Once again İrf­an Aktan is the one who shines a light, more nec­es­sary than ever, fol­low­ing the lib­er­a­tion under sur­veil­lance of one of the teach­ers on hunger strike.


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He does so through the inter­ven­tion of Veli Saçılık, who has been of one of the pro­tag­o­nists since the very begin­ning of this pow­er struggle.

Because Veli Saçılık does not mince words, he sheds light on the shad­owy areas of non con­ver­gence in the social strug­gles against the suc­ces­sive decrees by the AKP regime in Turkey. The out­look is blunt on the divi­sions in the oppo­si­tion, and their role in the appar­ent sta­bil­i­ty of the rul­ing pow­er faced with iso­lat­ed protesters.

Of course, any resem­blance with sit­u­a­tions in Euro­pean would be pure coincidence…

If the extreme fatigue of those who have strug­gled alone for months shows in this casu­al exchange, it also reveals the dif­fi­cul­ty of tak­ing onto one’s self a strug­gle that should be mas­sive and col­lec­tive against a regime dic­tat­ing its rules against of back­ground of State terrorism.

Veli Saçılık : “Seeing Nuriye’s condition could provoke indignation”

The good news land­ed as I was fin­ish­ing the tran­scrip­tion of this con­ver­sa­tion and was prepar­ing the intro­duc­tion : Semih Öza­kça, the teacher jailed since May 23, was released on the con­di­tion that he wear an elec­tron­ic bracelet. How­ev­er, the same deci­sion was not tak­en con­cern­ing Nuriye Gül­men, arrest­ed with Semih, whose health has dete­ri­o­rat­ed to the point of requir­ing her trans­fer into inten­sive care. Accord­ing to Saçılık, Gül­men was not lib­er­at­ed for fear of the indig­na­tion the sight of her might set off.

Semih Öza­kça and Nuriye Gül­men start­ed their resis­tance togeth­er at the same peri­od, led the same fight, spoke the same words, and expressed the same demands. The fact that Öza­kça was freed, fol­low­ing the hear­ing on Octo­ber 20, but that Gülmen’s incar­cer­a­tion con­tin­ues appears to be a per­sis­tent top­ic of dis­cus­sion. Accord­ing to Veli Saçılık, the fear that see­ing Nuriye might set off indig­na­tion in the pub­lic is the rea­son for keep­ing her out of sight.

Semih freed under judi­cial control…

While hun­dreds of thou­sands of pub­lic sec­tor employ­ees were fired under the state of emer­gency, declared on July 20 2016 and con­stant­ly extend­ed ever since, reac­tions to this prac­tice has remained lim­it­ed to the resis­tance of a hand­ful of per­sons say­ing “I want my job back” in front of the mon­u­ment to Human Rights on Ankara’s Yük­sel avenue. Veli Saçılık, who also descend­ed on Yük­sel Avenue demand­ing his job back at the same time as Gül­men and Öza­kça did, has been one of that hand­ful of peo­ple to come forward.

Saçılık, who has been harassed by the police almost every day, tak­en into cus­tody a count­less num­ber of times, now com­plains most­ly of the fact their union did not stand by them. Saçılık, whose moth­er and com­pan­ion are also fac­ing tri­als, says “I’m tired now”. But he adds imme­di­ate­ly: “This is about the sur­vival of two com­rades, of Nuriye and of Semih. I have to go down [into the street] for her and for him. When no one speaks up, I must say ‘our work, our bread, our free­dom’. Oth­er­wise, at this very moment, I would be at home with my com­pan­ion and my daugh­ter, I would be liv­ing like a human being. But since no one is tak­ing to the street, since no one is say­ing any­thing, I must compromise.”

With Veli Saçılık, we exam­ined the resis­tance on Yük­sel, now going on a year, and Özakça’s lib­er­a­tion while Gül­men remains imprisoned.

Fol­low­ing our con­ver­sa­tion, we learned of Semih’s lib­er­a­tion. What does this lib­er­a­tion signify?

In my opin­ion, the tri­bunal in ques­tion wants to impress abroad, as if there was a real judi­cial process under­way. Of course, we con­sid­er recu­per­at­ing Semih a vic­to­ry. We freed him from cap­tiv­i­ty. And the hunger strike will go on in pub­lic. It will be an argu­ment against those who say “They are not con­duct­ing a hunger strike”. We will con­tin­ue to speak out on Yük­sel Avenue. And I think we’ll also remove Nuriye from their hands and have (her and Semih) get their jobs back. I have hope in this area. Beyond the hope, I’m deter­mined to keep up the fight.

In your opin­ion, why wasn’t Nuriye Gül­men set free?

There is sup­posed to have been con­fes­sions from a so-called repen­tant. Yet, today on Octo­ber 20 at the hear­ing, every­thing this per­son said was futile. Such a deci­sion was tak­en because they are pre­tend­ing they are con­duct­ing a legal judi­cial process. More­over, since the sight of Nuriye would pro­voke pub­lic indig­na­tion, they con­tin­ue to keep her out of sight.

Because Nuriye’s con­di­tion is very bad, to the point of mak­ing the sight of her impos­si­ble. The gov­ern­ment does not want to step on its own pres­tige. Yet, with this strug­gle, we’ve giv­en that pres­tige quite a shaking.

On Novem­ber 9, it will be a year since you began the resis­tance at Yük­sel-Ankara. Hun­dreds of per­son were fired from their jobs by decree, but we have fol­lowed the reac­tion against these wide­spread liq­ui­da­tions through the resis­tance con­duct­ed by a few per­sons, includ­ing your­self. What is your appraisal of the year [gone by]?

Lis­ten, sev­er­al of us are resist­ing but for once, I will speak in my own name. I was fired on Novem­ber 22 2016 and I joined the resis­tance on Novem­ber 24. Nuriye Gül­men was the first to go down to Yük­sel Avenue with a plac­ard that read “I want my job!” One day lat­er, Semih Öza­kça joined up with Nuriye. The fol­low­ing day, I was on Yük­sel also. Then, oth­er com­rades such as Acun Karadağ, Mehmet Der­su­lu joined us. The dose of [police] vio­lence tar­get­ing us did not change from the first day onward. Frankly, I thought that these demon­stra­tions of resis­tance would spread to oth­er places, that seri­ous pub­lic opin­ions would build up in sev­er­al regions and that, short of being able to clear­ly reverse the process, we would man­age to trans­form this into a mass move­ment. Indi­vid­ual resis­tance mul­ti­plied in front of estab­lish­ments in dif­fer­ent places, begin­ning with Ankara and Istan­bul. But the AKP gov­ern­ment was so “uncom­pro­mis­ing”, to use their own term, that the peo­ple tak­ing to the street were put into cus­tody and sub­ject­ed to abuse. Dur­ing that peri­od where tear gas and rub­ber bul­lets were at the ren­dez-vous, and count­less tri­als opened besides, the birth of a mass move­ment was thwart­ed. I’m in front of tri­bunals every day. Law­suits have been launched against my moth­er, against my com­pan­ion. In this way, the threats start­ed to affect the fam­i­lies also.

Does the fact acts of resis­tance do not con­verge result sim­ply from these acts of repression?

In ref­er­ence to the film “The silence of the lambs”, we would have to say “the silence of the unions”. I, for one, have trou­ble under­stand­ing the silence of the KESK [Con­fed­er­a­tion of pub­lic ser­vice work­ers’ unions, mem­ber of the CSI and CES]. There have been over 130 thou­sand liq­ui­da­tions and some 3 500 of the ter­mi­nat­ed work­ers are mem­bers of the KESK. It shouldn’t have been too hard to mobi­lize those 3 500. What we are doing doesn’t demand super­hu­man strength. We go out and sit in front of the Human Rights mon­u­ment, we read press releas­es and we put up with police vio­lence. Peo­ple aren’t cow­ards in Turkey. Dur­ing [the protests in] Gezi, we saw what peo­ple were capa­ble of. But the unions behaved as if there was no tomor­row, enclos­ing the demands in bureau­crat­ic insu­la­tion, they con­stant­ly applied the brakes on mass move­ment and stopped it. They did not know how to lead, or they did not want to lead.

The unions have become a cog in the climate of terror

How?

By play­ing dead.

Why?

They fig­ured, “by play­ing dead, there won’t be oth­er fir­ings of our mem­bers, and we, the lead­ers, won’t get arrest­ed”. The unions have become on the of the instru­ments in the cli­mate cre­at­ed by the AKP.

But we know that the lead­ers of the KESK (con­fed­er­a­tion) have crit­i­cisms con­cern­ing your action. They say that Gül­men and Öza­kça did not con­sult them when they began their hunger strike and even that this action was imposed on them, and that those lead­ing the Yük­sel resis­tance aren’t too hot on the idea of coor­di­na­tion with the union.

They are not speak­ing the truth. I am not from the same polit­i­cal tra­di­tion as Semih and Nuriye. Every­one knows that. Nor did I join this resis­tance after long con­ver­sa­tions and dis­cus­sions with Nuriye and Semih. I moved with the KESK from day one. The day I was fired, I held a press con­fer­ence with the KESK. Then, I tried to par­tic­i­pate in all the actions and meet­ings orga­nized by the KESK around the liq­ui­da­tions by decree. But the KESK main­ly worked at doing noth­ing and at apply­ing the brakes. For instance, they orga­nized some­thing called “the Con­gress on liq­ui­da­tions”, but none of the deci­sions vot­ed there were put into prac­tice. That said, indi­vid­u­als or unions aren’t oblig­ed to come to Yük­sel. They’re not oblig­ed to go on hunger strike, as Nuriye and Semih have done, or to resist in the same way I have done. There are no rules of the sort. The only rule is to resist. You can resist in oth­er venues, in oth­er ways. At this point, the KESK is in such a sor­ry sate that it can’t even hold a sit-in on Sakarya boule­vard in Ankara. We’re talk­ing about a union that can’t even bring itself to do that much.

But in Istan­bul, in the neigh­bor­hoods of Bakırköy and Kadıköy, there is a resis­tance by mem­bers of the KESK…

Yes, they are my friends, and I know they are not orga­nized by the KESK, and that they pur­sue their resis­tance on their own ini­tia­tive. They are mem­bers of the KESK, like me, but they take to the street of their own free will. The KESK can’t even man­age to take care of its mem­bers resist­ing in front of their places of work in Ankara. And yet the KESK had vot­ed a deci­sion on “Mobi­liza­tions and actions in front of work places”.

Esra Öza­kça, tak­en into cus­tody on May 22 2017

The union leader said “We’re beaten because of you.”

Did you talk to them about this?

I talked to them a num­ber of times. “All right, don’t come to Yük­sel, I can be there and oth­er com­rades can show up” I told them, “But let’s not back down from our posi­tions, for instance on Sakarya avenue. When the police orders us to dis­perse, let’s stay put in front of our work places, stub­born­ly”. They keep tak­ing us into cus­tody. Fol­low­ing this inter­view, I’ll go to Yük­sel and be tak­en into cus­tody again. Tomor­row also, I’ll be arrest­ed, and the day after… If there were five hun­dred of us there, in dif­fer­ent spaces, two by two, and in rota­tion, wouldn’t we be more effi­cient? Do I have to suf­fer so many hard­ships? You claim to head a union, you obtain the posi­tion then, you do noth­ing! A KESK leader told some young­sters who took action dur­ing the com­mem­o­ra­tion of the Octo­ber 10 attack [attack at the Ankara Sta­tion dur­ing a Peace meet­ing, that caused 102 deaths in 2015]: “We’re beat­en because of you.”

Who said that?

I don’t name names but he’s one of the top lead­ers of the KESK. And he said that to young­sters who were dis­obey­ing the police. This sen­tence was spo­ken on the occa­sion of the trib­ute to the 102 peo­ple who were mas­sa­cred. It wasn’t addressed to the police spread­ing tear gas inside a enclosed space but to the young­sters react­ing against this [police] vio­lence. It’s a seri­ous com­ment. I don’t accept it. I go fur­ther and reply : “I’m the one get­ting beat­en because of you”. We get beat­en because you don’t mobi­lize your union of 250 thou­sand mem­bers, because you don’t take the offen­sive, you don’t dis­play the required resis­tance and, as lead­ers, you do not put your hand under the stone [Turk­ish expres­sion mean­ing ‘tak­ing risks’]. My crit­i­cism is clear and deter­mined. But that crit­i­cism doesn’t mean “Veli has an action plan, he has an objec­tive, and every­one must fol­low him”. The actions I under­take may or may not find sup­port… Peo­ple can say “What Veli says isn’t cor­rect” and I respect that. But if what I say is not cor­rect, it is their job to bring to light what is just, to move into the zone [of resis­tance] with their own vision, to pro­duce the words and the actions. Those com­rades – nev­er mind actions – they have no com­ment con­cern­ing the decrees. Con­cern­ing the zone [of resis­tance], I man­age to pro­duce slo­gans, I speak, news­pa­pers and web­sites pub­lish my words, whether they agree with me or not. But in those same media, we don’t see a sin­gle dec­la­ra­tion from the KESK’s co-pres­i­dents. Because they make no dec­la­ra­tions and even if they do, they say noth­ing of inter­est, they don’t think on the top­ic, they have no plan to move those actions [into a mass movement].

Don’t the mem­bers force the KESK to move?

They did, at first. In Ankara, approx­i­mate­ly 250 mem­bers were fired from their jobs, we man­aged to hold meet­ings with hun­dreds of peo­ple. I nev­er saw mem­bers who weren’t fired raise a sin­gle demand to the KESK on the top­ic. We kept ask­ing the unions, “What should we do?” and the answer we got was always the same “Wait, we’ll reach a deci­sion”. They did nothing.

Veli Saçılık

İrf­an Aktan with Veli Saçılık

I told Nuriye and Semih “hand over your hunger strike to me”

The fact Nuriye Gül­men and Semih Öza­kça start­ed a hunger strike was a crit­i­cal ele­ment that moved the resis­tance into inter­na­tion­al news. Why then did you not start a hunger strike?

I want my job back and I think a hunger strike that threat­ens to end in death doesn’t fit into that equa­tion. But Nuriye and Semih think this is how it must be done. Per­son­al­ly, I think my point of view is the cor­rect one, but I respect theirs. The fact I don’t agree with them nev­er turns into a judg­ment against their choice.

Many calls went out ask­ing that Gül­men and Öza­kça stop their hunger strike. Did you make any such suggestions?

At the fifty day mark, I offered my com­rades “stop and I’ll take over the strike, for fifty days”. I offered to turn it into a rotat­ing strike. But when they said “this is our deci­sion and this is how we’re going to do it”, I respect­ed their choice. From there on, it would have made no sense to tell my friends “why are you on hunger strike, this isn’t the right way”. In all cir­cum­stances, in my prac­tice, I do what is cor­rect for me. And my com­rades, with their own prac­tices, say what is cor­rect for them. So we have two action mod­els before us : that prac­ticed by Nuriye and Semih, and the one Acun Karadağ’ın, Mehmet Der­su­lu and oth­ers includ­ing myself prac­tice. If oth­ers who don’t think like we do, sug­gest oth­ers things, I will nev­er tell them “why are you doing it that way, why are you resist­ing in that fash­ion”. Take the exam­ple of a com­rade in Bodrum, Engin Karataş [a teacher]. One day, he writes the word “Jus­tice” every­where, using wrap­ping tape. Anoth­er time, he does a para­chute jump, or he dives into the sea, anoth­er day he writes “Jus­tice” using marine rope, he flies a baloon with the slo­gan “I want my stu­dents” attached to it. He comes to Ankara, he man­ages to evade the police and places a slo­gan on the Human Rights mon­u­ment. As far as modes of action go, Mas­ter Engin is not ortho­dox, as I am, but he does a num­ber of things to express in a dig­ni­fied way “I want my stu­dents”. Fol­low­ing which what does the Eğitim-Sen [Teach­ers’ Union, mem­ber of the KESK] do to Mas­ter à Engin?

What?

The Bodrum rep­re­sen­ta­tive says “Mas­ter, do not come to the Eğitim-Sen, the police is pres­sur­ing us.” At that point, will we keep our dis­tance from unique actions like those under­tak­en by Mas­ter Engin?

Do you con­sid­er you action to be radical?

No, I’m doing noth­ing rad­i­cal, I’m only get­ting beat­en. Is get­ting beat­en some­thing rad­i­cal? I turn my back on them, they hit me over the head and kick me for good mea­sure. Fron­t­wise, they spray my face with tear gas, they shoot rub­ber bul­lets into my body. I prac­tice pas­sive resis­tance, an action in accor­dance with the dig­ni­ty of a pub­lic sec­tor work­er. And if some­one tells me “this is not a just action”, let him or her speak through his or her prac­tice, with­out run­ning away.

What argu­ments do KESK lead­ers oppose to your criticism?

The AKP has for­bid­den it, the police attacks”. That is their argu­ment. True, the AKP has for­bid­den it and the police attacks but I go out (in the street) any­way. Is it pos­si­ble for a union to base its action on “nev­er being tak­en into cus­tody”? If Lami Özgen, KESK’s co-pres­i­dent had demon­strat­ed the will I dis­played the first time I went down into the street, would things be the same today? If he had spo­ken up, as he saw fit, wher­ev­er he saw fit and said “my mem­bers act­ed on my instruc­tions and I take respon­si­bil­i­ty for it” Was that not pos­si­ble? They say of our action “the deci­sion was not tak­en in coor­di­na­tion with the union”. Why then don’t they put into effect the deci­sions that were tak­en in coor­di­na­tion with the union?

What kind of deci­sions were taken?

For instance, it was decid­ed to have actions under­way, every day of the week, in front of all the establishments.

When was that deci­sion taken?

About eight months ago. Indeed, there are deci­sions such as “In impor­tant spots in the towns, we will car­ry out actions of four hours dura­tion, every day”, “We will devel­op gen­er­al­ized pro­pa­gan­da tools against the state of emer­gency” , all these deci­sion were writ­ten down and reg­is­tered. The deci­sions tak­en by the KESK itself aren’t even respect­ed by the mem­bers of its admin­is­tra­tion board.

Lis­ten, KESK’s ten minute action does not sat­is­fy me. Myself, I’m fired, I have a child, I must resist. I say, “I’m not going home, I’m resist­ing” and they answer “no, we decid­ed on a ten minute action, the ten min­utes are up, go home.” They can’t tell me that, they have reg­is­tered decisions.

Are there ide­o­log­i­cal oppo­si­tions between you and the union?

No, we don’t have ide­o­log­i­cal dif­fer­ences. I don’t tell any­one “you are of such and such a polit­i­cal fam­i­ly, this is why you do this or that”. We have a tra­di­tion at the KESK : legit­i­mate and active strug­gle. It finds its strength, not from the law, but from its legit­i­ma­cy. Which is to say that, if your action is legit­i­mate, even if the police for­bids it, you do it. I go every day to Yük­sel and what I do is legit­i­mate. But some go to Sakarya avenue and the police tells them “don’t stay there, go in front of the com­mis­sari­at”, they go and they stand in front of the 5th com­mis­sari­at… I don’t accept that. Lis­ten, when some demon­stra­tors announce “for those who were fired : we will close our eyes for a minute and think of them”, the police tells them “your action is ille­gal, we shall inter­vene.” And they answer “OK, OK, we’ll open our eyes.” The sit­u­a­tion should nev­er have reached that point.

You have been up against police vio­lence almost every day for close to a year. How is your health?

Aching neck con­stant­ly, frac­tured shoul­der, I can’t lie down on that side. Fol­low­ing the tear­ing of a mus­cle in my left shoul­der, I can’t make some move­ments. I still have the bruis­es from the lat­est police inter­ven­tion. As I’m sub­ject­ed to gaz­ing reg­u­lar­ly, res­pi­ra­to­ry prob­lems are show­ing up. I had excel­lent eye­sight, now, I don’t see as well.

I never lived through another period where I was beaten, morning and night

Are you tired?

I’m tired! I don’t say it in a neg­a­tive sense, but yes, I am tired! I’ve been inter­est­ed in pol­i­tics since 1993, but since that time, I’ve nev­er been involved in an action for close to 350 days. I’ve nev­er lived through such a peri­od where I am beat­en, morn­ing and night. I live that now and I am tired. I’ve said it a num­ber of times : so many peo­ple were fired, why are there only four, five peo­ple shoul­der­ing the bur­den by them­selves? Hence­forth, this bur­den must be tak­en from us. Lis­ten, the Human Rights mon­u­ment in Ankara is sur­round­ed now. If the unions, the IHD (Human Rights Asso­ci­a­tion) and oth­er sim­i­lar organ­i­sa­tions don’t act, if they don’t at least orga­nize a cam­paign for the “lib­er­a­tion” of the mon­u­ment… The Human Rights mon­u­ment is bar­ri­cad­ed, this is shame­ful for all of us!

Does the fact you are tired mean you will not go out to Yük­sel anymore?

Per­son­al­ly, I don’t want to to down in Yük­sel street like that. I have to go into the street for her and for him. While every­one keeps mum, I have to say ‘our work, our bread, our free­dom’. If this was not the case, at this very moment I would be with my com­pan­ion and my daugh­ter at home, liv­ing like a human being. But since no one goes out [on the street], since no one speak up, I must com­pro­mise. How could I turn my back on news that four or five peo­ple who went in my place were beat­en? I’ll con­tin­ue. In a lit­tle while, I’ll go back in action, I’ll get sprayed with tear gas again, I’ll get beat­en again, I’ll get tak­en into cus­tody again.

There’s an even­tu­al­i­ty that the gov­ern­ment might resolve the hunger strike issue.

Of course, Nuriye Gül­men, Semih Öza­kça and Esra Ökzakça’s hunger strike con­tin­ues in the mean­time. Con­se­quent­ly, the risk for their life increas­es with every pass­ing day. Appar­ent­ly, there won’t be any evo­lu­tion on the part of the government…

I think there will be an evo­lu­tion. The hunger strike is reach­ing its 222nd day and its an irre­versible process. Even if they lib­er­ate them this very day, the fact our friends will remain hand­i­caped is an unfor­tu­nate cer­tain­ty. Although four or five of us car­ry out our actions, we know that people’s hearts are with us, their eyes are on us. The State gives us impor­tance. It thinks this action can gen­er­ate a revolt of the Gezi type. Con­se­quent­ly, so this ten­sion will stop, I think there’s a pos­si­bil­i­ty that the gov­ern­ment will resolve the hunger strike issue, through par­al­lel means.

Are there sig­nals of this, that we don’t see, but that are vis­i­ble to you?

Anadolu Ajan­sı [AA State News Agency] has start­ed attend­ing our press con­fer­ences… so, some­thing is going on. AA was also present at the press con­fer­ence in front of Numune hos­pi­tal where Nuriye is detained.

But there are no oth­er sig­nals besides that one…

I think they’ll try to find a par­al­lel way through the state of emer­gency Com­mis­sion or the CEDH. The gov­ern­ment will devise a tac­tic rather than reach­ing a solu­tion. This will allow it to find a way allow­ing for a pause. But that means our friends will lose their life, and when we will go back to work, we will be sit­ting on their remains. And that will be inscribed in indeli­ble ink in the case against the government.

Dur­ing this year, both the HDP and the CHP attempt­ed dif­fer­ent approach­es. Do you think the oppo­si­tion par­ties are assum­ing their responsibilities?

We can’t say that this is ful­ly the case but but we did see that the CHP (People’s Repub­li­can Par­ty) pro­vid­ed sup­port above what they tra­di­tion­al­ly do. The HDP (Peo­ples’ Demo­c­ra­t­ic Par­ty) also gave us its sup­port. Sev­er­al mem­bers of par­lia­ment came to see us and mem­bers and sym­pa­thiz­ers of the HDP joined in actions with us. So did the oth­er par­ties of the Left­ist social­ists. Even if there was no deci­sion at the cen­tral­ized lev­el, they were by our side. How­ev­er, the CHP still insists on insti­tu­tion­al approach­es. The HDP is coher­ent with its dis­course at a polit­i­cal lev­el. I’m hap­py to see that. A KESK leader com­ing from the HDP, who is a mem­ber of the HDP in pol­i­tics, does not adopt the same posi­tions. HDP mem­bers involved in polit­i­cal action appear much more coher­ent. The same holds true for mem­bers of the ÖDP (Par­ty for Lib­er­ty and Sol­i­dar­i­ty) and the oth­ers. Because they under­stand that a breach that would open here would affect all the decrees and the state of emergency.

Wouldn’t the fact the gov­ern­ment would take a step in a direc­tion allow­ing Gül­men and Ösakça to end their hunger strike rep­re­sent an open­ing of the breach for it also?

We don’t much care about what the gov­ern­ment will do, we think about what we must do our­selves. For 350 days, the gov­ern­ment has demon­strat­ed that it does not want a solu­tion. At times, to decrease the effect on pub­lic opin­ion, it dimin­ish­es the vio­lence against me or against Acun. And when we raise our voic­es, they beat on us say­ing “you talked too much”. They haven’t found the bal­ance yet. The gov­ern­ment wants to shut us up, but not every­thing can go accord­ing to its wish­es, life doesn’t play out that way.

This stubborness is a good stubborness, a solid one

For months now, almost every day, you face the police, and you can­not guess from one day to the next what kind of inter­ven­tion you will deal with. What is your state of mind when you arrive at Yüksel?

I don’t think about what the police will do, but about what I must do. Fol­low­ing their argu­ment with the Broth­er­hood [the orga­ni­za­tion of preach­er Fetul­lah Gülen, for­mer friend of Erdoğan’s, now turned into Pub­lic Ene­my n°1], with whom I had no ties what­so­ev­er, as I am a Social­ist, they fired me. More­over, as if I had been stripped of my nation­al­i­ty, they took away all my rights, my right to study, to open a coop­er­a­tive, to trav­el, to go abroad, every­thing. Had I been con­demned for belong­ing to an [ille­gal] orga­ni­za­tion, I wouldn’t have been pun­ished so harsh­ly, but when you are fired by decree, this is how it goes. They said “Let them eat the roots of trees” [sic Osman Zabun, AKP par­ty leader, Ispar­ta Octo­ber 7 2016 ], they said “those ones, we’ve trans­formed into the social dead” [an AKP minister].

I’m not only angry for polit­i­cal rea­sons. I don’t go down in the street because I’m a Social­ist. I am there as a fired pub­lic ser­vice work­er. And I’m very angry at them. It’s a per­son­al anger. As I say “They can’t do this to us”, I also say “they can’t do this to me. I know, I could get killed sud­den­ly, by a gas can­is­ter. They can hurt my friends. On the one hand, when you arrive, you expe­ri­ence fear. It comes from not know­ing what will hap­pen, but once you’re on the spot, it ends. A few days ago, they did some­thing I could not stand. They threw me to the ground and with their boots, they pressed on the place where my arm was ampu­tat­ed. Liv­ing through such moments is hard to tol­er­ate. But I also know that every­thing they have done to us will be tal­lied up. I don’t say this to pro­voke agi­ta­tion but we are not writ­ing on sands but in His­to­ry. Before, I called those who tor­tured us “fas­cists”. But for peo­ple who hand­cuffed us in the back, even mama Per­i­han who is 75 years old, I don’t use polit­i­cal terms any more. Every time we think they won’t go that far, they do. But every time they tell them­selves, “this time, they will be afraid”, we are not afraid. This stub­bor­ness is a good stub­bor­ness, a sol­id one.

We only see the vio­lence on Yük­sel Avenue, but we don’t know what goes on dur­ing the cus­todies. Are you tak­en to the com­mis­sari­at every time? What goes on after Yüksel?

This varies every time. In any event, we were nev­er told what our crime was, pre­cise­ly. These last few days, for instance, they would throw us into the vehi­cle while beat­ing us and chok­ing us with the gas. Then, they take us to the hos­pi­tal, charge us a 227 turk­ish lira fine, for “obstruc­tion to the law and inci­vil­i­ties”, which is to say the type of mis­de­meanor that con­sists of “throw­ing garbage on the pub­lic road”, and they set us free. Before that, they would arrest us for “obstruc­tion to the law on demon­stra­tions and assem­blies” and there are sev­er­al tri­als opened against us for that rea­son. After­wards, they saw this wasn’t work­ing. So they opened a tri­al against Nuriye and Semih, for “mem­ber­ship in an (ille­gal) orga­ni­za­tion”. At that time, I had appealed to the Min­is­ter of the Inte­ri­or, say­ing “find an orga­ni­za­tion for me also”. Final­ly, they incor­po­rat­ed me into Nuriye and Semih’s tri­al. Now, I go and sign in at the com­mis­sari­at every day [judi­cial control].

Yük­sel Avenue, Ankara, May 22 2017
Encir­cled Human Rights monument

If I was a member of the organization, I would have been imprisoned a long time ago

What evi­dence is used to war­rant a charge of “mem­ber­ship in an [ille­gal] organization”?

The shares I make on Twit­ter and Face­book, con­cern­ing our resis­tance at Yük­sel. A pros­e­cu­tor asked me “who do you take your instruc­tions from?” I told him “you can’t ask me such a ques­tion, all you can say is ‘we have deter­mined that you take your instruc­tions from such and such’”. I told him “you for­got to enter the evi­dence in the file. Please, try to find some evi­dence before the tri­al, if you don’t it will be an insult to your pro­fes­sion”. I am a social­ist, I am a rev­o­lu­tion­ary, I am not a mem­ber of any kind of ille­gal orga­ni­za­tion. I am in the street as a work­er of the pub­lic sec­tor, a mem­ber of the KESK. Any­way, if I was a mem­ber of an orga­ni­za­tion, they would have arrest­ed me a num­ber of times.

What has gone miss­ing for things to reach this point?

If we were talk­ing about a nor­mal bour­geois gov­ern­ment, we wouldn’t have been fired, there wouldn’t have been all these dis­cus­sions. But when all this hap­pened, if our union had been the least bit orga­nized to deal with all these liq­ui­da­tions, if the lead­ers had mobi­lized from with­in the union, we could have made them back down. Unfor­tu­nate­ly, every­one turned into anoth­er cog in this cli­mate of fear, and backed down instead.

Some policemen come to us in order to apologize

In your opin­ion, on this road, those who were fired have been vanquished?

As long as the Yük­sel avenue action isn’t van­quished, the fired work­ers can­not be con­sid­ered as van­quished. Yük­sel avenue has become the cor­ner­stone, but this is not a good thing, it is a bad one. Our prac­tice should not be like this. The fact our will has been sub­vert­ed to that of the Pre­fect and of the Chief of Police, the fact we can­not say a word with­out their autho­riza­tion is shame­ful for us.

For months now you have been face to face with police­men on Yük­sel avenue. Over all this time, have you observed a trans­for­ma­tion in the com­mu­ni­ca­tions between you and them?

From what I’ve heard, part of the police­men would have sym­pa­thy for us. They say “As long as those ones occu­py the news, it won’t be our turn” (He laughs). As for anoth­er part, they attack beyond what their orders call for. When some of them address me as “Veli”, I tell them “You can­not call me by my first name”. Some of them, when they shove me, they come and apol­o­gize after­wards. But on the whole they are in a stance of reflect­ing “the wind can turn in this busi­ness some day and Acun and Veli who are well in the fore­front may come and ask for some account­ing some day”. On some days, they turn on our sup­port­ers telling them “Acun and Veli can do that, but who do you think you are to allow your­self the same thing?” And when we go to the hos­pi­tal, the police­men who seem the most respectable can say “we had noth­ing to do with it”

İrf­an Aktan

İrfan Aktan began in journalism in 2000 on Bianet. He has worked as a journalist, a correspondent or an editor for l’Express, BirGün, Nokta, Yeni Aktüel, Newsweek Türkiye, Birikim, Radikal, birdirbir.org, zete.com. He was the Ankara representative for IMC-TV. He is the author of two books: “Nazê/Bir Göçüş Öyküsü” (Nazê/A tale of exodus ), “Zehir ve Panzehir: Kürt Sorunu” (Poison and antidote: The Kurdish Question). He presently writes for l’Express, Al Monitor, and Duvar.

Spé­cial archives Nuriye & Semih : Nuriye et Semih


Translation by Renée Lucie Bourges
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