Ankara Should be the Capital of Peace!

The international participants Norman Finkelstein (USA), Scilla Elsworthy (UK), Peter Curman (Sweden), Jan Myrdal (Sweden), John Hipkin (UK), Ryan Amundson (USA), Obrad Savic (Yugoslavia), Michael Simmons (USA), Marijana Komarcevic (Yugoslavia), Dusan I. Bjelic (USA), Anthony Simpson (UK), Prof. Ursula Schumm-Garling (Germany), Daniele Tramonti (Italy) said.

Below is the press release:

"We writers, scientists, philosophers, artists, have always been an international community, bound in solidarity. Our languages, values and affiliations are without boundaries. Our work helps us distinguish between what science and technology makes possible, and what is desirable or acceptable in human terms; it has to do with safeguarding the meaning of words, so that they, and eventually human life, does not become meaningless, and obscured in darkness.

This is why we have come, from four corners of the world, to deliver a message to the Grand Parliamentary Assembly of Turkey and to the Turkish government.

We all know that war means killing people, by all the means made possible by the latest technology; that it causes the greatest misery, insufferable loss and the violation of human rights. We know that "the war against terror" is the dream of Mr. Bush to complement world hegemony with the uncontested control of all petroleum. We know that Bush's "eternal war" means plunging our world into an endless conflict.

We face today, not just a threat against the well-being of Iraq or Turkey, but the future of this region and the whole world.

The world is watching. Turkey should not allow her harbors, airports, and bases to be used for Bush's attack on Iraq. If Turkey is firm, in the face of all the pressure and the blackmail and if she does not allow this assault to take place from her soil, even if sacrifices have to be made, this war can be stopped. For the sake of peace it must be stopped!(NM)