(leer en español)
Hello friends,
During the day we fixed some
things, among them bringing Peter’s laptop to be repaired, since it stopped
working some days ago.
We had a meeting with Ayman, our new
Syrian friend, Handan and Mehdi at 6:30 pm in Ardic Cafe. On our way there, we
met Yuksel and chatted for a while. He told us that his 3 friends who went to
Attigliano in May were coming to the Message meeting tomorrow. We said good-bye
since he had to go to work but will meet tomorrow. We sat at the Ardic Cafe at
six and half an hour later Ayman arrived, happy to be with us again. We spoke a
little about the situation in Syria and how bad it was, with violence on both
sides. He told us a bomb went off in Damascus’ central square causing 40 deaths
and many wounded. He hopes the all this violence will end soon. He told us
other things too complicated to explain here. Handan came. We continued our
conversations that turn back to the situation in Turkey and Erdogan’s craziness.
In the meantime, people with flags were getting together, with speeches and
slogans. Soon the police had blocked access to the streets on the other sides,
closing Kizilay Square off. Then the people of the cafe start closing windows,
already knowing what could happen. Tear gas bombs. We’ve included some picture
below of this situation. It was surreal. We were talking with other people
inside a cafe, and underneath police and protesters clashed. Fortunately, after
a long time they were fighting, protesters decided to disperse, avoiding a violent
confrontation and tear gas. You must realize that this takes place on the
sidewalks full of people sitting at terraces, making believe they can’t see the
police, as if everything were normal.
So we continued our talks and touched
on the issue of deep and needed change. It was a long conversation, our friend
was very receptive. We invited him to the meeting tomorrow and he seemed
interested in coming. He will call us tomorrow to confirm attendance. Mehdi
didn’t make it and we don’t know what happened to him, because his mobile doesn’t
work. He told us yesterday through facebook, since he couldn’t come but we’d
seen the message late. But today no messages. We hope he is well and that
nothing happened.
At ten we said good-bye to Ayram
and Handan took us home, the three of us then had dinner.
That’s it for today, but we have
received information that violent clashes are taking place right now in Ankara
and Istanbul and many thousand persons have blocked the roads to Taksim. We
think that lots of things will take place in the next days. So, askings for the
good people of Turkey are welcome.
With a big hug from Florent & Peter
No comments:
Post a Comment