We lost more than one hundred lives during the Ankara rally on October 10. The Revolutionary Workers Party mourns all the comrades we lost, men and women, young and old, with whom we had united in a struggle for freedom, and offers condolences to their families as well as their trade unions and political organizations. We sincerely hope that our wounded comrades will get well soon.
The October 10 Ankara massacre is the biggest attack in Turkish history on workers and the oppressed while exercising their right to protest. It is bloodier than the Bloody Sunday of 1969! It is bloodier than May Day 1977! It is bloodier than the 1993 massacre that took place at Madimak Hotel in Sivas. It is more atrocious than all the attacks on May Day celebrations following the September 12 coup. The massacre of October 10 is, without dispute, the biggest and most brutal attack on a rally organized by trade unions.
It can only be compared to a barbarous massacre which was not related to class struggle. In March of 1992, the state murdered more than 100 people, old and young, women and children during the Newroz celebrations in Şırnak. That was the first atrocious act in a chain of massacres that the state directed at our Kurdish brothers and sisters during the early 1990s. The hideous planning for these massacres were later exposed in 1996 during the Susurluk scandal. The Şırnak massacre may have been the first of the infamous “1000 operations”. In short, Turkey is now at this horrible point! The massacre in Suruç was a follow-up of the attacks on Kobani. The October 10 massacre transformed Ankara into Suruç and Turkey is rapidly being transformed into another Syria!
Under the circumstances, actions such as expressing grievance and asking all political groups to unite in protesting in solidarity and confining oneself to saying “all those responsible should resign”, as Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, the chairman of the Republican People’s Party has been doing will only open up the way to more aggression by the AKP and Tayyip Erdoğan—an aggression that has indeed peaked with the recent massacre.
Tayyip Erdoğan is asking for solidarity. Ahmet Davutoğlu is asking for solidarity. And Kılıçdaroğlu is promising solidarity. The working class and the laboring population do not have one single issue that they can resolve in solidarity with the AKP, Tayyip Erdoğan or Davutoğlu. The only response to attacks on the working class is class struggle! It cannot be establishing solidarity with a government that represents the ruling classes, a government, moreover, that is slowly bringing Turkey to the edge of war and barbarism while eroding all the hard-earned freedoms.
They are the ones responsible for the massacre of October 10. This massacre has taken place in a Turkey where the government has not lifted a finger to go after the perpetrators of the pre-election explosions at HDP buildings and rallies in Mersin, Adana and Diyarbakir and the bombing in Suruç after the elections, on July 20. Thus even before attempting to figure out who the perpetrators are this time, we can point our finger at the AKP government. Their goal is not only to turn Turkey into a country where civil war mongers, sectarians and takfiris [those who declare all others to be non-believers] have a free hand. The future of the AKP and Tayyip Erdoğan is now completely dependent on such organizations. They are in a controlled kind of conflict with ISIS, hiding a deeper collusion. But there are so many other organizations in the picture: İBDA-C, the Kurdish Hezbollah parading as an innocent legal party (Hüda-Par), the so-called Ottoman Corps, the Turkoman Brigades… You name it. Do not ask who carried out the bombings in this massacre. Ask who caused bombings to become an indispensable aspect of Turkish politics. Then it will be clear that the responsible parties are the AKP government and Tayyip Erdoğan.
The unions and trade associations which organized the October 10 rally have declared a two-day general strike. Right now our most important task is to bring this decision onto the agenda of all the unions and trade associations, and to work hard to carry it out.
The workers’ movement should also join forces with professional associations and mass organisations to form an Independent Investigation Committee to discover, disclose, bring to trial and punish the perpetrators of the October 10 massacre and all those that support them. Bar associations and well-respected personalities should also be included in this effort. We should work hard to have this Committee authorized to gain access to all kinds of documents, witnesses and data. It is of vital importance that the investigation for the October 10 massacre is not left in the hands of a police chief-cum-minister of interior who lacks authority and political responsibility and who has failed to deal with security issues during his tenure.
The minister of interior must be dismissed! A minister who cannot prevent the death of more than 100 people at a rally should not keep his post. He should be dismissed immediately if only to open the way to a decent investigation. He is a police chief without any political responsibility; we would not expect him to resign. He should be dismissed!
All union members, call on your unions to support and organize the general strike!
Workers, public employees, office workers, participate in the general strike!
Onward for an Independent Investigation Committee established by unions and mass organizations!
Dismiss the minister of interior!
Central Committee of DIP
(Revolutionary Workers Party)