May Day Ends with Excessive Police Violence

Unions ended the May Day activity in Şişli following the excessive violence by the police forces. DİSK president Çelebi said that “Our friends ended up in the hospitals. They used all kinds of violence. Whole Turkey became Taksim.”

- İstanbul

01-05-2008

The head of the Revolutionary Union of Labor Unions (DİSK) Süleyman Çelebi and the head of the Confederation of Public Employees Trade Unions (KESK) İsmail Hakkı Tombul told in a press release held together in front of the besieged headquarters of DİSK in Şişli that they ended the May Day march following the excessive violence by the police forces.

Çelebi: Our Struggle Will Continue 95

“Although the Justice and Development Party (AKP) calls itself democratic” said Çelebi, “it is a two-faced party, demanding freedom only for turban (the islamic headscarf for women). They turned İstanbul into a prison. They applied all kinds of unimaginable violence and to the workers, treating them inhumanely. Now every square, the whole of Turkey, has become Taksim. Our struggle will continue.”

KESK president Tombul reproached the police violence as well: “They attacked us as if we were the enemy trying to occupy the country.” (TK)

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