15 Thousand Protest Government on Streets

Some 15 thousand architects, engineers and city planners join in capital Ankara this Saturday in a rally to protested the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) government and called for a free and democratic country.

Reacting to a government draft law allowing foreign engineers to work without academic or profession monitoring in Turkey and bringing together groups of various views, the meeting was stage of slogans ranging from “We won’t be refugees in our own country” to “Down with IMF, Independent Turkey” and a variety of chanting voicing protest to current issues from involvement in Lebanon to calling for a peaceful solution to the Kurdish problem.

“We are claiming our profession and our country” was the main theme of the rally’s organizer, the Turkish Union of Engineers' and Architects' Chambers (TMMOB) whose leader Mehmet Soganci said the gathering at the central train station which turned to a march to Sihhiye square was “a meeting to warn the government and to tell it to stop”.

Soganci: We want labor-oriented free Turkey

In a speech he made to supporters bracing heavy rain fall as they tightened the ranks, Soganci said they could not see the struggle for labor as being something apart the fight for freedoms.

Because of this, he said, while fighting for labor rights they were also pursuing a struggle for a free and democratic Turkey.

"For a long time a fight has been continuing in the administration” Soganci said. “The society is trying to be pulled into this fight in the dilemma of being secular or non-secular. They are being asked to side with this dilemma which on one side is reactionary and on the other, represents the authoritarian –status quo.

“But no, there is another way: We want a free and luminous Turkey against every kind of backwardness and darkness”.

301 should be abolished

Soganci noted in his speech that intellectuals and authors in Turkey were being put on trial under article 301 of the penal code which, he said, was an extension of the justice of the 1980 coup and said “trials are being turned into lynch attempts.”

He said “Turkey should rid itself of this shame… Article 301 should be abolished, a constitution on the side of freedoms should be prepared”.

Soganci also referred to Turkey’s recent sending of troops to the peace corps in Lebanon and argued that they would become “a part of the war”.

"Because, as long as there is the USA and Israel in the region, it is not possible to mention peace. Turkish soldiers have been sent to Lebanon to be killed and to kill. Those who took this decision will not be able to carry its responsibility. Turkey should not enter this swamp opened by the US”.

Laws cannot block scientific, historic truth

Soganci also criticized the French parliament’s passing of a law criminalizing the denial of a genocide of Ottoman Armenians and said "scientific, historic realities cannot be blocked by laws. The society should be able to face its own past with its own dynamism. To face the 1915 tragedy is possible only through a democratic environment where the grief can be shared. Everyone must understand these words”.

The TMMOB leader also said his organization backed the struggle of working women to prevent violence against women and discrimination of women in the society, noting that “sexual discrimination serves the interests of the ruling class” and that unless it was overcome, a free and equal society could not be established. (KO/II/YE)