They want their jobs back for 4 years

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It has been four years since a group of people discharged by Statutory Decrees started protesting with the slogan "We want our jobs back."

Six people who had been protesting in Yüksel Street in Ankara and in Düzce were arrested on August 22. In the ruling of arrest given by the Ankara 5th Penal Judgeship of Peace, it was indicated that "they continued protesting intensively despite previous judicial control measures."

Still behind bars, Mehmet Dersulu, Armağan Özbaş, Acun Karadağ, Nazan Bozkurt, Mahmut Konuk and Alev Şahin will have their first hearing at the Ankara 28th Heavy Penal Court on December 9, 2020.

'Our rights violated for 4 years'

Acun Karadağ and Alev Şahin have been arrested in Kayseri Prison in Turkey's Central Anatolian province of Kayseri.

Sending a letter to bianet from prison, she says that they read Sözcü and Cumhuriyet newspaper in prison. They also want to buy daily Evrensel so that they can read the articles of Prof. Şebnem Korur-Fincancı, the former Chair of the Human Rights Foundation of Turkey (TİHV) and the current Chair of the Turkish Medical Association (TTB) Central Council. However, they are told that "the newsstand in Bünyan does not have it."

'It is the last crime, but not the first'

Acun Karadağ's letter to bianet briefly reads as follows:

"Nuriye Gülmen, who started the resistance, is in Silivri [Prison]. Having started the resistance on November 14, five days after Nuriye, I and Alev Şahin, who started resisting in Düzce after she had been discharged after us in January 2017, are in Kayseri [Prison]. Mahmut Konuk, who was resisting in front of his workplace, is in Adana Kürkçüler. Mehmet Dersulu is in Bolu, Nazan Bozkurt in Gebze... Even though we did not see or hear it, I am sure that the same slogans were chanted at the same time in these prisons on November 9: 'We want our jobs back.'

"In the face of several slavery laws attempted to be passed today, I hope that the ones who saw this slogan merely as a demand for jobs now understand for what we have paid all this price for four years. In this slogan, there is an objection raised against the unlawfulness and injustice done to us; this slogan has the voices of millions of victims and righteous people.

"Didn't our hearts shaken with the İzmir earthquake just yesterday remind you of architect Alev Şahin and what she had said before she started resisting in Düzce on her own? She had said, 'I decided to be an architect after the Düzce earthquake in 1999. While I was working with my dignity so that our people would not die under the rubble, I was discharged by a Statutory Decree based on the complaint of the owner of a pro-AKP concrete firm because I had fined the companies pouring concrete improperly. They deprived me of my job and my bread.' She is now arrested.

"We have been subjected to all violations of rights seen and experienced by people 'one by one' since the State of Emergency period for four years. From the right to a fair trial to our Constitutional right of demonstration prevented everyday, from unlawful detentions to unlawful judicial control measures... That we are arrested today is the last crime committed by this government against us, but it is not the first one...

"We are glad that we have been resisting for four years and we are glad that we have been arrested because we have not stayed silent so that justice can be served. If we do not get rid of this exploitation and reactionism, we can resist for 40 more years." (AS/SD)