The pro-USA government of prime minister Tayyip Erdogan ‘s Justice and Development Party (JDP) have been trying to prevent any and all demonstrations against the US or the capitalist bosses by setting the police on them at every rally. If that didn’t work, there was always the “government ban” on assemblies at public places. May […]
The pro-USA government of prime minister Tayyip Erdogan ‘s Justice and Development Party (JDP) have been trying to prevent any and all demonstrations against the US or the capitalist bosses by setting the police on them at every rally. If that didn’t work, there was always the “government ban” on assemblies at public places. May Day was no exception when it came to please Erdogan’s masters.
Istanbul’s Taksim Plaza has been the traditional location to celebrate the May Day in Turkey. Most governments tried breaking this tradition by banning this labor/people event nearly every single year.
The worst effort was to attack the hundreds of thousands of people celebrating the May Day in 1977 at the same plaza by opening fire upon the crowd by snipers strategically placed on government buildings and hotels around the plaza, then rolling the tanks on the panicked crowd.
However the workers, associations, confederations of Labor Unions, people, and progressive parties fought back to use the Taksim Plaza for the May Day celebrations as before. The police was present every time and tried preventing the event with full force.
This year. The pro-US, pro-capitalist Erdogan’s government tried preventing the May Day celebration by banning the Plaza to the demonstrators due to “security concerns.” It showed some construction work around the plaza as an excuse to prevent the event scheduled to take place there. However, only few days prior to the historic celebration, the government did not see security issues when thousands upon thousands of soccer fans used the named plaza to celebrate their victory.
To protest this selective and arbitrary ban by the government to please the bosses and the US, the lawyers’ association, “Contemporary Judiciaries’ Association” member lawyers gathered at the steps of the Bar Association and staged a protest march into Taksim Plaza from there.
The attorneys carried a banner that read, “The Right to Assembly and Peaceful Demonstration Can Not be Rolled Back.”
Attorney Serife Ceren Uysal addressed the crowd after the march ended at the “banned” plaza demanding the government to abandon its repressive policies against the people of Turkey.
Sendika.Org News
