besta and Cudi to plunder and create irreversible destruction, and it has become so unconscious that it can ignore the fact that man and society cannot live without nature, by worrying about making money even from a leaf. By suppressing all beliefs, it has engaged in an unlimited effort to block the channels of belief in society, to turn faith into a trade, and moreover, to completely surrender faith to reaction. He did not hesitate to threaten all the ancient peoples of Anatolia and Mesopotamia with genocide. It has preferred to walk with contradictions with all the peoples and states around it, from the most ignoble agreements to the most bigoted threats. It approached the regional and global wars taking place next to it with lies and hypocrisy by looking the peoples in the eye, and tried to gain profit from the upheaval of the peoples’ lives and the death of the cities. It has made collaborationism, trusteeship, and lying the main arguments of politics.
This is how much the Gezi Resistance frightened the fascist state, its fascist government and its collaborators. After all, today, despite all his attacks, he has not been able to get rid of this fear. As part of the Collapse Plan, it did everything to immediately eliminate the spirit and the possibility of an organized united struggle that was unleashed by the Gezi Resistance. However, on March 12, 2016, before the third anniversary of the Gezi Resistance, the Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement declared its establishment, existence and perspective of struggle. Since then, it has continued its duty as the revolutionary hope and protector of the oppressed by blending the spirit of ’68 with the spirit of Gezi and adhering to the legacy of the martyrs of the Gezi Resistance until the end. After the resistance, the common democratic political ground of the peoples was strengthened, so to speak, the rotten eggs were purified day by day, and it became a fundamental factor that formed the backbone of the democratic political struggle.
After the Gezi Resistance, what fascism wanted to do one by one was responded to with historical and irreversible developments, successes and actions. With the Gezi Resistance, it has been engraved in our memories that freedom, democracy and justice are indispensable facts. In the person of Ali İsmail Korkmaz and Ethem Sarısülük, it has been seen that the only way to keep the struggle on the principle of ‘All together or none of us’ is to protect the spirit of Gezi. The truth of martyrdom, for all peoples and the oppressed; It has been shown that it can find meaning through the struggle by uniting against exploitation, genocide and fascism. As with the Mahirs, Denizs, İbrahims, Sinanlar and Ulaşs, the martyrs of the Gezi Resistance were also honorable resistance fighters of Turkey. Today, the meaning of that resistance and martyrdom is greater, as are the tasks it assigns. It has been understood that embracing this meaning and duty will mean living and celebrating the victory of the war of freedom, which spread in waves from Gezi to Rojava, from Hatay to Dersim, from Izmir to Amed, from Nurhak and Munzur to Zap and Zagros.
We commemorate with respect and gratitude the Gezi Resistance Fighters who were martyred for this cause, and as a requirement of our commitment to their memory, we state once again on its eleventh anniversary that we will continue to fight against the spirit of Gezi and to expand our united revolutionary purpose, which is its embodiment, and to march breathlessly and relentlessly until victory.
Long live the Gezi Resistance!
Long live the united revolutionary struggle of the peoples!
HBDH Executive Committee – 30 May 2024