In Turkey, Serbia and their neighbours, mass mobilisations are rising to challenge corrupt regimes
~ Rob Latchford ~
Mass mobilisations in Turkey have seen tens of thousands on the streets for almost a week, an uprising inflamed by the arrest of the opposition-party Mayor of Istanbul. There have been 1,100 arrests amid scenes of police brutality. Large protests are also taking place in Bulgaria, Serbia, Macedonia, Bosnia, Montenegro, Greece, Albania, Slovakia, and Hungary. Will this wave of grassroots opposition fizzle out or escalate to economic shutdowns and a challenge to corrupt regimes across the region?
In Turkey, demonstrations and marches continue daily in multiple cities. The Eko-Anarşizm blog reported that over the last days many student activists and protest leaders were detained in house raids in Ankara, Istanbul, Izmir, Antalya and Eskişehir. The grounds for detention included charges of “provoking hatred and hostility”, “provoking or insulting the people and “insulting the President”. The Student Collectives network announced the arrests on its social media account. “Your attacks are in vain. Your fascism is glass, broken!”, said the announcement.
In Serbia, there have been mass demonstrations over the recent weeks against President Aleksandar Vucic, who has been in power for 12 years as prime minister or president, and is accused of corruption and democratic backsliding. In Belgrade on Monday, thousands rallied against a plan by Trump son-in-law Jared Kushner to transform a former army HQ bombed by NATO into a luxury hotel and shopping site.
Meanwhile, there has been a wide response to the occupying students’ call for popular assemblies. These now operate in all 4 major cities and many other towns and neighbourhoods. According to French source Ricochets, “for the moment these assemblies seem to be of a very diverse nature, with either purely local concerns, or national concerns, or a mixture of the two and we also do not know if they are trying to coordinate or not, or not yet and if the students are trying to do so, which, if that were the case, would give rise to the embryo of a real popular power”.
On March 20, the residents of Lazurevac, 26,000 inhabitants, held their first Citizens’ Assembly. Citizens’ assemblies were also held in Loznica, in Cacak where the assembly voted for the mayor’s resignation, in Vracar in the Belgrade suburbs, in Stara Pazova, in the Kalenic district of Belgrade. In other municipalities such as Pancevo where the process is less advanced but is progressing in the same direction, citizens invaded the municipal council, in Šida they demanded that the municipal councillors resign, in Obrenovča and Kikida they insulted them, elsewhere still, as in Nis and Vlatocinje they bombarded the municipal councillors of the power with eggs or spat on them as in Sremska Mitrovica so that there is no longer a single municipal council or regional assembly that can be held while the first organs of popular power are emerging.
Meanwhile in Sofia, Bulgaria, there was a large anti-government demonstration on Wednesday and again yesterday. The demonstrators are denouncing the electoral manipulation that resulted in a center-right government with the participation of the far-right and Putin’s left, but above all, they want the fall of the oligarchs who effectively rule the country over parties, and particularly Delyan Peevski. Many placards demand Peevski’s exit from the political scene. The local businessman, Bolloré, who amassed his fortune in the print media market, has long been the target of protesters’ anger. Thousands of people marched from the courthouse in the capital, Sofia, to the National Assembly, culminating in crowds outside the parliament building in Sofia, where words like “Mafia” were projected onto the building.
