Ankara bomb attacks: For Peace and Justice – No to War

Left Unity sends condolences and solidarity to the families, friends and comrades of those killed and injured in the terrible atrocity in Ankara.

The attack on a peaceful rally of trades unions and left organisations was designed as part of the continuation of the war against the Kurdish people.

This photo is from the poignant funeral of one of the more than 100 killed in Ankara. Mother and son burying Ali Kitapçi – a husband and a father. Sorrow and anger, tears and a clenched fist. We pay tribute to their struggle for peace.

The People’s Democratic Party (HDP) was directly targeted in this attack. In the June elections the HDP won 80 seats in the Turkish general election. Since then hundreds of HDP rallies and party premises have been attacked and party workers arrested and many killed.

This is a direct attempt by the Turkish state to destabilise the peace process in Turkey and force the country into civil war and to overturn the electoral gains of the HDP.

The bombing took place the day before the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) was due to announce a further ceasefire.

In recent weeks Turkish F-16 fighter jets have launched bombing raids on PKK positions and on Kurdish villages. Whole towns like Cizre, Silopi and Silvan have been placed under curfew and martial law with many killed on their streets.

Turkish trades unions are taking strike action across Turkey against this wave of terror and repression.

We stand shoulder to shoulder with the movement in Turkey and are proud that Left Unity member Andrew Burgin spoke alongside protesters at the solidarity protest in Trafalgar Square. (photos from the London demo thanks to Steve Eason)

We are sharing the report below on the bombing by Chris Stephenson, a British socialist working in Turkey. Chris is a supporter of the Greens and Left Future Party and editor of Marx-21 magazine.

“A double suicide bombing at a Trade Union organised peace march in Ankara last Saturday killed over 100 people and injured over 500.

The march had been called by two trade union federations, DISK and KESK, the Chambers of Engineers and Architects and the Turkish Medical Association.

Hundreds of union organised buses brought tens of thousands of people from all over Turkey to the assembly point near the Ankara railway station.

We gathered in front of Ankara railway station. While we were organising our contingent, distributing flags and banners and preparing to enter the line up for the march we heard a very loud double bang. People started to cry. We did what we could to stop panic and to get people to walk, not run, calmly away from the explosion. People had lost their shoes, their friends, their composure. As we moved away we saw human body parts lying on the ground, thrown there by the force of the explosions. We now realise we had been mid way between the two explosions and about 30 metres away from each.

We turned a corner and passed under the railway bridge. There we saw riot police approaching in full gear, but ambulances being kept waiting.

We now know that these riot police attacked those rescuing the wounded with tear gas and water cannon while the dead were still lying on the ground.

We had traveled from Istanbul to Ankara on a postal workers union bus. Before we could return to Istanbul we needed to wait for everyone to be accounted for. Finally one postal worker whose leg had been shredded by shrapnel from the bomb arrived in a taxi. We had to lift him up the stairs into the bus. They hadn’t even given him a crutch in the hospital. We got word that the President of the number 9 branch of the Postal Workers Union was in intensive care. With heavy hearts, we set off home.

This is the latest in series of violent provocations that have occurred since it became clear that the HDP (Peoples Democratic Party) was going to get enough votes in the June 7 general election to deny President Recep Tayy?p Erdo?an the parliamentary majority he needed to impose a Putin style executive presidency. Before the election there were 170 violent attacks on HDP offices, bombings of HDP offices in Adana and Mersin, then the bombing of the final HDP election rally in Diyarbak?r, killing four people.

Erdo?an’s AK Party have made a pact with the devil in the shape of Turkey’s deep state, the secret apparatus within the security forces that was responsible for the years of terror in the 90s when thousands were the victims of “murder by persons unknown” or simply disappeared, their bones dissolved in acid wells.

Just as in the 1990s, killings blamed on “terrorists” provoke fear and hatred. Years later it turns out that they were not the work of “terrorists” but carried out, or ordered, or arranged by the deep state.

The single most important act that preceded the turn to an intensification of violence in Turkey and the end of the two year ceasefire with the PKK was the bombing at Suruç which killed 33 young socialist activists. Prime Minister Davuto?lu now makes the absurd claim that the government “caught the person responsible”. It was a suicide bombing. No living person has ever been held to account, despite the fact that the bomber was being tracked by the security forces. The bombing was blamed on Islamic State although the notoriously publicity hungry Islamic State has never claimed responsibility, despite BBC claims to the contrary. The bomber may or may not have believed that he was acting for Islamic State, but no actual connection has been established.

But it was an intervention by the United States after Suruç that began the intense government violence that we now live with every day. In exchange for use of the Incirlik air base in South Eastern Turkey by US war planes to bomb Syria, the US gave the green light to bombing raids by Turkish war planes on Kurdish targets inside Iraq and in Turkey.

Now town by town, city by city the security forces of the Turkish state are declaring curfews, attacking the population and arresting local elected officials. They are attempting to force election officials to declare that the election cannot be safely carried out in these districts where the HDP gets 80-90% of the vote.

But all of this violence and repression appears not to be working. Opinion polls show no fall in the support for the HDP. If anything, support among the embattled Kurds is increasing. Support for the HDP among Turks and other ethnic groups is not falling, either.

The response of the government, the president, and the forces of Turkey’s “deep state” with whom they have made an alliance, is to step up the violence even further.

Every week the violence, the repression and the suppression of free speech is increasing. HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirta? was due to speak on Bugün, a small TV channel this week. 24 hours before the broadcast, that channel and seven others were removed from the Digiturk TV satellite by order of the public prosecutor for “supporting terrorism”. One of the channels was a children’s channel.

Which brings us to the bombing in Ankara.

The government has not declared three days mourning for the victims in Ankara. They have declared three days mourning for the Ankara victims and the police, soldiers and paramilitary village guards who have died since July. Notably the civilians who have died in the Kurdish areas in the same period were not included. In his statement about the bombings, Prime Minister Davuto?lu started by posing the PKK as a possible culprit, followed by a left guerilla group and only then Islamic State. He spent 20 out of 30 minutes of his statement attacking the HDP.

In response to Davuto?lu’s attacks HDP co-chair Selahattin Demirta? said “We are Turks and we are Kurds, we are soldiers, we are police. We are the ones who die. We know what your children get up to. They don’t die. We die. And you are responsible.”

Behind the descent of the Turkish government into violent attacks on their own population lies the policy of intervention in the civil war in Syria. Within the context of all the foreign interventions in Syria, the Turkish government has tried pursue its own interests, and turn a profit, by acting as proxy for Saudi Arabian and Qatari intervention in Syria.

Now the Turkish government is getting backing from the US for its attacks on the Kurds by offering use of the Incirlik air base. And also blackmailing the European Union into supporting Turkey’s regional ambitions by threatening to open the doors to allow the 2 million Syrians who are being denied proper refugee status in Turkey to cross the border into Europe.

The hands of the EU and US are dirty. They have always stood behind repressive regimes in Turkey and approved every military coup in Turkey’s history. Now their interventions in Syria are also responsible for fuelling the rising death toll in Turkey. We have suffered 600 dead since the June 7 election.

The massacre in Ankara may be blamed on the Islamic State. The real culprits are closer to home. Bombing Syria is no solution. It will strengthen Islamic State in Syria and Iraq and increase the murderous activities of the deep state in Turkey.

Using events in Turkey as an excuse for voting for British bombing of Syria would be dangerous hypocrisy.

Now the unions and associations that called Saturday’s peace demonstration have called a general strike for Monday and Tuesday. The divided nature of the unions in Turkey means that this general strike will not bring life to a stop in Turkey. It will, however, be an opportunity in the work places and on the streets to build the unity of the exploited from different ethnicities and beliefs against the elites who want to defend their power by having us die fighting one another. This class unity is the only way forward for Turkey and for the whole of the Middle East.”