[Statement of the World Anti-imperialist Youth Platform]
The Erdoğan fascist regime must immediately release the international delegation of the World Anti-Imperialist Platform and the Turkish youth activists!
The Turkish fascist authorities have illegally and violently arrested and detained around twenty comrades of the international delegation of the World Anti-imperialist Platform and Turkish youth activists. At 3:00 a.m. on July 1, police raided the campsite of the World Anti-imperialist Youth Platform, where an internal gathering was being held in a remote area seven hours away from Istanbul. Without informing them of the grounds for their arrest, the police brutally dragged away the international delegates and youth activists, handcuffing them behind their backs—a restraint reserved only for the most serious criminal offenders. The human rights abuses did not end with what amounted to an abduction. The fascist police fabricated charges of violating the “Anti-Terror Law,” an unprecedented fascist law, and, by imposing a confidentiality order on the investigation records, completely blocked the defense lawyers from accessing the specific allegations and the evidence. The comrades who have been taken into custody are currently maintaining their silence and resolutely fighting against the fascist authorities’ atrocities.
Using the NATO Summit as a pretext, the Erdoğan fascist government has turned the whole of Türkiye into a vast prison. The Anti-Terror Law on which it relies is a medieval, profoundly anti-human-rights law that blatantly violates both the Constitution of Türkiye and international legal instruments, including the European Convention on Human Rights (ECHR) and the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights (ICCPR), by trampling upon freedom of thought, expression, opinion, and personal liberty, as well as the due process of law. Although the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly ruled that the Anti-Terror Law must be amended, the Turkish fascist authorities continue to prioritize its application in order to imprison progressive activists, thereby violating the constitutional principle that international human rights obligations take precedence over conflicting domestic law. Since June, the Erdoğan government has violently arrested and detained more than 500 party members, trade unionists, and youth activists, imprisoning some of them. Furthermore, until the conclusion of the NATO Summit, it has imposed a blanket ban on all public activities outside designated venues, while expanding unlawful surveillance of civilians and installing additional checkpoints and CCTV systems at key locations, transforming the whole of Türkiye into a lawless domain of fascist rule.
Why is the Turkish government so frantically obsessed with carrying out fascist repression? It is because the Erdoğan fascist government has staked everything on what it calls the “successful hosting” of the NATO Summit. As his approval ratings have declined and anti-government sentiment has grown within Türkiye, Erdoğan is attempting to weather the crisis by bringing the four Gulf states of the Istanbul Cooperation Initiative into the NATO Summit and thereby expanding his political influence within NATO. Exploiting the increasingly tense situation in West Asia, he is seeking to subordinate Turkish defense companies even more deeply to NATO’s standardization system, reducing Türkiye to a rear base for imperialist wars of aggression. It is no coincidence that the Defense Industry Forum, the largest ever of its kind, is being held alongside this Ankara Summit while Erdoğan and his relatives are thoroughly intertwined with Türkiye’s defense industry. Under the pro-imperialist, fascist, and corrupt Erdoğan government, Türkiye’s patriotic democratic forces, progressive and revolutionary forces, and internationalist forces are being subjected to harsh and brutal repression. The fate of Türkiye and West Asia is being placed in ever greater peril by Erdoğan.
Immediately release the international delegation of the World Anti-imperialist Youth Platform and the Turkish youth activists! The activities of the World Anti-imperialist Youth Platform were conducted entirely as an internal gathering, and did not violate in the slightest even the legal procedures and conditions that the Erdoğan fascist regime, in its pre-modern manner, allows only to the barest extent. Who could possibly slander and frame this event—held as a youth camp on the coast seven hours away even from Istanbul, itself six hours from Ankara—as a “terrorist conspiracy”? This not only violates the most basic legal principle of proportionality, but also constitutes one of the gravest violations of personal dignity and individual liberty, as well as an especially malicious insult against twenty activists who have no connection whatsoever to terrorism. The violent repression carried out by the Erdoğan fascist authorities, backed by NATO—the command headquarters of World War 3—confirms that young people are becoming the greatest victims of the fascization driven by imperialism. The slogan raised by the youth vanguard of the twentieth century—”Save the future of youth from fascism and imperialist war!”—continues to shine brightly even today, in the era of World War 3. Just as those who came before us did, we, the anti-imperialist and progressive youth of the twenty-first century, will continue to stand at the forefront, as the vanguard, courageously fighting against the violent repression of imperialism and fascism. And on that glorious path, the path of justice, we will surely hasten and achieve the final victory.
July 4, 2026
World Anti-imperialist Youth Platform
