Mass Protests Against Fascist Oppression in Turkey…

Mass Protests Against Fascist Oppression in Turkey

The political situation in Turkey is once again escalating. The fraudulent revocation of the university degree of Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, his subsequent arrest and suspension, as well as the imprisonment of numerous other CHP representatives, including the Mayor of Şişli, Resul Emrah Şahan, and the Mayor of Beylikdüzü, Mehmet Murat Çalık, represent an open challenge by the state against the people. The Governor of Istanbul effectively imposed a four-day state of emergency, followed by bans on demonstrations. It is also foreseeable that fascist trustees will be appointed to replace the arrested mayors.

The fact that the fascist chief regime does not hesitate to imprison democratically elected municipal administrators under false accusations and remove them from office is nothing new. In the past, numerous democratic mayors of the DEM Party and its predecessor, the HDP, were replaced by trustees. This fascist practice is part of the colonial policy in Northern Kurdistan but has long since expanded to the entire country. Now, it has affected a CHP politician, İmamoğlu, who defeated the AKP in the last municipal elections and was considered a potential presidential candidate for 2028.

The attacks on the CHP are a direct confrontation with the will of the people. However, they are also a sign of the weakness of the fascist regime, which seeks to secure its power through repression and manipulation. Over the last ten years, Turkey’s presidential government system has evolved into a comprehensive fascist rule. The parliament has been largely disempowered, the judiciary brought under the control of the fascist chief Erdoğan, independent media dismantled, and political opponents persecuted. The media are strictly controlled, and the judiciary is used as a weapon against any resistance. Particularly, the Kurdish freedom movement, revolutionary and socialist organizations, and progressive journalists have been subjected to massive fascist repression for years. Thousands of activists have been arrested, women’s and youth organizations criminalized, and the few remaining political rights systematically curtailed. Through these measures, the fascist chief Erdoğan has secured a monopoly on power that encompasses not only the executive but also the legislative and judicial branches.

Especially after the municipal election defeat in Istanbul in 2019, the fascist agitation against the bourgeois CHP intensified. For a long time, the CHP attempted to accommodate the fascist regime, avoiding open collaboration with the DEM Party and other progressive movements, preventing mass mobilizations, and relying solely on elections as a political solution. However, recent developments once again prove that the fascist regime cannot be abolished through elections. The few instances in which the appointment of trustees was delayed were solely due to the massive resistance of the people.

The CHP bears significant responsibility for the establishment of the fascist chief regime. For years, it has made compromises, thereby contributing to the stabilization and restructuring of the fascist system and even paving the way for the lifting of parliamentary immunity and the arrest of HDP deputies. However, this strategy has failed. Now the question arises as to whether it will continue to stand in the way of popular resistance and degrade the current mass outrage into a mere party rally, where any resistance against state violence is labeled as provocation. Ekrem İmamoğlu has announced that he will “resist everywhere”, a respectable stance. However, this resistance must be comprehensive, determined, and strong enough to counter the fascist chief regime with real power. Calls for strikes by militant labor unions and student occupations indicate the strong will for resistance within the mass movement.

Traditionally, the CHP distances itself from the self-organization of the masses. However, the growing antifascist anger within its own base is putting increasing pressure on the party leadership. The base must not only oppose any form of collaboration with the fascist regime within the CHP but also unite with other antifascist forces, including socialist movements and the Kurdish democratic national movement. A determined resistance from the base against all forms of fascist repression is crucial.

The anger of the people is growing, especially among young people and workers. Social and economic crises, increasing impoverishment, and fascist repression have pushed people to their limits. The government is intensifying its attacks out of fear of losing power. The arrest of İmamoğlu was the final straw. Despite assembly bans in various cities, people have been taking to the streets for days, even deep into the night. From the very first moments, the police employed massive violence: tear gas, batons, and mass arrests. The fascist chief Erdoğan defames the resistance as “street terror,” but the protests are not being quelled.

The youth, in particular, recognize that this regime offers no future prospects. Universities have become central sites of resistance. Students broke through police barriers, organized boycotts, and demonstrated their determination to resist the fascist state. The protests evoke memories of the Gezi uprising in 2013. The anger is not only directed at the arrest of İmamoğlu. People are taking to the streets because they reject the fascist presidential system. The struggle against trustees, mobilizations for March 8 and the Newroz festival, strikes and labor resistance, the determined struggle of the women’s movement, the mass protests of the Alevi people against genocide in Syria, as well as the wave of outrage triggered by fascist aggression across wide segments of society, all these developments are signs of a potential unified antifascist general resistance.

The streets will determine whether these protests transform into a comprehensive antifascist popular uprising. Resistance must not be confined to the western metropolises; it must also expand in Northern Kurdistan, where the Kurdish people, following the call of People’s Leader Abdullah Öcalan for peace and a democratic society, are entering a new phase of confrontation with the Turkish colonial state. When all the peoples of Turkey and Kurdistan resist united with their demands the fascist chief regime can be defeated.

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On March 8, we are on strike, in the streets, in action for freedom and equality!
We are on strike on March 8, in the streets, and in action against the “Year of the Family” attack of the fascist chief system!
This year, March 8 will be a symbol of the resistance of women and their determination to defeat the all-encompassing wave of attacks of the patriarchal fascist regime under the motto “Year of the Family” against the women’s liberation struggle.
The strong actions of women for freedom and equality have repeatedly struck the fascist chief regime for years. Legal and factual achievements narrowed the field of exploitation and oppression. It caused setbacks in its social influence in favor of the equality and freedom of women. By declaring the “Year of the Family,” the fascist ruling regime intends to reverse all this in 2025. The fascist politico-Islamic restoration of patriarchy aims to achieve lasting results by using violence against women, femicides, arrests, imprisonments, and even assassination attempts against pioneering women to maintain and strengthen its rule with the coercion of fascist patriarchal attacks and to deepen the slavery of women symbolized by the “acceptable woman.”
It aims to destroy or neutralize the women’s liberation movement, define the social and legal basis of the ruling family, take back the rights won by the women’s liberation struggle in the last quarter century, restore the legal foundations of patriarchy, and complete the steps to strengthen these foundations both in terms of social restoration and the significant setback of the women’s movement this year.
Under the title “Year of the Family,” an attack is being launched against all legal, factual, social, and political achievements of women’s freedom. We will not capitulate to this attack, but we will resist and win!
We are on strike on March 8, in the streets, and in action against the regime that turns poverty into an opportunity to strengthen patriarchy!
The fascist chief regime uses the misery and distress caused by its poverty and crisis policies for laborers, the working class, students, urban poverty, and peasants to increase exploitation. This poverty and destruction are used to exploit female labor under the most insecure, flexible, and cheapest conditions of capitalist exploitation, while strengthening the patriarchal repression and exploitation structure of family labor within the framework of the “chief-type family” of the ruling system. By promoting forms of domestic exploitation, the rights of women to daycare, equal pay for equal work, and the visibility and payment of care work are transformed into a social attack. This is done by pushing poor female workers and women to accept a patriarchal society within the framework of the ruling family by incentivizing marriage and children.
We will never give up the fight for equal pay for equal work, for the recognition of women’s work in the home, in factories, in workshops, and offices, and for the right to equal participation in social life from work to leisure!
We will take up the fight for an equal and free life against the “chief-type family”!
With the chief-type family, the fascist ruling regime seeks to strengthen the exploitation of female labor and bodies by men and patriarchal capital under male guardianship.
It aims to seize the legal and factual achievements of women in the family and society.
The steps of women toward freedom and equality in work, education, culture, art, and leisure, which align with the freedoms women have gained in social consciousness, culture, and lifestyle, will be deliberately suppressed. The goal is to weaken the consciousness of democracy and democratic culture and replace these values with reactionism, racism, utilitarianism, and the objectification of human relations, as well as consumerism and the destruction of nature.
Starting with the family, the ideological transformation of fascist politico-Islamic patriarchy aims to dominate society as a whole and strengthen its ideological hegemony over it. The goal is to exploit the body and labor of women through childbirth and caregiving, while turning the army of workers and the unemployed, as well as occupying armies, into cannon fodder and consumable material for an aggressive, colonialist, and expansionist regional policy.
We are on strike on March 8, in the streets, and in action in solidarity with the resistance of women workers!
The robbery of the working class’s rights is increasing. New walls are being built against organization and unionizing. The working and living conditions of workers are worsening. These attacks hit women workers and their right to work the hardest. The strikes and resistance of women workers in various cities are also the defense of women’s right and will to participate in social life. The achievements of the struggles of women workers are socializing positions won in the name of all women. The fight for equal pay for equal work is the fight for the abolition of domestic slavery, for the essential economic foundation of women’s equal participation in social life.
We will strengthen the fight for equal pay for equal work, for March 8 as a paid holiday, and for solidarity with the resistance of women workers.
We will strengthen the fight for equal pay for equal work and for the introduction of March 8 as a paid holiday, as well as solidarity with the strikes of women workers. We will walk the path of women’s strikes, where women fight for their work at home, in factories, and in all areas of social life!
On March 8, we are on strike, in the streets, and in action against heterosexist attacks!
The sharpest point of sexist attacks by the colonial-fascist chief regime is heterosexist aggression. The dismantling of the LGBTI+ movement and the destruction of the visible LGBTI+ presence in society are among the top goals of the “Year of the Family.” The existence and struggle of LGBTI+ people are made the justification for all sexist attacks. The fight against sexist oppression is a united fight! We will strengthen the solidarity and cooperation between the women’s movement and the LGBTI+ movement in the resistance against the sexist system!
On March 8, we are on strike, in the streets, and in action against arrests, imprisonments, and other forms of fascist police terror aimed at women and the women’s movement!
Revolutionary female prisoners, who have had the courage to take leadership in the revolutionary and socialist struggle in countless political fields, the pioneers of the united struggle, the co-chairs arrested during the mayoral coups, revolutionary, socialist, feminist women arrested for their political actions, as well as women who have defended themselves against male violence through self-defense, are our pride.
The fight for women’s liberation continues not only in the streets, in actions, in the parliament, in rural areas, and in cities, but also in prisons. For freedom and equality, for revolution and socialism, we will strengthen solidarity with the imprisoned women and intensify the fight for the freedom of female prisoners!
On March 8, we are on strike, in the streets, and in action against imperialist, colonialist wars and occupations!
The unjust wars of the patriarchal capitalist, reactionary, occupying, and fascist systems are the means to strengthen, nourish, and maintain the continuity of patriarchal regimes. It is in the geographies of occupation, rape, and patriarchal attacks where attempts are made to transform women’s bodies into booty, where women’s sexuality is commodified the most, and where women’s bodies are most enslaved. Unjust wars lead to women becoming breeding machines for militarism, to the abuse of abortion and birth rights, to the intensification of family and domestic slavery policies, and to the escalation of patriarchal social oppression.
From Kurdistan to Palestine, from Syria to Yemen, from Lebanon to Ukraine, we will raise the rebellion of women against imperialist and colonialist wars and the will of women in the revolutionary struggle!
On March 8, we are on strike, in the streets, and in action to defend the achievements of the Rojava revolution and to support the national democratic demands of Kurdish women!
The Rojava Revolution continues to be under the threat of “either surrender or perish.” Military attacks on Rojava and the threat of a full-scale assault persist. The Rojava revolution, also known as the women’s revolution, continues to be a beacon of hope amid the most aggressive, oppressive, colonialist, and fascist regimes in the Middle East, regimes that are deeply rooted in patriarchy, and states of uncontrolled bourgeois male supremacy.
We will defend the revolution in Rojava, where hundreds of fighters have sacrificed their lives for the ideals of national liberation, freedom, and women’s equality, where the women’s army and women’s self-defense have become global symbols, and where the political achievements of women, particularly the systems of co-presidency and co-organization, have grown and flourished, against all attacks!
We will support the struggle of Kurdish women in Rojava, Bakur, Rojhilat, and Bashur for their national democratic demands; we will strengthen the socialist patriotic war of women!
Long live the women’s liberation struggle!
Strike, rebellion, resistance against patriarchy!
Long live March 8! Long live the women’s revolution! Long live socialism!

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Bijî Newroz, Bijî Yekîtiya Komarên Gel, Bijî Sosyalîzm!
Let us fight and win united against denial, colonialism, racism, and fascism!
Long live Newroz, long live the Union of Peoples’ Republics, long live socialism!
We celebrate Newroz 2025 in the midst of a unique historical process. The PKK is attempting to sign a peace agreement with the fascist regime, which, under pressure from regional developments, is forced to knock on the door of the cell where it has held Abdullah Öcalan in isolation for 26 years. The denying colonialism, which could not defeat the PKK or stifle the Rojava Revolution despite all its efforts, imposes an agreement on the Kurdish people using a racist-colonial language that offers no national democratic rights. It has the arrogance to give instructions on what the PKK and the national democratic movement should do not only in Northern Kurdistan but also in all four parts of Kurdistan.
While it crowns the inhuman Daesh leader Ahmed al-Sharaa and his fascist political-Islamic government, which is hostile to peoples, religious communities, women’s freedom, equality, and democracy, it continues to call the popular democratic administration in Rojava, which recognizes full equality of languages and faiths and prioritizes women’s freedom, “terrorists.” Although the PKK has declared a ceasefire, the colonial war continues and is waged with all military means and techniques, especially heavy artillery.
The fascist regime has extended its arrest terror in Bakurê Kurdistan and Turkey to writers who advocate for the Kurdish language. It issues arrest warrants for workers, women, youth, institutions, organizations, parties, as well as press and media workers who demand democratic rights and freedoms and who raise objections against the palace dictatorship, racist denial, colonialism, fascist state terror, patriarchy, injustices, poverty, unemployment, and ecological destruction. Some fascist trials are even based on justifications from fifteen years ago.
Our peoples say, based on their historical experiences: “There were many tricks in the Ottoman Empire.” The same applies to the history of the Republic. The events since the Koçgiri uprising, which became necessary after the breaking of the promise to grant autonomy to the Kurdish people in the newly founded state, within the framework of the Turkish-Kurdish alliance against imperialist occupation, are still vivid in memory.
Tricks, traps, deceptions, massacres, hidden graves, treachery like the Zilan massacre, which a year later was declared the day of the Massacre/Celebration, belong to the reality of inhumane governments during the Republican era. The only guarantee is to stay vigilant, strengthen unity, organization, and struggle, and never cast a shadow on the legitimacy of the right to self-defense.
As we, an unstoppable people’s stream, march to Newroz squares with calls for equality for the peoples, freedom for women, justice for the oppressed, not slavery but just, dignified, democratic peace, we raise the following demands and slogans in Bakurê Kurdistan and Turkey:
• The state must declare an immediate ceasefire!
• Freedom for Abdullah Öcalan and all political prisoners!
• Stop the colonialist attacks!
• End the occupation of Rojava and Başûr!
• The Kurdish national existence and the right to education in the mother tongue must be constitutionally and legally recognized.
• For the recognition of the right to democratic autonomy.
• Abolish the fascist, racist law called the Anti-Terror Law.
Let us raise the flag in the squares of Rojava and Syria demanding a form of state and governance based on the full equality of the Arab and Kurdish peoples and the recognition of all democratic rights of Assyrian, Chaldean, Armenian, Druze, Turkmen, Circassian, Yazidi, and Alawite national communities and faiths.
In Europe let us defend just, dignified, and democratic peace conditions, the equality of peoples, the freedom of Kurdistan, the release of Abdullah Öcalan and all political prisoners. Let us demand an end to the colonial wars, the occupation of Rojava and Başûr, the constitutionally recognized right of the Kurdish people to national existence and education in their mother tongue. Let us flood the squares with the demand for the right to democratic autonomy, from young to old, regardless of work, exhaustion, or illness. Let us make Newroz a day of preparation for the new resistance against the denying colonial fascist enemy, showing that we will face its traps and deceptions head-on.
As the peoples of the region in Kurdistan, Turkey, Syria, Iraq, and Iran, let us become a united fist and barricade against denial, colonialism, racism, fascist regimes, chauvinist political-Islamist governments, patriarchy, exploitation, and poverty. Let us raise the banner of freedom and the united struggle of the peoples!
March 17, 2025
MLKP Central Committee

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Long Live Newroz, Long Live Free Kurdistan!
We wish our Kurdish people and the peoples of the Middle East, who have been fighting for years against oppression, fascism and all forms of denial and annihilation, a happy Newroz.
We wish a happy Newroz celebration to all Armenian, Assyrian, Aramaic, Chaldean, Turkmen, Circassian, Druze, Alawite and Christian laborers, workers and oppressed who are resisting massacres, tyranny, annihilation and exploitation in Kurdistan and the entire Middle East.
Happy Newroz to the Kurdish women of Rojava who unite the freedom fire of the blacksmith Kawa with the women’s revolution and resist and fight against the reactionary, fascist, despotic and jihadist patriarchal states and their misogynist policies. Women from all nations and faiths carry the fire of freedom from country to country.
Happy Newroz to the steadfast bearers of the freedom fire, the youth from the mountains, plains, squares, factories, universities, suburbs, barricades and war positions, the Kurdish, Turkish, Syrian and all the youth of the Middle East.
Our Kurdistan and the entire Middle East region have been attacked, burned and destroyed by colonialists and occupiers for decades. Our people have been subjected to genocide with massacres and annihilations. The occupying and genocidal fascist Turkish colonial state, together with the imperialists, seeks to erase the will for freedom and the achievements of our people in every part of Kurdistan.
The occupying, fascist Turkish colonial state does not fulfill the national demands of our people for freedom and a status. It seeks to liquidate the essence of our resistance, but it will not succeed. While trying to crush us, it is itself on the brink of collapse. The fascist regime is forced to hold talks with the Kurdish people’s leader Abdullah Öcalan in the Imralı prison due to our persistent, determined, and self-sacrificing resistance.
Our party, the MLKP, has declared: “We maintain our unwavering position that the Kurdish people’s right to national freedom, equality, and national unity is indispensable, and we declare our support for the national democratic demands raised by the ‘Call for Peace and a Democratic Society’.” As MLKP Kurdistan, we reaffirm that we will implement these perspectives within our socialist patriotic line. We call on the oppressed millions of all peoples and faiths in our region to strengthen their united resistance against the fascist colonial regime.
While the imperialists and the fascist colonial states of our region, particularly the Turkish state and Israel, massively advanced their military armament, they seek to erase the armed struggles of the oppressed peoples from history. Organized, armed, and resistant peoples have always been the greatest fear of capitalist imperialists. They will continue to be.
Capitalist imperialism is on the path to resolving its structural crisis through a world war. In the First World War of the 20th century, the level of organization and national consciousness of the Kurds was not enough to establish Kurdistan. But in a time when imperialist contradictions and conflicts are at a new peak and the map of the Middle East is being redrawn, the Kurds entered this period with a new consciousness, new organization, and wartime experience. Under the current global and regional conditions, they have all the possibilities to turn their national and democratic collective rights into actual status. This level, achieved through great struggles and sacrifices, has a historical character.
In the four parts of Kurdistan, our people have gained their democratic national rights in different ways and forms. These achievements lay the foundation for the establishment of an independent, united, and free Kurdistan. Our people are organized, our people are conscious, our people know what they want. Our people have reached a level in Rojava and realized the women’s revolution. In Başûr and Rojhilat, they have achieved more national awareness and organization than ever before. In Bakûr, an unrelenting struggle is being waged. Our people crown the banner of resistance from the blacksmith Kawa with freedom. Mazlum Abdi, the General Commander of the SDF, sits at the table with Ahmed al-Sharaa, behind him stands the will of the oppressed and denied peoples. Behind al-Sharaa, however, stand the murderers of the Yazidis, Kurds, and Alevis. They are responsible for the massacre of thousands of Alawites in Latakia, Tartus, Hama, and Homs. These crimes will never be forgotten. They will continue to live on in anger and the vow for revenge.
The Zionist state of Israel, which claims to extend a hand to the Druze and Kurds, has started to attack Gaza again. The Netanyahu government, which has murdered thousands of Palestinians, can never be a friend of the oppressed peoples. We feel the pain of the Palestinian people deeply.
The fascist Turkish state and its gangs continue to attack Kurdish areas such as Tishrin, Qaraqozax, Kobanê, Zap, Xakurke, and Metina, with the aim of annihilating the Kurds. The Turkish state’s policy in Bakurê Kurdistan and Turkey, which aims at political liquidation and submission, has no end.
Imperialist capitalism seeks to exploit and divide the values of the world again and in a new form. Every part of the world has become a battlefield for the imperialists and their collaborators. Labor, women, nature, everything is exploited in the most brutal ways. Everything human is shattered and destroyed by all means and weapons. The Middle East and Kurdistan are particularly hard-hit by these attacks. Despite all the repression, violence, and exploitation by the imperialist capitalists and their collaborators, they have not succeeded in defeating and liquidating the oppressed peoples, women, and workers. Look at Kurdistan and look at Palestine. Capitalism is unable to solve its existential crises, neither in the world nor in the Middle East or Kurdistan. These class, national, and gender contradictions cannot simply be denied or swept under the rug. They can only be truly solved under the conditions of socialist construction, which destroys the capitalist imperialist system.
As MLKP Kurdistan, we will continue to defend all the achievements of the Rojava revolution and fight for a democratic Syria. In Bakurê Kurdistan, we will continue to fight for just, dignified, democratic peace and a united revolution. We will stand with the “Jin, Jîyan, Azadî” uprising that has reached the whole world from Rojhilat.
For Newroz 2025, we call on our Kurdish, Turkish, Arabic, Persian, Aramaic, Assyrian, Armenian, Chaldean, Circassian people, and our peoples from the Alawite, Yazidi, Druze, Muslim, and Christian communities in Kurdistan, Turkey, Syria, and the Middle East to unite in the struggle to annihilate the colonial and occupying mentality, strengthen their self-defense, and expand the resistance.
For Newroz 2025, we call on the peoples of the Middle East, from Palestine to Kurdistan, to a united resistance to fight for the freedom of the oppressed millions.
We salute all those who resist capitalism, colonialism, occupation, and patriarchy, fight, and refuse to submit!
Long Live Newroz! Long Live Socialism!
Long Live Just, Dignified, and Democratic Peace!
Long Live the Equal, Free, and Voluntary Union of Peoples!

Long Live Free Kurdistan!
March 19, 2025
Marxist-Leninist Communist Party/Kurdistan (MLKP Kurdistan)