[Statement of the World Anti-Imperialist Youth Platform]
The Turkish Authorities Must Immediately Release the Revolutionary Students Union Activists and End Fascist Repression on University Campuses!
The Turkish fascist authorities are carrying out a campaign of repression against youth and students who have been engaged in anti-imperialist and anti-NATO activities ahead of the NATO Summit. On June 12, nine student activists were violently detained in Eskişehir. The judiciary subsequently issued arrest warrants for six young activists, including Demirdöken, Tokca, and Sağlam of the Revolutionary Students Union. Undeterred by fascist repression, the students declared: “NATO will be dismantled, and the chains of imperialist war will be broken.” On June 15, more than twenty members of progressive organizations and trade unions were additionally arrested across Istanbul, while homes and organizational facilities were subjected to raids and searches. Judicial authorities are branding progressive youth, students, and activists as “members of an illegal terrorist organization.” The regime’s so-called “anti-terror law” has historically been abused as a weapon against anti-imperialist fighters and revolutionaries. Even the United Nations has pointed out that it is “overly broad and vague” and has been misused to criminalize the freedoms of peaceful assembly and expression.
Ahead of the NATO Summit in Ankara, the Turkish fascist government has established special checkpoints on roads leading into major cities, imposed sweeping bans on demonstrations and marches, and installed more than one hundred additional surveillance cameras throughout urban areas. The fascist authorities have concentrated nearly forty thousand police officers and gendarmerie personnel in major cities and deployed plainclothes police on university campuses. They have even sent armored vehicles and water-cannon trucks onto campuses and are openly carrying out fascist repression against young people opposing the NATO Summit, indiscriminately firing tear-gas agents, plastic bullets, and water cannons while violently detaining students. Through these desperate measures in service of NATO imperialism, the fascist authorities are crushing academic freedom, freedom of thought, and freedom of expression, while transforming entire cities into “prisons without bars.“
The fascist storm unleashed by imperialism and fascist forces is driving the future of youth toward the catastrophe of world war. The NATO Summit Defense Industry Forum, held alongside the NATO Summit, is a marketplace for war profiteering by imperialist military monopolies and the fascist regimes aligned with them. Advertised as the “most comprehensive and largest-scale” defense forum in NATO’s history, the forum’s real purpose is nothing more than to lure global capital and technology into the machinery of war. Moreover, under the banner of “NATO standardization,” NATO is seeking to fully subordinate even the weapons systems of non-NATO partner states. This represents an open war maneuver aimed at transforming the world’s defense industries into logistical bases for imperialist military aggression and forcibly mobilizing the labor and military resources of youth in both imperialist countries and their allies for US-led proxy wars.
Fascist surveillance, state violence, and the threat of armored vehicles cannot crush the struggle of youth and students demanding anti-imperialist peace. The struggle of Turkish youth—including the Revolutionary Students Union—against the war plans of imperialism and its fascist collaborators is just and legitimate. Anti-imperialist youth and students around the world will stand firmly united with the heroic anti-imperialist fighters of Türkiye. To defeat imperialist military alliances, the conversion of entire countries into logistical hubs for war, and fascist repression that threatens the survival and future of young people, youth across the world will rise in anti-imperialist, anti-NATO, and anti-fascist struggle.
The Turkish authorities must immediately release the imprisoned students and all detained activists!
End fascist repression against the youth and student movement!
We oppose the Ankara NATO Summit, a rehearsal for World War 3!
June 19, 2026
World Anti-Imperialist Youth Platform
