International Student Movement

Call for Solidarity from Turkey

The following message was sent to the ISM (global) mailing list by the Ankara Öğrenci Kolektifleri on August 29:

Dear friends,

We are members of a student movement, the Student Collectives, who have been fighting for the right of free education and democratic university for a long time in Turkey.

The struggle against the government in Turkey is a bit hard. There is a political party, AKP, which has been governing Turkey for 9 years. In this last 9 years, many of our public spheres were corporatized. Also this government, AKP, has been taking our fundamental rights such as education, medical etc. and require payment for them.

In the field of opposing organizations, student movements in universities are the most dynamic and powerful areas against the AKP government. However, AKP is trying to block our fight for our rights and the fight of other opposing movements because the government does not want to see any opposing movements against them.

Before the last elections, in order to get more votes, AKP went to Artvin – Hopa, a city of Turkey, to make publicity. In Artvin, the locals of the city hold a meeting and protested against both AKP and hydro electricity santrals (HES) because AKP has been selling the rivers, the main source of revenues of the local people to the investors in order to make them build HES on the rivers so that they can make profit from the water everybody uses for free in the forests. When people gathered to protest against AKP, about 3000 police attacked people with their pepper gas and beat them. A retired teacher, Metin Lokumcu, had a heart attack because of the police’s intense gas bombs and beatings. After this incident, AKP government claimed that not the police who had killed Metin Lokumcu, but Metin Lokumcu and people who supported his opposing ideas were to be blamed.

The death of Metin Lokumcu caused thousands of people’s big reaction. As a result, on the same day of Lokumcu’s death, thousands of people in lots of cities went on streets to protest against this situation. In the capital city of Turkey, Ankara, during the protest the police again attacked the people and took many of them into custody. In the house custody, those people were exposed to harrassment and violence by the police.

In the following week, 5 person who had been taken into custody during the protest against Metin Lokumcu’s death were put in prison. 3 of those people are members of the Student Collectives.

After a short while, the election was hold. After the elections, 15 more people were put in prison, 7 of them are members of the Student Collectives. Our friends are now in prison for 50 days. And the police took legal books, cartoon CDs, horror movie CDs and fruit knives from these students’ houses to use those things as a proof of their so-called ‘crime’. What we are getting through is a weird and unjust process right now. However, we know why the government want to put us under pressure and do their worst to achieve this. They do this because we fight for our education rights, we hold meetings  and protests against tuitions like you do in your country. As a result, although our friends have been in prison for 50 days now, the lawsuit process still goes very slowly. In order to stand up to this injustice, to get our friends out of prison and to fight against the ones who try to block the opposition of youth, we have started a campaign with a slogan ‘Set Free the Streets’. We have chosen this slogan to make them remember that to hold a meeting is one of our fundemental rights, they should take their hands off of the opposition movements, they cannot judge or arrest a person because he/she attends a meeting and also to tell them we will keep being on the streets. With this campaign we are aiming to mold public opinion for our demands and to take our friends out of prison.

While we are having this hard situation, we have a request from you. Please send us your supports either via text or video. Visual media would be more helpful. Because in this way, we would have the chance to be on TV and better publicize our demands.

Thank you in advance for your interest.

On behalf of the Student Collectives

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