Pre-NATO 'Fear' Barricades in Ankara — Streets Banned, Intellectuals in Custody!

On July 7–8, 2026, Ankara is preparing to host the 36th NATO Summit—the military pact of the world's rulers. While red carpets are rolled out at the Presidential Complex, a completely different scene unfolds on Ankara's streets: police barricades, doors broken down before dawn, and a people being silenced.

So why should an ordinary resident of Ankara care about a meeting of distant generals? Why is the state this panicked, and whom does it fear? We place this "preventive fear" operation unfolding in Ankara on the table in all its nakedness, in a way anyone who knows nothing about the process can easily understand.

Why Was the City Locked Down? The Ban Process

It all began with a sudden decision by the Ankara Governor's Office. Citing the security of foreign delegations attending the summit and "our country's reputation," the governorship indefinitely banned all actions, protests, press statements, and even leaflet distribution across the city.

In the People's Language: "The leaders of the military pact that bathes the world in blood are coming to Ankara; not a single worker, woman, or young person complaining of poverty, price hikes, or money flowing to war should let their voice reach through the Complex's windows."

These bans are in fact a document of the great class fear heard in the voice of the street. To protect their own "reputation," the rulers suspended the people's most fundamental constitutional right—the right to protest.

Who Is in Custody and Why? The Great Purge Operation

Before the ink on the governorship's ban had dried, a massive custody storm broke out on orders from the Ankara Chief Public Prosecutor's Office. Custody orders were issued for a full 241 people, and so far 209 people have been taken from their homes in dawn raids. Moreover, these people were subjected to a 24-hour ban on meeting with their lawyers. That is, the state wanted to hide for a full day whom it had taken and why.

Those taken into custody are familiar names—the conscience of this country and the voice of the street. Let us know them closely:

• Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emel Memiş: An economics instructor at Ankara University's Faculty of Political Science (Mülkiye). What is her crime? Explaining scientifically women's labor and how the people are being impoverished. That is, defending that the budget should be spent on the people, not on war.
• Elif Torun Öneren: General Chair of the (United) Revolutionary Party. Taken into custody with her door broken down because of her political will to stand against war and imperialism.
• Burcu Arıkan: Spokesperson of Umut-Sen. A labor defender who carries the voice of workers seeking their rights in factories and construction sites to the squares.
• Yıldız Tar: Editor-in-Chief of Kaos GL and journalist. A pen that makes heard the voice of the oppressed and the otherized.
• ÇHD Lawyers: Lawyers Semra Demir, Kürşat Bafra, and Doğa İncesu, members of the Contemporary Lawyers Association. The lawyers who would defend those taken into custody are themselves in custody!
• Socialist Youth: Dozens of university students who are members of SGDF and ESP. They are being tried to be silenced with house raids and arrests for days because they called NATO "Killer."

The Big Trick: While carrying out this operation, the state prepared a catch-all list. At the very top of this list of leftists, revolutionaries, academics, and lawyers, it placed the name "DAESH" (ISIS). The aim here is clear: to smear anti-imperialist revolutionaries by throwing them into the same sack as jihadist gangs in the eyes of the people and to legitimize the operation.

What Was the Opposition Going to Do? Action Calendar

So what were these people going to do that made the state so afraid? The calendar planned by anti-NATO left and socialist forces to enlighten the people and organize response before the summit was as follows:

• June 23–30: People's forums and leaflet distributions on "What is NATO, how does it plunder our budget?" in Ankara's working-class neighborhoods, universities, and unions.
• July 1–5: Joint press statements in central Ankara with the participation of ÇHD and democratic mass organizations "Against Legal and Rights Violations."
• July 7 (Summit Day): Large anti-imperialist mass protests and marches near the Complex and in Ankara's central squares.

The dawn operations the state carried out aimed precisely to neutralize the "organic intellectuals"—the vanguard who would organize the street—who wanted to implement this calendar.

Why Does This Process Matter to Us?

To see the barricades erected today on Ankara's streets merely as temporary security measures for an approaching military summit is to share the myopia of bourgeois politics. The picture before us is the most concrete exposure of the organic bond global capitalism establishes with local apparatuses of repression. This process is of vital importance for us workers, the oppressed, and revolutionaries; because:

Imperialism Is Not a Distant Monster but the Kitchen Fire in Our Home

One of the Turkish working class's greatest illusions is to perceive imperialism only as jets flying beyond the borders or missiles placed on border lines. Yet NATO is not a foreign policy issue; it is directly a design of domestic politics and a labor regime.

The imperialist war apparatus to be hosted at the Complex on July 7–8 does not come here for free. NATO's growth strategies, the billions transferred to the arms industry, and military commitments are financed directly with surplus value stolen from this country's workers.

• Why is your market basket empty? Because the budget flows not to the people's health but to NATO's war industry.
• Why is the minimum wage below the hunger line? Because the capitalist order must promise foreign investors and global pacts "a cheap, silent, and obedient worker paradise."

In short, Assoc. Prof. Dr. Emel Memiş being torn from her lectern and you being fired from the factory for unionizing are parts of the same agent.

The "Security" Discourse Is the Ideological Mask of Class Fear

That economists from Mülkiye, union spokespersons, lawyers, and socialist youth are thrown into the same sack and taken into custody shows not the state's strength but its ideological weakness and fear. While struggling in the spiral of economic crisis, the bourgeois state is horrified at the people's accumulated anger meeting anti-imperialist consciousness.

That is why they try to criminalize everyone seeking rights by melting them in the same pot as reactionary gangs like "DAESH." The aim is to sterilize the street, imprison social opposition in their homes, and present NATO generals with a report: "Look, we created a garden of roses without thorns inside."

The Material Force of Liberation: Class Solidarity

At precisely this point, against the rulers' greatest weapon—the policy of "isolation and fragmentation"—the sole and strongest antidote in our hands is solidarity. But in our vocabulary, solidarity does not mean merely shedding tears for victims or offering dry wishes in front of courthouses.

As Marx said: "Theory also becomes a material force as soon as it has gripped the masses." Today solidarity is that theory descended into the street, embodied in flesh and bone.

Uniting Fragmented Fronts through Solidarity

The state wants to isolate academia from workers, lawyers from students, political parties from civil society, and crush each in its own small cell.

• If today only workers speak out against Umut-Sen Spokesperson Burcu Arıkan being taken into custody,
• If only academics don robes for Mülkiye faculty member Emel Memiş,
• If only bar associations issue statements for ÇHD lawyers, then the state has achieved its aim.

Solidarity is the will to unite on a single barricade the labor thesis defended by the economics instructor with the worker's right to strike in the factory; the lawyer's robe with the university student's anti-imperialist anger. If the rulers prepare a single "terror sack" for us, we must weave against them a single "Class Front."

Unraveling the Carpet's Threads!

The magnificent red carpet to be spread under the feet of NATO leaders in Ankara on the morning of July 7 is not merely a military protocol instrument. That carpet is woven with the rights violations of silenced academia, revolutionary parties whose doors were broken down, handcuffed lawyers, and young people whose futures were stolen.

Our task is not only to expose the generals on that carpet but to reveal the exploitation mechanism beneath it. By holding each other's hands tighter, by carrying the voice of every comrade in custody to factories, campuses, and streets, we will unravel that carpet's threads one by one.

Because we know: However global imperialism's encirclement may be, the working class's solidarity is an equally destructive internationalist force. There is no liberation alone—we will either tear down all barricades together or submit to this siege!