Gürkan Türkoğlu Murdered Under Torture!
The murderers of Gürkan Türkoğlu are AKP fascism and imperialism.
Revolutionary prisoner Gürkan Türkoğlu was on a hunger strike for 267 days in protest against severe isolation cells. On April 13, he was removed from his cell by AKP authorities and taken to a hospital. There, his emaciated body was handcuffed to a hospital bed, and he was subjected to the torture of force-feeding.
Force-feeding long-term hunger strikers can result in permanent disability, including Wernicke–Korsakoff syndrome. In the past, numerous activists have been left permanently disabled after being subjected to this practice. AKP fascism knowingly and deliberately tortured a revolutionary because what it sought was a surrendered body. Gürkan Türkoğlu categorically rejected forced intervention.
The resistance of Gürkan, a representative of a tradition that says “either death or victory,” achieved its objective. The demands of the two revolutionary prisoners who had gone on strike alongside him were accepted, and they were removed from the isolation cells. However, as a result of the torture he endured, Gürkan fell into a coma. After remaining in hospital since April, Gürkan Türkoğlu died today.
The killer of Gürkan Türkoğlu is AKP fascism.
Isolation torture has claimed another life in Turkey’s prisons. In 1984, 1996, and 2000, nearly 200 revolutionaries lost their lives resisting isolation. Thousands of prisoners have also died as a result of the health consequences created by isolation conditions.
Isolation is torture. In these cells, the only weapon revolutionaries possess is their own bodies. Knowing this, fascism resorts to the torture of force-feeding. Turkish fascism is no different from Nazi Germany or Israeli Zionism. Revolutionaries are tortured in prison using methods developed through the training and support of US imperialism. Isolation policies, torture methods, and the training behind them are all products of imperialist policy.
Gürkan is a child of the peoples of the world. He was a socialist and an internationalist. Like Bobby Sands and his comrades, he gave his life in the struggle for the people. He did not surrender in prison; he strengthened the resistance.
They say that a true internationalist is someone who fights in the country where they live, because wherever we are, we must struggle against imperialism there. Gürkan Türkoğlu was a true internationalist and a true anti-imperialist.
Who was Gürkan? He was a member of Dev-Genç. He joined the revolutionary movement through the student struggle and became one of the leading figures of the anti-fascist movement in the universities. He played a pioneering role in the struggle against fascism and drug gangs. Under every circumstance, he demonstrated what it means to remain revolutionary in the face of betrayal.
He was imprisoned many times, yet he became a symbol of resistance even behind prison walls. He carried forward the banner of those who had previously lost their lives resisting isolation. He also took his place in the struggle against the severe “Well-Type” (Kuyu Tipi) isolation cells and never surrendered, even under torture.
On behalf of revolutionaries and oppressed peoples throughout the world, he resisted from within his narrow prison cell, even when he stood alone. To embrace Gürkan is to embrace the struggle for socialism. It is to embrace the history of the anti-fascist and anti-imperialist struggle.
As the Anti-Imperialist Front, we say that one of the sharpest fronts in the struggle against imperialism today is the resistance against isolation in Turkey’s prisons. Isolation is an imperialist project. It is a demand of NATO. NATO, which seeks to establish a 60,000-strong army on Anatolian soil, aims to destroy the revolutionary movement in Anatolia.
But there are those who continue to resist. There are those like Gürkan. There are those who resist under the harshest conditions and endure the most severe forms of torture.
Gürkan Türkoğlu Is Immortal!
Isolation Is Torture!
Down with Fascism! Long Live Our Struggle!
Down with Imperialism! Long Live the Struggle of the Peoples!
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