Anti-new year campaign and attack at Reina

Reina is one of the most famous night­clubs in Istan­bul. It was attacked on this, the begin­ning of the 2017 New Year.

Accord­ing to the Pre­fect Vasip Sahin, the attack was car­ried out by a sin­gle per­son who first shot down a police­man at the door, then a civil­ian, before enter­ing the club. At least 39 peo­ple were killed and 60, wound­ed. Accord­ing to the BBC, 16 of the vic­tims were foreigners.

Yet wit­ness­es men­tioned sev­er­al armed per­sons. One of the wound­ed trans­ferred to the Sis­li Etfal hos­pi­tal:   “Three or four per­sons fired with sub­ma­chine guns at first. After­wards, inside, they shot the sur­vivors in the head.” 

One of the wait­ers at Reina said there was a move­ment of pan­ic and he man­aged to hide. “Appar­ent­ly, there were two of them, I saw one.” Some 500 to 600 peo­ple were in the club.

Some cus­tomers are said to have jumped into the Bospho­rus to save them­selves. Some wit­ness­es said the assailants arrived, “dis­guised as San­ta Claus”.

We will spare you the videos cir­cu­lat­ing on social media.

The own­er of Reina, Mehmet Koçarslan, declared: “They are said to have used kalash­nikovs. Amer­i­can secu­ri­ty ser­vices had sig­naled the risk. For one week to ten days, there were secu­ri­ty mea­sures, includ­ing on the sea front. What hap­pened afterwards?” 

Fol­low­ing the attack, the police cor­doned off the club…

Cen­sor­ship sur­rounds infor­ma­tion on the topic…

Over the past few days, an “anti New-Year” mobi­liza­tion had been observed in dif­fer­ent Istan­bul neigh­bor­hoods. Mem­bers of Islamist orga­ni­za­tions had dis­trib­uted fly­ers invit­ing the pop­u­la­tion not to cel­e­brate the New Year, and mem­bers of the “Anadolu Genç­lik Derneği” orga­ni­za­tion (Asso­ci­a­tion of Ana­to­lian Youth) dur­ing a gath­er­ing at Istan­bul Uni­ver­si­ty, had pub­licly “cir­cum­cized” an inflat­able San­ta Claus, before knif­ing him.

Istan­bul Uni­ver­si­ty Decem­ber 26 2016

Last Thurs­day in Aydın, a town in West­ern Turkey, mem­bers of the group   “Alperen Ocak­ları” ( Alperen Homes) in tra­di­ton­al region­al cos­tumes had stage an “exe­cu­tion” of San­ta Claus.

Aydın, Decem­ber 28 2016

This type of mobi­liza­tion has been a recur­ring event in Turkey for the past few years. Is there a link with the attack on Reina? The ques­tion can arise.

Iden­ti­tar­i­an with­drawals have their own sym­bols. The sym­bols dif­fer, but the vio­lence is the same. If San­ta Clause gets knifed in Turkey, in France the “Repub­lic” has been stoned by youths of the Front Nation­al in front of the gates of the Préfecture…

It would be hard not to draw con­nec­tions with this cli­mate, added to the polar­iza­tion wished by Erdo­gan denounc­ing cer­tain “elites” and the assas­si­na­tion of 39 per­sons dur­ing the night in a spot known for the par­ties of a cer­tain Istan­bul bourgeoisie.

By many aspects, the lim­its of iden­ti­tar­i­an pop­ulism and/or Islamist big­otry resem­ble the ISIS ideology.

At this hour, infor­ma­tion is total­ly absent and the regime uses the term “ter­ror­ism” in a gener­ic way. We now know that, for the regime, it can des­ig­nate an oppo­si­tion jour­nal­ist, a crit­i­cal lawyer or a human­ist author and be cou­pled with “Nation­al Uni­ty” even more than with “fight against obscu­ran­tism”. The Prime Min­is­ter’s words, trans­late, lit­er­al­ly as those of “dou­ble stan­dard ter­ror­ism”…

If the Euro­pean media pick out the list of 2016 attacks adding the words “Kur­dish rad­i­cals” to them, we must note that on the same top­ic, the Turk­ish min­is­ters main­tain the habit­u­al con­fla­tion of the PKK with ISIS.

This morn­ing, Erdo­gan announced that he would go after “the sources” which, in the mind of a Turk­ish nation­al­ist means the Kurds of Syr­ia as well as those of Bakur. We can there­fore fear that addi­ton­al purges will take place as as response, as will the pur­suit of bomb­ing in Syr­i­an territory.

The com­plic­it media, such as Yeni Şafak, are already announc­ing “anti-PKK” oper­a­tions, like in Bat­man. As a reminder this same rag was pub­lish­ing this type of image on Decem­ber 28: San­ta Claus here also sym­bol­iz­ing “the West” attack­ing Turkey.

If the failed putsch in July would rep­re­sent ” a gift from heav­en”, this mas­sacre could well be a “gift from San­ta Claus”, but always serv­ing the inter­ests of the AKP regime.

Last minute : Sup­ple­ment on Mon­day Jan­u­ary 2^nd.

ISIS has claimed author­ship for the attack. BFM TV won’t be hap­py about that, after claim­ing yes­ter­day that the attack was the work of the YPG “a dis­si­dent branch of the PKK” (with total self-assur­ance and no sub­se­quent cor­rec­tion of this total stu­pid­i­ty out of the mouth of their “cor­re­spon­dent”)

ISIS claims this attack on the Istan­bul Reina night­club in these terms:
“The apos­tate Turk­ish gov­ern­ment shed­ding Mus­lim blood must know that fire will burn in its house.”

Français : Cam­pagne anti nou­v­el-an et attaque à Reina Cliquez pour lire

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