Taksim Solidarity: All Detainees Must Be Released

Taksim Solidarity held a press conference this morning, urging the immediate release of their detained members. “It was the people who ensured the status of park as it is,” they said.

Taksim Solidarity held a press conference this morning - in the aftermath of last night’s police violence on Gezi Parkers and detention of several Taksim Solidarity members.

The press statement urged the immediate release of all detainees, saying that the access on public can not be restricted.

Held in Taxim Hill Hotel, the conference was attended by Turkish Doctors Union Chairman Özdemir Aktan, Chamber of Architects Chairman Eyüp Muhçu, Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK) General Secretary Arzu Çerkezoğlu, TMMOB Board member Mehmet Soğancı, Mustafa Turgut  from Istanbul Branch Platform of Public Sector Labor Unions Confederation (KESK) and Hüseyin Demirören from Taksim Solidarity secretariat.

“Police intervention came without a warning”

Reading the statement released by Taksim Solidarity, Mehmet Soğancı said 48 members of their platform were detained and kept in Istanbul’s main police headquarters in Vatan Avenue.

He said that yesterday’s police intervention with water cannons and gas bombs took place without a warning, and platform members were detained unlawfully under the order of Istanbul governor.

Urging the authorities to release all detainees without further processing, Soğancı claimed that the government was lying to its people by controlling the city of Istanbul with police violence.

“The park remained as it is after a long struggle of people against the government’s nature-hostile, unscientific, anti-democratic and profit-seeking project. It is the people who saved the park and it is the people who make it more beautiful. And not the government,” he said.

Soğancı also reminded that people resisted against police violence since June 28 even though violators have been cleared out and left unpunished.

"All the spontaneous forums across Turkey’s parks and squares marked a light of hope in the construction of true democracy where we can determine our own future ourselves.”

"Scores of injuries due to rubber bullets"

Eyüp Muhçu: Istanbul governor has no competence to determine whether or not people can enter a park. Restricting public access is a crime. We will not seek permission to enter any public space.

Özdemir Aktan: Istanbul governor invited people to the park initially and welcomed them with gas bombs afterwards. Should we consider this as a trap? One of the striking facts about recent police violence is the firing of rubber bullets. We don’t have the exact number but scores have been reportedly injured due to rubber bullet wounds.

Arzu Çerkezoğlu: Nothing will be the same after June resistance. People who demanded freedom, equality and peace won here, while AKP government has lost. I am inviting the government to leave behind their irrational policies.

Mustafa Turgut: PM is governing the city, therefore he is the responsible. All those who are responsible of violence must be prosecuted to alleviate tensions.

Following the press conference, the group marched towards Taksim Gezi Park, as they chanted slogans “Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance”.

"We don’t know detainees’ charges"

Addressing the crowd in Gezi Park, advocate Can Atalay said the court verdict on Gezi Park was published in National Judicial Network (UYAP) on June 18. “However,” Atalay continued, “we delayed the announcement of the detailed verdict as we didn’t rely on authorities. This is the reason why we announced the final verdict as soon as it was announced on July 3.”

He also added that yesterday’s detainees were yet to see their lawyers and no charges have been made.

Police detained 80 protestors yesterday including 48 members of Taksim Solidarity.

Some of yesterday’s detainees from Taksim Solidarity were listed as follows: Mücella Yapıcı (Chamber of Architects), Ali Çerkezoğlu (Turkish Doctors Union General Secretary), Beyza Metin (Chamber of Electric Engineers Istanbul Branch Chairwoman), Süleyman Solmaz (TMMOB Istanbul Coordination Council Secretary), Akif Burak Atlar (Chamber of City Planners Istanbul Branch Secretary), Sabri Orcan (Chamber of Architects Istanbul Chamber) yönetim kurulu üyesi Ender Imrek (People’s Democratic Congress executive board member), TKP MYK member Erkan Baş, Haluk Ağabeyoğlu from HDK, Hakan Dilmeç from Kaldıraç Magazine, EHP Istanbul Chamber Chairman Emre Öztürk. (NV/BM)

http://bianet.org/english/human-rights/148353-all-detainees-must-be-released

Slingshots and brass knuckles for the Police!

Slingshots and brass knuckles for the Police!



It has been discovered that the riot police which is known with its heavy attacks against activists during the Gezi Park protests is now being fortified further. It is reported that it was imported for the police forces

brass knuckles, slingshots and filled sticks apart from pepper

gas.
As a result of the AKP government's efforts to fortify police

forces during its rule between 2002-2012,

595,086 tons of pepper gas was imported. It was discovered

that the imported gas was classified as "arms against

predators" for import tax tariff purposes.

According to a report by soL newspaper, the reply to the opposition party's MP for Kocaeli Mr. Lutfu Turkkan's bill addressed to the

Minister of Duty and Commerce Mr Hayati Yazici unearthed some

grave practices in regards to the government's fortifying the

police forces. Minister Yazici, stated in his reply to the

bill that between the years 2000-2012, 651.5 thousands of tons

of pepper gas was imported and the maximum amount imported was

115 thousands of tons in 2005. Mr Yazici stated that last

year 43.6 thousands of tons of pepper gas was imported

together with coshes, clubs, filled sticks, brass knuckles,

slingshots, shotguns and guns.

Classified as "arms against predators"

Another scandalous detail was unearthed in the reply to the bill. Pepper gas imported for the police is defined as arms against predators in customs.

What is the Police planning to do with the slingshots?

It is now questioned what kind of intervention the police forces will do with the knuckles, slingshots, shotguns, injection arms that are normally used against wild animals that are supplied besides pepper gas, water cannon and cosh. There are question marks about what kind of attacks are about to be made to the people after this process of fortifying the police forces by the AKP government.

There had been claims before about the riot police having used slingshots in many protests. The bill's findings seem to have solidified the claims that some so-called activists that were accused of using slingshots were actually police officers. Also, another controversial matter is based on which legal grounds the riot police will use slingshots, knuckles, injections and clubs if the so-called activists who were blamed of using slingshots were committing a crime according to the police.



http://haber.sol.org.tr/devlet-ve-siyaset/polise-sapan-ve-musta-haberi-75941

Groupe armé aux coutelas et couperets attaque les protestataires qui fuient l’intervention de la police

Un groupe armé aux coutelas et aux couperets attaque les protestataires qui fuient l’intervention de la police

On voit dans la séquence de vidéo un groupe attaquer avec des couperets les personnes qui fuient l’intervention de la police. Un des agresseurs frappe d’abord avec un coutelas la jeune femme qu’il vise et il lui donne un coup de pied. On voit que la police n’intervient pas au groupe de personnes armé aux coutelas. Ce fragment de vidéo filmé avec un téléphone portable s’est rapidement diffusé via les médias sociaux. -DHA News Agency

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Group with machetes and cleavers attack protestors who flee police intervention

In the video footage a group with machetes and cleavers are seen to attack Gezi protestors who are fleeing police intervention. It's clearly seen that one of the members of the group hits a woman he targeted with a machete and then kicks her from her back. It can be also seen that police don't intervene at all to the group with machetes. This video footage shot with a mobile phone has spread on social media very fast. -DHA News Agency

[wpvideo JjT9yTuc]

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Parliament rejected in 140 strokes

Digital media analyst reviewed “turkish parliament in twitter” in light of the gezi park resistance: why can’t the opposition do their job?



Radikal.com.tr - 2013 Gezi park events, no doubt one of the signature events in Turkish history, caused an unbelievable increase of criticism against the AKP government which has been power since 2002 by winning 3 successive elections. The events in one way paved the way to spell out the mentality and future course of events in the form of “old Turkey” and “new Turkey” and to sociologically focus on the media and personal rights and freedoms as the fundamental requests of mothers, artists, academicians, gays, unions and fan groups. Many communications and political experts stated that AKP government managed this crisis very badly during this process. On the other hand, both the AKP government and the protestors agreed on an important problem in Turkish politics during AKP rule, which obviously is interesting as both sides share the same view: The ineffectiveness of opposition parties.

If you ask PM Erdogan, almost all negativitiy in Turkish politics, from 1993 Sivas events to Reyhanli attack to Dersim events, Kurdish problem and 12 September regime change is because of CHP which has not been in power for a long time. The ineffectiveness of the opposition resulted in the need for people to get their voices heard and the protests lasted for days in several cities in Turkey. If we look at the final tally, 4 dead, 8000 injured with 60 in critical condition, 11 lost their eyes, 103 had concussion. Another component of the tally is the reaction with strong criticism from Turkish publishers association, Turkish bar association, Turkish physicians association, authors such as Yasar Kemal and artists such as Idil Biret with the “we are worried” advertisement.

Undoubtedly, during Gezi parki protests, social media, whether by AKP or what we can call anti-AKP factions, was heavily used as a reflection and direction of media censorship and auto-censorshp. Many news got disseminated from social media into mainstream media and some “supporter” media did not cover many important news and therefore social media became the primary source of what’s happening and disinformation and as such is both commended and criticized. In fact, social media was defined as “society’s plague” by PM Erdogan. The cencorship and auto-cencorship exhibited in mainstream media resulted in an explosion of traffic in Turkish social media sites and the fact that people considered news sites, parliament members’, entities’ social media accounts as the healthy source of information became one of the signature and unexpected features of the “new Turkey” that gave meaning to Gezi Parki events compared to many other events in Turkish history. One of the accounts widely followed by people that they came across while they were trying to raise their voice on the streets and on social media due to the ineffectiveness of the opposition was Parliament’s twitter account. During Gezi parki events, everybody somewhat became a citizen journalist and expressed their fast, healthy reaction with “disproportionate intelligence” and Parliament account also got its share of this disproportionate intelligence.

Youth who were defined and who define themselves also as apolitic before Gezi events, white collar worker and roughly 90% of Gezi parki protestors who based their actions against vandalism, discrimination and violence were not aware of the Parliament’s General Assembly and their official Twitter account. Even though the account has been active since March 2012, the fact that most of the opposition proposals were rejected attracted the attention of one ordinary citizen following the Parliament’s Twitter account, which then raised awareness of the broader population and put AKP government in a difficult position of not accepting any opposition proposals in the name of democracy: AKP government has not been allowing opposition and representing opposition in the Parliament!



This was against the notion of majority ruling the minority concept that PM Erdogan himself is against. Several columnists also expressed that ideal democracies have “pluralism” rather than “absolutism”. In fact even though PM Erdogan reacted to Gezi Park events by saying “democracy is all about the ballot box”, one of AKP founders, first AKP government prime minister and current President Abdullah Gun, contradicting Erdogan said “democracy is not only about the ballot box”, which then brought the question into attention of all political parties as to whether the populations represented by the opposition parties are represented in the Parliament sufficiently through the proposals.



Is opposition’s ineffectiveness because of government rejection of the opposition? In 440 days between March 28, 2012 and June 18, 2013, an interesting picture emerges that illustrates the effectiveness of and the chances given to the opposition, when we look at the 3223 tweets from the Parliament’s twitter account. The analysis of the picture illustrated by the Parliament’s twitter account on how effective the opposition is from the opposition’s perspective is given below. During this time, based on the official Twitter account data and considering all enquiries by all parties in the Parliament; all of 50 proposals by AKP were accepted whereas all 216 proposals by the opposition got rejected.



Distribution of acceptance and rejections in enquiries given by the parties in 440 days Without focusing on the 2B, Forest Law, Petroleum Law sort of legislation that AKP passed in the Parliament and by only taking the oppositions parties’s perspective, CHP is the party with the most number of proposals with 103, MHP follows with 59, and BDP follows with 54; whereas all 216 proposals were rejected due to the majority impact of AKP’s members of the parliament.



Reasons of the rejected enquiries made by the opposition parties about AKP officials When we look at the contents of the rejected enquiries made by opposition parties, the conclusion is that most are reactions to Gezi events and many other problems before. The enquiry related to the investigation of disproportionate force used by police on protestors which even the Prime Minister officially accepted but did not result in any resignations or the enquiry related to the use of the tear gas, which has been accepted to be a chemical weapon by Turkish physicians association, Turkish torax association and resulted in heavy criticism from European Parliament, International Amnesty Organization, US Senate and United Nations, were proposed by CHP but got rejected.

Other than that, MHP also made enquiries and got rejected on the reasons of the Reyhanli events which resulted in the deaths of 53 citizens. The enquiry on the deaths in Uludere was also made by CHP and BDP and got rejected.

Below is the list of all enquiries made by the opposition parties and got rejected. When we look at their contents, the democratic rights and freedoms demanded during Gezi Park events, hate crimes, prevention of the celebration of national holidays, expression issues such as the media rights, Reyhanli, Uludere, 1993 Sivas events, Kahramanmaras events, all of which have never been settled in public’s conscience as well as vocational issues such as farmers, cotton producers, rangers, members of Turkish armed forces, relatives of martyrs, injured, teachers, students, environmental issues such as nuclear plants, forests, hydroelectric plants, 2B, thermal plants, issues related to secularism and holy places and corruption allegations have been brought up by opposition parties and presented to be able to represent the Turkish citizens but were rejected by AKP’s majority.

This had me, somebody who have always been in the opposition to the governing party, regardless of which party it is, surface the question that we asked at the beginning. In fact, opposition focused on the issues relevant to the public, presented under the roof of the Parliament, in short did their jobs but under the roof of the Parliament where ALP has the majority, all of those inquiries were rejected. In addition to the 440 days where we were not able to gather data, how many enquiries were rejected during the 11 years of AKP rule? This question comes up and is intriguing. If some of the opposition enquiries were accepted, we could have discussed the effectiveness and passivity of the opposition parties during the 440 days, however, if none of them were accepted under the roof of the Parliament begs the question as to whether there is democracy in Turkey or in the Parliament, requires us to demand that we need pluralist and not absolutist democracy in Turkey and therefore need the election threshold to be removed and say #direnmuhalefet, #direndemokrasi and #direnTBMM.

http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/140_vurusta_reddedilen_tbmm-1140259

Abdullah Cömert autopsy report: Gunshot ...

In the autopsy report it is documented that Abdullah Cömert who died in Hatay during the June Resistance was killed by a gunshot. The preliminary autopsy reports concludes as: “there is an entrance at the root of the nose and an exit at the right temporo occipital probably caused by a gunshot and the person was already dead when he was admitted to the hospital”. And the definite cause of death was expressed as: “I could not establish the definite cause of death based on available external evidence. There is need for classical autopsy.”

http://haber.sol.org.tr/devlet-ve-siyaset/abdullah-comertin-otopsi-raporu-atesli-silah-haberi-75818

Des artistes condamnent la "rhétorique de haine" du gouvernement

Des artistes, journalistes et écrivains turcs, dont le prix Nobel de littérature Orhan Pamuk, ont publié samedi, sur une pleine page dans plusieurs journaux, un appel au gouvernement lui demandant de cesser d'employer une rhétorique de division qui alimente selon eux la haine dans le pays.

Cet appel, signé par plus de 80 personnalités, intervient à la suite d'un mouvement de contestation sans précédent qui a visé pendant près de trois semaines le gouvernement islamo-conservateur du Premier ministre Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

"Nous somme inquiets", "La rhétorique du 'vous contre nous' accentue les divisions au sein de notre société", avertissent les signataires, appelant le gouvernement à mettre fin aux pressions contre les militants.

"Il y a une atmosphère de frustration et de haine", peut-on lire dans le texte, qui accuse implicitement M. Erdogan et son gouvernement de dérive autoritaire après une décennie au pouvoir.

Le Premier ministre n'a de fait cessé de fustiger les manifestants, issus pour la plupart de la classe moyenne, jeunes et éduqués, au moyen d'une rhétorique dévalorisante, les qualifiant de "voyous" et de "terroristes".

Les artistes n'ont guère été épargnés, accusés par M. Erdogan d'appartenir à des "groupes marginaux".

La rhétorique du Premier ministre a accentué les divisions de la population entre ses partisans, qu'il a désignés comme "les 50%", et les autres, qui, rebondissant sur cette formule, se sont appelés "les autres 50%".

Tandis que la fronde anti-gouvernementale, partie le 31 mai d'une mobilisation contre la destruction programmée d'un jardin public d'Istanbul, le parc Gezi, a rassemblé des dizaines de milliers de personnes, M. Erdogan a poussé ses partisans à organiser des contre-manifestations, déclarant: "Personne ne peut nous intimider (...) nous ne prenons d'ordre ou d'instruction de personne sauf de Dieu".

La fronde anti-gouvernementale en Turquie est partie le 31 mai d'une mobilisation contre la destruction d'un jardin public d'Istanbul, le parc Gezi. Le week-end dernier, plus de 2,5 millions de personnes manifestaient dans les rues de près de 80 villes de Turquie, selon les estimations de la police.

Dans leur gestion du mouvement de contestation, devenu la plus grave crise politique depuis l'arrivée au pouvoir du Parti de la justice et du développement (AKP) en 2002, les autorités ont pris pour cibles les journalistes et les artistes.

L'acteur turc Mehmet Ali Alabora a ainsi été pris à partie par M. Erdogan après qu'il eut posté un tweet soutenant les manifestants. Le Premier ministre l'a accusé de susciter des troubles et l'a menacé de poursuites.

L'acteur avait signalé plus tôt dans le mois avoir reçu des menaces non spécifiées, après que le journal pro-gouvernemental Yeni Safak l'eut désigné comme l'un des leaders d'un "complot visant à faire tomber le gouvernement".

Lundi, la BBC a exprimé sa préoccupation devant ce qu'elle a qualifié de campagne des autorités turques visant à "intimider ses journalistes".

Le maire d'Ankara, Melih Gokcek, avait mis sur son compte Twitter des accusations contre la correspondante turque de la BBC Selin Girit, la qualifiant d'espionne à la solde du Royaume-Uni.

Le pianiste turc de renommée internationale Fazil Say a lui aussi subi l'ire des autorités turques.

Connu pour son athéisme militant, le pianiste âgé de 43 ans a été condamné le 15 mai pour blasphème en raison de ses tirades provocatrices contre la religion musulmane sur Twitter. Cette condamnation a suscité à l'étranger une volée de critiques contre la Turquie.

Fazil Say, dont la condamnation a été annulée, doit être rejugé prochainement devant un tribunal d'Istanbul.

Le mouvement de contestation a fait quatre morts et près de 8.000 blessés. Le recours excessif à la force par la police turque a été très critiqué dans le monde et a écorné l'image de M. Erdogan.

Les attaques répétées du Premier ministre contre les médias, et une tendance à utiliser les tribunaux pour faire taire ses ennemis, ont alimenté les inquiétudes quant aux droits de l'homme en Turquie, pays qui est candidat à l'adhésion à l'Union européenne.

La Turquie est régulièrement critiquée par les ONG de défense des droits de l'homme pour ses atteintes à la liberté d'expression et pour le nombre de journalistes ou d'avocats détenus dans ses prisons.

Les artistes qui ont soutenu le mouvement de contestation redoutent qu'en représailles il ne leur soit interdit de participer aux festivals ou aux représentations ayant lieu dans les municipalités dirigées par des membres de l'AKP.

http://www.lepoint.fr/societe/turquie-des-artistes-condamnent-la-rhetorique-de-haine-du-gouvernement-29-06-2013-1687310_23.php