Bloody Sunday (1969)

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For other incidents referred to by this name, see Bloody Sunday. For the Taksim Square Massacre of 1977, see Taksim Square Massacre.

Bloody Sunday is the name given to a counter-revolutionary response to a leftist protest that occurred on February 16, 1969 in Istanbul's Taksim Square, Turkey. A coup d'etat in 1960 had allowed a group of Turkish military officers to take control of the country[1]. Under this established government, labor tensions grew and anti-American sentiment rose. Elements of the Turkish left and labour movement were protesting against perceived American Imperialism[2].

Protests increased after the United States Sixth Fleet arrived in Turkey[3]. Unrest peaked on February 16, 1969, when 30,000 people marched on Taksim. The demonstration was broken up by the police, but several thousand continued the march towards Taksim. It was at this point that a Counter-revolutionary force attacked a large group of these protesters with knives and sticks[4]. While it was a salient example of counter-revolutionary forces attacking protesters in Turkey, left-right political tensions ran high for most of the 1960's and 1970's[5]. Feroz Ahmad, a leftist Turkish scholar, refers to Bloody Sunday as "an example of organized, fascist violence"[6], alluding to right wing elements responsible for most of the violence.

During this confrontation, two revolutionaries, Ali Turgut and Duran Erdogan, were killed[7]. Similar attacks on labor groups by right wing elements in the government and Turkish politics occurred in both 1971 and 1977. The 1977 massacre is referred to as Turkey's "second Bloody Sunday"[8].

[edit] References

  1. ^ Karasapan, Omer. Turkey and US Strategy in the Age of Glasnost. Middle East Report, No. 160, Turkey in the Age of Glasnost (Sep. - Oct., 1989), p. 6
  2. ^ Amineh, Mehdi Parvizi; Houweling, Henk (June, 2007). "Global Energy Security and Its Geopolitical Impediments: The Case of the Caspian Region". Perspectives on Global Development and Technology 6: 365-388. doi:10.1163/156914907X207793. 
  3. ^ Kasaba, Resat Ed. (2008). Turkey in the Modern World, The Cambridge History of Turkey 4. Cambridge University Press, xvii, 226-266. 
  4. ^ Karasapan, Omer. Turkey and US Strategy in the Age of Glasnost. Middle East Report, No. 160, Turkey in the Age of Glasnost (Sep. - Oct., 1989), p. 8
  5. ^ Başkan, Filiz (January 2006). "Globalization and Nationalism: The Nationalist Action Party of Turkey". Nationalism and Ethnic Politics 12 (1): 83-105.
  6. ^ Ahmad, Feroz (1977). The Turkish Experiment in Democracy: 1940-1975. Boulder, CO, USA: Westview Press, 381. 
  7. ^ Istanbul Protests, https://turkishdailynews.com.tr/archives.php?id=21969. Turkish Daily News February 17 , 2001 . Accessed on April 25, 2008
  8. ^ Ahmad, Feroz. Military Intervention and the Crisis in Turkey. MERIP Reports, No. 93, Turkey: The Generals Take Over (Jan., 1981), p. 10,22
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