As people suffer new earthquake
Turkish gov't arrests anti-Clinton protesters
By Bill
Wayland
Ankara, Turkey
In honor of U.S. President Bill Clinton's visit to Turkey,
riot police brutally attacked a protest rally here Nov. 15 in
the main square of the country's capital.
The demonstrators were opposing the vast U.S. military
presence in Turkey and the International Monetary Fund's
control of the Turkish economy. Clinton was here to attend a
Nov. 18 Istanbul meeting of the so-called Organization for
Security and Cooperation in Europe.
About 200 protesters had barely assembled in Kizilay Meydani
Square when 500 cops with clubs, shields and full body armor
swept through the area, arresting at least 100 people and
beating and clubbing many more.
Demonstrators reassembled several times as the battle moved
down Mustafa Kemal Blvd., while those arrested forced open
police-bus windows to chant, "Down with U.S. imperialism" and
"Yankee go home, this country is ours!"
Police later surrounded the offices of the Party for
Socialist Power (Sosyalist Iktidar Partisi), which organized
the rally, and arrested several more people.
Clinton had arrived in Turkey just after a 7.2-scale
earthquake struck near the ancient metropolis of Istanbul on
Nov. 12. As of this writing, at least 700 people are known to
be dead. Thousands more are injured and homeless.
As in the monster earthquake that killed tens of thousands
in Turkey on Aug. 17, many who died could have lived. Most of
the deaths were caused by the collapse of cheaply built
apartment blocks, many built on unsuitable ground by greedy
contractors.
Miners, left party help
with rescues
The homeless of the Duvce region will join at least 200,000
people still living in tents since the Aug. 17 catastrophe. The
government promised them prefabricated housing before winter.
But cold weather has aleady arrived.
Over 1,000 coal miners from Zonguldak near the Black Sea
hurried to Duvce the night of the quake to help rescue people.
When Workers World talked with them they had been working 14
hours without food or rest. Several said they were not given
adequate equipment to dig through the rubble.
The Party for Socialist Power canceled anti-Clinton protest
activities planned for Istanbul Nov. 13 and 14 because of the
earthquake. Party members instead rushed to Duvce to help with
rescue and relief work.
Among those who mobilized to help were homeless workers from
Nazim Kent. This is a tent city named after the Turkish
revolutionary poet Nazim Hikmet, who lived in exile in the
Soviet Union until his death.
Clinton is expected to visit the earthquake region while in
Turkey. This bomber of civilians in Yugoslavia and Iraq will
probably have kind words and may offer some modest aid. It will
certainly be only a fraction of the money the Pentagon has
spent covering Turkey with military bases to threaten the
Middle East, the Balkans, and oil-rich former Soviet republics
in the Caucasus and Central Asia.
Meanwhile, the U.S.-controlled IMF this month imposed
devastating new conditions on Turkey. These include cutting
social spending, limiting wage increases to well below the rate
of inflation, and raising the retirement age by 10 years.
At least half of Turkey's income is used to pay interest to
Western banks. It also buys weapons from the United States at
close to $1 billion a year.
Among the IMF's victims are the self-sacrificing miners of
Zonguldak, thousands of whom have lost their jobs to cutbacks
demanded by the IMF.
This article is copyright under a Creative Commons License.
Workers World, 55 W. 17 St., NY, NY 10011
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