WE’RE OUT THERE IN THE STREETS, IN THE SQUARES!

On 27 May 2013, the incessant attacks on our living spaces – especially on Taksim Square and Gezi Park – by a government that ignores all ethical, scientific, technical and legal standards in order to impose its projects, turned into lawless violence. Taksim Solidarity’s demand for “proper urbanization and livable cities” met with the demands of millions of citizens for freedom and democracy, which in turn spread our solidarity and struggle to all corners of the country by 31 May 2013,  giving it a new and universal dimension.

Thriving on the creative intelligence of our youth, the embracing compassion of our mothers, the power of the workers, the vibrant voice of women, and the loud cry of the LGBTI, the Gezi Resistance has left a permanent honorable mark in the social, urban and democratic history  of our country.

However the government, fearful of this exemplary solidarity and resistance, still stigmatizes us as “Geziciler”; and with policies that encourage police violence through injustice and impunity, keeps polarizing the country in order to hide its own corruption, murders and criminality.

To this end, all the squares, parks, neighborhoods and cities are put under siege; preventing us from mourning the killing of more than 300 miners in Soma, celebrating the May 1 Labor and Democracy day, being out in the streets on March 8 Women’s day, even preventing us from gathering for the funeral of our children murdered by unbelievable police violence.

But it should be known that despite these dirty politics of violence and injustice, which are signs of desperation and cowardice of those in power; in all our purity, bareness and rightfulness; with all our values and colors that make us who we are; with an unshaken prudence, will, determination and creativity; wherever there is life, we are out there and in the streets.

To remind the world that we have not given up on our demands and victories, as Taksim Solidarity we will be in the streets in Taksim! Millions of us, with all our different languages, voices and colors, are all together and in the streets!

We’re there with our ‘few trees’, with our desire, our ideas, our wish to live humane lives, our hope, our resistence, we’re everywhere, out there in the streets, in the squares.

We are in the streets for those squares that you have banned because you fear that we will rebel against your massacres, your corruption; because you fear that we will reclaim our cities, our common values, and the nature and living spaces which you have looted.

We, the workers, the unemployed, the uninsured, the migrants, the students, the people and all those you ignore… Look, we are out there in the streets, in the squares.

Because we will not be silent and we will not obey; because we refuse more forcefully each day to work to death uninsured, ununionized, and subcontracted in the factories, mines, shipyards and office buildings; because we do not trust your cover-up media; because we cannot find justice in the courts which you use to punish us, we are everywhere, out there, on the streets, in the squares!

With the things that we produce, our neighborhood homes, factories, urban gardens, forums, our own colors; with the things that we produce against the things that you destroy; with our justice, we are out there and in the streets!

We, ETHEM, ALİ İSMAİL, MEHMET AYVALITAŞ, MEDENİ, HASAN FERİT, AHMET, ABDULLAH, MEHMET İSTİF, FADİME ANA, BERKİN ELVAN, UĞUR KURT, AYHAN YILMAZ and all the lives we lost in Soma, we are out there and in the streets.

From Wall Street to Sintagma, from Puerta Del Sol to Taksim, we are out there in our squares! On May 31, we are in the streets, in the squares!

We are in our squares in Ankara, İzmir, Antakya, Eskişehir, Bursa, Adana, Mersin, Diyarbakır; in all corners of the country we are out there in the streets!

To free our squares, our parks, our streets, our living spaces, and to free our lives, we are out there in the streets!

Taksim Solidarity