May 02, 2008 – It is now in everybody’s memory: The police attacking workers waiting in front of their union hall under DISK, the Confederation of Progressive Labor Unions, with red dyed water cannons. Well, it was discovered that the red dye in the water was actually a burning agent with pepper. People who were […]
May 02, 2008
– It is now in everybody’s memory: The police attacking workers waiting in front of their union hall under DISK, the Confederation of Progressive Labor Unions, with red dyed water cannons. Well, it was discovered that the red dye in the water was actually a burning agent with pepper. People who were hosed with this burning agent soon felt burns and rashes on their skin.
– Police could not stop itself from beating anybody on the streets in Istanbul on May Day. When they couldn’t stop, they also attacked their own government’s news reporters from Anadolu Agency and beat the reporter and broke his camera capturing the barbaric brutality of the cops in action.
– To give support to the government’s attack, the local municipality government, from the same ruling pro-US, Islamist, Justice and Development Party (JDP-AKP) shut down all the surveillance video cameras in the places where the police had planned to attack the most. While all other cameras on the streets of Istanbul functioned well, only the cameras in these districts had “technical problems.” By censuring the violent attack’s images was the way the Islamic party local government gave support to the national government.
– Thousandof people clashed with the police to enter the historic site of May Day celebrations. Left groups like Alınteri, Mücadele Birliği and Kaldıraç opened their banners and were able to get close to the historic Taksim Square twice. However, they were only able to get about 300 yards close to the plaza. Yet, under heavy attack by the cops with water cannons, tanks and gas bombs, they had to disperse into the side streets. Nobody was able to enter the plaza with their free will except for the chief of security, the president of social democratic party DSP and the only socialist parliamentarian from Freedom and Solidarity Party, Ufuk Uras. While the Communist Party of Turkey (TKP) claims they have entered the plaza, nobody knows what they mean by this, since no group was able to enter the Taksim Square. The workers, unions and the left turned the “Entire City of Istanbul into May Day Area and Entire Istanbul became Takism Square” (as the popular slogan of the day declared).
– There were others who were able to get into the square, not by their own free will. These were the arrested. These people were beaten brutally by the cops and were taken to the “arrest vehicles” parked at the plaze.
– To see the normally “peaceful” social democratic party, CHP’s members fighting with the cops in the side streets of Istanbul was a sight to see!
– Even the soft liberal Mehmet Ali Birand, the anchorman of TV station Channel D announced the May Day events as “State Terror.”
– Speaking in the parliament, the social democratic party CHP’s representative from Yalova said, “I am warning that moustached chief of security. There will come a day when we will make you pay for these events. I am calling on to the governor of Istanbul who called for ‘using proprtional force’ that you also need a ‘proportional intelligence’ to be a state official.”
– Unable to control their terror, the cops attacked the liberal, nationalist Cumhuriyet daily newspaper offices. Ali Deniz, the journalist writer for the paper’s Sunday section and his friend Esra Acikgoz were beaten by the cops on the premises. Ali Deniz’s arm has been shattered by the the beating he got in the hands of the Turkish police.
– According to the Anka News Agency, the pro-US, Islamic Prime Minister Erdogan had breakfast with a group of his representatives. In the 4 hour breakfast, it is rumored that the Prime Minister said the May Day was celebrated everywhere in the world but nothing like the events in Istanbul ever occurred. He is also said to have declared, “If we knew the unions were so insistant on celebrating the May Day in the Taksim Square, we would have let them.”
– There were reports of less “head banging” by the cops after the May Day attack. “Head banging” is a way the cops in Turkey celebrate after they beat up people on the streets. This is due to the police force becoming more influenced and more controlled by the pro-capitalist, pro-Islamist Fethullah organizations. These organizations are named after Fethullah Gulen, the infamous millionaire Turkish Islamist businessman living in the USA and broker of many business and political deals with the most notorious Islamic extremists in the world for the US.
– Reports indicate that more than 530 people have been arrested yesterday but because many of those arrested have not been “processed” yet, the number is actually many times more than this figure. Among those many arrested are several Sendika.org correspondents.
Sendika.org