Turkish Solidarity Protest

Following the death of Berkin Elvan, a young Turkish boy who was shot by the police last summer and had been in a coma ever since, a protest took place in the centre of Leicester yesterday as a display of solidarity with the people of Turkey.

Disgustingly the Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan referred to Berkin Elvan, who was just 14 years old when the police shot him in the head with a tear gas canister, as being connected to a terrorist organisation no less. This is rich considering Erdogan’s own British-backed dictatorial rule over the people of Turkey (see “Turkey: Eyewitness to Erdogan’s state terror”).

As Sosyalist Alternatif, our affiliated organisation in Turkey wrote last year:

The government has long violated democratic rights, the rights of workers, trade unions and minorities. The violence in Gezi Park was only the tip of the iceberg. Around 8,000 trade union and Left activists, journalists and Kurdish politicians are imprisoned.

It is all too clear that capitalism is incapable of creating a liveable world for the majority of the worlds citizens, although it provides a life of untold luxury for a just a few. Indeed, under our current system, just 85 people — one double-decker bus worth — have the same wealth as half the world’s population.

The tide may well be changing: one good example being provided by our sister organisation in the United States, who recently elected one of their members (Kshama Savant) to the Council in Seattle with around 100,000 votes. Or take our central role in the launch of a new working-class party in South Africa (WASP), or our ongoing work in TUSC here in the UK.

Join the international fight-back and unite with us in the democratic struggle for a global socialist alternative.