Positive Facts – Reactions to the attacks on Starbucks and Burger King in Diyarbakir continued. The Diyarbakir Chamber of Commerce (DTSO), the DTSO Business Women’s Council and the Diyarbakir Business Council issued written statements about the attacks. In a statement made by the DTSO Business Women’s Council, it was highlighted that the owner of the business attacked in the Sur district of Diyarbakir was managed by board member Aysegull Damlar Kaya.
The statement said: “Such attacks severely shake the economic fabric of our city and threaten the peace and security of our society. It does no good if our own employees are subjected to such attacks. A similar attack on a Starbucks branch in Kayapınar district shows that these violent incidents are not isolated. This attack is an empty provocation against our struggle to make women’s entrepreneurship and labor visible. We strongly condemn this attack on the work ethic of Diyarbakir businessmen and women entrepreneurs. We call on the authorities to be more sensitive in maintaining a peaceful and safe environment in our city. We demand that those who carried out the attack be identified as soon as possible and that the necessary measures be taken. We hope that such preventable attacks will never happen again. “We respectfully announce to our citizens that we will follow the consequences of the attack to the end.”
“Take the necessary precautions.”
In a statement, DTSO called the attacks worrying and said, “As the DTSO Assembly, we have always defended the right of our people to freedom of expression, peaceful assembly and freedom of demonstration, and we do not accept that some groups are consciously exploiting this right by entering our workplaces and causing fear and anxiety to our people here. As DTSO, we condemn these attacks against private companies that cause damage to the city and call on the relevant authorities to take the necessary measures to prevent these attacks from occurring.”
The Diyarbakir Business Council also said in a statement:
“The concepts of religion and faith have deep meaning and value for the people of our geography, but no one has the right to undermine these beliefs, to take part in acts that have no place in the Islamic religion or to darken the beliefs of the people. It is unacceptable to use such acts, mediated by political motives, in the name of religion or in the name of Israeli protests, as a means of social pressure on our cities. “We will not accept these attempts at the level of vandalism. We call on law enforcement agencies to fulfill their duties, but we will leave first of all those who seek to create an atmosphere of fear and panic by raiding the workplaces of our traders and merchants. We will not tolerate this, but we will not tolerate it …
Groups in Diyarbakir attacked Burger King and Starbucks, chanting slogans of Islamic law and jihad.
