Tayad is the Association of Solidarity with the Families of Prisoners and is part of the Front for Rights and Liberties (HOC) in Turkey. Both organisations were instrumental in supporting Turkish "death fasters", who recently had a significant victory against the abusive regime. Green Left Weekly's Rachel Evans spoke to Mesut Eroksuz, an Australian representative of Tayad.
"Turkey is a country of 70 million people, with about 1 million working people in trade unions. Overcoming poverty, combating imperialist tyranny and fighting against human rights abuses are huge issues for people in Turkey. The largest ongoing issue to date for the peoples of Turkey has been the human rights abuses that occur in our prisons", Eroksuz told GLW.
"Turkey has had a proud history of fighting colonisation." After World War I, Turkey was invaded by France and England. "This spurred a national liberation movement. Turks and Kurds fought together [during] 1920-23 against the common occupiers. [Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk told the Kurds — 'Let's fight together against common enemy and later we will give you your land'. Ataturk lied to the Kurds and gave them nothing when he became Turkey's first president in 1923.
"Ataturk led a petty-bourgeois government. This government was also known for its anti-communist policies. The new state gave loans to the newly growing so-called 'national bourgeoisie'." The capitalist class became rich and powerful, and landlords became capitalists. An "oligarchic dictatorship" formed.
The US began to court a section of Turkey's ruling elite using Marshall Plan funding in the aftermath of World War II. "Turkey was an important geo-political region for USA, sitting amidst the Middle East and near the USSR … The USA was able to sell its weapons to sections of the ruling elite and began to train sections of the Turkish army." Turkey was "rapidly becoming a neo-colony of imperialism", Eroksuz said.
Democratic space opened up in the early 1960s. A military junta overthrew prime minister Adnan Menderes in 1960 and then relinquished power to a civilian government in 1961. Trade unions and the distribution of Marxist literature were legalised, and the student movement grew. However, there was a period of reaction following a 1971 coup launched by the military's top brass.
"In this period, student and movement leaders were killed", Eroksuz explained. "This period saw the rise of the first revolutionary armed guerrilla movement in Turkey. But the rise of fascism defeated sections of the revolutionary forces physically — but not ideologically. Courageously, 1 million people marched in Istanbul on May Day in 1978.
"The civil fascist movement was led by the Nationalist Movement Party [MHP]; their anti-communist militants were trained by the CIA." In September 1980, the republic's third military coup took place. Washington, still reeling from the overthrow of its brutal monarchist client regime in neighbouring Iran the previous year, backed the coup.
"The US-supported coup was the final step in turning Turkey into neo-colony … Thousands of revolutionaries were locked up in jails all across Turkey. Thus began the crucial fight of revolutionary prisoners for their rights."
"If the revolutionary leaders inside prisons gave up, then oppressed and exploited peoples would have stopped their fight as well", Eroksuz told GLW. In 1984, the "death fast" tactic — indefinite hunger strikes — began to be employed by some revolutionaries. Four members of the Revolutionary Left — now known as the Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP-C), proscribed by Washington for being a "terrorist" organisation — died. Eroksuz explained that "cultural groups formed in the political prisoners defence and young people on university began to get more politically active".
"In 1989 revolutionary leaders escaped from jail and the movement began to rise. May Day saw protests for the first time since 1980, with 5000 people clashing with police. The revolutionary left and trade unions started to organise underground and there was a rapid growth of the left from 1989 till 1996 as morale rose." In 1996, the DHKP-C's May Day contingent in Istanbul numbered 30,000. The Kurdish Workers Party (PKK) also experienced rapid growth.
Some 500 movement activists disappeared from the streets during a crackdown in the 1990s. In 1996, the Turkish state constructed a new style prison in Eskisehir, based on the torture method of solitary confinement. "During this period some six to seven revolutionary organisations were using armed propaganda in Turkey". State military officials punished these armed groups by torturing revolutionaries in prison. "The left worked together very well in this period with seven groups leading and supporting the death-fast movement in Turkey." Revolutionaries took over the jails, demanding an end to "isolationist" prisons. In response, prison massacres took place in 1995 and 1996.
"Revolutionaries responded with a 70-day death fast without vitamins." People staged mass rallies supporting the death fasters. "Armed propaganda groups targeted civil and state-official fascist torturers and other sections of the oligarchic dictatorship, outside the prisons. In July 1996 a victory was secured — the isolation prisons closed down. Twelve revolutionaries lost their lives."
In 2000, an attempt to introduce "F-type prisons" — brutal high-security, solitary-confinement jails — was made. An April 2001 Amnesty International report noted: "In the F-Type prisons the prisoners were held in small cells either on their own or with up to two other prisoners. In the first weeks they were not allowed in the small yards attached to the cells. Some of them had no human contact, except with guards, for days. Visits from relatives and lawyers were limited. Amnesty International is concerned that prolonged isolation could in itself amount to cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment and could facilitate torture and ill-treatment."
In October 2000, prisoners decided to stage a death fast. Thousands of them were involved. Mass rallies opposed the F-type prisons. In response, an 80,000-strong police operation was launched by the Turkish state; tanks and bulldozers were sent into prisons and 28 prisoners were killed. "Six women were burnt alive in their cells with the use of chemical weapons. In 2001 Cengiz Soydas was the first death faster to die.
"Between 2000 and 2007, 122 people lost their lives in the death fast. Unfortunately, in May 2002 all organisations except the DHKP-C stopped the death fasts. They thought that the death fasters could not win." However, Eroksuz said, "death fasters continued their campaign, and mothers and relatives of the revolutionary prisoners locked themselves up in steel cells in the middle of freeways in Istanbul, issued press releases, and mobilised numerous demonstrations. Protests even included invading Associated Press offices in Ankara to stop the censorship that existed around the death fasters."
The last team to death fast consisted of lawyer Behic Asci; mother of two Gulcan Goruroglu; and Sevgi Saymaz, an inmate at Usak Prison. "The fact that a lawyer was prepared to die to protest prison conditions woke up many across Turkey." Many organisations, including trade unions, signed on to the campaign. "The corporate media had to publish the struggle. The state was denying there were isolation cells. These isolation cells held only one to three people per room. Prisoners spent 24 hours in these cells. Prisoners were given no common areas. Of course, revolutionary leaders were on their own. In a cell, alone — without books or papers for seven years. The mental torment was extreme. Yet the government of Turkey called them luxury villas."
Eroksuz explained to GLW that a victory was won in January this year. "The government accepted that isolation cells exist in the prisons. They admitted there was torture used against prisoners. They admitted there were problems. They agreed to accommodate common areas into prisons which would allow 10 people to see each other — 10-20 hours a week. This was the first time in seven years that the abusive state of Turkey has given any ground." It was a "huge victory".
"There are some jails that have been slow in implementing the new policy, but there are some jails where comrades are able to see each other. We continue the pressure so that we may have this new policy implemented throughout all jails. The trade unions are still on board. There are so many comrades in jail — around 2000 political prisoners in Turkey. Death fasting is a legitimate, mass way of resisting. It can be used to make the state back down on their policy."
"Our courageous comrades and their sacrifice has opened up space for workers, peasants, and the oppressed peoples to fight off imperialism and for a socialist Turkey", Eroksuz told GLW.