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40,000 protest against Bush in Turkey
Istanbul — Tens of thousands of Turks chanting
anti-Bush slogans demonstrated against the U.S. President's
visit to their country on Sunday and a NATO summit.
Mr. Bush is unpopular in Turkey, where the
overwhelming majority of the public opposed the Iraq war. And
– as he arrived in Turkey Saturday – militants in Iraq said
they had kidnapped three Turkish workers and threatened to
behead them.
The protest in the Kadikoy district, on the
Asian side of Istanbul, attracted more than 40,000 people,
mostly members of leftist groups, police said. There were some
100 foreign protesters from Greece, Britain, The Netherlands,
Portugal and Syria.
“We want to throw NATO out of Istanbul,” said
Dogan Aytac, a Turkish protester with a flag in his hat that
read: “Get out Bush!”
A 20-year-old Greek protester, Odysseas Maaita,
said, “We are here to express our solidarity with the Turkish
people, with the people of the Middle East and all others that
are under attack, to say that we are against NATO.”
The summit is to be held on the European side
of the city, across the Bosporus, about 10 kilometres from
Kadikoy.
Turkey dramatically boosted security before Mr.
Bush's arrival and in preparation for the NATO summit, which
begins Monday. Warplanes patrolled the skies over Istanbul
Sunday and more than 23,000 police are preparing for duty
during the summit.
Mr. Bush, who will attend the summit along with
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques
Chirac and others, met with Turkish leaders in Ankara on
Sunday morning and flies to Istanbul in the early afternoon.
At the protest, demonstrators carried banners,
reading: “Down with American Imperialism,” and “Go away Bush!”
Greenpeace activists carried signs against
nuclear weapons. Others chanted in English: “Yankees Go Home!”
Thousands of policemen, deployed in back
streets, watched the crowds from a distance as a police
helicopter hovered above.
Militant Kurdish, Islamic and leftist groups
are active in the country, and security in Istanbul has been
of special concern since November, when four suicide truck
bombings blamed on al-Qaeda killed more than 60 people.
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