We condemn the attack on Taksim! Let us not allow the climate of fear being created!
By the Party for Workers’ Democracy (IDP), the Turkish section of the IWU-FI
Thursday, 14 November 2022. We condemn the bombing on Taksim Istiklal Street, Istanbul, as a brutal act of terrorism. Six people are dead and dozens injured. We offer our condolences to those who lost their loved ones and wish the wounded a speedy recovery.
Such attacks will create an atmosphere of oppression similar to that experienced by the people of the country in 2015-16 and will damage the unity and struggle of working people.
In addition, government practices of «prohibition of publication» and restriction of access to the Internet, which have no other purpose than to drag society into an atmosphere of fear, and which usurp the freedom of information of the public, must end immediately. And before the ban, the government has to explain why it couldn’t prevent this attack with all the intelligence available.
The primary duty of the government must be to protect the security of the lives of its citizens. However, the government’s adventurous and aggressive foreign policy makes the country open to such attacks, as we have experienced in the past.
As we saw in 2015-16, the government failed to investigate the perpetrators of the terrorist attacks and the real perpetrators were not brought to justice. To prevent a similar outcome in the Taksim attack, the process must be executed transparently without restricting the freedom of the information of the public. Otherwise, the political responsibility for the climate of pressure and fear that will arise in society will remain with the current government.
