SOLIDARITY WITH THE COMMUNIST PARTY OF TURKEY! FREE OUR COMRADES!

The Communist Party of Sweden condemns the Turkish state’s arrest of the 145 Turkish communists who, together with thousands of working people, took to the streets of Turkey on July 5 to protest the NATO summit held in Ankara. 

The TKP’s demonstrations against the NATO summit across Turkey were met with brutal police violence in several locations, resulting in multiple people being injured and requiring emergency medical care. 

The Turkish state’s attempts to silence communists and anti-imperialists through police violence, mass arrests, and political repression will not succeed. On the contrary, this repression exposes the fear of the Turkish bourgeoisie and NATO of a growing popular movement against war policies and imperialism. 

NATO is the primary military instrument of Euro-Atlantic imperialism. For decades, this military alliance has spread war, occupation, destruction, and human suffering from Yugoslavia and Afghanistan to Libya and other parts of the world. The struggle against NATO is therefore a struggle for peace and for the right of peoples to determine their own future. 

The Communist Party of Sweden expresses its full and unwavering solidarity with the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP), with the arrested communists, and with all demonstrators who have risen up against NATO and imperialism. Their struggle is our struggle. The international solidarity of the working class cannot be crushed by police batons, pepper spray, prisons, or state repression. 

We demand that all those arrested be released immediately, that all legal proceedings against them be dropped, and that the persecution of communists and anti-imperialists in Turkey cease immediately.

SOLIDARITY WITH TKP AND THE PEOPLE OF TURKEY!

NATO MURDERERS, GO HOME!

Communist Party of Sweden