THE HYPOCRITICAL PROPAGANDA OF THE MASS MEDIA OF DECEPTION
The brutal suppression of student mobilizations in Turkey against the appointment of Melih Bulu as rector of Boğaziçi University in the Bosporus, which was ordered by Erdogan, continues. The only "qualification" of this rector is that he is a former candidate for MP of Erdogan's party, while he has nothing to do with the field of higher education. This act is an attempt to further violate the freedoms and rights of students and workers by completely dissolving the role that universities should have as places of socialization, politicization and free exchange of ideas.
Against all this, students and workers took to the streets, despite the restrictions, to demand Bulu's resignation and were brutally suppressed with tear gas, rubber bullets and hundreds of arrests. As of Monday 1/2/21, 250 arrests have been made in Istanbul and 69 in Ankara and the numbers are increasing daily. Many were released on conditions, banned from leaving the country, while 79 of them are accused by the authorities of being members of a "terrorist" organization. The attempt to discredit these mobilizations even by Erdogan himself, who claims that the students' actions are instigated by terrorist organizations, is used as a pretext to magnify the suppression they want to impose.
The reason for this reaction of the Turkish people may be the appointment of Melih Bulu, but the real reason is different. The attacks towards workers, students and the poor masses in Turkey, but also in other countries, through anti-labor and anti-education measures, along with the criminal mismanagement of the pandemic, millions of deaths, rapid rising of the unemployment, poverty and misery are what have led to the accumulated rage that begins to burst.
In our country the situation is similar, the crush of the rights and freedoms of workers and youth is intensifying daily with the building of an even more barbaric State of Emergency of the Riot Police and the Courts that strikes murderously anyone who opposes the plans of the government, convicts activists, violates even the bourgeois constitution, gives unlimited freedoms to the police and tries to establish a new junta.
The mass media of deception, after the millions euro given to them by ND (the government of Mitsotakis), continue the selective criticism of the events. Erdogan is characterized as a dictator, they "defend" the mobilizations of the students in Turkey and try to convince of the "democracy" that is established in Greece in contrast to illiberal Turkey. Instead, the mobilizations in Greece are christened by TV channels, such as SKAI, as a cause of dispersion of the virus, punks who do not care about public health, would-be murderers and much more. This filthy propaganda aims, on the one hand, to strike the internal enemy of the government and the rest of the memoranda-friendly politicians, that is, the workers, the students and the poor masses, and on the other hand, to strike the foreign one, that is in Turkey, hyping Erdogan's authoritarianism, the "Turkish aggression" and the "national solidarity" that "we should all have", reinforcing nationalist views on both sides.
Against the hypocrisy of the mass media and the Greek government we must show our practical solidarity towards Turkish students and workers. All together in common, mass and militant struggles in Turkey, Greece and around the world we must fight to defend our rights and gains by dissolving the junta of neoliberal governments that crush our lives every day.