Story of Başak

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My name is Başak. I am 21 years old. Who did this to me? Handful of dogs!!! I guess a bit further than this would be death… We are not those provocateurs who, with sticks in their hands, are breaking the windows of the banks, destroying the streets and starting fire, and stirring up people making them run around. It’s true; I participated in the demonstrations in İzmir for the last couple of days. I was together with people who were sharing same thoughts with me; it was so fun, we were happy as if we were celebrating a fest. Once the police came, the fest ended; but why? Why did they attack innocent people, instead of the provocateurs who aimed to tarnish the action?

I am writing this with one hand. I don’t care how much I suffer.
For days, people have been suffering, breathing poison, beaten; and there are heavily injured people, and even people who died, in spite of all the efforts of media to hide it. I was at Gündoğdu Square for only one reason: It does not matter who s/he is, doesn’t matter which party, which team; we would go for help with our bags full of medicine. We were a few people and the only thing we did till 12 pm was to sit on the grass, then we were cold and found a small group of people who were sitting around a fire. We got warm by their fire and then left. Everything happened after this. Police started to throw tear gas and it was impossible to see beyond our noses after a while. Everybody was scattered, and I found myself right behind the statue in the square and hit the deck.
I am neither a provocateur nor a terrorist.
I just waited for the tear gas to stop. As I was thinking of finding my friends and going home I hit the ground with a hit to my head. They were hitting me everywhere, my head, my arms, my legs, my back; I managed to open my arms and saw at least 7 people around me. I don’t remember what they said, and fainted. I opened my eyes again upon a hit on my head and right then 10 policemen started to hit me with batons, I fainted again.
At a time I was such defenseless?
I begged a policeman; I said ‘please stop’; and he replied: Either pretend dead or run away fast among beat-ups. I chose to run away, they’ve also beaten up my friends. I saw one of them while running and we sheltered under one of the tables of a café.
Then a woman took us to her house.
I regained my consciousness.
It is 3 am and I am in the hospital. My left wrist is broken, my right leg is mildly broken, as far as we can count, I have 25 baton and stick marks on my body. As you can imagine my skin is purple now. My left cheekbone is a bit swelling and reddish; I am not even talking about the strikes I got on my head.
I took my battery report.
There are proofs and witnesses that I was beaten up both by police and people who were not from police department.
I leave the rest to the justice.
Thank you for being with me.
Resist for me, for our country and for our nation.

05.06.2013
Source: Social Media

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