Turkey & Town Centre Politics

BELOW, Eric Lee of the website Labour Start calls for support for the campaign now taking place on the streets of Turkey against what some are calling the 'autocratic ambitions' of the Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his government.  In today's International Herald Tribune, the journalist Tim Arango writes from Istanbul:

'Across this vast city, a capital for three former empires, cranes dangle over construction sites, tin wall barricade old slums, and skyscrapers climb higher than the mosque minarets that had dominated the skyline for centuries - all a vanguard for more audacious projects already in the works.'

Already two people are reported to have died since the start of the protests against the bulldozers and construction trailers that are rapidly changing the physical landscape of Istanbul.  Edhem Eldem, a historian at Bogazici University in Istanbul, challenged the government for taking on massive development projects without seeking public support:
'In a sense, they are drunk with power (and) they lost their democratic reflexes and are returning to what is the essence of Turkish politics:  authoritarianism.'

When the government announced a plan to convert Taksim Square, a  historic place of public gathering, into a replica Ottoman-era army barracks and shopping mall; something Mr. Eldem, the historian, called 'a Las Vegas of Ottoman splendor', that was what incited the demonstrators.  But Tim Arango writes:  'there are many other contentious projects that have drawn public outrage.'  For example the city's oldest film theatre was demolished to make way for another mall, raising howls of protest; a 19th-century Russian Orthodox Church may be destroyed as part of a renovation of the port, and in ghettos across across the city, the urban poor are being uprooted and paid to leave their homes so the contractors can move in to build gated communities, according to Mr. Arango, many of these have ties to government officials.  When this kind of thing happened in other European cities like Barcelona in the 1990s, it led to civic unrest when ethic communities moved out of the centre of the city to the periphery.

The brutal crackdown on protests at the end of May in Istanbul's Taksim Square has shocked the entire world -- and triggered a massive wave of protests across Turkey. A coalition of organizations including trade unions has issued demands which trade unionists everywhere will support. These include: free all those arrested; drop all charges against them; hold accountable those responsible for the police violence; and lift all bans on meetings and demonstrations. Please send your message of protest and spread the word today.

A coalition of organizations including trade unions has issued demands which trade unionists everywhere will support.

These include:

• free all those arrested;
• drop all charges against them;
• hold accountable those responsible for the police violence;
• and lift all bans on meetings and demonstrations.

Please click here to send your message of protest -- and spread the word today.

Thank you!



Eric Lee

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