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Turkey: “Idle Environmentalists” released from Custody, After Protest
The 33 environmentalist who protested the Gendarmerie raid of the Ekotopya Youth Park in Sinop in front of the governorship are released. The Prime Minister calls them “idle environmentalists”
The participants of the Ekotopya (Ecologic Utopias) Youth Park, who were raided by the Gendarmerie and told to shut down their camp by Sinop’s governor, held a protest meeting in front of the governorship.
Police took into custody the 33 activists who lay down on the street. One of the camp participants R.G., who declined to give his/her name, told bianet that those who were taken into custody were released early in the morning.
The Ekotopya Youth Camp was raided by the Gendarmerie on Friday (August 22). Following the raid, the governor had ordered the immediate shutdown of the camp.
R.G. said that the street where the Sinop City and Life Without Nuclear Association (SINYAD) was under police blockade for two days and that they did not even give water to the environmentalists who were apprehended.
The co-chairpersons of the Greens Party, Bilge Contepe and Ümit Sahin said, “This has shown one more time how democratic the Justice and Development Party (AKP) is. It is clear that the Prime Minister supports this kind of behavior, as he attacked the environmentalist in Rize when the Sinop Police was putting pressure on them in Sinop.”
Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan said in his speech in Rize, a city at the far eastern end of the Black Sea Coast of Turkey, that he was an environmentalist, his government was environmentalist, but they were not of those idle environmentalists.
