By Mike Talavera

On June 27, a German court sentenced Turkish revolutionary Erdal Gökoğlu to five years in prison for alleged association with the Revolutionary People’s Liberation Party-Front (in Turkish, Devrimci Halk Kurtuluş Partisi-Cephesi or DHKP-C). Although the prosecutor in the case was asking for a three-and-a-half-year sentence, the judge exceeded this request for no reason other than political repression.

For many years, Gökoğlu has participated in actions against imperialism and fascism, both in his home country of Turkey and in Europe. From 1995 to 2001, he was imprisoned in Turkey for his revolutionary work. During that time, he joined a hunger strike against the F-type prisons, maximum-security prisons where inmates were regularly subjected to solitary confinement and torture.

During this hunger strike, Turkish authorities forced medical intervention on Gökoğlu and as a result he lost his memory and fell ill with Wernicke-Korsakoff syndrome. When he was released from prison, he emigrated to Belgium where he sought political asylum and therapy for the severe illness. He began to recover and started organizing again.

In the winter of 2016, Gökoğlu was arrested and imprisoned in Poland in connection with a bulletin issued by INTERPOL at the request of the fascist government in Turkey.

After several months of struggle, hunger strike and protests, Gökoğlu was released from the Polish prison and returned to Belgium. At the end of 2017, he was arrested again by Belgian police at the request of the German imperialists. In December of that year, he was extradited to Germany, following a decision by the Belgian court. Several months later, a lawsuit against him began based on the infamous German law §§ 129b (“Support of a foreign terrorist organization“).

Incendiary asks for our readers to call for Gökoğlu’s release and the release of all revolutionary prisoners!