Alevi community mourns victims on anniversary and vows never to forget events in Sivas
Demonstrators marched down Green Lanes
MOURNERS in London marked the twenty-first anniversary of a hotel fire that killed 37 writers and liberals in eastern Turkey.
More than sixty people were injured in the blaze at the Madımak hotel in the Central Anatolian town of Sivas in 1993.
They had been attending a conference with liberal author Aziz Nesin, who had translated Salman Rushdie’s controversial novel ‘The Satanic Verses’.
The event was marked in London on Wednesday evening with a march from the Alevi Cultural Centre in Dalston towards a memorial at Stoke Newington Park.
Yaşar Demiralay, the leader of the centre, said that his community would not forget the pain of twenty-one years ago.
He described the events of 2 July 1993 as nothing short of a massacre and added they would be pushing for greater recognition of the Alevi community in Turkey.
Demonstrators marched down Green Lanes
Other speakers, coming from Alevi communities elsewhere in England and from the Scottish capital Edinburgh, condemned Turkey’s governing AK Party for its role in creating ostracism against Alevis in Turkey.
DEEPENED RIFT
Thirty-seven people, most of Alevi origin, died when a mob outside set the building in Sivas on fire in 1993. The event was seen as a major assault on free speech and human rights in Turkey, and significantly deepened the rift between religious and secular segments of the society.
Five accused men were released in 2012 after a court in Ankara ruled the statute of limitations had run out on the 1993 hotel fire.