Etki Can Bolatcan
The people of Greece woke on the morning of 21 April 1967 to the sound of the coup-making generals echoing from the radios.
Greece was one of the important countries in the US policy of fighting communism put into effect to encircle rising socialism. In the period following Greece’s inclusion in the cold war circle at a time similar to Turkey’s NATO membership, a CIA-engineered fascist junta similar to what we would see in our country on 12 September was carried out in Greece in 1967 as the Colonels’ Junta.
After the coup fascist repression and bans began without pause, and the junta declaring that it had seized power “to protect the country from the danger of communism” launched a major pro-American transformation.
Against this climate of repression and intervention fragmented objections were rising from different social groups and possibilities of struggle against the junta were being discussed. In the following years the deepening economic crisis, imperialist interventions and increasing repression brought these objections together on a common line by 1973.
Youth was at the forefront of this line. Students were not content with organising around the concrete demands of youth but were seeking the possibilities of a united struggle embracing the people’s demands extending from bread to freedom, from democracy to independence. In the following dates forums were founded on campuses, student representatives were elected from the grassroots and a legitimate militant approach was woven with broad youth circles. With this approach the faculty occupations that began in February 1973 quickly breached the walls of the universities. Each new protest tore down a wall of fear erected by the junta.
When the date showed 14 November all lecture halls of the Polytechnic University had been filled by students and discussions on the governance of the university and the country had begun.
The common decision emerging from the forums held with the strong participation of students was the occupation of the university and it was put into practice without delay when each student leaving the lecture halls gathered in the yard. With the occupation the Polytechnic University became a centre of direct self-government and the struggle for an autonomous democratic university took shape. With the occupation students formed action, security, food and propaganda committees. Most importantly they launched the Polytechnic Radio, which spoke to all Athens with the technical means of the occupied university. The call raised from the radio was quickly engraved in history: “This is Polytechnic… The students fighting for freedom are speaking…”
The Polytechnic occupation soon turned into a broad social uprising with the participation of the people of Athens and social groups from other cities of the country. People visited the students on campus, built solidarity networks and set up barricades in the streets. Protests were organised in universities, high schools and neighbourhoods across the country.
The junta was making preparations to break this experience that had made the Polytechnic a stronghold of the united power of the people. In the first hours of the night connecting 16 November to 17 November the resistance that spread across all Athens after 17-year-old Diomidis Komninos, who shielded his chest at the university gate, was killed did not subside despite tanks entering the school, soldiers firing at the people and countless waves of detentions. The people continued the struggle the next day too, ignoring the curfew and martial law.
The Polytechnic Resistance became a political rupture showing that the people could take their own fate into their hands, ceasing to be a student action for the junta. After the uprising the regime lost its legitimacy both at home and in the international public sphere. In the following years the defeat in Cyprus, the cracks within the army and the unrelenting social reaction forced the junta to dissolve. Shortly afterwards the junta had to move to civilian politics and the coup plotters were sentenced to heavy penalties in trials lasting years.
Perhaps after the brutal slaughter of the students in the Polytechnic there was an air of discouragement in Greece but the united resistance of the students paved the way for a victory that the Colonels’ Junta could not withstand. As Solneman said “Not every uprising or rebellion may result in revolution, but there is no revolution that does not begin with uprising, rebellion, spark. Every rebellion deserves to be considered the beginning of the end of the world.” The Polytechnic Resistance is a beginning of the Greek people’s victory against the junta and for 52 years it has been commemorated with the participation of thousands as a building block that strikes fear in the rulers every 17 November. Just as the call from the Polytechnic Radio comes to life again in Greece with the slogans shouted on 17 November, with Loukanikos’ barking and Alexis’ resistance, it echoes in Turkey in the torn-down barricades, student forums and the claim for an autonomous democratic university.
The radio call of that day that spread from the campuses to the streets and found its answer in the people’s hope-filled eyes freed from fog, today too is in the ears of the young who light a torch for a country being pushed into dark corridors. This resistance continues to show itself in the never-fading struggles of the youth who continue to surround the streets of Greece and remain the nightmare of the ruling classes. This is also a sign that the traditions of revolutionary resistance will never fit into the past even if they pass through defeats or are crushed under juntas but will find a place for themselves in a future and at the same time remain the most important source of strength for new resistances.
After 19 March, it was not only our youth that flowed from the barricades that were torn down in our country, but also our revolutionary past… When the strongest barricades that were intended to be erected were torn down, ‘This is Beyazıt’; when students wrote their own stories with their own pens, ‘This is Hacettepe’; When the ‘junta perfume,’ as Greek students put it, was poured, ‘This is ODTÜ,’ and even after 50 years, if the ‘radio of freedom’s voice’ continues to broadcast from fluctuating frequencies, then this is Revolutionary Youth.
Note: This article is translated from the original article titled Burası Politeknik, Beyazıt, Hacettepe…, published in BirGün newspaper on November 23, 2025.
