Perhaps I am alive thanks to my friend's need to pee!

I remember every moment of it as if it were yesterday… I was only 16 years old. As we had decided with my high school friends the day before, we met at the Karaköy Ferry Terminal in Kadıköy and took the Tünel up to İstiklal Avenue… 

It was early in the morning. We had filled our stomachs with a simit each on the ferry… And we had thrown half of them to the seagulls…

We started wandering around Beyoğlu, where most of us had come for the first time. Those who had been there once or twice before were showing us places with a know-it-all attitude: 

“That over there is Asmalı Mescit…”

“That is Galatasaray High School…”

“That is the Flower Passage (Çiçek Pasajı)…”

We were looking at the places our friends pointed out with astonishment and curiosity…

I was most excited when I saw the cinemas. Those famous cinemas whose names I had heard thousands of times but where I had never watched a single film.

*

Along the way, we saw groups of five or ten people like us… Some were singing anthems, others were chanting slogans.

Police vehicles and dozens of police officers were waiting at every street corner.

To be honest, we were feeling a serious sense of unease.

Because for a few days, some newspapers had been writing that serious incidents would occur on May 1st and that people could die.

Especially the writers of the right-wing Tercüman!

Still, there was a flood of people towards Taksim…

“There is a flood, a flood towards the sun… We will capture the sun, the capture of the sun is near…”

We believed so strongly that if we reached Taksim, we would capture that sun…

*

As we approached the square, our walking pace slowed down… When we reached the front of Ağa Mosque, we could no longer move forward. 

It was clear that the rally area had reached its capacity.

We couldn't see, but we could hear the voices…

Everyone was joining in with great enthusiasm to the anthems played from the rally podium, and the sound rising from the choir in the square was spreading in waves across all of Istanbul.

*

We were only able to enter the square when the speeches began in the afternoon… I had held hands with my school friends so we wouldn't lose each other… Everyone and everything was so beautiful. 

There was determination in the eyes, and hope in the songs and anthems.

We shouted and stood there for hours…

*

Our voices had gone hoarse, and our backs had started to ache from fatigue… 

After all, we had been on the road since the morning hours…

“I need to pee, I'm really desperate,” said Kazım. We looked at each other; most of us were in the same situation… 

We had already listened to the beginning of the speech by DISK President Kemal Türkler. One of the friends said, “Let's walk towards the mosque we saw on the way here. It will also make our return easier.”

Holding hands again, we entered İstiklal Avenue; we reached Ağa Mosque and relieved ourselves. Just as we were stepping out of the mosque courtyard back onto İstiklal Avenue, we saw thousands of people running from Taksim in a panic… Someone shouted at us, “Run, they are shooting, run!”

We followed this call and ran non-stop until we reached Tünel. 

We were no longer holding hands or anything; we had lost each other. I didn't know the road or the way… Following the crowd flowing like water, I continued to run down the hill that I later learned was “Yüksek Kaldırım.” 

When I reached the Karaköy Ferry Terminal, I found one or two of my friends.

Everyone was telling each other about the events as much as they had seen and heard.

A girl around my age was sitting on one of the chairs of the pastry shop across from the terminal, sobbing uncontrollably:

“So many people died, so many… The fascists massacred so many people!”

*

Even though it was not my habit at all, I returned home before dark. My father had turned the television volume all the way up and was listening to the news. No one even noticed me. Then my mother noticed me and hugged me, saying, “Where were you, my son? I was so worried.”

“If only you knew where I came from, mother, who knows how worried you would have been!” I thought to myself!

*

The metallic voice of the male news anchor on television was filling the room:

“Around 19:00, an armed conflict broke out between Maoist groups marching from the direction of Saraçhane to Taksim Square and DISK security guards. At the same time, gunfire erupted from all sides of the square. According to allegations, many people in the crowd died and as many were injured as a result of fire opened from the top of the Water Administration building and the upper floors of the Intercontinental Hotel (today The Marmara Hotel). It is also stated that a large number of people died after being crushed between a police armored vehicle chasing them and a pickup truck at the beginning of Kazancı Hill…”

*

The result was truly terrifying.

Towards midnight, I learned that exactly 34 people had lost their lives in that square where we had been shouting and singing anthems with enthusiasm just a few hours earlier.

28 people had died from being crushed, 5 people from being shot, and 1 person had died under an armored vehicle.

If Kazım hadn't insisted, “Damn it, I can't hold my pee anymore, let's go,” perhaps we would have been among those who died.

*

After this event, which went down in history, the police detained 40 people.

None of their involvement in the incident could be proven, and they were all released. The blame fell on the DISK executives and the members of the Rally Organizing Committee. 

Exactly 98 people were tried for 14 years. In the case that ended in 1991, not a single person received a “conviction.”

Because those who were tried were innocent, and the killers had long since vanished into thin air!

Who knows, maybe they are still walking among us today, free as a bird.

*

Do you know why I told you about this event that most of you have experienced or know about?

Today is May 1st…

It is not just Labor Day…

It is also the 47th anniversary of the massacre in 1977…

Those who forbid us from going out to those squares today are those who are afraid of us commemorating that bloody day.

They are those who take sides with those who exploit the Turkish Working Class and those who massacre them when they encounter resistance…

And even if not today, May 1st will surely be celebrated in Taksim again, and our 34 citizens who died will be commemorated with respect.

*

Today, Kazım is no longer here; he has long since gone to the place where those 34 people are.

Some of my other friends are the same… 

For their memory, I am singing our anthem at the top of my lungs with the excitement of my 16-year-old self:

“May 1st, May 1st…

The holiday of the worker, the laborer…

On the glorious path of the revolution…

The holiday of the advancing peoples…” 

*

Happy holiday to us all…

I swear on those we lost in 1977… No matter how much they don't allow us to go out, Taksim is ours…

Taksim is May 1st, 1977!