Don't Holiday in Turkey


Our Death is a Call to the Entire World


There is a regime in Turkey which massacres it's own people and is turning Turkey into a bloodbath.

Do not be deceived because of the attention you receive if you go there on holiday. The natural attractions and fun should not make you blind.

Yes, our country, Turkey, is a beautiful country with its natural setting and people. You could experience four seasons during the same day. These attractions are being destroyed every day, and those who live there are suffering as if they are living in hell.

Turkey has been turned into a bloodbath. Massacres, torture, rape in police stations and murders in prisons are continuously taking place. The regime is covering up the real situation in Turkey today.

For the last nine months, there has been resistance in the prisons. The revolutionary prisoners are continuing their death fast resistance demanding freedom, justice and democracy.

Dozens of revolutionary prisoners have been massacred by being burnt and shot. Hundreds of them have been left crippled. Right now, torture is being carried out and the prisoners are being left crippled.

The balance sheet: 53 prisoners and 4 families and friends of political prisoners, who are also on death fast to support the revolutionary prisoners, have lost their lives.

37 Prisoners have lost their memories because of being subjected to force feeding and forcible medical intervention. They do not remember their past. They have all become like the living dead. And there are hundreds more on the brink of death.

The death fast resistance is continuing.

Beaches, amusement centres, sun, sea and a cheap haven for a holiday. Are these what you think of when Turkey is mentioned?

But these are not the true face of Turkey.

The truth is: millions of people on the edge of starvation.

The truth is: covering up the massacres with propaganda about tourist attractions.

The truth is: F-type isolation prisons, torture, disappearances and massacres.

  • If you want everyone to live with their beliefs,
  • If you are for freedom of thought,
  • If you defend human rights,
  • If you demand law, order and justice,

Do not support the state in Turkey. Because the money you spend there returns to the people of Turkey in the form of weapons, bullets, torture devices and tanks.

Hear this call.

This is the call of those who have been resisting for more than 200 days, refusing to surrender and saying "We Will Live With Our Own Thoughts".

DO NOT GO TO TURKEY, THE COUNTRY OF DISAPPEARANCES, MASSACRES AND TORTURE

DO NOT SUPPORT FASCISM

The Committee of Solidarity with the Captives


TURKEY'S TOURISM INCOME TO INCREASE
The Undersecretary of the Ministry of Tourism, Savas Kuce said Turkey obtained about $3 million in the Jan.-June period from tourism. He added they expect the figure to reach $10 million at the end of year (2001) and more than 12.5 million tourists to visit Turkey.
Turkish Press Review -- Thu, 12 Jul 01


Boycott Turkish resorts An Phoblacht 26th July 2001


TURKEY IS NO HOLIDAY SPOT

Letter in Andersonstown News
Belfast, 20th August 2001

The current exchange rate between the British pound and the Turkish lira is approximately 18 million lira to the pound. Turkey needs all the British pounds that it can lay its hands on. Exchanging punts for Turkish lira is just as desirable because the Turkish government is at war with its own people and their demands for democracy. We can understand the desire of the Turkish people, we also recognise the depths that the Turkish government are gong to to cash in on that desire.

The Turkish government’s record inhuman rights abuses over many decades stands up there with the best of them, the British in Ireland, apartheid in South Africa, Pol Pot in Cambodia, Pinochet in Chile and all the other countries who, in an effort to show the world bank just how democratic they are, systematically attempt to destroy their own peoples’ ideas on democracy.

By imprisonment, torture and the murder of human beings in their own countries, they replace the real democratic wishes of their people with the democratic requirements of the world bank.

Turkey is one of the poorest countries in the world, with one of the largest armies and they are not afraid to use it against their own people. They ignore the demands of their own people and all the international human rights organisations with regard to their record on human rights.

They are compounding the brutality by building H-Block style prisons that they call F-Type prisons. This enables them to take their political prisoners out of the mainstream prisons, and put them in one-person-cells. In this way they can go about breaking the prisoners one at a time. This system is used in conjunction with regular attacks on the prisoners, on one occasion leaving 28 prisoners brutally murdered.

As a result of this the prisoners embarked on a hunger strike involving almost 1000 protesters. So far 30 have died and unfortunately many more may follow.

We need to support this hunger strike, we need to highlight the brutality of the Turkish government.

But most importantly we need to stop supplying the Turkish Government with 18 million lira per pound/punt with which they build the F-Type prisons. Some people will say what's the difference in holidaying in Turkey and all the other countries with poor human rights records? Well there isn’t one but let’s start somewhere.

The Turkish government historically have no respect for their own people or what the rest of the world thinks about them, but they do need money.

Stop building prisons for Turkey, holiday somewhere else.

Jim McCann & Joe Barnes
Ballymurphy ex-prisoners’ Association