TURKISH and Kurdish revolutionary groups launched a Europe-wide campaign against fascism today, urging unity among all peoples to bring freedom to the oppressed.

The Peoples’ United Revolutionary Movement (HBDH), a coalition founded in 2016 to overthrow the government of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, launched the campaign in the French city of Strasbourg today.

A statement read out at the rally declared: “Our calls for peace were met with bombs raining down on us. We wanted democracy, but they crowded the prisons with mass arrests.

“We demanded human rights, but they tortured our people and dropped them from helicopters. We said no to sexual oppression, but the state protected the rapists.

“We called for an end to national oppression, but they attacked Kurdish funerals and graves.

“We wanted freedom of expression and beliefs, but they poured petrol and burned it.”

Echoing the words of Irish republican Bobby Sands, HBDH executive member Tekin Yoldas said that “there is something everyone can do” in the united revolutionary struggle against fascism.

He said that the Turkish state was weakened partly because of a deepening economic crisis which is affecting every citizen across the country.

Mr Yoldas called for a “total mobilisation” and for resistance everywhere to target the forces of fascism.

“Our guerillas resisting in the mountains, our militias that burn the fire of freedom in the cities, our people who resist in the factories and in the streets will be the leader of this struggle,” he said.

“We will target all the organisations of fascist power, all of its institutions. We will target the bosses who are enemies of the working class, we will target the murderers of women … we will target the fascist power that steals the bread and the food of our people,” he said.

Consisting of about 10 organisations, including the Kurdistan Workers’ Party and the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party, the HBDH includes the majority of Turkey’s revolutionary left.

It is committed to the self-determination of oppressed groups, in particular the Kurdish population — the world’s largest stateless community — which is spread predominantly across Turkey, Syria, Iran and Iraq.

The HBDH insisted that “if struggle for Kurdish self-determination is broken, the AKP [Turkey’s ruling Justice and Development Party] will start to attack all other opposition forces in Turkey.

“Consequently the future of all progressive, revolutionary and working-class forces in Turkey is directly tied to the future of the Kurdish resistance.”