Why Do We Resist? Why Do We Sacrifice Our Lives?

Date: 1st Sept '02

Name: DHKC Article

Date: August 26, 2002 Statement: 270

WHY DO WE RESIST? WHY DO WE SACRIFICE OUR LIVES?
GULNIHAL YILMAZ EXPLAINS:
"We are not a people that deserves to be plundered in our own land,
despised and looked down on.
We, as revolutionaries, want to remove from our land every trace of the
oppressors and their oppression, and to exile tyranny and exploitation from
our land forever.
We want a life of dignity, happiness and justice. We want a great deal but
these are the rights of our people, rights that have been taken from us. We
will take them back."
GULNIHAL YILMAZ EXPLAINS:
"There is a battle of wills going on in the isolation cells today…
We know that it is not a mirage to live in a country where there is no
repression and exploitation, a land in which we can produce freely and
share with one another…
So they want to destroy us because we are a model of collectivism and
readiness for sacrifice. They want to destroy us because our example shows
that those who are right can never be defeated so long as they defend their
convictions with determination.
They want to destroy us because we are full of hope and we have integrated
this hope into our lives. But they will not succeed. They will never succeed."
Gulnihal Yilmaz was one of the resisters in the 5th Death Fast Team. She
started the Death Fast on June 18, 2001 in Kutahya Prison.
She has become immortal as the 95th martyr of the resistance.
In the past month alone there have been four martyrs in the resistance war.
The entire bourgeois press, many parties which call themselves left-wing
and many NGOs (non-governmental organisations) are ignoring this fact. They
act as though there were no resistance and no deaths. For the resistance
war shatters the oligarchy's play-acting at democracy. There are no facts
which more clearly expose the games and the deceptions about "laws to
harmonise with EU requirements" like the resistance in the F-Type prisons.
The bourgeois media ignore it. They are thoroughly and quite openly censored.
They do not even publish "news in brief" items about deaths. For if they
reported deaths and resistance, then it would be clear that all the words
about "our process of democratisation" are empty chatter, and their
electoral theatrics would come to nothing.
Various sections of the left and NGOs ignore the resistance because it
exposes the emptiness of their "leftism" and "democracy".
A great many circles are annoyed with us for not joining in this game.
We have no time for games which are rubber-stamped by the system.
Our work is far more serious. In the isolation cells and in all areas of
life we are conducting a struggle for the future of our country and people.
Some present the resistance war as purposeless, useless and senseless. The
Semras, Fatmas, Birsens and Gulnihals have something to say to those who do
not understand.
Those who still do not understand do so because they do not want to
understand.
There are no secrets.
Our 94 deaths up to the present have made this clear.
And Gulnihal Yilmaz told the story for the 95th time. The words at the
start of our statement are quite unambiguous.
The isolation cells are intended to destroy revolutionary beliefs. Hope is
to be destroyed in the isolation cells.
And our resistance fighters say: "We will die, our beliefs will live."
For these beliefs are the only source of hope today, not just in our
country but in the world. If our beliefs were removed from the world, then
the world would be nothing other than an American empire. We will not
permit that. Semra, Fatma, Birsen, Gulnihal and the others will not permit
it because they are fighters of willpower and determination.
And it is consciousness, conviction and courage which is waging the
struggle in the isolation cells. That is precisely what the architects of
these cells want to destroy. They fear the rightness of this consciousness,
belief and courage. They are aware that none of this is reflected in their
electoral comedies and they know that the programmes of the IMF cannot be
implemented if this consciousness, belief and courage infuse our people.
They know that nobody will believe in the shameful scenarios which the
agents of the IMF seek to pass off as in some way left-wing.
"The Party-Front has opened a school teaching conviction and readiness for
sacrifice. We are teaching. We are explaining what willpower and resolve
mean." (Gulnihal Yilmaz)
Our comrade Gulnihal Yilmaz was part of this struggle for 13 years.
She was 34 years old when she fell. Our comrade, of Cherkess nationality,
took part in the youth struggle when she was studying law at Ankara
University. Within a short time she was the responsible comrade of her
unit. She was whole-hearted in everything that involved her. She was
tortured several times during her years in the struggle. She always left
the torture centres without giving a statement. The torturers never
succeeded in making her surrender.
She worked and had responsibility in different areas, both legal and
illegal. On July 17, 1993, she was arrested and the long years of captivity
began.
She continued the tradition of not surrendering in the prisons. In the
prisons where she was put, she took on leading tasks in our prisoners'
organisation in various areas.
During the December 19-22 massacre she was in Canakkale Prison. She too was
ready to sacrifice herself. She volunteered right at the start of the Death
Fast and joined the 5th Team.
Throughout her entire revolutionary life, there was no act of
self-sacrifice for comrades, people and movement that she would not do. For
her, this last act of self-sacrifice was more than just sacrificing herself.
She said: "The object of this sacrifice we make is the happiness of the
entire people. It will raise the morale of all the peoples of the world. It
is the glow in the eyes and the hope of those who longed for revolution in
the Soviet Union, Vietnam, China, Cuba and the whole world, and who poured
out blood and sweat in order to achieve the revolution."
While her body broke down, cell by cell, and she approached death day by
day, she was happy and peaceful because she thought of the happiness and
the morale of the peoples.
Gulnihal and those like her tell us: those who today close their ears will
tomorrow not be among the victors but among the defeated.
All those who live in this country should pay heed to Gulnihal's words.
The resistance war is a touchstone in the history of Turkey. Tomorrow, from
the state to the democratic institutions, from the left to the right, all
of them will take their place in history depending on their attitude to
this struggle and whether or not they adopted a position on it. It may be
that the state with its censorship and certain left circles by their
silence do not wish to discuss the massacre and the resistance. But it will
be discussed. Nobody will be able to escape the judgement passed by our
dead. Nobody will be able to escape a reckoning.

Devrimci Halk Kurtulus Cephesi
(Revolutionary People's Liberation Front)

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