"The 10 October Dossier" Is Out

The Clock That Stopped at 10:04

October 9, 2026 at 07:17 PMAuthor: Oğuz Demirkapı

The Clock That Stopped at 10:04: "The 10 October Dossier" Is Out

Eleven years ago, on the morning of 10 October 2015, we lost 103 people who said "peace" in front of Ankara Railway Station. Knowledge Commons' new dossier gathers that morning, the search for justice that followed, and the lives of the comrades we lost into a single book for the younger generations.

Dear young comrades,

Some of you were in primary school on 10 October 2015. Some of you were the child of a family that learned the news that morning from the ticker at the bottom of the television. For some of you, 10 October is a date whose name is read every year, but whose inside has not been filled in. We prepared this piece, and the dossier it introduces, above all for you.

Tomorrow, on 10 October 2026, in the eleventh year of the massacre, the families will again be in front of the Station. At 10:04 the names will be read one by one. "The 10 October Dossier — 10:04: The 10 October Ankara Massacre, Terror, the State, and the Mask of 'Stability'", which we publish today, brings together the lives behind these names, the documents of that morning, and the search for justice that has gone on for eleven years. 185 pages, 7 parts, 19 chapters, 6 appendices; the life stories of 103 comrades, 10 charts and diagrams, 39 openly licensed photographs. In this piece I will tell why the dossier was written, what it tells, and what it asks of you.

Part One: That Morning

On the Saturday morning of 10 October 2015, people were gathering in front of Ankara Railway Station for the "Labour, Peace and Democracy Rally," at the call of DİSK, KESK, TMMOB and the TTB. The corteges were dancing the halay, banners were being opened. At 10:04, two suicide bombs exploded a few seconds apart. It was the terrorist attack that took the most lives in the history of the Republic of Turkey. Some of the wounded lost their lives days, months, years later; today we commemorate 103 people (Medyascope, 2025; Evrensel).

The first part of the dossier tells that morning minute by minute: the rally, the explosion, the gas, the ambulances, the broadcast ban, the government's first words, and the next day's answer of labour, the work stoppage. There is also a figure that has entered the record: according to the inspector's report and the case file, of the 2,044 police assigned to the rally, 129 were around the Station (Diken, 9 October 2018).

Then we look at the whole of 2015. On 5 June, the HDP rally in Diyarbakır; on 20 July, in Suruç, the socialist youth who wanted to take toys and books to Kobanî; on 10 October, in Ankara, the labour and peace rally. According to court judgments and case files, all three attacks were carried out by persons linked to the same ISIS network; in the three of them, 141 people lost their lives. The dossier tells, with documents, the structure of this network running from a teahouse in Adıyaman to Gaziantep, the applications the families made to the police saying "our child is missing," and the technical surveillance.

The title of the fourth chapter is a question: Why did the warnings not turn into a protective measure? According to the inspector's report, as reflected in the press and in a parliamentary motion, there were dozens of intelligence notes, from months beforehand, that a suicide-bomb attack could be made on the rallies (parliamentary motion). The existence of these warnings is not proof that the place and the time of the attack were known in advance; the question the families have been asking for eleven years is which measures were taken, in the face of this information, to protect the participants.

Part Two: An Eleven-Year Trial

In the main case, on 3 August 2018, nine defendants were given aggravated life imprisonment 101 times each (Medyascope). The families' demand that the massacre be tried as a "crime against humanity" found no response in 2024; according to the court, the legal elements of the offence had not been realised (bianet). This distinction matters: for a crime against humanity the statute of limitations does not run; the lawyers voice a concern about the statute of limitations with regard to the fugitive defendants.

As for public officials, permission to investigate was not given. In the Gaziantep process the governorate refused permission twice, the court set aside these decisions twice, and on 17 June 2026 a decision of non-prosecution was given for the second time (Kısa Dalga). The case continues today as well: one of the fugitive defendants was brought to Turkey in 2026; the next hearing is on 3 December 2026, at 10:00 (Evrensel).

This part of the dossier gives, together, the court judgments, the proceedings at the Constitutional Court and the European Court of Human Rights, the rejected motions for a parliamentary inquiry, the association the families founded and that was closed in 2018 on the ground of its statute, the commemorations on the 10th of each month, and the debate over the monument.

Part Three: Not a Number, a Person

Massacres turn people into numbers. Newspaper headlines write "103 dead," and then that number too is forgotten. In the third part, the heart of the dossier, we did the opposite: we recorded each of our 103 comrades' name, work, family, dreams, and last words. Our main source is the book Peace Portraits, published in 2017 by the P24 Memory Library, prepared by 62 volunteer writers who went to the families' homes, and the press of the period.

When these lives come together, a class map emerges. Among those whose occupation is clear in the sources, there were at least 21 students and recent graduates, 15 construction workers and their unionists, 15 factory, workshop, service and domestic workers, 11 railway and transport workers, 7 teachers, 7 pensioners. Of the 78 people whose age is explicitly stated in the sources, 37 were between 18 and 35. The youngest of us was nine-year-old Veysel, who did not want to let go of his father's hand; the eldest of us were past seventy. They had come from all four corners of Turkey, from Adana to Edirne, from Kars to İzmir.

What they all had in common was this: they were people who lived by their labour in this country, who paid the price of the war, and who knew that peace would benefit them most of all. We commemorate them not as victims who were "in the wrong place at the wrong time," but as subjects of the struggle who were there for peace, by their own choice, by a conscious decision.

Mustafa Doğan, the father of İTÜ student Güney Doğan, leaves a carnation in front of the Station on the 10th of every month: "Even if no one comes, even if I am left on my own, I will take my carnation and leave it where their blood was shed." The whole of the dossier is a record left beside this carnation.

Part Four: Terror, the State, and "Stability"

The second half of the dossier places 10 October inside a wider history. It tells, with documents, how armed jihadist organisations grew in the shadow of the calculations of the great powers and the regional powers, from the mujahideen in Afghanistan to al-Qaeda, from the Taliban to ISIS: the United States' own diplomatic correspondence, intelligence reports, court judgments. It examines, as a historical comparison, the pattern called the "strategy of tension," from Bologna Station in Italy to Indonesia, from Latin America to Gladio. It recounts, through court judgments, the Hizbullah trials of the 1990s in Turkey, the Umut case, Sivas, and the wave of attacks running from 2003 to 2017. According to our compilation, 301 people lost their lives in the principal attacks attributed to ISIS in Turkey and brought before the courts.

The sixth part gathers these in a class analysis and asks three questions: In whose hands? Under whose control? To whose benefit? Whom the attacks targeted, in which political climate they took place, and how the concept of "stability" was used afterwards, are facts that can be documented. To think these together is not a criminal accusation; it is our right as citizens. A frightened society asks for a strong hand; our question is whose "stability" that "stability" is.

How Did We Write It?

This dossier is published in Turkey and will be read in Turkey. For this reason we held tightly to three principles.

We separated fact from claim in every sentence. A court judgment, an official document, a recorded statement and a claim are given in a separate language, with who said it and in which source it appears. Details that are uncertain, single-sourced, or contradictory between sources did not enter the text.

We analysed apparatuses and relations, not persons. No one about whom there is no final court judgment is described as guilty; those on trial are "defendants." There is no assessment, in the nature of a verdict, about a pending case.

We did not legitimate violence in any form. This is a peace text that rejects violence directed at civilians, from whomever it comes. In the life stories, only memberships of legal parties, unions, professional organisations and associations appear.

The text passed twice through legal review and a check of spelling; before printing it will be read by a media lawyer, and it will be read to the families and to the 10 October Peace Association. All 39 photographs in the book were chosen from Wikimedia Commons, only from among freely licensed files; out of respect for personality rights, we did not include photographs of those who lost their lives, or of their relatives.

Two Accounts: What They Want Forgotten, What We Put on Record

What they want forgotten	What we put on record
"103 dead"	103 names, 103 occupations, 103 lives
"The wrong place at the wrong time"	They were there for peace, by a conscious decision
One more terrorist attack	A network, reflected in the courts, that links Diyarbakır, Suruç and Ankara
"The warnings were of a general nature"	The dated record of the warnings, the measures, and the permissions to investigate
The case is over	There is a new hearing on 3 December 2026
To commemorate is a rite	To commemorate is a form of organising
Memory is the families' burden	Memory is the common property of all of us

Concrete Tasks

Read it, and have it read. Download the dossier, and read a chapter of it together in your own circle, in your student collective, in your union branch. The thesis box at the head of each chapter is a heading for discussion.
Join the commemorations. For the 10 October commemorations, follow the current announcements of the 10 October Peace Association, the families, and the labour organisations. If you are outside Ankara, join the commemorations in your city. Protecting the peaceful and legal character of the commemoration is part of the respect owed to the memory of those we lost.
Follow the case. Follow the hearing on 3 December 2026. Hearings are open to the public; it matters to the families and the lawyers that they see they are not alone.
Contribute to memory. In Chapter 19 of the dossier there is a proposal: under the lead of the 10 October Peace Association, with the families' approval, an openly licensed and searchable 10 October Memory Commons. Some of our comrades' stories were never written; some portraits were lost when the sites where they were published closed. Knowledge Commons is ready to offer technical infrastructure and volunteer labour for this archive.
Correct it, and develop it. This is a living document. For a piece of information that is wrong or missing, for the families' requests for correction and removal, for new sources, write to us; every correction that is verified enters the next version with a version note.

Close

Dear young comrades,

The clock of Bologna Station is kept stopped at 10:25, in memory of the massacre of 2 August 1980. In Ankara too a clock stopped at 10:04. But that clock did not only stop; it was set again every year, on the tenth of every month, in every carnation left in front of the Station.

Those we lost had come in front of the Station that morning to defend peace against war, labour against death, solidarity against fear. What we owe them is not a lament, but the carrying on of that decision. We will not forget; because not forgetting is an organised act.

Peace, right now.

Download the Dossier

The 10 October Dossier — 10:04: The 10 October Ankara Massacre, Terror, the State, and the Mask of "Stability." A Memory and Class Guide for Young Comrades. Knowledge Commons, Version 1.2.1, October 2026. The original text is CC BY-SA 4.0; the images are subject to their own licences (Appendix F).

All our files are on a single page: Guides. The PDF, the charts, and the scripts for downloading images are shared under the same licence.