Friday, June 7, 2013

Turkish Revolution report (night 6-7 June)

Garanti, the bank which owns several TV channels in Turkey, all of which are censoring the information on the revolutionary uprising, has been faced now with a boycott. Small business owners are closing their accounts in it and returning the bank's card readers, as shown in the photo.

But they are doing much more: they occupied one of the TV stations forcing the matter to be debated in the waves.

Garanti is controlled 50-50 by Doğuş Group and Banco Bilbao Vizcaya Argentaria (BBVA).



Repression moves to Ankara

As the international attention is to great extent focused on Taksim Square and Istanbul, the repression there has weakened. However elsewhere in the country and very especially in Ankara, it has increased instead.



Causes of the uprising

Aytekin Kurtul Kaan, member of the Turkish Communist Party (TKP), explains in an article published in Spanish language the causes of the social anger, which I synthesize here:

1. Growing repression: the AKP government, especially since 2007 has increased the repression, directed especially against military officers who were reluctant to NATO hegemony and independent journalists. Most of the charges were reliant on telephone tapping, what has caused paranoia in the population. 

2. Anti-secularism: imposition of religion teaching in schools, transformation of secular schools into religious ones, even what in Turkey amounts to nearly "blasphemy": Erdogan claimed that the founders of the republic Mustafa Kemal Atatürk and Ismet Inönü were "a pair of drunkards".

3. Economic disaster: even if it is not usually discussed because of the protection that Erdogan has in the Western and Arab halls of power, Turkey has a worse foreign debt than Greece, debt that has been partly hidden by the sellout of the country's assets to private investors. Also the productivity level is mediocre in spite of the very low salaries, what has damaged the economy after the trade association with the EU. Today only 16% of Turkish citizens live above poverty level and 14% lives under hunger level.

In addition to that the intervention in favor of the Islamists in the Syrian conflict has caused many troubles especially in the border areas, where Syrian fundamentalist militias have attacked Turkish citizens. 


Source: Webguerrillero[es] (link 1, link 2, link 3).

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