[Via... http://www.egroups.com/group/Communist-Internet ] . . ----- Original Message ----- From: secr <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To: <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Sent: Sunday, May 27, 2001 12:28 PM Subject: [mobilize-globally] Hundreds detained in Turkish union protest Subject: [S26-global] Reuters: Hundreds detained in Turkish union protest-TV Date: Sat, 26 May 2001 23:42:08 EDT From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED], [EMAIL PROTECTED] CC: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Hundreds detained in Turkish union protest-TV ANKARA, May 26 (Reuters) - Turkish police detained hundreds of people on Saturday when public sector workers gathered in Ankara for an unauthorised protest against a proposed law they say will limit their union rights, television stations reported. NTV and CNN Turk television showed pictures of riot police seizing protesters and bundling them on to buses to take them away from the central Ankara square where they were trying to demonstrate. CNN Turk said police had said they would release those detained after the protest was over. The demonstration was organised by the Public Sector Workers Union (KESK) to protest against a proposed law which it says will limit rights to join unions and take industrial action. Police said between 2,000 and 3,000 people were gathering around Kizilay Square and more were trying to join them from other parts of the country. A police official contacted by Reuters could not immediately confirm the number of detentions but said there had not been any serious trouble. State-run Anatolian news agency said police had eventually decided to allow as many as 10,000 protesters who had travelled from around the country to enter the city, after holding them at highway checkpoints for several hours. "The public workers who are marching to Ankara from all sides of the country are now marching to Kizilay despite the numerous detentions," teachers' union Egitim-Sen, part of KESK, said in a statement. Witnesses said hundreds of police, including mounted police, had gathered around Kizilay Square ahead of the demonstration. The government announced earlier this week it had reached a pay deal with public sector workers. It agreed not to impose a pay freeze as originally planned, but the deal fell well short of union demands for pay rises to match inflation. Turkey's latest financial crisis in February, which saw the lira lose some 40 percent of its value, has dealt a heavy blow to civil servants whose pay rises last year were linked to inflation targets the government never met. The crisis and the lira's depreciation sent inflation soaring to around 50 percent in April, eroding the value of workers' salaries even further. While Saturday's demonstration was held to protest against the proposed union law, some people also voiced anger at the government and Economy Minister Kemal Dervis, who has drafted a tough economic programme in return for $15.7 billion of loans from the IMF and World Bank. ----------------------------------------------------------- to unsubscribe from this list, please send a blank email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] more S26 infos: http://x21.org/s26 view messages archive: http://www.egroups.com/group/antiimf2000 ----------------------------------------------------------- To unsubscribe from this group, send an email to: [EMAIL PROTECTED] Your use of Yahoo! Groups is subject to http://docs.yahoo.com/info/terms/
