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What Is Happening In Mersin 23/05/2011

There has been a big fight in one of the poor areas of Mersin, Cilek Neighbourhood in between the local communities. The reason of the fight is not clear yet. In the fight between 1 journalist and 7 police officers, 41 people got injured in total and Mehmet Zülfi Tuncer lost his life. 10 cars were set on fire and incidents kept going in spite of the interference by the security forces'. 14 families were moved to another region after signing a document. The document stated that those families were leaving the region voluntarily.

Allegedly the fight started between the internet café owner and the kids in the café because of the 'timing' but it has not been enlightened how the incidents turned into an fight. During the incidents some of the families' furnitures were set on fire after of getting into the fight.

Media Always Does This

It was noticeable that some media organizations reflected the incidents one sidedly. The fight between the Çilek region locals was reflected to the public as "Cono tribes and the citizens came from East and South East had a fight." Some media organizations who didn't accept one of the parts as citizens in the past did the same thing again and didn't count the Çilek Neighbourhood locals who were called as "Cono". Some media organizations telling about the incidents as "public's reaction to drug selling and prostitution" reminded the incidents happened in Manisa, Selendi. 20 families had to leave the region because of the incidents in Selendi.

Some media organizations tried to legitimize the incidents in Selendi as "public's reaction to crime." But the reports published by the human rights organizations after the incidents showed that the incidents were caused by different reasons and the families who had to leave Selendi faced discriminations starting from the months ago.

The writer and editor of our web site Ali Mezarcıoğlu evaluated the incidents in the following way:

"Everything is so recent. It is really hard to reach objective information outside the common media. However making a neighbourhood, tribe or family a target and obligating them to leave their region is not right. Anybody can make claims against the other side. But if everybody starts penalizing the other side that would cause new feuds. Crime is something individual and it can't be used as an excuse for penalizing belonging family or the ethnical group, it is not acceptable.

In every part of Turkey our poor neighbourhoods are being used by criminal organizations, this is a reality. Poor people coming from different ethnical origins are being used as tools by those criminal organizations. We should never forget that making any parts of the society a target will not solve the problem. In this case some media organizations tried to tarnish the Gypsies' name by using locals who are called "Cono". Trying to tarnish Gypsies' name by using local incidents is becoming a very dangerous habit. And we see this mistake is being repeated. We ask , media being in the first place, all the organizations to take a more responsible role and not to use the this dangerous language which could cause bigger tensions."