10 people died and 15 people were injured in yesterday’s suicide bombing by IS militants in the Sultanahmet Square. New massacres could have been prevented if light was cast on the Reyhanlı, Diyarbakır, Suruç and Ankara massacres and a fight against all logistical, political, etc. backing for IS had been started. While failing to do this, the government has taken suspects into custody in front of the media, only to quietly release them afterwards;deceiving the public and pretending to fight the terror organization with the fake custodies; imposing media blackouts on the bomb attacks; covering up all the evidence that may cast a light on the truth. The government also continues its confrontational, expansionist and sectarian foreign policies.
The government, led by a Prime Minister that does not deem the interference of named suicide bombers befitting a “constitutional state”, is on a mission to persecute a teacher, Ayşe, who tried to make her voiceheard on national TV, saying“end the killing of, acknowledge what is happening, there should be peace”. 1128 academicians, demanding peace and asking for acknowledgement of Kurdish peoples’ demands for a resolution to the conflict and a permanent peace, have immediately become targets of government representatives at all levels, led by President Erdoğan; The Council of Higher Education (YÖK) have taken the task on and already started investigations.
The President and the government want all sections of society to take side with reactionism and not criticize it. The government should be the last to complain about the situation. The government, and particularly the President, have built the single party rule and prospect through polarizing the population and with their tone and politics that will turn this polarization into conflict.
This is not the first time that the Turkish population is faced with these kind of attacks by the rulers, violation of rights, oppression, violence and threats. The rulership is faced with a population that lived through coups, massacres, that were abandoned to unemployment and poverty with laws like 1402s, that have survived prisons and torture.
We remind the rulership that their path is the wrong one. We support the demands to stand up against deaths and for peace, personified in teacher Ayşe;the call on the government by the academics; and the true reports by the imprisoned journalists. Furthermore, we will not step back from the struggle to build a democratic country in the face of all the reactionary politics of the rulership, oppression and violence. We call on all labour and democratic forces to bring down this wall of terror that is being created and to fight for democracy, for rights and freedoms and for peace both at home and abroad.
Selma GÜRKAN
Chairwoman