“We should be the ones who stare at the light, and to show the light to others. If we can not do anything, at least we should be a candle.”
Nuriye Gülmen was a research assistant at Selçuk University, Konya, Turkey. She is just one of the 7,915 university lecturers/workers who were fired from their jobs overnight by a decree-law issued under the state of emergency declared on 21 July 2016 by the fascist AKP government.
She has not retreated to her corner like all other university lecturers who have been thrown out of their jobs. She began to protest in front of Human Rights Monument, Yüksel Avenue, Ankara on 9 November 2016, holding a piece of cardboard on which were written the words, “I have been dismissed, I want my job back!”.
She has resisted from the first day she was dismissed from her job until today. She was arrested by the police dozens of times, she was imprisoned based on false evidence. She went on a hunger strike that lasted 324 days. She shook the state with her resistance and bring people of Turkey together.
To punish Nuriye Gülmen for her relentless resistance, the fascist AKP government used “digital evidence” and the testimonies of police informants, informers, and collaborators, and on 22 August 2020, she was imprisoned(second time) under a court case that from the start became a conspiracy against her.
While Gülmen was in custody, news appeared in the bourgeois media that she was an ‘ head of a terrorist organization’ and that she was mentioned in this organization’s archive. This allegation circulated in the press for 5 days, and it was without any evidence and material ground.
The accusations in the indictment consist only of the demonstrations Nuriye Gülmen participated in, her presence in İdil Cultural Center(*) and her previous hunger strike.
The Istanbul 28th High Criminal Court rejected the first indictment as ‘there is no evidence in this case’, this rejection was lifted with the objection of a prosecutor. Later, the digital evidence about Nuriye Gülmen was added to the indictment.
The allegations against Nuriye Gülmen in this so-called digital evidence have never been proven, and even the material has not been subjected to any technical examination. Her lawyer Oğuzhan Topalkara states that they never the receive the original evidence and their request for a copy was denied.
Moreover, although the alleged seizure date of this digital investigation in the report is 14 October 2020, there were records that the content of the digital files were changed on 13 October 2020, which is 1 day before the operation, which it was seized.
It was obvious that the ‘technical report’ which was presented to us is a farce. There is an expert report that this digital material is not true and forged. The court did not consider it necessary to investigate the report further.
Even though, people of Turkey stands in solidarity with Nuriye Gülmen against these accusations. The so-called leftist worker unions abandoned her. While she was in the women’s prison, in the Silivri prison complex, near Istanbul, Nuriye Gülmen was expelled as a member of the Education and Science Workers’ Union (Eğitim-Sen in Turkish) part of the Confederation of Public Employees’ Unions in Turkey (abbreviated as KESK in Turkish). This happened on the 11th. Congress of the trade union which was held at the end of November 2020, and practically at that time Nuriye Gülmen could not defend herself from the false allegations made against her by a large number of the trade unionists.
The leaders of the second-largest workers’ union – DİSK, the Confederation of Progressive Workers’ Unions, instead of supporting Nuriye Gülmen and the other workers which were thrown out of their jobs, chose to become collaborators of the fascist government and shook hands with the Turkish Minister of the Interior, Süleyman Soylu, who is known for his hatred against the workers and crimes against the people of Turkey.
Neither of Turkey’s two major trade union confederations, DİSK and KESK, uniting hundreds of workers and civil servants, defended the imprisoned Nuriye Gülmen and the other workers which were thrown out of their jobs.
The ongoing lawsuit against Nuriye Gülmen has striking similarities with other historical cases; the lawsuits against George Dimitrov, Julius and Ethel Rosenberg, Nicola Sacco and Bartolomeo Vanzetti, and the case against the participants in the Haymarket riot in Chicago in 1886. History proved that these cases are politically motivated and initiated by conspirator bourgeois. The heroes of working class are innocent and history will prove that Nuriye Gülmen is innocent. Already, she is a working class hero.
Nuriye Gülmen is still in prison. The illegitimate fascist AKP government is still holding Nuriye as a hostage in Silivri prison. Nuriye Gülmen and the resistance of the workers on Yüksel Avenue are historically and politically right and legitimate(**).
The fascist AKP government is the enemy of the workers!
We demand the release of Nuriye Gülmen! The permanent detention imposed on her should be lifted!
sign the petition to demand freedom for Nuriye Gülmen
(*) Idil Cultural Center is the cultural center of Grup Yorum located in Istanbul, Turkey. Named after artist Ayçe Idil Erkmen, a martyr of ’96 hunger strike, the place serves a studio for Grup Yorum. Nuriye Gülmen was doing a interview with members of Grup Yorum when police raided the place and arrested her.
(**) some parts of this translation first appeared in New Solution Magazine.