FromAegean

The Minister of Health to ban the use of chemical gases against our people raising their legitimate demands, against the wounded; in hospitals and other places where medical care is given, in hotels where people sought shelter, in rooms where small children were sleeping, against the sick and elderly …

We waited and expected them

To express their grief for the loss of Mehmet Ayvalıtaş, Abdullah Cömert, Mustafa Sarı and Ethem Sarısülük,
To convey their wishes of recovery to 59 citizens seriously wounded, 11 others who lost their eyes and thousands of citizens injured in various ways…
We waited for them
To say it is under our guarantee to deliver medical care to all without any distinction who have suffered from violence and been exposed to gas while out on the streets just for the fact that they are human beings; without enlisting them for governmental scrutiny and without keeping their records for governmental access…
And we waited and expected them
To recall human ethics and say “health workers have their immunity even in wartime” seeing physicians and students of medicine who were running around to help citizens falling breathless by tear gas, losing an eye or having skull fractures…

But we didn’t expect the following:

Engagement in such a disproportionate violence day after day against millions of people demanding freedom, equality and respect,

Collective and violent detention of lawyers, who opposed unlawfulness in the court houses,

Accusing physicians, medical students and health workers of committing a crime for providing urgent care to wounded people,
Sending official warnings to the Turkish Medical Association and Medical Chambers of İstanbul, İzmir and Ankara repremanding them for not having asked for permission from the Ministry of Health before helping urgent cases,
Asking for teh lists of the names of physicians, medical students and health workers involved in the provision medical care to wounded people and the names of the people who received such medical care,
Detention of physicians and health workers,
Prime Minister’s attempt to divide the society into two camps and using them as a threat to one another,
Targetting Turkish Medical Association and physicians as wrongdoers and insulting them,
Categorizing as crime those acts which are deemed as rights in universal law and international conventions.
But we also didn’t know that
There were too many peace-loving, witty, determined, stubborn and dignified young people ready to rise for freedom and equality as well as so many rejuvenating adults,
We didn’t know that
There were too many physicians, medical students and health workers who would so quickly rush to help our citizens who suffered from violence in return for their just and peaceful demands,
We didn’t know that
After having been subjected to so many years of unjust discourse of “physicians are just selfish, they pursue their interests only” our people would embrace us warmly saying “no interest of theirs is above the well-being of their patients, didn’t you know that?”
We didn’t know that
Physicians worldwide would so quickly take sides with us in solidarity and making the same call to the Prime Ministry as we did by reminding the ethics and values of the profession of medicine.
Now we know...
We recalled
that humanity is conscience, solidarity and fraternity after all,
that nothing can compromise the rightfulness of those rising against oppression and violence in the name of equality, freedom and human dignity,
that values of medicine derive from human values and cannot be separated from them...
After all our experience for the last 20-25 days, Prime Minister’s statements targeting the Turkish Medical Association among others annoy us no more. We also regard as normal those unscientific statements by the Prime Minister concerning abortion and caesarian section that also target physicians. We understand his furiousness and perplexity. Our only concern is possible delay in reaching the bright, peaceful, free and equal future that awaits us.
Here we declare once more: As the Turkish Medical Association we shall always be among, backing, leading and siding with both physicians and all who are involved in this process.
And we add: The Prime Minister should excuse us; physicians in Turkey will never accept to be “Prime Minister’s physicians” as he is fond of speaking possessively for the police forces as “my police”. As physicians in Turkey we shall be ready to help all who need us (including the Prime Minister himself).

If those resorting to tear gas, pressurized water and violence have their Prime Minister, the TTB has humanity to be in solidarity with.

Turkish Medical Association

Executive Council

Monday, June 24, 2013

FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY IN TURKEY - 5 - FOR THOSE WHO DON'T HAVE MUCH TIME TO READ LONG ARTICLES...

ZOOMING IN ON UPRISE FOR DEMOCRACY IN TURKEY

Recep Tayyip Erdogan (RTE), the Prime Minister (PM) of the decade-old Turco-Islamist government of Turkey is not taking an inch back from his position regarding the protesters in Turkey. The PM labels the protesters "chapulcu", looters, in other words. when they are peaceful students, professors, artists, lawyers, journalists, doctors, nurses, mothers, fathers, veterans, Kurdish intellectuals, workers, celebrities, parliamentarians, everything but no looters.

RTE and his party AKP has been sacrificing everything Turkey stood for; its sovereignty, its culture, its history, and its nature to profit and commercialization of the country. The last such attempt in Turkey was to replace Gezi Park with a mall, located in the heart of Istanbul that has been an oasis for Istanbulites among the concrete blocks of Taksim, for many decades. This infuriated environmentalists, whose benevolent civil disobedience was met with brutal police violence, which then brought out hundreds of thousands of Turkish people onto the streets all over the country. RTE is unable to see that what has been turning the country upside down for over a month is more than a few hundred trees now, a sociological phenomenon that needs to be understood and addressed with an open mind not an iron fist. The crowds on the streets are asking of him today. "Hear us and respect us!" Instead all they get is pepper gas, chemical-loaded water jets and being shot at by gas capsules, which killed 5, injured more than 10,000, hundreds in the intensive care units so far.

Proposed as the emblem for potential Olympics to be held in Turkey

RTE and AKP’s goal in all this is to spread terror, ban citizens' rights to free speech, to association and assembly, and annihilate all forms of resistance to the society's Islamization and the country's commercialization. Turkey is uprising today against AKP’s calculated agenda that will eventually transform the society to one that lives by the rules of Kuran, no less, like Iran, Saudi Arabia, or Libya.

The third military coup in Turkey of 1980 eliminated the democratic provisions of 1960 to such an extent that subtle steps taken in 1980s brought AKP to power and changed the composition of the society drastically. First, the election system was modified so that political parties winning less than 10% (a threshold varying between 2-5% in democratic countries) of the votes nationally, would not be represented in the parliament even if they are the majority party in certain provinces.

Secondly, the number of parochial middle/high schools increased from 500 to close to 5000 in a stretch of five years, a deliberate strategic effort to transform Turkey into an Islamist society in the 2000s. Thus, AKP came into power in 2002, winning 34% of the votes (363 representatives in a 550 seat-parliament). Once in power, corruption and opportunistic support from near-sighted non-fundamentalists allowed them to win 47% of votes (341 representatives) in 2007 and 51% (326 representatives) in 2011. Keep in mind, though, 51% of votes does not equate 51% of the population (with 66% voting rate) since majority if not all of non-voters were liberals. Thus, AKP has the support of only 35% of the adult population in Turkey enjoying disproportionately high representation in the parliament because of an antidemocratic election system.

RTE and AKP have never been for democracy. Had they, they would have responded to Istanbulites' request on Gezi Park and would have started a regional participatory discussion. Had they, once the regional court ruled, the actions regarding Gezi Park should await the resolution of the tensions, they would have obeyed the ruling. Had they, they would have supported multiculturalism, passed laws to end discrimination against Kurdish minority, and democratized the election system. Had they, they would not have rounded up scores of lawyers, physicians, and nurses with brutal police force, who solely dared doing what they were trained to do; defend in court the demonstrators arrested unjustly by police forces and "treat all individuals regardless of religion, race, ethnicity, or political affiliation in both times of war and peace.” as Geneva Convention on medical neutrality empowered them to do, thus RTE and AKP committed an international crime by banning medical personnel in Turkey, in Istanbul, and in Taksim from doing what they had to do.

RTE coined democracy as a train: “… we will take it until we get to where we want to be. Once we are there, we will get off.” The international community has every reason to believe that AKP is doing just that: exploiting democracy as a vehicle to get to his hidden agenda. RTE and AKP are not non-violent mild Islamists. Islam and any other organized religion, in the hearts and minds of individuals certainly serve the good of the society. But, once Islam is pulled into political discourse it is inevitable that sharia will follow sooner or later, in societies like Turkey definitely with violence.

Before it is too late, American and European governments must send decidedly strong diplomatic messages to the Turkish government withdrawing their economic and political support. International community dedicated to true democracy owes this to the benevolent, pacifist, non-violent democrats of Turkey trying to defend and expand democracy before Turkey becomes another, Saudi Arabia, Iran, Egypt, or Syria. Two thirds of the people of Turkey do not want to live in an open-air prison, I trust everybody would respect that demand.

Sunday, June 23, 2013

WHY CAN'T YOU LOOK AT MY CARNATION

WHY CAN'T YOU LOOK AT MY CARNATION

Streets and squares full of people
Skyline full of hands reaching up
Heads together shoulder to shoulder
Sky full of carnations
pink and red
Tunes of peace and love in the air
Youth has risen up
for a change for a
future full of peace
respect
love
tolerance
Carnations write the poem
of their journey

With helmets and
face shields
you shield yourself from me
My friend, you are the one
with pepper gas capsules
you pull the trigger of
water cannons
We are the ones with no gear
beaten to death day after day

What is it you're hiding from
behind your shield
Look at me in the eye
See the peace in my eyes
See the invitation to freedom
to true brotherhood
in that carnation I extend to you
That, you can not bring
yourself to look at.

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=10151672273456683&set=a.10151650742991683.1073741826.569751682&type=1&theater

Friday, June 21, 2013

FIGHT FOR DEMOCRACY IN TURKEY - 4

Written by, Avital Livny

i cried quietly on the boat over to taksim tonight. having spent a few hours earlier today in gezi park, strolling around and chatting with the folks gathered there, i was struggling to understand the inhumanity of the police attack on such a peaceful demonstration.

by the time we had docked in kabataş, my sadness and confusion had turned to anger, and i was eager to climb the hill and stand shoulder to shoulder with friends and strangers against this brutality. an avowed pacifist, i knew i would throw no stones, i would go on no offensive. my only intention was to demonstrate my human right to stand in solidarity, to chant slogans, to clap my hands in the air, to peacefully protest.

we gathered on sıraselviler blvd in cihangir. quite a few yards ahead was one of the police's water cannons, but we reasoned that we were in a safe place, along the route the ambulances take in and out of taksim square. (indeed, we stopped our chanting every few minutes to cheer on the brave EMTs as they shuttled the injured out of harm's way and to the hospitals. sadly, there were so many ambulances - going back and forth, empty and then full - that i easily lost count.) there were rumors of clashes in harbiye and that the police were coming up from both sides of istiklal. but things felt relatively calm where we stood, like we had found the one safe public space in the entire area in which we could peacefully protest.

but we were wrong. before long, and without provocation, the tear gas came, raining down on us. the crowd responded as usual: calling out 'slowly' and 'don't run' and walking calmly but relatively quickly to try to get clear of the police attack without causing a stampede ahead. but the police didn't want us to react calmly. before we knew it, the water cannons were on our backs and noise bombs flashing to our sides. but remarkably - incomprehensibly - no matter how fast we ran, we couldn't seem to get clear of them. they were literally chasing us - a group of peaceful protesters trying our very best to show (by running away) that we meant no harm. but they meant harm. they intended not only to scare us but also to injure us, whether by hitting us with pressurized water or tear gas canisters, or by causing the exact stampede we were trying so hard to avoid.

i cried quietly on the boat home from taksim tonight. something in me felt broken. call me naive if you'd like, but i'm not sure i believed something like this existed before tonight, before i saw it for myself. violence in the face of non-violence. the absence of a public space to express our collective yet peaceful discontent. the disrespect one human can show another when they refuse to recognize that they are, in essence, equals.

i am struggling tonight to hold onto the beauty and signs of collective strength i have witnessed during these past weeks - the solidarities formed in gezi park, on the streets of istanbul, and all across social media platforms. i still want to believe in the basic goodness of humanity. but something in me broke tonight. and so i know this night will be a dark one in my personal history; and i worry that it will be a dark night in turkey's history as well.

non-turkish and non-turkish-speaking friends: if you haven't already done so, please take the time to educate yourselves about the situation here. take the time to contact your local consulates and elected representatives to demand that somebody be held accountable for this unwarranted violence. demand that there be public spaces in which people can come together to peacefully protest. demand that human rights - nay, human decency - be respected. we need your help.