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Years of rule by the AKP-MHP parties and the rise of Islamist and fascist policies have brought Turkey to its current situation. The process that began with the arrest of Selahattin Demirtaş on November 4, 2016, continued with the arrest of Zafer Party chairman Ümit Özdağ and most recently with the arrest of CHP presidential candidate Ekrem İmamoğlu.

On March 19, 2025, following the arrest of Ekrem İmamoğlu, the first nationwide protests were triggered when Istanbul University students broke through the barricade. Istanbul University students broke through the barricade that day and set the course for both the student-youth movement and the country’s opposition and the rest of the people. This movement initiated by the university students spread throughout the country and continued for days. The young people, who are in debt, in a precarious situation and whose future has been taken away from them, are proud to resist against this order and to be the subject of the struggle. Already from the first day of Imamoğlu’s arrest, the main opposition made appeals in different parts of the country. People took to the streets in the face of these calls. The reason why people took to the streets was not only opposition to the government. Among the people who crowded the squares were workers who wanted to be paid fair wages for their work, women and LGBT+ people who wanted to live in equality and freedom,who did not want to be killed, Kurds and Alevis, victims of the Islamofascist political regime, and other  minority groups who took to the squares to demand their rights.

esistance in Ankara emerged on the second day of İmamoğlu’s arrest, when ODTU students wanted to march from the campus to Güvenpark, but the police prevented them from leaving the campus with several interventions. On March 20, 2025, protests were organized in several universities in Ankara, especially in ODTU, Hacettepe University and Ankara University, and during these protests, our colleagues were subjected to inhumane treatment by the police. To this day, some of us still have traces of sticks and rubber bullets on our bodies. Things like pepper gas, orange gas, etc., which were used as chemical weapons, are impregnated on our clothes. Our friends who were subjected to strip searches or tortured for resisting strip searches in the process after being arrested suffer some psychological disorders.

However, the students were not intimidated by these pressures and tortures, but on the contrary, they mobilized. In this process, the existing or newly created boycott-action committees in the universities guided the student movement. The students opposed the transformation of campuses into businesses, the transformation of students into customers, the inadequate and charged food, the dogmatic and undemocratic educational system and, despite all these pressures, they were able to say free, scientific and democratic education. The fiduciary rectors and the university administration tried to chase these students away from the youth movement by various methods.

uring this process, our classmates were expelled from their dormitories. The university administration subjected them to unjustified and unfounded investigations. Some of our friends were arrested. We have obtained the release of many of our detained friends, and we will obtain the release of others. Our university, Yildirim Beyazit University, has also taken some steps to get involved in this process. In our university, which is a new university and where Akp’s pressure is felt especially strongly, these issues were a taboo that could not be discussed even in a group of friends, but today we are able to hold forums on our campuses. We intend to create action and boycott committees and expand the solidarity network in our school. The rectors and the government did everything possible to distract us from the struggle, but in vain. Contraryto their intentions, we became even more committed to the struggle.  The seed planted in the 1960s has today become a huge tree that gathers people in its shade.