‘Gandhi’ Kemal leads 450 Km march to Istanbul

There is just one word emblazoned across the banners and T-shirts. Adalet, which stands for ‘Justice’ in Turkish. The 450 Kilometre walk from Ankara to Istanbul, which began on June 15 and is expected to end on July 9 outside a prison in Istanbul, has revived memories of another march in India, the 24-day march to the coast undertaken by Mahatma Gandhi in 1930 as part of his ‘Salt Satyagraha’.

Some Turkish observers have compared the march to the 1991 march by 100,000 miners to Ankara. It began with demanding miners’ rights but had snowballed into a wider, anti-government demonstration.

No wonder the Turkish opposition leader Kemal Kilicdaroglu, who is leading the march, is called ‘Gandhi Kemal’. The mild mannered and soft-spoken opposition leader of the Republican People’s Party, a party founded by Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, founder of the Republic, has sought to keep party affiliations apart. Instead he has sought to unite the opposition against the loss of democracy and the authoritarian policies of Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The march was triggered by the arrest and a 25-year prison sentence awarded to a party colleague Enis Berberoglu. Berberoglu was the Editor-in-Chief of Turkey’s largest circulated daily newspaper Hurriyet but lost his job following a crackdown by the Government. He was accused of passing off photographs of Turkish army trucks allegedly carrying weapons to Syria. The march is scheduled to end outside the Istanbul prison where the former journalist is detained.

Erdogan had declared a state of Emergency in the country after a failed coup in July last year. An estimated 50,000 people have been arrested and detained since last summer and 1.40 lakh people have been fired or suspended from their job. Among those arrested are judges and the chairman of the Turkish branch of Amnesty International.

Erdogan, however, continues to enjoy popular support and in recent elections his party polled between 40 to 50 per cent of the votes while the opposition Republican People’s Party’s vote share has stagnated around 25 per cent.

The opposition leader Kilicdaroglu was quoted by a New York Times report as saying, “ It is impossible for the opposition to talk in Parliament…the opposition ( therefore) has to look for other places to do its work.”

The Republican People’s Party wants to restore both democracy and secularism in Turkey.

While Erdogan has condemned the people participating in the march as terrorists, there is growing concern that the number of marchers will grow as they get closer to Istanbul this week. Any attack on the marchers or any physical harm to Kilicdaroglu may trigger another round of civil strife.

The Government, aware of the potential for mischief, has provided a security detail to protect the opposition leader during the march. But according to reports, that has not prevented ruling party supporters from hurling abuses and insults. While a ruling party supporter is said to have dumped a truck-load of manure at a camping site, another one is reported to have left a bullet.