The Dialectic of an Honorable Life: Understanding and Keeping Alive Comrade Nebi Barlas

Comrades,

In these July days of 2026, we confront the objective and shattering reality of having lost Comrade Nebi Barlas — a revolutionary lawyer who devoted his life to the defense of revolutionaries, to the struggle for existence of the oppressed, and to the legal front of the class struggle; a valiant human rights defender among the founders of the Human Rights Association (İHD); a companion in struggle. This loss, which the bourgeois media and the ideological apparatuses of the property order attempt to reduce to an "ordinary obituary," is not, from the standpoint of Marxist dialectics, a singular, passive biographical closure, but a qualitative leap in which a revolutionary consciousness is bequeathed to collective memory.

Historical materialism teaches us that human beings make their own history, yet they do not make it under arbitrary conditions of their own choosing, but within the class contradictions they confront directly and that are handed down from the past. The life of Nebi Barlas is precisely the steeled form of the dialectical bond between this objective necessity and the will of the revolutionary subject.

Today the minds of our young comrades are besieged by postmodernism's chatter that "there is no truth," by the virtual illusions created by the digital world, and by the packaging of the culture industry that commodifies everything. Late capitalism constantly presents to the individual a selfish existence, the accumulation of property, and insertion into the hierarchy of capital as the sole criterion of "success."

It is precisely in the midst of this ideological siege that the life of Nebi Barlas stands as a dialectical barricade that extinguishes all the artificial lights of bourgeois society and reveals the naked face of reality.

Who Was Nebi Barlas, What Did He Do, and Why Must We Commemorate Him?

To make sense of a revolutionary's life and loss is not to treat him, as bourgeois biographism does, as a singular "heroic tale" or a mystical "myth of sacrifice." Marxist dialectics teaches us that the individual is shaped at a concrete moment of the social base, of production relations, and of the class struggle, and participates in historical practice.

The life of Comrade Nebi Barlas is the steeled form of the dialectical bond between objective historical necessities and the will of the revolutionary subject. To understand him requires stripping away the ideological packaging and false illusions offered by contemporary capitalist society and focusing on naked materialist truth.

Who Was Nebi Barlas? Historical Demarcation and Revolutionary Subjectivity

Nebi Barlas is not merely a "lawyer" who graduated from a bourgeois law faculty, nor an ordinary "human rights defender." He is a historical subject positioned at the very center of the class struggle in the harshest crisis moments of Turkish capitalism and in the periods when the state apparatus applied its most naked forms of violence.

• Class Formation: From the 1963 purge of Military Academy cadets to the Mamak dungeons, from the 12 March memorandum to the 12 September military fascist regime, he confronted the fascist repressive apparatuses of the ruling class directly.

• Grasping the Class Character of Law: Through his practical life he grasped that law is not a supra-class "mechanism of justice," but rather the codified will of the ruling class.

Biographical and Dialectical Comparison

Axis of Inquiry	Bourgeois Idealist Conception	Nebi Barlas's Materialist Reality
Individual and History	A biography of the "hero" or "victim" isolated from history.	A revolutionary subject shaped by class contradictions and historical necessity.
Approach to Law	A quest for sacred and abstract "Justice," independent of the state.	A consciousness that accepts law as the instrument of the ruling class and the courtroom as a position of anti-capitalist assault.
Purpose of Life	Individual career, accumulation of property, and intra-system respectability.	Dedication to collective liberation, to the emancipation of the working class, and to the struggle for humanization.

Chronological Cross-Sections from the Life of Nebi Barlas

The historical line of a life clearly reveals the class conditions through which it was steeled:

• 1940: He opened his eyes to life.

• 21 May 1963: While a final-year student at the Turkish Military Academy, he was among the cadets purged on the pretext of the coup attempt by Colonel Talat Aydemir and Fethi Gürcan.

• 1963–1966: Under an unjust conviction, he spent 3.5 years imprisoned in the Mamak, Balıkesir, Bigadiç, and Kepsut prisons. The prison years enabled him to grasp that "Justice is an urgent need, like bread, like water."

• Late 1960s / Early 1970s: After his release, he completed the Faculty of Law at Istanbul University and began to continue the struggle for justice in his robe.

• 12 March 1971: During the memorandum period, he undertook the defense of Staff Lieutenant Colonel Talat Turhan.

• 12 September 1980 and the Years of Martial Law: In the period of the junta's heaviest repression, he conducted the defense of a total of 2,480 political prisoners before the Martial Law Courts, 807 of them facing demands for the death penalty.

• 25 June 1981: While serving as counsel for the revolutionaries Ahmet Saner and Kadir Tandoğan, who were executed at Paşakapısı Prison, he personally witnessed their executions.

• 1986: He was among the founding members of the Human Rights Association (İHD), institutionalized against human rights violations in Turkey.

• 2000: Reacting to the humiliating searches imposed on lawyers at the entrance to Sağmalcılar Prison, he left the practice of law, saying, "I will not diminish my robe by serving under these conditions."

• 2026: After his modest life in the Akçay district of Balıkesir, he departed from among us at the age of 86. He left young jurists the message: "Do not bow, do not remain silent, hold your honor above all else. Remain in justice."

What Did He Do? Material Practice and Ideological Assault Against Class Justice

Modern capitalism commodifies science, art, and law, transforming them into its own survival mechanism. Law is an ideological apparatus that the system uses to render exploitation "legitimate." The answer to the question of what Nebi Barlas did is concealed in how he sabotaged this mechanism in favor of the class struggle:

• Erecting a Barricade in the Martial Law Courts: After the 12 September coup, in the darkness when the junta courts worked like a guillotine, he undertook the defense of 2,480 political prisoners, 807 of them facing demands for the death penalty.

• Rejecting the Commodification of Justice: Under conditions in which capitalism confined everything to the money-commodity-money cycle, he chose propertylessness by demanding not a single kuruş for defending revolutionary youth and workers.

• Rejecting Systemic Legitimacy: In 2000, against the humiliating search impositions on lawyers at prison entrances, he ended the profession, saying, "I will not diminish my robe by serving under these conditions."

Balance-Sheet Analysis of Material Practice

Action / Historical Cross-Section	Logic of the Ruling Class / System	Nebi Barlas's Dialectical Intervention	Class and Ethical Meaning
12 September Junta Trials	To impose acceptance of the martial law courts as fascism's legitimate judicial organs.	To transform the defendant's dock not into a position of mere defense, but into a position for exposing and judging the junta.	By refusing to commodify justice, he transformed revolutionary solidarity into a material force.
Rejecting Commodity Relations	To turn legal knowledge into a market for sale and an instrument of capital accumulation.	To take no money from poor and revolutionary prisoners, and to reject property accumulation absolutely.	He erected a practical communist moral barricade against the corruption of capitalist relations.
Decision to Lay Down the Robe (2000)	To sustain professional existence by submitting to formal procedures within the system.	To reject humiliating impositions and effectively end the profession by saying "I will not diminish my robe."	To reject formal legitimacy and sabotage becoming an instrument of the system's legitimation.

Why Must We Commemorate Him? A Dialectical Compass for Young Comrades in the Age of Contemporary Illusions

To commemorate the loss of Nebi Barlas is not a romantic longing for the past, nor a passive lament of the kind found in the bourgeois culture industry. To commemorate means to dialectically incorporate his methodology into the struggle we wage today.

Today our young comrades are besieged by the vast ideological illusions created by digital capitalism and late-capitalist decay:

1. The Postmodern Regime of Truth: With the lies that "there is no truth," the dialectical grasp of youth is sought to be dulled. Barlas's life represents the hard truth of concrete reality and of the class struggle.

2. Digital Isolation: The individual is isolated and rendered passive in virtual worlds. Barlas's practice, by contrast, is a concrete organized existence given in flesh and bone, in real courtrooms and at prison gates.

3. Market Ethics: In this age when honor and success are measured by property, Barlas's life shows that honor is won by standing in the class ranks.

Modern Capitalist Illusions and Nebi Barlas's Answer

Contemporary Bourgeois Illusion / Trap	Discourse of the Dominant Ideology	The Answer Given by Nebi Barlas's Life	Practical Lesson for Young Comrades
Postmodern Relativism	"There is no objective truth; everyone has their own truth."	Truth lies in production relations and in the class struggle; it is necessary to be principled and clear.	To cling resolutely to the dialectical materialist method against ideological drift.
Digital Alienation and Individualism	"Be the entrepreneur of your own life, compete, succeed alone."	Individual salvation is a dream; real existence is possible only through collective struggle.	To withdraw from the virtual worlds offered by screens into the field of concrete class struggle.
Commodified Ethics and "Market Honor"	"Honor and success are measured by the property one owns and by purchasing power."	Honor is not to surrender to the order of capital and to stand upright in the class ranks.	To reject bourgeois glitter and keep the ethical backbone above every personal interest.

"Why Is Life Lived?" — A Thanksgiving in the Name of Class and Humanity

The modern world rising upon the rotting body of late capitalism imposes upon the human being the deepest alienation in history. The order of capital tears the individual from the means of production, from their own labor, from nature, and finally from their own species-essence, reducing them to an isolated "atom."

Under the siege of consumer society, digital narcotics, marketable aesthetics, and pseudo-scientific illusions, modern humanity is left alone with that ancient question that gnaws at the mind: "Why is life lived?"

Bourgeois existentialism and idealist philosophy answer this question with a pessimistic nihilism or with fairy tales of individual "self-realization." For them, life is either an absurd existential ache whose meaning is invented after the fact, or a personal "success" story to be won in the competitive market.

Yet Marxist dialectics rejects all of these metaphysical deliriums! Life gains its meaning precisely in the midst of objective reality and the class struggle, at the point where historical necessity intersects with the will of the revolutionary subject.

The mark left by Comrade Nebi Barlas is the most epic and material answer drawn against this abstract existential crisis.

An Existence That Shattered the Wall of Alienation

"The human being 'becomes human' only within the social process and through the bond established with production relations. To resist the rottenness of class society is not a moral preference; it is, in the materialist sense, the sole path to remaining human."

Comrade Nebi did not live life within the boundaries drawn by the ruling classes, as a search for comfort or a hunt for titles. In an age when capitalism transformed everything — justice, art, ideas, and human dignity — into commodities bought and sold on the market, he radically rejected commodification.

He answered the question "Why is life lived?" not with words, but with the primacy of his action:

• A Destructive Blade Against the Illusions of Capital: He tore away the ivory towers of bourgeois law, the formal procedures of the courtrooms, and the false masks of justice worn by the powerful.

• The Epic Power of Propertylessness: He cast into the refuse heap the accumulation of property, career climbing, and intra-system privileges. For he knew that every chain binding one to capital paralyzes the will of the revolutionary subject.

• Being Steeled in the Class Ranks: He bound his life not to individual dreams, but to the collective fate of those who walked to the gallows in the 12 September dungeons, of workers, of the oppressed, and of revolutionary prisoners.

The Death of a Revolutionary and the Dialectical Leap

Viewed from the standpoint of historical materialism, the ending of Comrade Nebi Barlas's physical biography is not a passive "annihilation." In accordance with the dialectical law of nature and society, the completion of a quantitative lifespan is its transformation into a qualitative leap of the consciousness he left behind in collective memory.

He left behind no passive victim over whom to lament, nor a picture to be museumified. He left:

• An unyielding will that echoed in the martial law courts,

• A spine that did not bow at prison gates,

• And an unsullied robe flung in the face of bourgeois justice.

This legacy is becoming an instrument of struggle in the consciousness of young comrades whom contemporary capitalism seeks to keep under ideological blockade. Youth seeking the meaning of life will find real existence not in the false glitter offered by the order of capital, but in that steel barricade that Barlas wove step by step.

Eternal Thanks in the Name of Class and Humanity!

Thank you, Comrade Nebi Barlas!

For showing us that life need not be a paralyzing existential anxiety or a selfish race of consumption, but can be lived like a spear hurled at the fortress of capital...

For proving in practice that even beneath the guillotines of bourgeois justice, human dignity, communist morality, and class consciousness cannot be seized...

For leaving a flawless life that, from Mamak to the Martial Law Courts, from actions to the prison gates, cried out to the question "Why is life lived?": "It is lived for the liberation struggle of humanity and of the working class!"...

In the name of the working class, of oppressed peoples, of those who believe in the flow of history, and of all humanity waging the struggle for humanization, we are grateful to you.

Your life is not an end, but an unshakable resolve in the uninterrupted flow of our struggle. Rest in peace, comrade; the dialectic of your action flows on, and the banner continues to rise in young hands!