NGOs Raise their Voice against the Government

Four major Turkish NGOs will issue a joint press release on Friday 18 March against the 'capital-focussed economic policies of the Justice and Development Party (AKP) and the party's enforcement of their ideology on the society'.

The Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DİSK), the Confederation of Trade Unions of Public Employees (KESK), the Turkey Union of Chambers of Architects and Engineers (TMMOB) and the Turkish Medical Association (TBB) are part of the joint press statement that is going to be released in Ankara, Istanbul and Izmir at 12.30 on Friday.

The announcement entitled "We will not be silent" emphasizes that the AKP tried to create their own deep state by disregarding all fundamental rights and freedoms with their fairytales of a "leader democracy".

'We are at a point where words are not enough anymore'

The representatives of the NGOs indicated that the amendments pursued by the AKP in the context of the referendum on the Constitutional Reform Package in 2010 were not any different from the Constitution that emerged after the military coup in 1980 and that a new system of tutelage was going to be constituted. They declared that attacks against workers, the youth and journalists are still going on and that the policies of oppression against the opposition have lost nothing of their impetus.

The announcement underlines that the people's right to defence was seized, that the government continued with unrestrained injustice and that the country entered a process generated by a new authoritarian government.

The statement reads, "By building up their own media, police and judiciary, the AKP tires to create an order of surveillance where everybody is being watched and eavesdropped on and a society that pledges allegiance to them. Everyone who has raised his/her voice against the AKP policies is now thinking about when it might be his/her turn. We either raise our voices now and defend democracy and our freedoms or we will be swamped with taciturnity while we are waiting for our turn".

"Now is the time to raise our voices and not to remain silent for a free, secular, democratic and independent Turkey against the darkness and the oppression that is growing day by day. Now is the time to raise our voices altogether". (EKN/VK)