Following the arrest of 61-year-old professor and Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) Assembly member Büşra Ersanlı and 63-year-old publisher and writer Ragıp Zarakolu, intellectuals have started a campaign they labelled "We are all KCK". KCK (Kurdish Communities Union) is alleged by the prosecutors to be the "urban wing" of the PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party). What exactly is this "urban wing", what its scopes and role is hard to say because the prosecutors so far have not been able to explain it themselves. Indeed they keep asking for the arrest of thousands without specifying why. Worse, they hide behind the KCK fig leaf and put other charges into the bargain so to make it almost sure that the people they want to see in jail actually end up behind bars.
A reaction to this indiscriminate and above all unmotivated arrests has been mounting in recent weeks, and it kind of reached a pick with the arrest, last week of Ersanlı and Zarakolu. If there was any further evidence that the "KCK excuse" could be used against anyone, that was it.
The new campaign, "We are all KCK", is being launched by lawyers Eren Keskin, Ayşe Batumlu, Leman Yurtsever, Hürriyet Şener and photographer Veysi Altay invited people to take part in this activity. By now, 50 people, including writer, activists and poet Roni Margulies, sociologist İsmail Beşikçi, Dr. Şebnem Korurfincancı, ecologist Bilge Contepe, writer A.Hicri İzgören, singer Ferhat Tunç, Şanar Yurdatapan and many leaders from leftist parties and organizations, signed the petition.
The campaign’s promoters announced that this action will take place in a couple days.
Workers from Office Workers’ Trade Union have today staged a protest against the government policy of indiscriminate attacks against people who are organizing against the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
ANF / NEWS DESK
