On September 12, 1980, the Turkish colonialist fascism, actively and directly supported by their US masters, realised a fascist military coup and established a wall of fear. On September 12, 650.000 people have been detained and 95% of them tortured, 171 have been killed under torture, 50 people were executed, political parties and trade-unions were banned, 39 tons of books, magazines and newspaper were destroyed and 30,000 persons were forced to leave Turkey... However, in spite of all that, they were not able to liquidate the revolutionary and communist movement and today more than ever the masses are asking for account.
In the last 5 years, big public meetings developed demanding account for all that what was, and still is September 12 and the protests began having a mass character. This year, on the 28th anniversary of the fascist coup, the protests have been stronger than ever. The people going on the street are not only protesting against the crimes of 1980, but against the order of today, which still is the order of September 12. The fascist constitution is still in force, all the fascist institutions of the state created after the fascist military coup are still functioning, none of those responsible for the innumerable crimes has been sentenced and the fascist regime is adding every day new massacres and crimes to their bloody history. The political power is still concentrated in hands of the MGK (National Security Council) that was founded right after the coup and that consists of all the main generals of the army and heads of the police, the president, the prime minister and several ministers.
With the Ergenekon operation against some exposed elements of the counter-guerrilla, first of all the AKP government and different forces tried to give the impression of acting against all the known crimes committed by the counter-guerrilla, but actually they only want to convict them for some attacks against the government and are trying to keep the attempts of coups and all the mass massacres under wraps. Moreover, they try to hide all the links of the counter-guerrilla with the army, the police and MIT (National Intelligence Service). Several elements, who were imprisoned in the context of the Ergenekon operation, among them Sener Eruygur, Kuddisi Okkir, Ayse Asuman Ozdemir and Ferit Ilsever, have been released under the pretext of "health problems". This shows once again, that the Ergenekon operation did not aim at all at smashing the counter-guerrilla or demanding account from the guilty elements, as, first of all the AKP government, used to put it, but that it was the result of a reconstruction and thus strengthening the counter-guerrilla led by the regime itself. Meanwhile revolutionary prisoners are exposed to death by not releasing them from prison in spite of serious illnesses like cancer; the gangsters of Ergenekon are released one after another.
All the public discussions about the counter-guerrilla in the context of the Ergenekon operations, the consciousness of the masses growing especially since the assassination of the Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in January 2007 and the mass protests following it, strongly put the issue of demanding account on the agenda of a broad public opinion.
The ESP (Socialist Platform of the Oppressed) organised from August 9 to September 12 every Saturday at 11 am actions in many cities demanding the conviction of those responsible for the massacres of the counter-guerrilla and the clearing of these crimes. Every week, they put one massacre, assassination or attack at the centre and prepared detailed "indictments of the people" reminding the facts and demanding justice. Among the topics discussed were the counter-guerrilla massacres in Maras , Corum , Sivas, Gazi and Gungoren, the assassinations of intellectuals, forced disappearances and prison massacres, massacres against the working class and revolutionaries, anticommunist terror, the crimes of the dirty war in Kurdistan, the massacres against non-Moslem people and finally the military coups.
Thereafter, the Socialist Platform of the Oppressed continued demanding justice by organizing a bicycle tour between September 23 and 28 under the slogan ""The counter-guerrilla must be dissolved, the putschists must be convicted. We want justice" stopping at places, where massacres and other crimes took place and organising press conference there.
Also many other events and actions demanding justice took place all over Turkey and Northern Kurdistan around the September 12. The biggest meeting took place on September 13 in Izmir organised by the DISK (Confederation of Revolutionary Workers' Unions), where 40,000 people made clear, that they did not forget the fascist coup even after so many years and raised the demand to convict the putschist generals. Many trade-unions, platforms and political parties, among them the ESP, DTP (Party of Democratic Society), DISK, KESK (Confederation of Public Employees' Unions), SDP (Party of Socialist Democracy) and many others, marched shoulder on shoulder against the putschists.
The mass meetings of this year have shown, that there is a big potential in our country for the development of a strong mass movement demanding account from the putschist generals like the peoples in Latin America already did. The conditions are ripening for calling to account not only the putschist generals of September 12, but also those responsible of the dirty war in Kurdistan, for all the crimes of the counter-guerrilla like forced disappearance, extra-legal killings, mass massacres, assassinations of progressive intellectuals, to put it in a nutshell, the regime as a whole, because all this crimes of the putschists and elements of the counter-guerrilla are no separate issues, but links of the same chain, the counter-guerrilla regime itself, and it is time to call upon the people to demand account in the streets.
The next important date for demanding justice will be October 20, the first day of the Ergenekon trial. Many of the criminals of the counter-guerrilla will sit in the dock and we have to use this opportunity to demand justice. The bourgeois courts will not do this for us, only the peoples are able to ask for account and convict them.