Aggravated solitary isolation against PKK leader Abdullah Öcalan continues to be an explicit interface of the state policy towards Kurdish question. The Kurdish people's leader Öcalan has not been allowed to see anyone including his family. Isolation to Öcalan had started after the "peace process", which ended with the Suruç massacre where 33 revolutionaries were killed, including communist youth leaders, and which happened after the June 7th, 2015 elections*. Since July 2015, fascist Turkish state exacerbated the war both inside and outside the country and carried out brutal massacres. This "civilian" coup d'etat process, which AKP evolved into the Palace** fascism, continued with capture of the full control of police and military by the Erdoğan-Palace regime after the failed coup attempt of Gulenist movement on July 15th 2016, and following to this, with the change of the parliamentary to presidential regime, by means of April 16th 2017 referendum and June 24th 2018 general elections. Trying to overcome its social legitimacy crisis to maintain its dictatorship, fascist chief regime arrested elected HDP deputies in order to close the democratic struggle channels completely in this process. Among these arrested, there were co-chairpersons of HDP, Selahattin Demirtaş as representative of the Kurdish national liberation movement and Figen Yüksekdağ as representative from communist movement. Still, ex-parliamentarians, tens of thousands of HDP members are in prison, judicial processes are not being functioning for the political prisoners, there is not even a crunch of the principle "rule of law" left. Only recently, the decision of EHRC (European Human Rights Court) for the release of Demirtaş has not been put into order.
Leyla Güven, DTK *** chairwoman, was among the arrested before the June 24th 2018 elections. She has been elected in these elections, but despite her gained impunity, she wasn't released. As a resisting Kurdish woman, Leyla Güven sees the isolation against Öcalan as the isolation against the freedom of Kurdish people. For this growingly burning reason, she started a hunger strike with the sole demand to remove of isolation against Öcalan. Immediately, other political prisoners joined this hunger strike resistance. Moreover, HDP started supporting hunger strikes in its party buildings in different cities. As the state is intimidated by any kind of resistance, to prevent it from spreading to streets and among masses, the police raided HDP party buildings and took the hunger strikers under custody. Yet, strikes didn't end, the next days, new comers took over the shift and joined the hunger strike. Thus, the "spontaneous" demand of this hunger strike resistance became to stop the state's arrest terror and the release of the arrested. As it started with this essence, it became a more apparent means of antifascist struggle during this last month.
Trying to grow its political power by leaning on the relations with EU before 2007, the AKP had made the party closure process by law extremely difficult, which is actually also a precaution for itself not to be closed in the future. That is why, Erdoğan doesn't want to bring back this procedure of suppression, instead he uses different tools. He doesn't close down HDP, but tries to make it dysfunctional by arresting all of its cadres who are still outside the prison. This tactic has been beaten off so far, by the broad party basis and people's organization capacity around their party. Of course, this reaction is still not big enough to stop these attacks and to push the fascist terror back.
The state's arrest terror and direct violence has not been only towards hunger strikes. Worker's actions flamed by the women workers in this summer against French company Flormar, had peaked with the mass actions of the 3rd Istanbul airport construction site workers. The biggest arrest number of workers in the history of Turkey was seen in this action, more than 400 workers were taken under custody at one night, trade union leaders were arrested. Worker's actions are still spreading as the economical crisis grows, but they don't carry on with an integrity among each other and can be suppressed by providing some partial demands and by police violence, since they haven't yet met with the other channels of antifascist resistance.
This period will show us long lasting effects of economical crisis and therefore following worker's actions. In such a period, Turkey again will face with an election. Elections, which are used as a means of gaining social legitimacy to overcome the afore mentioned legitimacy crisis of Erdoğan dictatorship, will again be functional as long as it is used as a means of path-opening for revolutionary struggle, of spreading the antifascist resistance to the base for the HDP, which is the democratic unity front of the oppressed, including communists and Kurdish national liberation movement. Approaching elections like typical bourgeois party will cripple this purpose of HDP with the legalistic and parliamentarist enthusiasms. In this sense, struggle against the sections in HDP, who have the intention to affiliate with the bourgeois left (such as CHP ) and liberals, is among the tasks of socialists inside the HDP. Essentially, it is because such alliance with the bourgeois left will weaken HDP and such a step will be a step to liquidate the revolutionary essence of the party. That is why hunger strikes, street rallies, worker's actions, local resistances towards ecological devastation, rebellious steps of unemployed or student youth, any kind of resistance opposing the Erdoğan fascism are in sight of communists. Communists will try to unify them with the united democratic front embodied in HDP.
In such a political atmosphere, revolutionaries, who are determined to hold on their democratic struggle positions until the last moment, are in mobilization against the arrests through reestablishing their party organs over and over again. They use this as a form of resistance today against fascism. And the hunger strikes started by Leyla Güven entered the scene as one of these forms. As communists, we are taking part in this resistance with all our strength from Europe, to Turkey, North Kurdistan to Rojava. We embrace the demand of freedom for Öcalan so as to defeat fascism and to move forward the historical alliance with Kurdish national liberation movement on a revolutionary basis. Communists, who directly joined the hunger strikes in some cities, or who made solidarity visits to party buildings, made agitprop works in the streets, dare to pay the price against the state violence. The defeat of fascism can only be possible through simultaneously using armed or unarmed means, organizing peaceful actions or actions based on violence and revolutionizing every position we have. We undertake the task to be a breathing pipe for our peoples with our bodies in our lands where Erdoğan tries to disallow even breathing for the ones who do not give up on their freedom.