By
New Worker correspondent
MORE
THAN 10,000 people took to the streets of London on Sunday 11th October, mainly from
London’s Turkish and Kurdish communities, to express shock and outrage at the
bombing of an anti-government peace demonstration in the Turkish capital,
Ankara, on Saturday.
The
bombing in Ankara killed 128 people and injured more than 200 – some very
seriously. No organisation has claimed responsibility for the two blasts but the
progressive Turkish and Kurdish communities are certain that the government of
the AKP (Justice and Development Party), led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan, is
directly or indirectly responsible.
They
accuse Erdogan of playing a two-faced game allowing Al Qaeda, ISIS and other
anti-Assad forces to cross the Turkish border into Syria while at the same
time, like the United States government, pretending to oppose ISIS.
Erdogan
has used the conflict as an excuse to launch a new military offensive against
the Kurdish community in Turkey and those just across the border in northern
Syria, where the Kurds have been battling for their lives against ISIS.
Publicly
Erdogan has dismissed both ISIS and the Kurdish fighters as “terrorists”.
The
recent Russian interventions against ISIS in co-ordination with the Syrian
government forces have been very successful and shown up the hypocrisy of both
Erdogan and Washington for their failure to deal with ISIS, and undermined
Erdogan’s support within Turkey.
Saturday’s
peace march in Ankara was a huge rally to demand that Erdogan’s AKP stop its
covert support for ISIS and Turkish air force attacks on the Kurdish fighters
in northern Syria.
The
bombing of that march of unarmed civilians has shocked the world and led to a
much bigger and angrier demonstration against Erdogan and the AKP in Ankara the
next day by people who refused to be intimidated by the bloodshed.
Sunday’s
hastily organised protest in London mirrored that demonstration and was also supported
by London Stop the War and by the RMT union.
The
protest had been called for Trafalgar Square but that was already pre-booked
for a huge Indian celebration of Diwali so the Turkish atrocity protest
assembled in Whitehall opposite Downing Street. It soon became evident that
there was nowhere near enough space there to accommodate the huge numbers
turning up, so the organisers led a spontaneous march to the BBC headquarters
at the top of Regent Street.
Steve
Hedley, representing the RMT, made a powerful speech calling for unity and
solidarity between unions in Britain and Turkey, to stand together with a
message for Erdogan: “You can bomb, you can burn and you can injure but you
cannot win.”
