Tag Archives: protests

Turkey continues to (sort of…) unravel?

13 Mar

From The New York Times:

Across Turkey, New Unrest as Teenage Boy Is Buried

By SEBNEM ARSUMARCH 12, 2014

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Riot police used tear gas to disperse protesters on Wednesday. Credit Ozan Kose/Agence France-Presse — Getty Images

ISTANBUL — An enormous outpouring of grief and antigovernment rage during the funeral procession for a teenage boy felled by a police tear-gas canister turned into another mass confrontation with the Turkish authorities on Wednesday as mourners clashed with antiriot squads in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir. At least one person was killed.

The new unrest came a day after protesters battled with police officers in at least 15 cities over news that the boy, Berkin Elvan, 15, had died. He had been comatose with head trauma since June, when Turkey was first engulfed with antigovernment protests against the decade-old tenure of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who is seen as increasingly authoritarian.

The boy, who was struck by a tear-gas canister while buying bread, has become the newest symbol of simmering anger at Mr. Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party, known as AKP, and over the tough police repression of political dissent and a recent corruption scandal that has entangled the top echelons of the ruling party.

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Hrant Dink demonstration 2014: “the world’s top jailer of journalists”

20 Jan

Protesters march to Agos newspaper office during a demonstration to mark the seventh anniversary of the killing of Turkish-Armenian journalist Hrant Dink in Istanbul

Signs read: “We are all Hrant, We are all Armenian.” (click)

From Al Jazeera

Justice urged for slain journalist in Turkey:

Several thousand people take part in Istanbul rally to mark anniversary of Hrant Dink’s killing and demand justice.

Several thousand Turks have taken part in a rally, amid heavy presence of riot police, to demand justice for a prominent Turkish Armenian journalist murdered seven years ago.

A demonstration has been staged every year on January 19 since Hrant Dink’s murder. It has often turned into a general plea for justice.

“Murderer state will account for this,” chanted the protesters who had gathered on Sunday in Istanbul’s Taksim Square.

Questions still linger about the circumstances of the killing.

Dink, 52, a leading member of Turkey’s tiny Armenian community, was killed by a teenage ultranationalist outside the offices of his bilingual Agos newspaper on January 19, 2007.

He had campaigned for reconciliation between Turks and Armenians, but incurred the wrath of Turkish nationalists for calling the mass killings of Armenians during the first world war a genocide.

Dink’s supporters believe that those behind the murder were protected by the state and have asked for a deeper investigation to uncover officials who were allegedly involved.

Backing up widespread accusations of a state conspiracy, a former police informant accused of instigating the murder claimed during his trial last month that he had warned police of the plot but they failed to act.

Dink’s self-confessed murderer, Ogun Samast, a 17-year-old jobless high-school dropout at the time, was sentenced to almost 23 years in jail in 2011.

Sunday’s rally came as the Turkish government battled fresh protests in the wake of a corruption scandal involving the closest allies of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister.

On Saturday Turkish police fired tear-gas and plastic bullets to break up a protest by around 2,000 people over controversial plans to impose curbs on the internet.

Turkey has long been criticised for a lack of freedom of expression and has been branded the world’s top jailer of journalists.

Dozens of journalists are in detention, as well as lawyers, politicians and legislators, most of them accused of plotting against the government or having links with the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK).

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