This wave of repression is now also continuing against the prisoners of the May Day demonstration.We wrote about the events on May Day in our brief overview of May Day worldwide:"42,000 police officers were sent onto the streets in Istanbul to brutally suppress the Turkish masses fighting on May Day. Fierce fighting broke out on Taksim Square, barricades were built, and the henchmen of the old state used rubber bullets and pepper spray. So far, countless people, including 6 Partizan readers, are still under arrest."
The six Partizan readers are still in custody of the old Turkish state. Together with 17 other Partizan readers, who were arrested on May 1 as part of the Taksim Square resistance, they are now being charged by the anti-democratic and reactionary judiciary of the old Turkish state. "Propaganda for a terrorist organization", "praising the crime and the criminal" and violations of the assembly law are the ridiculous charges brought against those who raised the red flag of liberation from imperialism, semi-feudalism and bureaucratic capitalism on May Day.
The trials against the Partizan readers and all those who resisted on Taksim Square on May Day are like a witch hunt. This becomes particularly clear when one listens to the sentences demanded by the Istanbul Public Prosecutor's Office. It is demanding 567 years in prison for 42 defendants. That is 13.5 years for each one of the defendants.
Nevertheless, the bourgeois semi-feudal class justice of the old Turkish state fails to break the revolutionaries and those who resist. As a sign of their continued resistance and steadfastness, the May Day prisoners of Taksim Square published a statement.
In this statement they write that they salute all those who raised the flag of labor and resisted on May Day. The prisoners further state that the ban on demonstrations at Taksim Square is an indicator of the intensifying economic crisis and that the ban shows the government's fear of the power of the working masses and their potential for rebellion. The statement goes on to say that it is this fear of the justified rebellion of the masses that is driving the restriction of democratic rights, the arrests by the police and the incitement in the bourgeois semi-feudal media. The government is striving to create a tame opposition within the limits of legality. But the May Day prisoners counter this plan by saying that it is justified to rebel against hunger, exploitation and the old order and that they will liberate the streets and squares with renewed strength and raise the flag of labor once again.
The consequences are simple when we look at this situation. The rebellion is justified, and the brutal oppression of the old Turkish state will not stop the revolution but accelerate it.
