“Several days after the attacks in Africa, Turkey’s ‘two cultures’ – the Islamic one and the secularist one – collided. It was on a Saturday. Conservative shopkeepers chased and even beat up demonstrators who were trying to mark the ‘worker’s holiday’. A shopkeeper even told the Istambul Dayily Harriet, ‘We are Muslims and they are terrorists.’ May Day has long been regarded as the holiday of the year for the Turkish left and workers’ movements in general. For most of the past four decades, it had been impossible to celebrate it with a demonstration in big cities in Turkey. Until 2010, it was banned. All this because of May Day in 1977. Unknown people accused by the left of being government trouble makers, fired into the crowd in Taksim Square, killing 34 people and wounding 136 others.”