Saturday, 10th of October, “Peace, Labor and Democracy” rally was organized in Ankara, Turkey. The initial call was made by DISK (Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey), KESK (Confederation of Public Workers’ Unions), TMMOB (Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects) and TTB (Turkish Medical Association). This rally was a united rally with the participation of many unions, civil society organizations, non-governmental organizations, civilians and political parties. The call was made as a response to the ongoing war between Turkish Armed Forces and Kurdish militants in southeast of Turkey. The demand was to accomplish ceasefire with the slogan: “Resist the war, make peace now!” With the call of these various associations, thousands of people traveled to Ankara to participate.

Saturday morning, people started to unite in front of Ankara Train Station, which was rally’s meeting spot. According the official declaration of Turkish Security Forces, there were 14.000 people present in the area. Participants of the rally were lining up with their associations’ corteges, holding banners demanding peace.

Soon after 10:00 AM there were two consecutive explosions, suspected to be suicide bombings, occurred in the area within close distance to each other. A video footage shows the exact moment when the bomb went off, as people were singing and dancing:

 

Soon after the bombing, within the chaos, cries and screams for help, various civilians in the area and press workers started using the social media announcing that there are tens of dead people in the area and no ambulances were arriving. Doğan Tılıç, a participant of the rally explained the moments of the attack on his article on BirGün newspaper: “I was 20 meters away from the area where the bomb went off. The police forces entered the area by throwing gas capsules. I have not seen any ambulances when the police was arriving. Here [Turkey] the distance between life and death is only 20 meters.” Member of Turkish Medicine Association, Hande Arpat gave a statement to Agos newspaper: “Because the police attacked with gas capsules right after the explosion, we could not perform immediate medical intervention on those who were wounded.” HDP (People’s Democratic Party) Istanbul deputy Filiz Kerestecioğlu also gave a statement to Agos newspaper: “I arrived 30 minutes after the explosion; immediately we started carrying the wounded people. They [police] made an intervention on the first ambulances that were trying to exit. The explosion happened on HDP cortege. This [bombing] means that you cannot walk here for peace.”

This footage shows the police attacking the people trying to escape and blocking their way:

Many videos taken right after the bombing are circulating in the social media. Most of them contain graphic content and I watched them all. In one of them there’s a woman crying “My flesh is falling apart, I am dying!” The man shooting the video, in between his sobs keeps saying “Hang in there, you will resist, please don’t die!” In another video there’s a woman trying to walk through the corpses and talking on her phone saying: “They killed all of us!”

Many photos circulated on social media, but this one got to me the most. Corpses covered in HDP flags, the pro-minority party of Turkey who demands for peace but from many people’s point of view is a “terrorist” party.

I was going to be there. There is a gender studies conference in METU, Ankara and I had a presentation there this Friday and on Saturday I was going to participate in this rally. My feminist association, erktolia, already made a call for women to participate in this rally with the women’s associations we are in solidarity with. I was going to be there with two other friends of mine but we cancelled our presentation two weeks ago, because the plane tickets were too expensive. The minute I woke up on Saturday morning, I saw messages from my friends about the incident. I started searching through the Facebook profiles of each person I know who was to attend the rally. On each click, my fingers were shaking. I could have been there with them, and we could have been dead. And here I am today, in Paris, miles away from people I love, miles away from this massacre, searching through the lists of dead and wounded people, trying to see if there is a name that I recognize. Does it matter if I recognize the names? I saw a “name” on one of the lists being circulated in social media: “unidentified child (age 10)” Does this child’s identity, ethnical background or “political representation” in the rally matter?

Just a couple of hours after the bombing, Turkish Radio and Television Supreme Council announced a ban on press coverage from the area. The request was made from Vice Prime Minister of Turkey, Yalçın Akdoğan. Then people from Turkey started tweeting that they could not access Twitter and they had to use various VPN services to tweet.

Interior Affair Minister Selami Altınok, Justice Minister Kenan İpek and Health Minister Mehmet Müezzinoglu gave a press conference on condemning this terrorist attack. Health Minister explained that there were 4 ambulances in the area (where 14K people were rallying) and by 11:00 AM (55 minutes after the call for help was made) 21 ambulances made it to the area of the bombing. He also said that there was no need for extra blood to be donated to the hospitals, but while he was making that statement, people in the hospitals were making calls for blood. Interior Affairs Minister also said: “Necessary measures were taken. I don’t think that there was vulnerability in security.”

In Ankara, the capital of Turkey, where about 4.5 million of people live, a national peace rally was organized and as I am writing this article, the Turkish Medicine Association announces that there are at least 105 people who died and 500 who are wounded due to the consecutive bombings. And the officials say that the security measures were taken? Officials say hospitals are fully equipped with staff and medical needs yet Turkish Medicine Association made a call to Minister of Health that more staff and blood is needed. Let alone the fact that the police  did not help the victims but instead attacked them with gas capsules.

Just 1 day ago, on 9th of October, a local newspaper in Rize, Turkey organized a protest against terrorism. Well known gang leader Sedat Peker participated to this rally and he said “blood will be shed, and once rivers of blood are shed, then they [terrorists] will understand” yet there were no bombings there. Just 20 days ago, a rally was organized in Istanbul against terrorism where Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoğlu said “you have to work hard for 1st of November [general elections day] and make AKP the ruling party.” President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan gave a speech there as well, yet there were no incidents.

Many AKP members, followers and pro-AKP media is quick the blame PKK (Kurdish Workers Party) which is an armed pro-Kurdish organization. Which has also announced one day before the attack that they are willing to ceasefire. Then they say HDP is trying to collect more votes for the upcoming elections on November 1st.

Let’s see how many people have died since the last elections on July 7th:

694 people have died in Turkey in 4 months and not a single minister or offical has resigned!

Consecutive bombings happened on a peace rally in the capital of Turkey, soon after police attacked the area, then officials claimed they were in control of  the situation, then the officials banned broadcasting of the incident and then people could not access to Twitter in Turkey. Meanwhile any pro-government rally in Turkey can be carried out without any incident.

Within the light of these facts, I’d like to ask once again, who would bomb a rally organized for peace, and who would fail to protect the citizens participating in this rally?

The answer lies clearly within the banner from the protest carried out in İstanbul last night: “The Murderer State”