Solidarity Growing Among Turkish Protesters http://en.haberler.com/solidarity-growing-among-turkish-protesters-281821/ The protests in Turkey have lasted four weeks now. More and more Kurds
are joining in, and sectarian differences are being deemphasized.
"Lice is everywhere, resistance is everywhere!" rang out the slogan from
the thousands who had taken to the streets of Istanbul on Friday night
(28.06.2013). Some hours earlier, there had been violent clashes in the
predominantly Kurdish town of Lice, in the Diyarbakir province of
eastern Turkey. The protests were aimed at the construction of a new
outpost of the Gendarmerie, a branch of the Turkish armed forces. One
person was killed while several more were injured.More protests
followed in Istanbul on Saturday at midday.
Organized by the workers'
union KESK and the Kurdish BDP party, they chanted slogans including:
"We don't want a police station. We want freedom!"The
demonstrators then organized themselves once again - via Twitter and
Facebook - on Saturday evening.."The people
are all protesting together," 22-year-old demonstrator Yanki Özdogan
told DW. From now on, he added, everything would be different. "When I
talk to people I notice that their awareness and their empathy for other
people has risen. People have gotten closer."Turks, Kurds,
Alawis, Sunnis - old sectarian distinctions are apparently being
ignored. "That was never anyone's intention," one Kurdish demonstrator
said. "All that happened in the past were provocations. It didn't matter
how many divisive statements the politicians made. The people won't
lose their solidarity, and that's the important thing.""We're all brothers," another Kurd added. "We're all equal and free, and want to live equal and free in this country."Lice - the Kurdish Gezi Park
But
Hüseyin Celik, spokesman for Turkey's governing AKP party, tweeted that
the clashes in Lice were designed to disrupt the ongoing Kurdish peace
process. "Those planning a big conspiracy are trying to create a Kurdish
version of Gezi Park. Please be careful, my Kurdish brothers," he said
in another tweet. "Big conspiracy" was the same phrase that Prime
Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan consistently used in speeches to explain
the nationwide protests against his regime.As part of the peace
process, meant to end the 30-year conflict between the Turkish
government and the PKK (Kurdistan Workers' Party), some PKK fighters
withdrew from Turkey at the beginning of May into the Kurdish region of
northern Iraq.
The Kurdish BDP party criticized the progress of the
peace process on Friday, and called for an extension of the rights of
the Kurds, who make up 20 percent of the Turkish population.'We are deeply ashamed'"For all these years, we've been deaf to the things happening in
eastern Turkey, and we always blamed [the Kurds]," one protesting
student told DW. "But the latest events have shown us that the situation
wasn't how it was presented to us." The media had been lying to them,
another demonstrator agreed. "We are deeply ashamed, and we hope that we
can all live together in peace."Hundreds of intellectuals also
showed their solidarity on the weekend. Under the motto "We are
concerned!" they took out an ad in a newspaper on Saturday regarding
polarization in society. Artists like Nobel Prize-winning author Orhan
Pamuk and pianist Fazil Say endorsed the ad, which said: "We sign the
call to end the hate speeches and stop the use of artists as targets."
The general oppression has to end, they assert.
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