As of May 22, it has been made public that the lawyers have returned from another visit to Imrali after the meeting held on May 2. We do not have any other information on the meeting as of the writing of this article. For instance, how long did the lawyers meet with Kurdish People’s Leader Abdullah Ocalan and what did they discuss? Were they able to meet with their other clients who are also in the Imrali Prison? What messages have Leader Ocalan and other revolutionary prisoners given? We do not know any of these. By the time you read this, you will probably know the answers to some important questions. As such, we will try to draw attention to general truths, taking the situation into consideration.

It can be assumed that the Erdogan administration will occasionally allow lawyers’ visits in Imrali. Maybe even family visits. This will be the case until at least the June 23 Istanbul municipal elections. Because the Tayyip Erdogan administration is stuck, both in the country and abroad, and there is no other way for them to win the Istanbul elections. It is now abundantly clear that the most critical vote to determine the outcome of the elections is the Kurdish vote. Of course it is not actually clear that allowing visits in Imrali will bring gains to the fascist AKP-MHP government: It is also a serious possibility that upon seeing the resistance push open the gates of Imrali, the Kurdish people may increase the resistance further.

Whatever may come, it is clear that the two Imrali visits in May have accelerated the current political process. The political-military process had already picked up speed, with the increasingly tense US-Iran relations pushing the AKP-MHP government, and the Turkey-Russia relations prolonged by necessity increasing tensions between the Tayyip Erdogan government’s relationship with the US. The ever-deepening economic crisis has started to affect people to the point of unemployed citizens setting themselves on fire in protest.

Of course on top of these, there are the protests developed by the Kurdish people and their allies with the Break the Isolation Smash Fascism resistance move. The death fast resistance in prisons is on day 25. The indefinite non-alternating hunger strike launched by Democratic Society Congress Co-chair and HDP Hakkari MP Leyla Guven on November 8, 2018 is close to the end of its 7th month. Thousands of prisoners in Turkish prisons have been on hunger strikes for 6 months. In all four parts of Kurdistan and all around the world, there have been hunger strikes against the Imrali isolation and torture system for six months. With the momentum of these protests, Kurdish people and their allies in all four parts of Kurdistan and abroad have been up in arms, organizing dozens of demonstrations daily. The prisoners’ mothers have been on the streets of Kurdistan and Turkey around the clock. With the coming of the spring, the steadily developing guerrilla actions have spread throughout all areas. From all around the world, forces of democracy and various political circles issue statements warning the Erdogan government against the Imrali isolation.

Everybody knows that the resistance move has created a defeat for the Tayyip Erdogan administration in the March 31 elections that made them lose power. To alleviate the situation and to reverse the defeat, Tayyip Erdogan’s government has developed the process to renew the Istanbul elections by the hands of the Supreme Board of Elections. Tayyip Erdogan was saying there would be no more elections for 4.5 years before March 31, and before 3 months have passed since, he is pushing for another election. The Istanbul elections can be seen to further increase political tensions.

In short, the narrowing foreign relations, the increasing economic crisis, the developing Break the

Isolation Smash Fascism resistance move with the death fasts, the results of the March 31 elections and the June 23 Istanbul elections to be held have accelerated the political process, and to that mix the Imrali visits have been added now, which necessitates ever more vigilance, intense focus, awareness and a ready-for-action stance around the clock if one is to draft a correct path and come out standing under such circumstances. This is necessary for all who deal with politics, but is especially true for the press and media in general, who are an active element of politics. In such processes, it is not the one with the most resources but the one who reads and maneuvers the political process the best who prevails.

Going back to the Imrali visits, they need to be correctly understood and relayed. For one, lawyers going to Imrali and meeting with their client is in a way nothing but the implementation of constitutional and administrative law. As such, it is necessary and important to stress this continuously. The normal thing would be that these meetings have no political significance at all. What has been done is a legal procedure determined by the constitution and the country’s laws that is implemented in every other prison in the country. But Imrali is not a place built under the law, the persons held there are not legal criminals, this we know. We also know that the Erdogan government, with their extremely pragmatist character, abuse everything for political gain. In short, there is not even a semblance of law or morality in Imrali, on the contrary, there is an immoral policy of hostages in place. This is the truth, and we must always know this truth. But despite that, we should still stress the legal right aspect of the Imrali visits, and situate the lawyers’ and family’s visits as such to render them unimbuable with political significance. If there will be politics in Imrali, that should be through not the family or the lawyers, but other forces and bodies.

Secondly, we must never forget that the lawyers’ visits, which were not allowed for the last 8 years, which was a crime against the constitution, happened twice this May because of the resistance by the Kurdish people and their allies, i.e. the Break the Isolation Smash Fascism resistance move. We must continue to stress this and keep it current, because this is the absolute truth. Everything is made possible through the people’s and the guerrilla’s valiant resistance. This is what is necessary to properly respect the resistance, the resisters, the hunger strikers who have been losing themselves cell by cell, and most importantly the heroic martyrs who lost their lives in the resistance. Give to Caesar what is Caesar’s, it must be acknowledged that the true force that allowed the May 2 and 22 visits in Imrali was the Break the Isolation Smash Fascism resistance and the people in the resistance. We must never allow for any other understandings or analyses in this matter.

Lastly, it is also necessary and important that we see the meetings’ connection to the June 23 Istanbul elections and develop the correct approach accordingly. As much as we say that the lawyers’ visits to Imrali are legal and have nothing to do with politics or the election, as much as that is the truth, that is not the approach the Tayyip Erdogan government has as facilitators of these meetings as they abuse anything and everything for political gain and the elections. This is a fact of the personality and politics of Tayyip Erdogan. In this sense, it is a clear fact that Tayyip Erdogan’s government has “allowed” the visits to influence the Kurdish vote in the Istanbul elections, there is no actual change in their policy or mindset. So, the fascist, colonialist and genocidal mindset and policies are still in place. As such, what they aim to do is hunting for votes with a simple tactic. Then we must see this fact and know how to employ tactics ourselves. We must crown the June 23 Istanbul elections with a result that completely shatters the fascist-genocidal mindset and politics. With the June 23 Istanbul elections, we must be able to bury in history those who got their start in politics in Istanbul.