news analysis - turkey's stand against terrorism
WORKERS, DECEMBER 2003 ISSUE
In response to a call from trade unions, peace protests were held on 22 November in major Turkish cities including Istanbul, Ankara, Antalya and Batman. The protests expressed revulsion at the horrific suicide bombings in the Turkish capital Istanbul, four in one week, which tore through two synagogues, the British consulate and HSBC bank.
Protesters showed their deep anger at the terrorist outrages, which they saw as attacks on the whole Turkish people, and they again called for an end to Turkey's alliance with the US over the Iraq war. Strangely, the trade union protests were hardly mentioned at all in British and US press reports, which concentrated on the statements of political "leaders".
A chilling al-Qaeda statement exulted in the destruction and misery caused by the bombings, saying "the cars of death (are) reaping the souls of the allies of the tyrant of the era" and defined their suicide bombers as "people who love death". In fact, the cars of death killed and maimed ordinary workers going about their everyday lives in the Turkish capital. The desire to terrify and blast the Turkish people back into a repressive, medieval era is the mirror, not the opposite, of US attempts to dominate and subdue Iraq. As the protesters said, both are enemies of progress who need to learn that people are not easily cowed by bombings.
Blair and Bush
Also chilling was the press conference in London, where Blair stood beside Bush to hear him express the US's right to wage war anywhere it chooses, under the guise of "not flinching" in the face of terror: "We stand absolutely firm until this job is done - done in Iraq, done elsewhere in the world."
In Britain, Foreign Office minister Denis MacShane caused a furore when he called on British muslims to choose "the British way, based on political dialogue and non-violent protests" instead of the values of terrorism. Trevor Phillips, chairman of the Commission for Racial Equality, declared that the phrase "the British way" was offensive.
That depends on who defines it. Is it a government which decides to abandon British interests in subservience to the US, sending its troops to die in a "pre-emptive" war abroad in the teeth of massive opposition from its people and even before it had fixed the vote in parliament? A government which has made Britain a far more dangerous place to live? Or is it the many thousands of workers who marched in London to oppose Bush's visit, a cross section of society speaking with a united voice, disciplined and dignified?
The latter, just as in Turkey the peace protesters rejected terrorism in their own "Turkish way", on the streets of their cities.