Everything started when the Turkish government decided to destroy Gezi Park to build a mall. That made people come to Taksim Square, Istanbul, to protest for saving the park. Today, there are many people protesting in Turkey and the police is becoming more and more violent. There are many injured people and also some deaths.
Police forces have left Taksim Square but protesters are still there to protect it. However, police forces might have left the square, but things in Turkey haven’t calm down: as it seems, Gezi Park was the last drop for Turkish people and now we have protests in Istanbul, Izmir, Ankara and 48 other cities.
All of those protests started with a sit-in protest in the park, but now, people reacts against the government of Recep Tayyip Erdogan and they ask him to resign. Gezi Park was just the start and the last drop for Turkish people and the issue is bigger. They demand the freedom of speech and real democracy in their country.
It is obvious that those days in Turkey we witnessed a clear violation of human rights. Not only the police attacked peaceful protesters in Gezi Park, but also they used water cannons, tear gas, peper spray and armored personnel carriers against the protesters which led to over 1000 injured people and at least two deaths.
We are in the side of Turkish people. We demand the Turkish government to stop the violence against them and leave them because it is their right to protest. The Human Rights Working Group (HRWG) decided to take action against that violation of human rights in Turkey and show our solidarity to Turkish people.
To do that, we are calling everyone to light a candle and take a photo and write “your name + lights a candle for democracy in Turkey” and send it to hrwg@aegee.org for uploading it in our Facebook page. Also we are calling the locals that want to take action to send us photos of what you did to upload them in our Facebook page. Turkey needs us and we have to be there, by their side!
Written by Dimitra Amorgianou, AEGEE–Kastoria
Thank you Michal Szanjder for the main picture of the article!