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CounterPunch
February
1, 2003
Report From
Istanbul
We Won't Be
US Soldiers: Turkish Citizens Say No to the War on Iraq
by BEHZAD YAGHAMAIAN
The opposition to war has been slowly building
up in Turkey. There have been many demonstrations and anti-war
meetings across the country. Turks oppose the war and the presence
of U.S. forces in their country. War is a subject of conversation
in private and public gatherings. Students and academicians,
journalists and publishers, artists, and ordinary people show
their resentment of the war in different forms: petitions, public
declarations, peace forums, and anti-war rallies. The United
States has requested/demanded the use of Turkey's land and air
bases, the stationing of 80,000 soldiers-according to some reports-in
Turkey, and access to the country's naval bases in the Black
Sea! For many, this is a near occupation of the country by the
United States.
For many ordinary people, the U.S. attack
on Iraq is an attack on Islam and Mulsims. A taxi driver, and
a father of three told me that the war was about oil and money,
a ploy by Bush to get richer from resources owned by the Mulsims.
Another cabby called for a union of Mulsim nations to defeat
the U.S. and Israel. As an alternative to joining the EU, he
proposed the formation of an Islamic Union between Turkey and
its neighbors: Iraq, Iraq, and Syria. An older driver called
George Bush the "Satan." Many in Turkey share these
sentiments. They feel assaulted, pushed around and disrespected,
and violated by the United States. Anger towards the U.S. is
growing in the country.
Nearly a month ago, more than one thousand
Turks-mainly intellectuals, students, and unionists-came together
at a peace forum to listen to speeches by Noam Chomsky, Tarik
Ali, and others. They cheered, and burst into clapping every
few minutes with Tarik Ali's criticisms of the close alliance
between Turkey and the U.S., his attack on the history of the
U.S. involvement in the region, and his call for a broad and
inclusive anti-war movement in Turkey. A young person from the
audience, a member of "an anti-capitalist organization,"
asked Tarik Ali for guidance in forming an anti-war movement.
Ali's response and his call for action by labor unions created
a thunder of excitement and clapping in the auditorium.
January was a month of intensified anti-war activities by the
Turks. On January 26, a large and diverse crowd gathered outside
Istanbul University to demonstrate against the war. They came
in the thousands-middle class men and women in their western
outfit, and those from poor quarters of Istanbul; women under
the Islamic headscarf; children on the shoulders of their parents;
workers and unionists, and student; and Arab women in their traditional
garbs. They came from all walks of life, all smiled, all looked
defiant and jubilant.
This was a postmodern protest against
the war-an unlikely block of the seculars, Mulsims, syndicalists,
and the socialists-created by the hawkish U.S. war plans in the
region. There were colorful flags and banners, whistles, drums,
the sound of clapping hands, cheering, and chanting. There were
many pictures of Che Guvara wearing the black and white checkered
Palestinian scarf, and others with his landmark cap!
The crowd chanted without stopping for
a moment. They linked the Israeli persecution and killing of
the Palestinians with the U.S. war crimes in Iraq; condemned
George Bush and Ariel Sharon, and opposed the "Imperialist
War." Some called for socialism, others cried Allah-o Akbar.
The hijabed women walked in groups of twenty or thirty; some
whistled; others jeered, clapped, and protested with joy. They
carried banners; posed before cameras, and protested outside
the university they were barred from entering with their headscarves.
Peace signs in the air, men and women
jumped up and down, danced to the beat of the drums, and loudly
denounced the United States in their theatrical body movements
and words. The message was clear. The U.S. was not to be welcomed
in Turkey, not by its citizens.
Behzad Yaghmaian
is the author of Social Change in Iran: An Eyewitness Account
of Dissent, Defiance, and New Movements for Rights (SUNY Press,
2002).
He can be reached at: behzad_yaghmaian@hotmail.com.
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