Patriotic Front, which consists of hundreds of initiatives from all over Turkey, organized a rally against the European Union on October 2nd, one day before the summit of EU countries in Luxemburg to decide whether negotiations between the EU and Turkey should start. Despite the rainy wetter, which occasionally turned into a thunderstorm, an enthusiastic crowd of thousands of patriots and communists from all over Turkey attended the rally. In addition to that, around hundred members of the Communist Party of Greece and over a dozen delegates of the international conference on October 1st were also present in solidarity with their Turkish and Kurdish comrades.
The rally started at 2 pm at the Iskele Square with a moment of silence in the memory of the martyrs of revolutionary struggle and the poet Nihat Behram read out one of his poems titled "Cry Out Your Pain, O’ People." The opening speech of the rally was made by Kemal Okuyan, the General Secretary of the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP). After that, Dimitris Koutsoumpas, member of the Political Bureau of the CC of Communist Party of Greece (KKE), addressed the crowd.
A Turkish public worker and a Kurdish construction worker, who represented the common anti-imperialist struggle of the Turkish and Kurdish people, made speeches, which were followed by other speeches by a university student and a university professor, a high school students and a teacher, an finally Guray Oz, a newspaper columnist. Further on, a solidarity message of the delegations of the international conference "Developments within the Imperialist System: The New Dynamics in the Anti-Imperialist Struggle," which had taken place a day ago, was read out to the public.
Orhan Aydin and Metin Coskun, who are theater players read out poems, while Renan Bilek and the Music Group of Nazim Hikmet Culture Center contributed the rally with their performances. In addition to that, Stefanos Psaradakos and Eleftherios Psaradakos, two singers from Greece, conveyed the message of solidarity of our Greek comrades to our anti-imperialist struggle against the European Union.
At the end of the rally, despite the pouring rain, the crowd marched through the streets of the city center, chanting slogans for socialism, revolution and independence.
