The 23 communist prisoners who had been imprisoned after attacks and raids on our party and revolutionary socialist organisations on September, 8-12 2006 were taken to court on 5-6 June 2008 for the third time. At this hearing at the 10th Heavy Penalty Court of Besiktas, Istanbul, the prisoners started to hold their defence speeches. At the end of the hearing 3 prisoners were released. The date for the next hearing has been set for October 24, 2008. The 10 September Prisoners declared in their defence speeches that they will continue to raise their socialist ideas and convicted the Turkish bourgeois state and the constitutional system. In his speech, Seyfi Polat, one of the communist prisoners, defended our party MLCP and all its peaceful and violent actions and activities. Below is the shortened version of Seyfi Polat's defence speech.
The answer to the indictment
Public Prosecutor
of the Republic in Istanbul Ali Cengiz Haciosmanoglu's indictment is
292 pages long, and with all its spirit, it resembles the stenographic
notes of the political police. There is no doubt that being the
stenographer of the political police whose name and history have become
identical to damned crimes such as torture, rape, killing through
torture, extra-judicial executions, forced disappearances and all
crimes against humanity, does not bring honour to anyone, on the
contrary, it leads him to shame. The 292 pages long accusation by
the public prosecutor proves his alienation from the country he lives
in, from the workers, peasants and labourers who produce everything
consumed in this country, as well as from the situation and the pain
our people are facing. This alienation makes the public prosecutor who
prepared the indictment more royalist than the king in defending the
yoke of the imperialists and, first of all, of the US imperialism, the
exploitation and plundering of the collaborating capital
oligarchy, and the injustices and brutality of the fascist
regime, while he is evaluating the activities and actions of our party.
Demagogy of terrorism, violence of the oppressors and the oppressed
Whenever it is inevitable to mention the name of the MLCP in the indictment prepared in the name of the ruling forces of the capitalist exploitation and robbery system, of the fascist oppression and tyranny regime and their imperialist masters, the public prosecutor Haciosmanoglu's first sentence is "the armed terror organisation called MLCP"! The ideologists of the imperialist bourgeoisie and leading political spokesmen point out that especially during the period since the 1990ies with the term "terror" they have referred to "violence without any aim" and "violence for the sake of violence". However, it is not a mystery that they have been trying to label as "terrorist organisations" all parties, groups and guerrilla forces who had to make use of the means of violence in the struggle with a political-social program aiming at the liberation of the working class and the oppressed or who fought against the imperialist occupiers with arms in their hands. According to them, even states who do not bow to the US imperialism, such as Cuba, for example, are "terrorists"! If you ask these bourgeois demagogues, they will say that the oppressed and exploited workers, labourers convicted to poverty and misery, the people under imperialist yoke and the nations living under the colonial slavery yoke do not have the right to put an end to this situation. At the most, they can demand partial changes within the system as allowed. However, if they are not content with this permission and join the struggle for political or national freedom or social revolution and have to make use of revolutionary violence in this struggle against imperialist bourgeois violence, they are defined as "terrorists" and their political struggle "terrorism"! There is no doubt that this is an absurd and dirty lie. It is cheap demagogy.
The state in a society with classes means the use of violence organised for the profits of the ruling class. Institutions, such as the army, police organisation, judicial system, the courts, the prisons and bureaucracy are means of the violence organised by the ruling class. The apparatus called the state is not an occurrence of itself but the sum of all of the above. All states of the exploiters consider the monopoly of violence or force as the requirement for the state’s existence, of state hegemony and authority, and want to have it in their hands. Through laws, they make it officially legitimate and possessing a legal identity. In this sense, the state has the monopoly on using violence. For this reason, any violence by the oppressed, any attack on the state hegemony, apart from what the ruling classes use by the means of the state, does not harmonise with the existence of the state and is considered as "terror" and "terrorism", which is the most popular expression of today.
The fascist bourgeois convictions of the indictment cannot overshadow the legitimacy of the MLCP. The indictment which does not define the MLCP as a party rejecting the bourgeois system and fascist regime and wanting to overthrow them, but as an "armed terror organisation", has no validity. Our party gets its legitimacy from the struggle for the liberation of the working class and oppressed from exploitation and political tyranny. Not considering legitimate the longings, profits and demands of the working class, labourers of the cities and labouring peasantry belonging to their class, social, national and gender identity, who are the creators of all wealth produced on this soil and present the great majority of the population, could only be the expression of the political dominance of the exploitation and of a bunch of parasites on our people. But this is exactly what is not legitimate in the eyes of labouring manhood. And can it be said that anything legal is always legitimate? Therefore, anything illegal can't be labelled as "illegitimate".
The MLCP is an illegal, but a thoroughly legitimate revolutionary party. No, it was not founded according to the laws of the system, and it did not make itself fit into the borders and moulds of these reactionary-fascist laws. For this reason, the defenders of the systems of exploitation and oppression can persecute the party in the name of the ruling forces, but leaving aside their ability to put an end to the legitimacy of our party, they will not manage to overshadow it even a little bit. A party can be legal or illegal. The criterion for being a party is not legality, but some objective criteria. Every party has a program, a statute/internal functioning, cadres and organs, members, criteria/rules of membership, strategy, basic tactics and approaches and current tactics. Parties are organisations that have a united will and action. The MLCP has all these characteristics. With its uninterrupted, consistent and active political work, with its organisation that spread in Turkey and up to Northern Kurdistan, its steadily working organisations and organs, its rules, publications, its congresses and conferences, our party is among the respected parties fighting for freedom and socialism.
The illegality of the MLCP and its organisation on a clandestine basis are based not on a fetish, but on the need to ensure the freedom of struggle for the emancipation of the working class from being wage slaves and the oppressed from the political yoke and injustice. If our party were not illegal and organised on a clandestine basis, capital and fascism would not have any difficulties in making the MLCP inactive - if the party does not deviate from its program, strategy and political line - and annihilate it physically by using violence, provocation and conspiracy, such as it is being done to all active revolutionary parties fighting against the ruling power. What prevents them from reaching this dirty aim are illegality and clandestine action. Nevertheless, for years they have been making use of all the methods of tyranny and violence against our party, such as seen in the example of Mustafa Suphi, the revolutionary movement of '71 and its leaders on behalf of it and since then until now, and they have committed crimes against humanity. In vain! The MLCP will continue to be illegal and clandestine in order to protect its freedom of struggle against the wage slavery system, exploitation, social and national injustices, fascism and imperialism.
For the MLCP, Marxism-Leninism is the basis. Marxism-Leninism is not a dogma or a pile of frozen dead formulations, but a scientific guide. For this reason, the MLCP puts the historical and dialectical materialist method before anything. It acts with the consciousness that otherwise one cannot be a Marxist and give Marxist-Leninist answers to questions and problems of the period the world and society are living in.
With the victory of the revolution, the MLCP aims at starting the process of socialization of the means of production, extinguishing any kind of exploitation of and domination of human by human, as well as the bourgeois ideologists' influences, dependent on the consciousness, will and preparedness of the working class, as well as on the determination and success of the working class to lead the poor in the cities and the countryside. In other words, the MLCP aims at starting the period of socialism. Our party's final aim is, depending on the socialist achievements in the world and on the conditions of abundance created by using all science and technology for society, to achieve a world with an unlimited brotherhood of humanity, where the enslaving subordination of the individual to the division of labour is over, the antithesis between mental and physical labour, between city and countryside, has vanished, where culture becomes the common property of everyone, labour has become a delight and life's prime want, where people do not rule people but things, where total freedom is won for humanity, where the classes, the state and national fences do not exist anymore. Scientific name for this is the communist society.
You can kill the militants of the MLCP, you can imprison them and weaken their activities for some time at a particular level, but you cannot stop the MLCP which is the flag of freedom and socialism, of the demands, longings and dreams of the working class and the oppressed, which stands against capitalist exploitation, fascism, the yoke of denial and colonization, the patriarchal chains on the women, social injustices and the imperialist yoke.
The ruling forces of the exploiting system and fascist regime behind the indictment and their imperialist masters continue dreaming about the MLCP’s nightmares. The laws of class struggle continue to function. The struggle goes on. The victory will be with those who raise the flag of freedom, justice and equality for the people! The working class and the oppressed will win!
Long live the workers' and oppressed peoples' struggle for freedom!
Long live the equality and brotherhood of the Turkish and Kurdish people!
Down with the capitalist exploiters and the fascist tyrants! Down with imperialists!
Long live the revolution!
For the victory of the revolution, long live the MLCP!
June 5, 2008
SEYFI POLAT
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