The Free

Turkey’s toxicity and Europe’s paralysis

from thefreeonline Sept 23, 2023 by Ali Dinçer * at Turkish Minute

People of Kobane bid farewell to 5 youths Murdered by Turkish drone… part of Erdogan’s Drone Marketing Program

Last week Turkish president and drone salesman of the year Recep Tayyip Erdoğan said Turkey could “part ways” with the EU.

It was one of the most confusing breakup announcements of all time since most people didn’t even know that the two sides were dating.

Erdoğan’s remarks were a reaction to the European Parliament’s annual report on Turkey, which contained criticism of Turkey’s grim human rights record…

the arbitrary use of terrorism charges to silence dissidents,
political control over the judiciary,
ongoing invasion, ethnic cleansing and attempted genocide in Afrin, NE Syria..
mass incarceration,
denial of human rights for women
mass torture in police custody and in prisons,
restrictions of free speech
imperial expansion policy in Syria, Azerbaijan, Libya, Iraq..
ongoing repression and banning of Kurdish language, culture, music
refusal to comply with European Court of Human Rights judgments,
abduction of Turkish citizens from outside Turkey,
media censorship, online censorship,
toxic blackmail and bullying in international relations
daily murder of innocents in Syria by drones, artillery and assassinations
lack of access to a fair trial and a crackdowns on journalists,
social media users, opposition politicians,
academics, lawyers,
trade unionists and human rights defenders.
a few extras were added!…ed.

Or as Erdoğan calls it, “justice”.

It has almost become ritualistic for the EP to publish these reports every year and for Ankara to swiftly declare them “null and void.” In the past the publication was called the “progress report” because it was meant to document Turkey’s progress in terms of aligning its legislation with the EU’s legal standards as a candidate for membership.

As of 2015 Brussels appropriately dropped the word “progress” and began calling it the “Turkey report.” More recently, they renamed it the “Türkiye report,” giving in to Erdoğan’s childish caprice.

US Auto Workers: ‘Stand-Up Strike“Living paycheck to paycheck, scraping to get by? That’s hell.

from thefreeonline on September 22, 2023 By Malik Miah at Red Ant Admin

^{United Auto Workers members marched at a rally in downtown Detroit on September 15 after the union launched a strike earlier that day. Photo: Bill Pugliano/Getty Images}

What’s being called the “summer of strikes” (more accurately an upsurge of labor agitation) is inspiring more workers to fight back.

“We build those cars!” chanted striking auto workers.

On September 15, at midnight, the United Automobile Workers (UAW) President Shawn Fain said rolling strikes against major US-owned auto companies were launched. Some 12,700 assembly line workers at three plants in Michigan (Ford), Ohio (Stellantis) and Missouri (GM) hit the picket line. The UAW represents 150,000 workers.

This is the first time the union has launched a strike hitting each of the big three manufacturers at the same time.

Fain was elected president in March against long dominant incumbent opposition. He said the strike was class warfare between the working class and the billionaire class.

Fain laid out the stakes days before the strike began:

“Living paycheck to paycheck, scraping to get by? That’s hell. Choosing between medicine and rent is hell. Working seven days a week for twelve hours a day for months on end is hell. Having your plant close down and your family scattered across the country is hell. Being made to work during a pandemic and not knowing whether you might get sick and die or spread the disease to your family is hell.

“Enough is enough. It’s time to decide what kind of world we want to live in and it’s time to decide what we are willing to do to get it.”

A Struggle for the Industry’s Future

“Enough is enough. It’s time to decide what kind of world we want to live in and it’s time to decide what we are willing to do to get it.”

The strike takes place as the traditional automakers invest billions to develop electric vehicles (EVs) while still making most of their money from gasoline-driven cars. The negotiations will determine the balance of power between workers and management, possibly for years to come. That makes the strike as much a struggle for the industry’s future as it is about wages, benefits and working conditions.

The established US carmakers — General Motors, Ford Motor and Stellantis (which owns Chrysler, Jeep, and Ram) — are trying to defend their massive profits and their place in the market in the face of stiff competition from non-union Tesla, owned by the world’s richest man Elon Musk who hates unions, and foreign automakers from Europe and Asia (including Mercedes Benz, Volkswagen, Toyota, Honda, Kia and Hyundai) that are non-union.

Executives and business analysts have characterized what is happening in the industry as the biggest technological transformation since Henry Ford’s moving assembly line started up at the beginning of the 20th century.

They don’t mention that the auto workers in the 1930s organized sit-ins and pitched battles to build their independent unions. Their strike actions along with those of workers in many other industries forced the Federal Government to pass labor legislation favorable to most workers. At that time, the US ruling class feared a workers’ revolution against capitalism.

Pipeline Fighter Denied Bail After Blocking MVP Construction For 3 Days

Report on recent action against the Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) that blocked construction for three days.

—from thefreeonline on 22 Sept 23 by Appalachians Against Pipelines via It’s Going Down

Early Saturday morning, a pipeline fighter using the name “Bramble” locked herself to a buried lockbox at a Mountain Valley Pipeline (MVP) worksite in Roanoke County. She prevented pipeline workers from clearing vegetation on the top of Poor Mountain for three days; on Monday, she was extracted from her blockade and arrested. As of Tuesday afternoon, she is still being held without bail.

“I’m fighting for a world where we can all be free,” Bramble stated. On day 2 of her blockade, she wrote, “Workers came by my spot today and took away my supplies, hoping that I would leave. In the end though, they can’t take away the view I have from up here. I can see so much of what we are up against.

“I can see the pipeline easement for miles, their machines that destroy the forest, and Western Virginia Regional jail where Wren and Acre were held for months after they were extracted from the Yellow Finch treesits, along with so many others who are unjustly incarcerated. The mountains and wild forest surrounding all that evil is so much bigger, and it’s untamed.”

Banners at the site throughout the blockade read, “No Prisons, No Pipelines,” and “No Patriarchy, No Pipelines.”

On Saturday and Monday, additional folks gathered nearby to show their support for Bramble.

People have been disrupting MVP construction regularly since construction restarted on July 5th 2023, with many stoppages occurring at the sites where MVP still plans to cross difficult, dangerous terrain. At least two dozen work stoppages have occurred since work restarted, including walk-ons, rallies and multiple other lockdown protests. Poor Mountain, where this action is happening, is where the Yellow Finch Treesits blocked the MVP’s path for two and a half years from 2018-2021. It is one of the steepest stretches of the MVP easement, and one of the last remaining areas of the pipeline’s path where downed trees have not been cleared.

The Mountain Valley Pipeline is a 42-inch diameter fracked gas pipeline slated to cross 300 miles of Appalachia. In June 2023, congress passed a law to fast track the MVP, despite the pipeline’s long history of environmental violations and failure to hold on to key permits. People have been resisting the MVP since it was initially proposed and continue to fight this toxic project.

Kurdish Narin Gezgör, founder of Rosa Women’s Assoc, gets more than 7 years in prison.. Eng/Cat

from thefreeonline on Sept 33, 2023 by KurdisCat

ANF News

A court in Amed (Diyarbakır in Turkish) has sentenced Narin Gezgör, a founding member of the Rosa Women’s Association, a Kurdish women’s rights group, to seven years and six months in prison, the Center for Stockholm Freedom, citing Gazete Duvar.

Women’s Voice for Peace, a short film about Rosa Women’s AssociationAs part of the project “Women’s Voice for Peace”, documentary filmmaker Güliz Sağlam prepared a short film which was published by Rosa Women’s Association.Established in 2018 with the knowledge a…ANF News

Gezgör was sentenced in a new trial after an appeals court overturned an earlier verdict that carried the same prison term for the same charge due to the lower court’s failure to properly review the case.

The sentence was handed down on the charge of membership of a terrorist organization, which carries a minimum prison sentence of six years and three months.

The Rosa Women’s Association fights against violence against women and has been the focus of repression for years. The association was founded as a civil society organisation in Amed at the end of 2018. The association supports women affected by violence and campaigns for gender justice, environmental protection and a democratic culture of peace in society. After the state-imposed closure of all municipal women’s institutions in the wake of the coup attempt in 2016, it is now the only institution in Amed to which women can turn for advice and support.ANF News

It is common for Turkish authorities to prosecute and convict people on terrorism-related charges for their non-violent engagement with civil society and political commentary.

Politically active Kurds are often accused of membership in the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK),In the second wave of repression in April 2021, the association was broken into by the police and searched. Since then, several activists have been sentenced to prison terms of varying lengths, including journalist Nurcan Yalçın and Peace Mother Hayriye Türkekul.

‘Urge the Government of Turkey to release arrested women’s rights …

Turkey’s anti-terror legislation has repeatedly drawn criticism in international reports for being too broad and ambiguous, allowing courts to interpret social affiliation as links to terrorism and comments as terrorist propaganda.

Turkish courts usually accept the testimony of anonymous witnesses as evidence of defendants’ ties to terrorism.

Among other things, the prosecution wanted Gezgör’s membership of Rosa, her involvement with the association, interviews she gave on women’s issues and her participation in press statements, rallies and funerals to be punished as “terrorism”. The lawyers accused the prosecution of classifying a legal association as “illegal” and of seeking to punish Narin Gezgör for her work against patriarchal violence. The lawyers demanded acquittal for their client, who did not attend the trial. The verdict is not yet final.ANF News

Allegations of torture and ill-treatment in police custody often involve detainees being coerced into signing statements that incriminate themselves and others.

In the 2022 edition of the Rule of Law Index published by the World Justice Project, Turkey ranked 116 out of 140 countries, scoring even worse than Russia and Belarus.

Turquia: La kurda Narin Gezgör, fundadora d’una associació de dones kurdes, condemnada a més de 7 anys de presó

Un tribunal d’Amed (Diyarbakır en turc) ha condemnat Narin Gezgör, membre fundadora de l‘Associació de Dones Rosa, un grup kurd pels drets de les dones, a set anys i sis mesos de presó , va informar dilluns el Centre per a la Llibertat d’Estocolm, citant la Gazete Duvar. Gezgör va ser condemnada en un nou judici després que un tribunal d’apel·lacions anul·lés un veredicte anterior que implicava la mateixa durada de presó pel mateix càrrec a causa de la fallada del tribunal inferior per examinar adequadament el cas.

La condemna es va dictar amb l’acusació de pertinença a una organització terrorista, que comporta una pena mínima de presó de sis anys i tres mesos. Les proves presentades contra Gezgör incloïen la seva pertinença a l’associació, així com les seves entrevistes als mitjans i testimonis anònims que la van incriminar. És habitual que les autoritats turques processin i condemnin persones per càrrecs relacionats amb el terrorisme pel seu compromís no violent amb la societat civil i comentaris polítics. Els kurds políticament actius sovint són acusats de pertinença al Partit dels Treballadors del Kurdistan (PKK), un grup armat designat com a organització terrorista per Turquia i bona part de la comunitat internacional.

La legislació antiterrorista de Turquia ha suscitat repetidament crítiques als informes internacionals per ser massa àmplia i ambigua, permetent als tribunals interpretar l’afiliació social com a vincles de terrorisme i els comentaris com a propaganda terrorista.

\Els tribunals turcs solen acceptar la declaració de testimonis anònims com a prova dels vincles dels acusats amb el terrorisme. Les denúncies de tortura i maltractaments sota custòdia policial sovint impliquen la coacció dels detinguts perquè signin declaracions que s’incriminen a ells mateixos i als altres

A l’edició de 2022 de l’Índex de l’Estat de Dret publicat pel World Justice Project, Turquia va ocupar el lloc 116 entre 140 països.

KurdisCat@protonmail.com

ANF | Co-founder of Rosa Women’s Association sentenced to seven and a …

Narin Gezgör, a linguist and women’s rights activist, has been sentenced to seven and a half years in prison by a Turkish criminal court in the province of Amed (Diyarbakır) on charges of membership of a “terrorist organisation”.