Ukrainian protestors gathered in the Turkish capital of Ankara over the weekend for an anti-war protest and calls for the Turkish government to ban Russian propaganda in the country, the Bianet English news portal reported on Monday.
On Saturday, Ukrainian protestors marched in the capital, waving banners with anti-war slogans and others calling Russia’s President Vladimir Putin a killer.
🇷🇺 bir “askeri tesisi” daha yok etti. Videoda gördüğünüz Kharkiv’deki Özgürlük Meydanı’ydı. Hiç askeri teçhizat görüyor musunuz?
Düşman sadece sivil altyapı tesisleri ve ulaşım araçlarını hedef alarak özgür Ukrayna halkını yok etmeye çalışıyor.
Ama çok bekler! pic.twitter.com/PyOQFbF6zR— Ukraine in Turkey (@UKRinTR) March 1, 2022
They were joined by members of Turkish football clubs, who brought their own banners that read “çArşı against Russia”, referring to a local Turkish football club. Together, the Ukrainian and Turkish protestors chanted Murderer Putin, get out of Ukraine” and “Ankara and Kyiv, shoulder to shoulder.”
The protestors also slammed the coverage of the war by Russian state-run Sputnik news agency, which has a Turkish language service. They called for the Turkish government to boycott it and other Russian state-funded media outlets.
Protests across Turkey have taken place against Russia’s decision to launch a war against Ukraine last week. On Sunday, hundreds of Crimean Tatars, a Turkic-minority with historical ties to Turkey, and Ukrainians gathered in Istanbul’s Beyazıt Square and protested Russia’s attack on Ukraine and its annexation of the Crimean Peninsula in 2014. The next day, the Ukrainian embassy in Ankara shared a flier about the launch of a Turkey-wide aid campaign in major Turkish cities.
The Ukrainian ambassador to Turkey, Vasyl Bodnar, attended the protest on Saturday where he condemned Russia for its attack on Ukraine and described it as starting a “third world war” through its aggression.
“The Russian Federation has been continuing to commit crimes for three days,” said Bodnar. “This is not a war against Ukraine, this is the third world war. Belarus is also involved in the war and Russia is trying to include Kazakhstan as well.ahvalnews