A Festering Sore: ‘Maraş Massacre on its 40th Anniversary’
A Festering Sore: ‘Maraş Massacre on its 40th Anniversary’ The Maraş massacre started with a blast bomb thrown into a cinema attended mostly by nationalist right-wingers. Rumors spread that left-wingers had thrown the bomb. The next day, a bomb was thrown into a coffee house (Kıraathane) frequently visited by Alevi left-wingers, In the evening of 21 December 1978 the leftist teachers Hacı Çolak and Mustafa Yüzbaşıoğlu were killed on their way home. While a crowd of some 5,000 people prepared for the funeral, right-wing groups stirred up emotions saying that "the communists are going to bomb the mosque, and will massacre our Muslim brothers". A completely coordinated organised violence wave was triggered in a very short period of time. What happened at Maraş Massacre cannot be diminished by calling it names like ‘Maraş Incidents.’ It wa...
