Turkish TOMA's. Wikicommons/Vikiçizer. Some rights reserved.Last Friday 370 civil society organizations were closed by the government under the allegation of supporting terrorist groups. 50 of these organizations are based in Diyarbakir, in my city. There are associations that support the families who lost their houses during the curfews or families who live under the poverty line in the region. Associations that represent women and children’s rights, Kurdish linguistic rights, “lost” people, reconciliation, Kurdish culture, lawyers rights have all been closed by the government.
Sarmaşık is one of the associations that was working on poverty. Sarmaşık has regularly given food support to 32,000 people every month for the past 11 years.
2 days ago, I was walking to the Sarmaşık press meeting to protest the closure. There were many tanks, TOMAs and police at the entrance of the street. At the press meeting, there was only one camera because most of the media institutions were closed 2 months ago. There were only 10-15 people participating in the press meeting but there were dozens of police officers blocking the street.
