Our Working People of Turkish, Kurdish and Various Nationalities,
History is not only an echo of the past, but also a call to the future. This call was answered for the second time in Turkey on April 24, 1972, when a group of communists under the leadership of İbrahim Kaypakkaya raised the glorious flag high once again. TKP/ML was born in the red-hot fire of the class struggle with the longing for equality and freedom, a classless and exploitation-free world. TKP/ML, After the murder of Mustafa Suphi and his comrades, broke the 50-year silence of the Communist Movement in Turkey and became the name of a strong exit that clung to its roots.
April 24 was the milestone of a people’s claim to change their destiny. And that day did not end as it began. Because the establishment was one day, the struggle is until victory…
The first steps of this resistance were taken at a time of darkness. In Turkey, where fascist oppression, torture, and denial were shaped with their harshest face, it was raised with the claim of revolution, faith, cost, consciousness, and practice. Every line of İbrahim Kaypakkaya’s ideas, every moment of his practice was the scientific and revolutionary cry of a revolt against fascism, of the people’s longing for liberation under the leadership of the working class. That cry was raised in 1972 and gradually echoed across the country. The echo that continues today in the mountains, in the dungeons, in the streets is spreading to merge with the destructive power of the awakening millions.
That day a rupture took place; A line emerged that reckoned with reformism, capitulation, and petty-bourgeois idealism detached from the people, and raised the red flag of Marxism-Leninism-Maoism on the soil of Turkey. The founding of the TKP/ML was not only an organization, it was the declaration of the revolutionary ideological rupture, the strategic orientation, the People’s War line as the path to liberation.
This rupture, realized under the leadership of Comrade Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, is an ideological, theoretical, practical and political leap in the Revolutionary Movement in Turkey. This is a line that does not compromise with Kemalism, that places the class struggle on the ground of concrete revolutionism rather than abstract romanticism, that defends the ideological leadership of the proletariat and sits on the strategy of Protracted People’s War that will extend from the countryside to the cities based on the worker-peasant alliance.
Kaypakkaya is unique in building the revolutionary practical rupture shaped by theoretical clarity with a high level of audacity. He, grasped the necessity of the People’s War on the territory of Turkey, not only as a strategy, but as a dialectic of life. Turkey’s semi-colonial, semi-feudal character revealed the bitter reality of the oppressed classes and nations under the domination of imperialism and its revolutionary solution: People’s Democratic Revolution.
TKP/ML, kneaded with İbrahim Kaypakkaya’s legacy of thought, is a culture of resistance. It is an ideological stance that stands firm against oppression, torture and surrender policies. Even today, his clear position on issues such as “The Right of the Kurdish Nation to Self-Determination” and “The Class Character of Kemalism” responds to the future with all its actuality. This will did not only sprout in the heart of Turkey, but also sprouted as part of the struggle for the freedom of the world’s peoples. From the moment it was founded, the TKP/ML carried not only a local but an international mission. Kaypakkaya’s line not only stood against class and national contradictions in Turkey, but also against the rotten order of the imperialist system. April 24 is also the birth of the voice of the international proletariat in our geography.
Today the world is on an even more complex and dangerous threshold. The imperialist powers are fighting for new markets, energy lines and hegemony areas for their own economic and strategic interests. It is waged through direct military aggression as well as proxy wars, regional conflicts, coups d’états and trade wars.
Every move of the imperialists aggravates the lives of the oppressed peoples. Hunger, poverty, migration, occupation and destruction are becoming the common reality of the world working class and toiling peoples. As the crisis of the imperialist-capitalist system deepens, repression becomes more organized, lies more open and war more destructive. This aggression sharpens the contradictions between imperialism and the world proletariat and oppressed peoples. From the Middle East to Africa, from Latin America to Asia, oppressed peoples are becoming not only the victims of these wars but also the carriers of resistance against imperialism.
Our struggle is a struggle not only for the people of Turkey, but also for the liberation of the international proletariat from its chains. TKP/ML is also a front of the world revolution.
In this period we are in, the need for Comrade Kaypakkaya’s scientific line and the revolutionary communist practice he directed has deepened even more. The rampant exploitation of the rulers, the subcontractor system that steals the guarantees of the working class, the collapse of agriculture, the permanence of unemployment, the reactionary, patriarchal regime that facilitates the murder of women, the policy of annihilation and denial directed against the Kurdish nation and other oppressed nationalities; all these reveal the rottenness of the system. The youth is suffocating with no future, the people with poverty, nature with the plunder of capital. All these contradictions raise the anger of the people like magma accumulating in a volcano. However, history has repeatedly shown that spontaneous outbursts of this accumulated anger do not produce lasting revolutionary results. From the Gezi resistance to the ongoing wave of uprisings, from the women’s movement to the student boycotts, all popular movements, large and small, have been extinguished due to the lack of vanguardism or have retreated into the channels within the order. At this point, we insistently emphasize: the historical role of the communist vanguard is decisive. The revolutionary tasks declared with the establishment of the TKP/ML stand before us today with all its burning, urgent and concrete need.
The intervals of crises arising from the imperialist capitalist system have become more frequent. The impoverishment of the people continues like a never-ending decline. It is neither spontaneous revolts nor reform movements that will organize the anger caused by the crises in favor of revolution. Today, the anti-fascist actions, barricade resistances, boycotts against the fascist dictatorship, economic crisis, anti-democratic attacks, repression and arrests continue to grow day by day. All these developments show that the people are no longer tolerant of being ruled as before.
Our party sees the political atmosphere created by these actions as the real ground for transforming this righteous anger into revolutionary will. Because no popular movement can go beyond its limits without an ideological, political and strategic line to guide it. Real liberation is not possible without transforming anger into revolutionary organization, revolt into revolutionary war, rebellion into a perspective of power. The only force that takes on the task of leading this is an ideologically, politically and organizationally equipped communist party, but a real communist party.
Today, the opposition within the system is trying to direct the struggle for democracy and freedom to the ballot box, to a return to the bourgeois-feudal parliamentary system. However, this system has nothing to do with democracy, even if different types of government options are offered. Fascism is the way this state exists. For the oppressed, the democracy of this state is surrounded by cemeteries and prisons.
Our party, TKP/ML, considers the struggle for democracy not only as a form, but as a revolutionary transformation in the people’s struggle for power. In this sense, the demand for democracy raised by the people today can gain meaning when directed into the channels of revolutionary struggle. It is clear today, as it was yesterday, that the search for reformist and in-system solutions will not be the answer to the aspirations of the people.
Student protests, workers’ resistance, women’s anger on the streets, the demand for the “recognition of the will” of the Kurdish nation… All of these, when combined with the right leadership and channeled into the People’s War line, can lead to a real liberation.
The People’s War, the basic strategy of our People’s Democratic Revolution, is not only a form of armed struggle. This strategy means organizing the lives of workers, poor peasants and all working people, mobilizing the creative energy of the masses for the revolution, establishing the strategic relationship between city and countryside.
This is a long, patient but faithful march. And today, the popular movements, the workers’ strikes, the just and legitimate demands of the Kurdish nation, the student protests and the women’s revolts that are surging all over Turkey repeat this call to us: Transform the People’s War line into an organized breakthrough! At this point, the historical role of the TKP/ML becomes clear.
We are aware of the reality and our shortcomings. With 53 years of history, through defeats and victories, the communist movement has carried on to this day. Over the past 53 years, TKP/ML, despite countless attacks by fascism, ideological distortion, encirclement, and attempts at liquidation, has stayed true to its line, unwaveringly defending the strategy of People’s War and continuing on its path with determination. In this 53-year history of struggle, there are not only successes. Our Party has experienced organizational disorganization and practical blockages in many periods, but has had the will to face these inadequacies and transform the experiences and lessons it has learned into permanent positions.
For 53 years, our party has passed through countless storms. Four of our General Secretaries, members of our Central Committee, hundreds of our fighters and comrades have been immortalized. We have experienced repressions, operations, internal sieges, organizational convulsions. But after every destruction we have risen again, after every loss we have held the red flag even tighter. Because we are a revolutionary will that flourishes in the bosom of the people. Our task today is to turn the fire burning in the driest part of the steppe from the countryside to the cities into a great fire, to grow the People’s War in the lands watered with the blood of our immortal comrades.
On the 53rd anniversary of the founding of our party, that great march continues. Those who march with the burden of the oppressed on their backs and red flags in their hands are here. Because liberation will come with an organized people under the leadership of the proletariat.
Because revolution is the most burning need of these lands.
Our task is to organize the masses, to grow our party among the masses, to develop and strengthen the People’s War and to lead the struggle for the People’s Democratic Revolution to victory. We are aware of our task and we will achieve it!
Long Live Our Party TKP/ML, TİKKO and TMLGB Under its Leadership!
On April 24, 1972, the Seeds of Hope Were Sown, Our Struggle Will Continue Until Victory!
In Its 53rd Anniversary, Long Live Our Party TKP / ML!
Our Guide in Our Struggle for the Democratic People’s Revolution TKP / ML 53 Years Old!
Down With the Fascist Dictatorship, Long Live the Democratic People’s Revolution!
Long Live the People’s War!
Long Live Proletarian Internationalism!
Long Live Marxism-Leninism-Maoism!
April 2025
TKP/ML CC-PB
(Communist Party of Turkey/Marxist-Leninist Central Committee-Political Bureau)
