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The 10 September prisoners were taken to court on June 5-6 for the third time. The prisoners started to defend themselves for the first time at the hearing that took place at the 10th Heavy Penalty Court at Besiktas, Istanbul. At the end of the hearing, 3 revolutionary prisoners were decided to be released. The 23 prisoners taken to court from Edirne and Tekirdag F Type Prison and Gebze M Type Prison shouted the slogans "Down with fascism, long live our struggle" and "Long live the revolution and socialism" when they were entering the court building. In their defence speeches the communist prisoners once again convicted fascism and defended socialism.
The communist prisoner Seyfi Polat answered the definition "the terror organisation called MLCP" by defending the constitution and program of the MLCP and emphasizing that the imperialist occupations and the oppression and violence terror applied against the oppressed in order to maintain the power of the bourgeois exploiting system are terror themselves. Seyfi Polat explained in his defence speech why the MLCP is leading an armed struggle.
In their defence speeches the 10 September prisoners also stressed proletarian internationalism. The prisoner Ali Hidir Polat commemorated the FARC leader Manuel Marulanda Velez who had lost his life in Colombia and said: "I am sharing the enthusiasm of the Nepali people and its revolutionary party that destroyed the monarchist dictatorship."
While the 23 prisoners declared that they are continuing to defend their socialist ideas exposing the Turkish bourgeois state and the Constitutional system in different ways. They emphasized that Turkey is neither a politically nor economically independent country by giving examples of privatisation and accords with the IMF and WB. The communist prisoners also defined that none of the four constitutions that had been launched since the foundation of the Turkish Republic has been based on the nation`s will and that the current constitution that had been introduced after the military coup of 1980 was enforced by bayonets and torture. Furthermore, they said that the constitution gives all arbitrement to the army including the possibility to realise a state coup, and the prisoners reminded of the fact that the rights of the Kurdish people and national minorities are totally denied in the constitution.
The date of the next hearing was set for October 24, 2008. The court decided to preliminarily release the prisoners Fatma Siner, Fethiye Ok and Hasan Ozan so that they do not need to stay behind bars during the process.
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