Gendarmerie commanders in Turkey targeted by bomb attack

international | miscellaneous | press release Friday August 08, 2003 10:36 by Meryem - DHKC, translated by DHKC London Information Bureau

August 6 attack in Istanbul is revenge for prison massacre

The DHKC (Revolutionary People's Liberation Front) in statement 309 claims responsibility for a bomb attack on August 6 against gendarmerie commanders in Istanbul who were travelling by bus. The attack is in revenge for the gendarmerie's role in prison massacres in Turkey and is also aimed against the use of isolation and tyrannical behaviour in the prisons of the country.

Date: August 6, 2003 Statement: 309

The Halkali (Istanbul) Commando Brigade took part in the December 19 massacre
We will not accept the prison cells and isolation! We will continue to demand a reckoning for 107 deaths!

At about 7:45 on the morning of August 6, 2003 our fighters carried out a bomb attack on a bus in Istanbul/Halkali which was carrying commanders of a gendarmerie commando brigade who were directly involved in the December 19 prison massacre.
They are the official representatives, generals and NCOs of the Republic of Turkey. They used a "civilian" bus to go to work. This is not because the army has no service buses available but because they are afraid. Some of them were in civilian clothes. They are hiding from the people in their own country.
But all have seen that they have not managed to hide from the Liberation Front.
No perpetrators of massacres can hide forever from the people and from our organisation. Sooner or later, information about them reaches the People's Liberation Front. There is no doubt that they always feel fear. Those who massacre, the death squads, those who decide to massacre and give the orders can neither hide themselves in "civilian" buses nor keep themselves safe behind walls. They cannot keep themselves beyond the reach of people's justice.

The gendarmerie are among those chiefly responsible for the December 19 massacre!
In the days December 19-22, 2000, 20 prisons were levelled to the ground with bulldozers and excavators and 28 prisoners massacred.
This massacre, this brutality was carried out under the guidance of the GENADARMERIE HIGH COMMAND.
EIGHT GENDARMERIE COMMANDO BATTALIONS and 8,335 soldiers in 37 units took part in this, the worst prison massacre in the history of Turkey.
In the operation at Bayrampasa Prison, in which six women were burned alive, injured and burned prisoners were sprayed with gunfire and 12 prisoners in all were killed, TWO BUSES OF GENDARMERIE SPECIAL TEAM MEMBERS AND 30 BUSES OF GENDARMERIE COMMMANDOS took part.
The gendarmerie carried out such a brutal attack on prisoners who were behind four prison walls that they ran out of bombs and had to be re-supplied by other units. It was precisely the commanders of these gendarmerie units whom we have targeted with our own bombs.

OUR TARGET IS THOSE WHO ARE POLITICALLY AND MILITARILY RESPONSIBLE FOR THE PAST THREE YEARS OF TYRANNY IN THE PRISONS!
==> The political parties who decided upon the massacre of December 19-22 and upon opening the F-Type prisons and are continuing isolation torture in the F-Type prisons;
==> Those inside the army, police and bureaucracy who direct the massacres and the isolation torture
==> The soldiers, police and prison guards who have taken part in the barbaric slaughter and the isolation torture, whether as trigger-pullers, torturers or perpetrators of the massacres.
==> Those who back the slaughter;
are all guilty and will atone for it.
The AKP government is continuing fascist policies in full harmony with the General Staff. They bear full responsibility for every death that has taken place since November 3 as well as for the use of barbaric isolation, and they are GUILTY!
END ISOLATION!
THOSE WHO DO NOT END ISOLATION WILL HAVE TO PAY THE PENALTY!
However many isolation prisons they build, however many fascist means of coercion and pressure they seek to use like introducing prison uniforms; the government and the whole world should know that we will not accept isolation and the cells!
Imperialism and its collaborators will not make our prisoners and revolutionary movement surrender. Neither the F-Types nor pressure to repent will make us deviate from our struggle for independence, democracy and socialism.
And again, everyone should know; no force in the world will stop us demanding a reckoning for the 107 martyrs.

DEVRIMCI HALK KURTULUS CEPHESI
(REVOLUTIONARY PEOPLE'S LIBERATION FRONT)
Sacrificial Units