Statement by the TKP/ML CC-PB for the Martyrs
We hereby share a statement issued by the Central Committee of the Political Bureau of the Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist (TKP/ML CC-PB).
TKP/ML CC-PB : THOSE WHO HAVE BECOME IMMORTAL IN THE STRUGGLE FOR COMMUNISM AND REVOLUTION ARE THE PULSE OF A FREE LIFE!
Our Working People of Turkish, Kurdish and Various Nationalities;
Death is the physical end of a life. For humans, life refers to the period between birth and death. Humans, by nature, are social beings; what gives their life meaning is their positioning within social relations. Human conscious activity, shaped on the basis of equality, sharing, and justice with primitive-communal society, has been subjected to alienation from its own nature with the emergence of class societies. The ruling classes today impose life as an individual competition and death as a silent end.
This attack on human sociality has evolved into a process in which individuality is glorified and life is attempted to be reduced to an individual purpose. The ruling classes have glorified this individualistic understanding of life not for humans and nature, but for the continuation of their own domination and exploitative system. For them, human life has always been a tool that adds wealth to their riches. In every section of class societies, a handful of rulers have mortgaged the lives of the vast masses for their own interests. The vast masses either live for the pleasures and wealth of the ruling classes, or death—presented as a “sacred” end—is turned into a tool of threat in the form of a monument of fear.
However, human nature is based not on humans serving humans, but on serving society. Equality, justice, and sharing have been shaped on this foundation; these values have become a motto of rebellion against imposed individuality. The ruling classes, as a result of the individualistic understanding of life they impose, enforce death as an “end”; whereas, within the struggle for social life, death has gained meaning as the herald of a new life. The difference between “deaths as light as a bird’s feather” and “deaths as heavy as the Tay Mountain” becomes evident here. As Deniz Gezmiş put it: “Humans are born, grow up, live, and die. What matters is not living long, but being able to do much during the time one lives.”
The death imposed by the ruling classes as an “end” gains its meaning in being defined, for revolutionaries, as the germination of a new life. In the struggle waged for humanity’s march toward its own essence—a system free of exploitation, equal, free, and governed by sharing—communists and revolutionaries have become seeds fallen into the soil not only through their struggle, but also through their deaths. Their death is not the victory of darkness in a system of exploitation and oppression; it is the heartbeat of the future. Because every fallen comrade gives birth to a new consciousness, every mourning turns into organized rage. The pulse of a free and equal world beats through this dialectic. Death is overcome through struggle; life gains meaning through resistance.
Our people, Comrades;
In the process we are going through, inequality and injustice are deepening further, and the wheel of exploitation is being tightened more with each passing day. The world is being made increasingly unlivable for the sake of the interests of a handful of rabid minorities. In our time, perhaps the greatest accumulation of wealth in world history is taking place; yet while this wealth fills the coffers of a small minority, hunger, poverty, and misery grow and deepen. In this age where abundance enlarges misery, life has been reduced to a routine in which the ruling classes indulge in pleasure and luxury, while the broad masses carry on life at the brink of death.
The contradiction is not only between the oppressors and the oppressed; it also continues among the ruling classes. An endless struggle for hegemony takes place among imperialists to gain control over the accumulated wealth. Especially, local-scale wars of hegemony and invasions carried out over energy resources not only expand the wheel of exploitation but also increase massacres. As the struggle for hegemony deepens, the nature of wars changes, and the possibility of a third imperialist world war is being spoken of more loudly following regional conflicts. In this process, stretching from the Middle East to the Pacific, from Latin America to Africa, both human life and nature—the fundamental basis of life—are under great threat.
Despite the accumulation of wealth, the deepening crisis of the imperialist-capitalist system intensifies the contradictions among imperialists; and as these contradictions grow, so too do the intensity and destructiveness of conflicts. While this situation serves as a tool of hegemonic struggle for the ruling classes, for the oppressed it means blood, tears, massacres, poverty, and hunger.
This crisis, while exposing the dynamics of struggle on the side of the oppressed, also sharpens the existing contradictions. Although still weak and unorganized, the anger and resistance of the oppressed are developing. In this process, the most advanced positions are the resistances shaped through armed struggle and the organized forces formed by the masses rallying around these resistances.
These forces pose a serious threat to the power of the ruling classes. Despite their own internal contradictions, the imperialists, along with their local collaborators and lackeys, develop joint aggressions against this threat. The rulers, who attack even the smallest social opposition with ferocity, act even more recklessly when it comes to armed resistances, carrying out both direct assaults and purges simultaneously.
The atacks, ranging from Gaza to the national armed resistance forces in Syrian Kurdistan, and including the Marxist-Leninist-Maoist movements waging people’s war, stem from the political-military missions of these armed resistances: organizing the masses and undermining the power of the ruling classes. Weapons are powerful tools for the winning of rights and for the protection and expansion of hard‑won gains. Against the rulers who seek to shape the world through the power of arms, it is a historical necessity to expand the struggle from the perspective that “a people without an army has nothing.” In Palestine, the greatest obstacle faced against decades of attacks by Israeli Zionism has been the armed resistance of the Palestinian people. In Kobane, it was also armed resistance that halted ISIS reactionism and secured Kurdish national gains.
Today,imperialist attacks targeting the armed struggle in Gaza and Syrian Kurdistan are being carried out comprehensively through lackeys and collaborators. The resistances, fueled by solidarity actions developing around the world, are building strong barricades against reactionism. Against the people’s war being waged in India under Maoist leadership, comprehensive attacks are being carried out under the name “Kagar.” Across all these fronts of resistance, the people continue the struggle with the aim of repelling the attacks and achieving victory by rallying around the armed resistance forces.
Comrades;
The struggle against imperialists and their lackeys continues across different arenas and through various means. This struggle is carried out at a heavy cost. The greatest of these costs are the sacrifices of the revolutionaries and communists who dedicate their lives to the cause of humanity’s liberation. From mountain peaks to barricades, from factories to universities; from peasants defending nature to women whose labor is denied, in all fields of resistance, as in the past, these sacrifices continue to illuminate our path today. Their names live not only on gravestones but in every field where the struggle continues. For those who became immortal for the sake of the revolution were not buried in the soil—they became the struggle itself. They are reborn every morning in the redness of the sun, in every step taken on mountain peaks, in every strike organized in workers’ strongholds. Those who achieved immortality in the struggle for revolution and communism are not footnotes of history; they are the pulse of the struggle.
They took defeat as their teacher and shattered surrender. They walked knowing that those who struggle do not always win, but that the victors inevitably emerge from among those who struggle. They carried hope in their hearts, for they knew that when hope is lost, everything collapses. Understanding that it is not losing but giving up that constitutes defeat, they positioned themselves accordingly and left this consciousness as a legacy for us.
Comrades;
In these days, when poverty, misery, hunger, and massacres are deepening, there is no path other than struggle. To hold firmly to this struggle, to transform it into an organized force, and to magnify the fears of the ruling classes is a historical responsibility. The struggle for the Democratic People’s Revolution, socialism, and communism is humanity’s only path to liberation.
Our Party, at its 1st Conference held in 1978, declared the last week of January as the “Week of Remembrance for Party and Revolutionary Martyrs.” January is the month in which Comrade Lenin, one of the masters of the International Proletariat, the German Communist leaders Karl Liebknecht and Rosa Luxemburg, the TKP leaders Mustafa Suphi and 14 comrades, who were treacherously murdered in the Black Sea, as well as our Party member and the first commander of our People’s Army Ali Haydar Yıldız and our first female martyr Meral Yakar, became immortal.
The communist leader İbrahim Kaypakkaya, during the last week of January, was captured wounded in a clash with the enemy. Enduring months of torture without revealing a single secret, he became immortal on May 18, 1973, leaving the party he founded as a legacy to his successors.
In light of this decision, as we commemorate all the martyrs of communism and the revolution, let us also take up their will and consciousness.
Let us walk in the light of the scientific ideology of the immortal masters of the International Proletariat—Marx, Engels, Lenin, Stalin, and Comrade Mao.
From İbrahim to Mehmet, from Ali Haydar Yıldız to Cumhur Sinan Oktulmuş, and from Meral Yakar to Gökçe Kurban, let us follow in the footsteps of our comrades whom we have sent to immortality while struggling in the ranks of the Proletarian Party.
Let us walk armed with the internationalist spirit of Comrades Charu Mazumdar, Ho Chi Minh, Clara Zetkin, Chairman Gonzalo, Rosa Luxemburg, Basavaraj, and Hidma.
Let us walk armed with the revolutionary legacy of Deniz, Mahir, Mazlum, and Sabo.
Let us march forward with the fighting spirit of militants whose names are countless and have become immortal in the struggle for communism and revolution.
Let us march forward, firmly grasping the red flag and the banner of People’s War left to us by our immortals, filling the void they have left behind, and advance against feudalism, fascism, imperialism, and all forms of reaction. Let us march so that we may tear down their paper fortresses.
– Glory to Our Immortals in the Struggle for Communism and Revolution!
– Our Immortals Are the Guiding Star of the Struggle for Communism and Revolution!
– Either Our Weapons Will Fall Silent, or They Will Continue to Live!
– Down with Imperialism and All Forms of Reaction!
– Long Live Our Party the TKP/ML, and TİKKO and TMLGB under Its Leadership!
– Long Live the People’s War!
– Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
– Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!
January 2026
TKP/ML CC-PB
(Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist
Central Committee – Political Bureau)
