Story and pictures: Onur Uz
British Parliament’s Alevi Secretariat organised its first event with a panel dedicated to tackling “Turkey’s contemporary situation and Alevis”. The event, which took place on the 22nd of March 2016 hosted journalists, politicians and local charity and NGO representatives from different backgrounds.
As a significant range of turnout was seen at the event, the panel tackled the contemporary agenda of Turkey including the negotiations with the EU, terror and economic aspects by also correlating Alevis’ standing amongst these agendas. The panel was moderated by the secretariat’s vice president Meg Hillier, along with the participation of Turkish journalist and academic Ahmet Şık, Turkish Republican Party’s MPs Hüseyin Çamak and Zeynep Altıok, Enfield MP David Burrows and BAF representative İsrafil Erbil.
The panel also tackled a wide range of aspects due to the day’s clash with the terror events took place in Brussels. Many other sub-topics like the censorship on Turkish media and political corruptions took place in the panel speeches. Journalist Ahmet Şık, pictured Turkey’s contemporary situation as “an ultimate darkness”.
ŞIK: “WE ARE UNABLE TO DESTROY THE DARKNESS – A REVOLUTION IS NEEDED”
Ahmet Şık, in his speech, said
“Discrimination against minorities has now become an interiorised act by the government. This is a one-sided act of severe discrimination. This interiorised act only reproduces the cruelty and increases its damage.
“The oppressive tendencies to shut the freedom of speech in Turkey is now at a worrying level and this applies to many different spheres from journalism to the court.”
As a journalist and academic, who has gone through imprisonment in the past few years in Turkey, Mr Şık also stated that the darkness in Turkey could only be cleansed by a revolution. Mr Şık also tackled the lack of government response towards the minorities who have been asking for actions to follow human rights.“The Turkish government being unresponsive to human rights calls would never silence people, on the contrary, would make people angrier, we need secular diplomacy”.
“The Turkish government being unresponsive to human rights calls can never silence people, on the contrary, this starts to make people get angrier and therefore we need secular diplomacy.” said Mr Şık.
“DISCRIMINATION IS A GLOBAL ISSUE”
Enfield MP David Burrows, in his speech, stated that he was more than happy to be a part of diversity at the Parliamentary, highlighting the fact that it is what the world needs now. Burrows continued by saying: “Discrimination is a global issue. It is not about one nation, religion or community or topic. We all need to be totalitarian to be able to see the bigger picture.”
The panelists then carried on to answering questions from the audience, in which many issues regarding the Kurdish community’s complaints, terror oriented questions and questions on Turkish government’s prospective actions were questioned. The panel’s moderator Meg Hillier, said she was more than grateful to be a part of the secretariat by saying “We all need to be one big voice and together to raise awareness and understanding.” İsrafil Erbil, from the British Alevi Federation, then outlined the standpoints, vision, and missions of the Secretariat once more before the panel came to an end.
