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40,000 protest against Bush in Turkey

Istanbul — Tens of thousands of Turks chanting anti-Bush slogans demonstrated against the U.S. President's visit to their country on Sunday and a NATO summit.

Mr. Bush is unpopular in Turkey, where the overwhelming majority of the public opposed the Iraq war. And – as he arrived in Turkey Saturday – militants in Iraq said they had kidnapped three Turkish workers and threatened to behead them.

The protest in the Kadikoy district, on the Asian side of Istanbul, attracted more than 40,000 people, mostly members of leftist groups, police said. There were some 100 foreign protesters from Greece, Britain, The Netherlands, Portugal and Syria.

“We want to throw NATO out of Istanbul,” said Dogan Aytac, a Turkish protester with a flag in his hat that read: “Get out Bush!”

A 20-year-old Greek protester, Odysseas Maaita, said, “We are here to express our solidarity with the Turkish people, with the people of the Middle East and all others that are under attack, to say that we are against NATO.”

The summit is to be held on the European side of the city, across the Bosporus, about 10 kilometres from Kadikoy.

Turkey dramatically boosted security before Mr. Bush's arrival and in preparation for the NATO summit, which begins Monday. Warplanes patrolled the skies over Istanbul Sunday and more than 23,000 police are preparing for duty during the summit.

Mr. Bush, who will attend the summit along with British Prime Minister Tony Blair, French President Jacques Chirac and others, met with Turkish leaders in Ankara on Sunday morning and flies to Istanbul in the early afternoon.

At the protest, demonstrators carried banners, reading: “Down with American Imperialism,” and “Go away Bush!”

Greenpeace activists carried signs against nuclear weapons. Others chanted in English: “Yankees Go Home!”

Thousands of policemen, deployed in back streets, watched the crowds from a distance as a police helicopter hovered above.

Militant Kurdish, Islamic and leftist groups are active in the country, and security in Istanbul has been of special concern since November, when four suicide truck bombings blamed on al-Qaeda killed more than 60 people.

 

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