Executed student leaders remembered

ISTANBUL- Hürriyet Daily News

Main opposition CHP leader Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu places a red carnation on the grave of Hüseyin İnan, who was executed together with Deniz Gezmiş and Yusuf Aslan in 1972. AA photo

Leaders of the 1968 student movements who were executed by the military junta in 1972 were commemorated yesterday on the 40th anniversary of their execution.

The ceremony began in the morning at the graveyard where Deniz Gezmiş, Yusuf Aslan and Hüseyin İnan are buried. Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, leader of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) was among the participants of the ceremony.

Marches were held in Istanbul, Izmir and Gaziantep to remember the three victims of the 1971 military coup. Speaking at a ceremony in Istanbul’s Dolmahbahçe Sönmez Targan, chairman of the 1968 Foundation, said the three “brave students were executed by the American imperialism and the compradors in Turkey.”

“Even though their psychical existence is not with us today their thoughts and ideas are living rousingly in our people’s souls after 40 years. We are in sorrow and tears but we are standing with our heads high,” Targan said.

Bora Gezmiş, brother of legendary student leader Deniz Gezmiş, also said he will apply to the Turkey’s General Staff to get back his brother’s diary.

“Deniz [Gezmiş] had told my dad that he was keeping a journal. He also said that the journal would be in our hands one day, but after his execution the [soldiers] gave us only a plastic bag. I know that diary exist and I guess that it is in the archive of the General Staff, I will apply to get it back,” Gezmiş said.

Gezmiş, Aslan and İnan were Marxist-Leninist revolutionaries and political activists in Turkey in the late 1960s. Gezmiş was one of the founding members of the People’s Liberation Army of Turkey (THKO).
Gezmiş and his two friends Aslan and İnan were found guilty under Article 146 of the Turkish Criminal Code, which refers to the crime of “attempting to change all or part of the Constitution of the Republic of Turkey.”

They were executed early on May 6, 1972, at Ulucanlar Prison in Ankara despite appeals and protests.