From: Zeynep Tufekcioglu <zeynept-AT-turk.net>
Subject: Re: Battle of Somme
Date: Mon, 8 Jul 1996 11:00:11 +0300


>Once though  when he and his army buddies
>got together for a party , there was one of their friends who had been at
>Gallipoli and he got drunk and started to cry and curse Churchill. I recall
>quite vividly the awful silence among my father and his  mates when their
>friend broke down.
>
>regards
>
>Gary
>

I went to the hills where Gallipoli war was fought when I was 13 or so.
There are no tombstones, because so many have shed blood and died there-
your people and my people. Even people as far away as Australia. It is
remembered as a "proud" point of Turkish history. Just that people who do
the "priding" and the people who do the dying seem to be different. There is
one big monument there, dedicated to all that have died. The hills are all
green now, but kids still find shells and bits and pieces from guns. And
human remains.

I'm also perplexed by the same question, but I don't think we can ever
manage to behave like them even if we wanted to.

>Sometimes I think that revolutionaries have to be just as ruthless as our 
>enemies if we are to win. Other times I think that if we were to behave 
>the same as them - how would that make us better?.....just a thought.

Here, when there are explosions, as often, in the basement sweatshops
because chemicals and explosives are just used so carelessly, many die.
Often most are teenagers. They have to scrape the remains of human beings
>from the wreckage. No whole body parts are left. A few years ago, an mining
explosion killed almost a 100. The bastards had measured the level of
methane as getting too high, and moved the expensive machinery out. Not the
people. The life expectancy in the mining towns is around 45 anyway. In the
Kurdish areas, landmines kill and maim without sense or purpose. Ruthless?
Too much pain for 8 letters to express. 

In Mayday rally some of the youth cornered a police, alone, started beating
him. You've got to remember this is land of routine torture. And this is
going on while the police is opening fire on the crowd. Other elder
revolutionaries tried to stop the younger kids. When they couldn't they
moved between the police and the kids, and got beaten bad for a while, and
allowed the police to escape, who would definitely have been lynch-killed
otherwise.

I think we are justice - if and when we are ever "ruthless" it will be just.

Zeynep



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