00:00For more, we're joined by Bedri Beykam, Turkish artist, writer, columnist for Djung Hurriyet newspaper.
00:06Thanks for being with us here on France 20.
00:07Sure. Thank you very much. It was a good chance. I was in Paris. I have a show opening on Tuesday.
00:13Where is it opening?
00:14At near Beaubourg, at Galerie S. Beaubourg, in the center.
00:20In the center, right in the heart of the French capital.
00:22An exhibition about Picasso's Demoiselle d'Avignon revisited.
00:27All right. And that's not far from the Picasso Museum.
00:30Right. Right. Not far.
00:34Let's first talk politics here.
00:35Sure.
00:36You just heard our correspondent saying that after the arrest of opposition leader Ekrem Ememolu,
00:42Turkey now going into a quiet period. A quiet period for how long?
00:49Well, can you call this quiet?
00:51Right. You know, like around, you said, there's about 400 arrests today on the 1st of May, demonstrations today.
01:00I mean, because many of the workers or syndicates wanted to do the celebrations in Taksim Square,
01:07which is the heart of the city. This is where also I spend all my life because my art center pyramid is in Taksim Square.
01:16So it's one of the symbolic places where the leftists, the Democrat people, they always want to come because there's been many deaths, unfortunately, on that Taksim Square in 1977 during the celebration.
01:33It was the epicenter of the biggest protests against Erdogan a decade ago.
01:38Yeah. And when the Gezi protests happened all in Taksim and near at the Gezi Park, right near the Taksim Square.
01:49And now that since March 19, you know, Emem Ememolu was taken in custody on March 19 and he was arrested and taken to prison on March 23.
02:06It was the day when our party, the CHP, elected Emem Ememolu as our candidate for the presidency.
02:19And among the 1.750 members of CHP, 1,650, 95 percent elected Emem Ememolu as their presidential candidate.
02:35And there were huge protests at the time, the biggest that had been seen in years inside of Turkey.
02:41But just as this was a decade ago, time always seems to be on Recep Tayyip Erdogan's side.
02:47The protests, there was a holiday period. And since that time, the protests have gone down in size and in momentum.
02:57Well, Erdogan seems to always win at the long game.
03:00Yes, you can say that so far, but I'm not sure in a sense that now CHP has two very strong names.
03:10One of them is a presidential candidate, Ememolu, who is unfortunately in prison.
03:15And the other one is the actual president of CHP, Özgür Özel, who was elected, you know, in the last month of 2023 to the presidency.
03:28And he's very strong, and he's been organizing rallies, manifestations.
03:35Now, after the arrest of Ememolu for seven days in a row, at the headquarters of the Istanbul mayor in Saracane,
03:46he organized seven big rallies in a row.
03:49And then, since then, he's been organizing one big rally in every city every week, and one in an Istanbul district also.
04:00For instance, the 19th of May, there will be a big rally in Izmir, and probably millions will come.
04:09And he's very much a good symbol for the general leadership of the opposition in Turkey.
04:19It's very interesting that he's been able to unite even leftist parties, like socialist parties,
04:26and some right-wing parties who have come to give him solidarity for trying to free Ememolu,
04:35for making an opinion, public opinion pressure for the freeing of Ememolu,
04:41and for the opposition, for democracy, human rights, and equal rights against law.
04:48And so, what will it take to get Ekrem Ememolu out of jail?
04:51I mean, this very legal pressure with demonstrations, with CHP using its political rights,
05:05doing rallies, and making press conferences, parliament speeches, is going to be very effective.
05:17Even though the whole apparatus of the state is on?
05:20But you see, the fact...
05:22Go ahead.
05:22He's on Erdogan's side.
05:23The fact that he has been able to unite right-wing opposition and left-wing opposition in solidarity
05:32has never been seen in Turkey.
05:34During the Gezi protests, you still had millions in the street,
05:39but you didn't have a party leadership, you didn't have a leader,
05:44you didn't have a political perspective hope.
05:47Now, there is a party who is leading all these young people, or old young people from all ages,
05:57protesting, like they have accepted the leadership of Ememolu and Özgür Özel,
06:03and even the parties, the other parties, like the one of, the one called E-Parti, which is on the right,
06:13or, you know, the national, sorry, the victory party of Ümit Özda, and Ümit Özda is another leader in prison.
06:24And, you know, all these people come together and unite, even the people who have no parties.
06:32They come and protest for equal rights, for democracy,
06:36and they cannot obviously digest the fact that Imam Olu has been held in prison without any obvious proofs,
06:45without any way to convince people that he deserved to go to jail.
06:51So, this is why those millions are so easily operational on the field.
