A father and his son are attacked by a group of four reactionary people in Mudanya, in the Marmara region of Turkey, on May 29, 2017, a few days after the beginning of the Ramadan, the month during which some sects of Muslims fast.
The two were firstly harassed by the group while having their lunch at a restaurant at the Mudanya Pier of the northwestern province of Bursa. The two, following the harassments for not fasting, said that they were "seferi" (exempted from fasting since they are travelling) but the reactionary group replied, "Then you won’t eat in the public eye". After throwing water on the son and the father, the reactionary group attacked them.
The punched father’s nose was bleeding while appeared purple spots on the face of the son. Following the attack of the reactionaries, a citizen has recorded the father and son and proposed them to witness for them if they filed a complaint. The two, despite the physical violence, frightened, refused the proposal of the citizen. Meanwhile, the owner of the restaurant did not even help the attacked father and son.
VERBAL AND PHYSICAL VIOLENCE AGAINST NON-FASTING: NOT AN EXCEPTION BUT RULE
Since Justice and Development Party (AKP) in power in 2002, verbal and physical violence against non-fasting people during the Ramadan has been normalised.
During the first years of the rule of the party, the attacks were glossed over by liberals and Islamists on the grounds that such attacks have always existed in Turkey and that they were marginal incidents. However, the violence has become much more prevalent all over Turkey and even in the city centres citizens witness such incidents since a long time.
In September 2008, a lawyer was beaten for not fasting in the Keçiören district of the capital city of Ankara while he was smoking. The assailant had said "How can you smoke during the Ramadan? Is it Armenia here?" The same month, a kiosk owner and his apprentice were beaten for selling alcohol during Ramadan in Çankaya district of the city.
In August 2012, the Grey Wolves, the youth branch of the fascist Nationalist Movement Party (MHP) prepared a banner on which "You are not fasting during the Ramadan? The fire of hell is calling you," making a visual and semantic allusion to the advertisement of the Burger King in Rize, in the Black Sea Coast of Turkey. In July 2015 the same organisation had staged protests across Turkey, burnt flags of the People's Republic of China, attacked Chinese restaurants and ‘tourists who were mistaken for being Chinese’ in response to the alleged ban on the Turkic Uyghurs in the eastern Turkestan to fast during the month of Ramadan. The soL News had disproved the allegations on the ban.
In June 2015, a woman has been verbally abused by two men since she was smoking outside during fasting time in the city of Erzurum, in the Eastern Anatolia.
In June 2016, Seogu Lee, a Korean record shop owner organising a Radiohead event in his shop at the Firuzağa neighbourhood at the touristic Beyoğlu district was attacked for consuming alcohol during the Ramadan by Islamist reactionaries. Lee had closed shut down his shop after the violence against him. Following the attack, Erdoğan, equating the violence and organising an event during Ramadan without hesitation, had said ‘Using brute force to interfere is as wrong as organising an event spilling onto the street during Ramadan.’
In the rural cities, several such cases are estimated to occur but they are not reported due to the fear of the victims, as in the case experienced a few days ago in Mudanya.
Catering services of a number of state schools, municipalities, and teachers’ locals are closed down during Ramadan. In rural cities in the Central and Eastern Anatolia, it is even impossible to find a place to have lunch during the month.
