The rally had been organized by DISK, the Confederation of Revolutionary Trade Unions, which had held a similar gathering in Taksim Square the previous year without incident. On the morning of 1 May 1977, workers and students poured into the square — estimates put the crowd at several hundred thousand. It was a festive, political assembly: banners, chants, the expectation of solidarity.

Shots were fired. Witnesses disagreed about exactly where they came from; most pointed toward the Sular İdaresi water-authority building or the nearby Sheraton Hotel — the tallest building in Istanbul at the time — or both. Gunfire alone did not cause most of the deaths. What followed was a catastrophic crowd crush. Security forces entered the square with armored vehicles, sirens blaring, firing water cannons into the packed crowd. People tried to flee through Kazancı Yokuşu, the nearest exit, but an armored vehicle had blocked it. In the press and panic, 27 of the 36 documented dead were crushed. Autopsy reports established that only four victims had been killed by bullets. Three others died from injuries that could have been either bullets or blunt trauma. Several witnesses said Meral Özkol was run over by an armored vehicle.

DISK compiled a list of 36 names. Istanbul Radio had announced 34 dead and 126 injured on the day of the attack; the union's press advisor later concluded that a full accounting could raise the toll to 42. The officially indicted case identified 34 victims. Whatever the precise number — and it remains disputed — the people who died were workers, students, and trade union members who had come to mark a holiday. They had families waiting for them. Among those documented are a woman named Nazan Ünaldi, a man named Aleko Konteus, and Sibel Açıkalın — individuals who deserve to be remembered as people, not simply as statistics in a contested historical event. Over 500 demonstrators were detained by security forces in the aftermath; 98 were formally indicted. The demonstrators, not the perpetrators, were the ones put on trial.

No one was ever convicted of organizing or carrying out the attack. The trial of the detained demonstrators ended in acquittal on 20 October 1989. Prosecutor Çetin Yetkin, who had spent three months investigating the killings, was reassigned and resigned; he later claimed that a bag of explosives he had identified as evidence had simply disappeared. The perpetrators of the initial shooting — whoever they were — were never brought to court.

Suspicion turned quickly toward the Counter-Guerrilla, the Turkish branch of the Cold War clandestine network known in Western Europe as Operation Gladio. One of the first public figures to say so aloud was Bülent Ecevit, then the leader of the political opposition, who stated on 7 May 1977 that forces within the state but outside legal control had a hand in the incident. Prime Minister Süleyman Demirel declined to comment publicly but privately warned Ecevit in a letter that he too might be targeted if he spoke at Taksim Square in June. The CIA, ITT Corporation, and various intelligence figures have been named in subsequent investigations. None of these allegations has been definitively proven in court.

Taksim Square was effectively closed to May Day gatherings for decades after 1977. The history of why plays out in subsequent Turkish politics: labor groups periodically sought to return, and were sometimes met with force. The 1977 killings were part of a broader wave of political violence that convulsed Turkey throughout the late 1970s, culminating in the military coup of 1980.

What makes the Taksim Square massacre distinctive, and distinctively painful, is not only the scale of the killing but the absence of accountability. Families of the victims spent decades without answers about who was responsible. The question of who fired the first shots — and who ordered the security response that turned panic into catastrophe — has been examined in books, documentaries, and journalism, but the Turkish state has never reached a definitive official conclusion. The names on DISK's list are the clearest record of what happened: real people, gathered for a legal celebration, who did not survive the day.

Every year on 1 May, workers' organizations in Turkey gather to mark International Workers' Day and the anniversary of the 1977 massacre. In years when authorities permit demonstrations in Taksim Square itself, the attendance carries particular weight: the square has become as much a memorial space as a civic one. When access is blocked, the attempt to reach it becomes its own statement.

The victims are commemorated by name at union memorial events. Their names — Kahraman Alsancak, Leyla Altıparmak, Hülya Emecan, and the others on the list — appear on banners and in speeches each May. Whether or not the full truth is ever officially established, the people who died in Taksim Square on 1 May 1977 are not forgotten.