‘Collective Summer Camp’ of youth in Turkey banned for the first time in over 10 years
A summer camp that has been organized by college students from across Turkey for the past 11 years is being banned this summer due to ‘state of emergency’.
The annual ‘Collective Summer Camp’, which has been a regular summer activity organized and financed, without any sponsorship or marketing, by college students, was supposed to take place in Menderes district of Aegean province of İzmir.
The district mayor’s office banned the event by showing the state of emergency as the ‘excuse’.
According to reports of online news portal of Turkey’s trade unions, Sendik.org, the representatives of the large group of college students tried talking to the authorities to question the ban and demand for it to be lifted.
The response they received from authorities in local governance office was that ‘the command had come from a top office’.
“Do not expect a legal response from us! This thing has no legal base”, the students were told.
Since the failed coup attempt of last summer, Turkey has been ruled under a state of emergency that has been extended for four times. Numerous activities of the opposition, especially, have been banned arbitrarily in reference to the emergency laws.