We united in the streets, we will achieve our demands in the streets!  
We won’t let anyone harm the Gezi Park, our labor, our life and nature! 

Our resistance began a week ago in Taksim Gezi Park and has since spread over to the streets and squares in 40 cities across Turkey. It has unveiled the willpower of millions. The people of the Turkish Republic are showing their long due response to the fascist and oppressive Turkish government. Despite the unlawful and disproportional police interventions, we are determined to force the government to listen to our demand to live in a democratic and secular country.

In democracies, the law enforcers are responsible for ensuring the citizens’ rights to freedom of speech and assembly. Likewise, the media has a duty to ensure that people have access to unbiased and timely information. In Turkey, today, neither the enforcer nor the media fulfils their responsibilities towards their own citizens. We condemn the use of violence against those who were using their right to peaceful demonstration and the media in Turkey that refuses to provide true flow of information that this society demands and deserves.

Our resistance is no longer just about the trees and the environment. It is against all oppressive and anti-democratic conducts of the Turkish government lead by the Prime Minster Tayyip Erdogan; it is against the authoritarian ideology of “I have decided so and therefore it is”. Our resistance is the unified uprising of all seculars, anti-capitalist muslims, homosexuals, echologists and so on.

We will not bow down to the bans, suppression and unlawful violence of the Turkish police state. We will not allow the government to impose their political agenda, oppressive Islamism and puritanical prohibitions to reshape the Turkish way of living. We will not let them plunder and sell our cities, villages, forests and water supplies.

Our civil resistance will spread to all domains of public and business life, from labour unions to trade associations, artists groups and political parties. We will make the government understand that they cannot take any steps on behalf of the Turkish public, despite the Turkish public. Our on-going resistance has proven that the current governmental policy of ruling through fear and suppression is no longer an option.

The immediate demands of our civil resistance are:
1. Prompt, independent and impartial investigations should be carried out to ensure that all law enforcement officials responsible for excessive and abusive use are prosecuted.
2. Directly accountable for all the brutal acts of the police, the governors and chiefs of police of Istanbul and Ankara should resign with immediate effect.
3. The police should free all civil protestors who have been taken into custody during the past week.
4. The demonstrators’ rights of peaceful assembly and freedom of expression should be respected and all bans against public demonstrations across the country should be lifted.
5. The media should respect the citizens’ rights for access to timely and unbiased information and should cover the demonstrations as is expected in a democratic country.

Taksim Solidarity