This is only the beginning! Our fight will go on!

“9 years after, when I came back to Istanbul, the city where I was born, from Alakir (in the Antalya province), the city where I was living, I woke up to a consciousness: the harmony of time/space homogeneity. I slept under the plane trees in Gezi Park as peaceful as I used to do in Alakir, on those fertile lands under the sky with my brothers and sisters, singing songs of freedom.

At the Gezi Park, I witnessed that the same disproportionate oppression deployed by corporations/government/military police trio to our peaceful struggle against the horrible destructions of hydroelectric plants was being used to Gezi Park protesters.

I got the news of the first police attack on the Gezi Park when I was under arrest in Alakir, waiting at the police station for hours deprived of food and water. The Alakir prosecutor’s attitude towards our protests was: “It’s none of your business to save this country’s nature! The State can take care of that!”  Gökhan Göktaş, the engineer of the DEDEGÖL ENERJİ that constructed the KÜRCE HES, one of the hydroelectric plants that devastated Alakir and the sergeant Melih Kemal Kürklü from Kumluca gendermerie headquarters had sued me for “slander.” Then the police released me on the condition that I should come back to the Kumluca gendarmerie every week to sign my parole papers. The minute I was released pending trial, I went to the Gezi Park. My brothers and sisters in Alakir were worrying about me while I was worrying for them.

At the Gezi Park I found myself in the middle of a spiral of violence and brutality. It was the same scenario that had been played out in Alakir: They attacked peaceful protestors who wanted to save the park and the trees from the massacres of speculators with tear gas bombs, rubber bullets, pressurized water, batons, etc. They brutalized the protesters under arrest. There were casualties. Many people lost their eyes and other organs. I’ve seen with my own eyes that two of innumerable tear gas bombs hit a tent and the infirmary where the injured were being treated. A girl hit by a rubber bullet from her head was badly wounded.

At some point, I fainted because of three tear gas bombs and a percussion bomb that landed just beside my feet. I had difficulties to breathe for a while. My skin was burning. These are only the things that I witnessed myself. I heard many horror stories from others.

It became obvious that the only marginal at the Gezi Park were the evildoers that deployed unimaginable violence to peaceful and pacifist people. The viciousness became marginal before hundreds of thousands of good people. And the evildoers were scared this time. They were scared in front of the unarmed and pacific people. Just like they were scared in Alakir. Despite all their tanks, arms, government’s support, laws, and money they were scared and they ran away from the square.

Maybe for most of you, it was impossible to see or hear what I’ve been telling because of intentional disinformation wired through mainstream media and communication means. And that is why you should absolutely go to the Gezi Park in order witness this universal transformation and awakening. That is why you should go to the Gezi Park in order to cry and tremble, not out of fear but out of joy. In order to unite with fellow souls. In order to remember who we are, the strength of our intelligence, our art and creativity. In order to awaken.

As for me, I will leave my home in Alakir near the river in the middle of a forest and go to the Kumluca gendarmerie headquarters once a week to sign my parole documents. And then I will hurry to the Gezi Park every week in order to sign for an enlightened future with my brothers and sisters until death finds me.

The ethics and civility that I have learnt from the nature and the education that I have got from my family urge me to struggle courageously against the evildoers and cruelty.

The awakened souls will do what should be done.

Delicious people of Alakir and Gezi Park, I am honored to fight shoulder to shoulder with you and I’ll be delighted to die with you if needed.

Oh, the sweet flowers of the resistance,

You are the nature; you are the tree, and the bird that chirps on the branches of the trees.

THIS IS ONLY THE BEGINNING! OUR FIGHT WILL GO ON!

Birhan Erkutlu from Alakir River Fraternity (A.N.K.).”

Cited in Facebook.

16 June 2013

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