On Friday, June 9th at 18:00h, police attacked the protest action of the public workers who protest for nearly 580 days against the fascist government and arbitrary layoffs in the Yüksel street in the Turkish capitol Ankara’s centre.
During the attack Nazan Bozkurt, Alev Şahin and Gülnaz Bozkurt were arrested. During the attack one of the assasin policemen hit Nazan Bozkurt with the fist and as a consequence her cheekbone was broken. After about one hour the police took Bozkurt to the hospital at about 15 minutes away from the where the protest took place.
According to the information delivered by Nazan Bozkurt’s friends, the doctors have stated that without operation in the following days there is a high probability to lose her left eye.
Currently, the condition of Nazan Bozkurt remains stable, but, as we have already mentioned, there is a real danger of it partially losing sight. This is another brutal assault by the Turkish fascist government’s assassin police against the daily protest at Yüksel street, carried out by the laid of public workers. The action, which was initiated on November 9th 2016 by university lecturer Nuriye Gülmen, has been going on for nearly a year and a half. Attacks against the protesters, which consist of reading protest declarations twice a day: at 13:00 and 18:00, can be divided into two periods. The first period was at the beginning of the action in 2016, when Gülmen was alone in her protest and the police attacked and detained her. Then, when Acun Karadağ and Semih Özakça joined her, the police continued to attack the protest. In the end, the three of them won the right to protest against Yüksel after nearly 40 days of police attacks.
The second period began in May 2017, when the protest became massive and permanent. In fact the protesters had occupied the space around the monument of “Human Rights”. After Nuriye and Semih were arrested and imprisoned, at the end of May 2017, the police blocked this area which is still being encircled by the police barriers. A police station was set up near the protest site where riot police officers and the public safety department were on duty.
Very often, the detention of protesters on Yüksel is accompanied by brutal police attacks and torture in the middle of the street. In order to draw attention to this fact, the protesters wrote up a report on the torture applied on to them, which was accompanied by medical expertise and photographs.
