Published online by Cambridge University Press: 28 July 2009
In the issue of the Turkish daily Milliyet dated September 23rd 1977, the following inventory of violent events which have occurred in Turkey in the preceding twenty-four hours was presented to the reader.
I. In a fight between the ‘revolutionary’ and the ‘idealist’ factions of the Diyarbakir Normal School for the training of primary school teachers one student was wounded in the chest and another in the abdomen. Both were hospitalized.
The clash started when the Assistant School Director attempted to ‘rough-up’ the two students because of their ‘hair and beard’. The students retaliated and were set upon with knives by students of the ‘idealist’ faction (I).
2. Ankara-Groups with ‘opposed views’ fought in Tuzlucayir with sticks and stones. One person was placed in custody.
3. Responding to sounds of repeated firing, police arrested a student who was found to carry a gun.
4. In the ‘Republic’ Lycée, a group shouted ‘down with the Fascists’ to rightwing students and began ‘firing in the air’. Two students were placed in custody.
5.The General Secretary of the Schoolteachers' Association claimed that the police ‘fired guns’ during the burial of a teacher who had been killed the preceding day. He also claimed that the Association's Gonen branch had been closed without justification.
6. The General Secretary of IGD (Progressive Youth Association) stated that a ‘Maoist’ group had forcibly occupied the Iskenderun branch of the Association (2).
7. A man was found in a coma in his room at the Terminal Hotel.
8. A 13-year-old boy who happened to be in the path of an oncoming group which was in pursuit of a person became the target of a hail of bullets. He was hospitalized.
9. A group of students who demonstrated in a tea-garden to the effect that ‘Çayans never die’ were apprehended (3).
10. A student of the Ihsan Mermerci Lycée was beaten with revolver butts by two members of the National Movement Party. The attackers then fired in the air and fled.