I have been in Istanbul since the end of November, translating for an English delegation visiting the lawyer on hunger strike Behic Asci. The delegation went home but I decided to stay on. I stayed at the Sisli branch of the Basic Rights and Freedoms Federation. This morning I put my clothes in the washing machine there and then walked over to the People´s Law Bureau. After I got there the phone rang and kept ringing. The place I had left and a dozen other associations and publication offices had been raided by the police. People have been arrested, ıncluding a woman I spoke to this morning. In the working class shanty town Okmeydani, youths have put up barricades and are fighting with police.
Watch this space...