Dear Atefeh and list members,
Atefeh has asked me to inform her/him about recent info on resistence
movements. I will never hesitate to inform my fellows about both the
power and the resistence events but I think all the members of this list
would like to have info from news etc. BUT nevertheless I will send a
very interesting (-disgusting) example.
A CASE On the Resistence to Resistence: TURKEY
I- Last month, during the party congress of Democracy Party of
Peoples (HADEP) which supports political rights of Kurdish minority in
Turkey, two young men has lifted down the Turkish flag. All the TV news
has worked on this issue; the result was a huge nationalistic wave that
is cristalized on the flags sticked on the buildings, windows etc.
II- Last week, Some extremist people has fired two public busses to
protest the insensibilty of government. It was this news, instead of the
hunger strikes, which gained more rating in TV's.
These two events made possible government to argue that all the
people attending to demonstrations were terrorists and perfidious. It was
these two events that were used to delegitimize the raison d'etre of
demonstrations
The Case:
Last week, 3000 people were in the Sultanahmet square to protest
the government. They were willing to give a letter to the Court in order
to accuse the minister of justice for his responsibility in the deaths of
5 people. (now 13). It was a great example of a mass 'resistence'.
The counter-resistence came from the government. It was not a
violent attack by police, but a really reprobate strategy: There were
tens of flags around that can easily be lifted down by demonstrations.
And a cleaned, empty public bus was parked at the center of the square
waiting to be crashed down and burned.
We were avare of provocation, so circulated the intention of
these attempts to provacate people.
What a strategy! We should be well armed against these forms of
power. The main strenght of power is to hide itself. We can catch it,
make it visible in the very micro-levels. Hence in this case, the
GOVERNMENT has tried to "structure possible fields of actions of us".
Koray Caliskan
Dept. of Political Sci. (RA/ grad. stu.)