IRSP: Turkish Regime's Attack on Death Fasters is Barbaric 5 November 2001

The joint-heads of the IRSP's international Department have condemned as barbaric the attack today by Turkish police on the Death Fast houses, in the Kucuk Armutlu area of Istanbul, resulting in at least six deaths. Mr. Harkin further called on the Irish government to intervene.

Terry Harkin, speaking from London for the IRSP's International Department, where he is in contact with the Death Fasters through their representatives, said:

"The IRSP's International Department have received reports today of an operation by the Turkish state against the Death Fast houses at Kucuk Armutul, a suburb of Istanbul. These reports indicate that at 12:00 PM, local time, Turkish para-military police stormed the area, armed with CS gas made in the USA, AK47s and Panzer armoured cars provided by the German government. They used live German rounds and American gas to drive local residents and Death Fasters from their homes and into the streets, where at least six of them were butchered by the police, with hundreds more injured and arrested.

"The Turkish Democratic Republic then brought in bulldozers and commenced the demolition of the homes of the local population, in scenes reminiscent of the Highland Clearances and Evictions during the Irish Famine.

"This is the country that Bertie Ahern is so anxious to have admitted to the European Union that he is thinking of having a rerun of the referendum on the Expansion Treaty.

"Mr Ahern should think hard on his position of accepting a pariah quasi-military state like Turkey. Turkey is only tolerated by the West because of its usefulness as a static aircraft carrier for the USA.

"Ireland has a key place at the heart of Europe and has grown prosperous through her involvement. It is time for this to be paid for, the Irish government is in receipt of a set of proposals that have already been seen by the Death Fasters' representatives. These contain the blueprint for an intervention that could see negotiations to end the Death Fast started quickly.

"The IRSP calls upon the Irish government to review its position on these proposals quickly and positively, and then act before any more lives are lost. We call on Mr. Ahern to be courageous; go to the Turkish state and say 'enough, stop this now and we will help you."

Mr. Harkin concluded by reiterating the call made recently to Sinn Fein and Green Party TDs by former MP Ms. McAlisky, to table a motion in An Dail to have the government recall Ireland's Ambassador to Turkey.

"After today's butchery, I would go further than that and call for the expulsion of the Turkish Ambassador, as he represents a government that commits acts of genocide against its own people," Mr. Harkin said.

ENDS

Echoing a statement issued by his counterpart in London, the North American Coordinator of the Irish Republican Socialist Party's International Department today denounced the attack by the Turkish government on the hunger strikers acting in support of Leftist political prisoners there. Peadar Baile, speaking from the IRSP's International Department office in San Francisco, in the U.S., also decried the Irish government for having turned its back on a proposal worked out by the IRSP and representatives of the hunger strikers in Turkey, which he believes might have brought peaceful resolution to the long-running protest.

"The IRSP's International Department cannot ignore the fact that the Turkish regime is actively engaged in a campaign of terror against the most oppressed sector of its own population, but we hardly expect the U.S. government to intervene in any way that might mitigate the violence brought against its own people by the Turkish regime," the spokesperson said. "Both they and Britain have long turned a blind eye to Turkish incursions into the Kurdish regions of Iraq, or for that matter the Kurdish regions within their own borders as part of an ongoing campaign of terror. The Turkish government having now acted with unnecessary and barbaric violence against its own people, within Istambul, is unlikely to draw their attention either.

"It seems that the U.S. and British governments are not concerned with acts of terrorism, merely with actions against their own interests. We are more disappointed in the Irish government, with the hunger strike rooted in the history of Ireland as it is, to have rejected a proposal to have played a role that might have kept this horror from having ever taken place.

"Is this the face that Europe wishes to present to the world at large? Have not the Europeans nations enough blood and violence on their hands already in their collective past as slave traders, colonial brigands, fascist invaders, and imperialist oppressors, that they now seek to add the brutal Turkish regime to their number?

"Ireland, long a victim of these practices should use its position in the European Union to counter the continuance of such brutality, but when a nation's sovereignty has been traded away for the crumbs from the imperialist's table, perhaps it is too much to expect that that nation might still make a stand for human dignity."

Shaking his head, the IRSP spokesperson added:

"The world is witness to this brutality. They will know who it is that accomodates terrorism in the world today."

STATEMENT ENDS