Turkey

We have been waging a campaign against work accidents which are rampant in Turkey. Central to the campaign is a petition to be finally submitted to parliament. Hundreds of UID-DER activists worked hard during the campaign which has the main slogan: “Work Accidents are not Destiny, Stop Workers Dying of Work Accidents!” During the campaign about 500,000 people have been contacted face to face. We have already surpassed our specific goal which was 100,000 signatures. To appeal to workers, the activists worked under all kinds of hardships in working-class neighbourhoods, at factory entrances, so...

On Friday 19 July, 36 cities around the world hosted protests against the violent abuse and murder of sex workers. These protests were sparked by the transphobic and whorephobic murders of sex workers in Sweden, Turkey, France, Italy and other countries. We were demanding “Justice for Jasmine and justice for Dora” , in reference to two recently murdered sex workers. In the week the protests took place, a trans* sex worker from Turkey called Dora Oezer was killed. Turkish police are looking for her murderer, who some news sources are saying was a client. Prostitution is legal in Turkey but...

On Friday 28 June, Turkish government forces fired on people in the Kurdish town of Lice, in eastern Turkey, protesting at the construction of a new base for the gendarmerie, a militarised police force. They killed a teenager and injured several other people. According to Deutsche Welle, “Protests followed in Istanbul on Saturday [29th] 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!’” Generally, according to Turkish socialists, the protests which exploded at the end of May against...

The movement against the authoritarian neo-liberal Erdogan government in Turkey continues in multiple forms despite heavy repression and heavier threats. It started with a small environmentalist protest against the plans to bulldoze Gezi Park, next to Taksim Square in central Istanbul, and build a shopping mall on the site. It spread after 28 May when the first small protest was attacked with tear gas and water cannon. As we go to press on 20 June, a Turkish socialist tweets: “Tonight [Wednesday 19th] there are forums in 27 Istanbul parks. Amazing atmosphere”. Since Monday 17 June thousands...

I was talking the other day to an educated and informed American and mentioned that I’d spent a lot of time recently working on building support for the protestors in Taksim Square. Her reaction surprised me. “But aren’t you worried about, you know, an Islamist takeover?” In the two years since the overthrow of the Mubarak Regime, many people have begun to learn all the wrong lessons from the Arab Spring. The fear that reactionary Islamists in Syria might hijack the revolution is a genuine one. But in Turkey, it’s the Islamists in power and secular, modern Turkey is in the streets and squares...

Protests to stop capitalism’s attempt to plunder Taksim Gezi Park have swiftly spread across the whole country and turned into an anti-government revolt. From the Turkish revolutionary socialist group Marksist Tutum, http://en.marksist.net/marksist_tutum/turkey_revolt_against_capitalist_… . Anti-government demonstrations are being held every day in many cities — Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir in particular. In Istanbul demonstrations have spread over many neighbourhoods. Hundreds of thousands have been taking part in the mobilisation. Thousands of people have been...

In May the Turkish state oil company agreed a oil exploration deal with the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Iraq alongside US company ExxonMobil. Iraqi oil resources are vast, but heavily concentrated in Northern Iraq under the administration of the KRG. That and the KRG’s relative stability has attracted many multinationals, and governments (Turkey, Iran, Lebanon, Israel) to the autonomous area. There has been increasing pressure on the KRG by the Iraqi Federal Government to stop all further deals and for all investment decisions to be made at the national level. The KRG have said if...

From the Turkish revolutionary socialist group Marksist Tutum Resistance against the planned destruction of Gezi Park — whose trees are to be felled to make way for a shopping centre — has become a mass movement. Park workers, labourers, students, artists and intellectuals have been opposing the construction machines and resisting the police. On 1 May, workers and socialists were also victims of furious police attacks when they demonstrated in Taksim Square. Construction machines stood ready to cut down the park’s trees, but demonstrators, joined by [pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party]...

In mid-April 2013, I visited Istanbul to meet a group of socialist activists involved in building a workers’ support group, Uluslararası Işçi Dayanışması Derneği (Association of International Workers’ Solidarity, UID DER). My visit co-incided with feverish campaigns to prepare for May Day celebrations. UID DER runs six community centres in rented-out shopfronts in different working-class neighbourhoods of Istanbul and Ankara; they want to open offices in other places. On the morning of my arrival we went to see the office in Sarigazi, a diverse neighbourhood, where Turks and Alawites live...

When George W. Bush proclaimed his “War on Terror” more than a decade ago, there was some concern in the USA and its allies that the war might not be confined to fighting actual terrorists overseas and could also be directed against ordinary dissenters at home. For that reason, civil liberties groups were particularly concerned about any “anti-terror” legislation that could be seen as curtailing human rights. The good news is that the democratic rights we had pre-2001 are largely intact in countries like the USA and the UK. The intelligence services no doubt have larger budgets and electronic...