2.5 Million Attended Gezi Protests Across Turkey :
Everyday 50 People Stand Silently In Their City Cntres
By Countercurrents.org
24 June, 2013
Countercurrents.org
Some 2.5 million protestors hit the streets across Turkey since the unrest began on May 31 over the attempt to demolish Istanbul 's Gezi Park . [1]
Only in two cities, Bayburt and Bingöl, people did not attend the protests while 79 cities witnessed big protests. A large majority of the protests were staged in Istanbul and Ankara .
Some 4,900 protesters were detained and 4000 people were injured including 600 riot police.
After the violent clashes slowed down, “standing man” civil disobedience protests increased in the country and everyday some 50 people stood silently in their cities' centres.
The damage toll showed that 58 public buildings and 337 private businesses were damaged while 240 police vehicles, 214 private cars, 90 municipality buses and 45 ambulances were left unusable. Some 68 city cams, known as MOBESE, were also broken. The total damage costs amounted to 140 million Turkish Liras.
Demonstration joins hands with Gezi Park
Thousands attended the commemorationdemonstration. DHA photo
Thousands gathered in Istanbul 's Anatolian district of Kadiköy to mark the upcoming 20th anniversary of the Sivas massacre, upon a call from Alevi associations.
A number of unions and the Taksim Solidarity Platform also attended the demonstration. A representative of the platform made a speech emphasizing that their demands had yet to be met by the government.
The crowd was commemorating the killing of 35 people on the night of July 1-2, 1993 , in an arson attack led by a mob on a hotel where many Alevi intellectuals and artists who had come to Sivas for a conference were staying. The controversies surrounding the pogrom have never completely been uncovered and an Ankara court dropped the case on the killings in March 2012, ruling that the charges against the suspects exceeded the statute of limitations. The Madimak hotel has since become a symbol of the discrimination faced by the Alevi community, who has long asked the state to turn it into a memorial museum.
Demonstrators also commemorated Ethem Sarisülük, a young Alevi protester who died after allegedly being shot by police during the Gezi Park events in Ankara .
At the Kadiköy demonstration, Kemal Bülbül, the Chairman of the Pir Sultan Abdal Culture Association, slammed prime minister Erdogan's attitude toward the Alevi community. "After saying 'one confession,' 'one religion,' 'one language,' 'one race,' he now says 'one man.' We don't accept any of it," Bülbül said.
He also criticized the choice of the name "Yavuz Sultan Selim" for the future third bridge over the Bosphorus. Known in English as "Selim the Grim," Selim is the Ottoman Sultan who is well known for slaughtering Alevis, and the Alevi community has repeatedly expressed its outrage over the government's selection.
Following the bridge furor, President Abdullah Gül proposed to name a future project after Haci Bektas, a mystic who influenced the Alevi faith, or the Alevi poet Pir Sultan Abdal.
"Change the name of the university in Sivas to Pir Sultan Abdal. Establish the Haci Bektas Theology University . Change the name of Tunceli, which is in fact the name of a military operation, back to Dersim. Then we'll talk," Bülbül said.
"Establish an inquiry commission into all the people who have been the victim of massacres: Alevis, Armenians, Syriacs, Turks, and Kurds," he added.
The Kadiköy demonstration came on the same day that Erdogan warned of attempts to "foment ethnic tensions" in Turkey during a rally in Erzurum .
Source:
[2] Hurriyet Daily News/Anatolia News Agency
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