ISTANBUL, July 5 (Xinhua) -- As Türkiye prepares to host the NATO summit on July 7-8, thousands of demonstrators took to the streets in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir over the weekend to denounce the alliance's push for higher defense spending.
Demonstrators carried banners reading "NATO wants war, workers want peace," "Budget for the people, not for NATO," and "No to NATO, no to war," while chanting slogans against the alliance.
In Istanbul, workers, civilians and members of political parties joined large rallies on both the European and Asian sides of the city, voicing their opposition to NATO's pressure on member states to increase military expenditure.
During a demonstration organized by the Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Türkiye, Chair Arzu Cerkezoglu said expanding war budgets threatens social security and places a heavier economic burden on ordinary people.
"We want more jobs, not more weapons. We want more schools, not more missiles. We want more hospitals, not more military spending," Cerkezoglu said.
Demonstrators at a rally led by the Communist Party of Türkiye (TKP) used funeral imagery to call for NATO's dissolution.
"Under the pretext of strengthening defense against an imagined enemy, more money is allocated to the arms industry, tax policies are adjusted accordingly, and, in the end, people are impoverished so that other nations can be bombed," Cem Demirok, a TKP member, told Xinhua.
The protests come as the Ankara summit is expected to discuss the pathways to deliver the commitment agreed by NATO member states at the 2025 The Hague summit to raise their defense spending to 5 percent of gross domestic product (GDP) by 2035, a long-standing demand from Washington.
On Sunday, police detained more than 100 people during an anti-NATO protest in Ankara, according to the Cumhuriyet daily, as authorities imposed a ban on demonstrations in the capital ahead of the summit.
Meanwhile, in the western city of Izmir, demonstrators marched toward NATO's Allied Land Command, chanting, "We do not want imperialist war centers in our country. NATO, get out!"
Baris Doster, a scholar at Istanbul-based Marmara University, said the protests reflect public anxiety over the domestic costs of rising militarization.
"NATO is not an ordinary, simple defense and security organization," Doster said. "It is an organization with economic, political and ideological preferences. It is the gendarme of capitalism, imperialism and liberalism under U.S. leadership."
Raising the spending target to 5 percent by pushing allies to purchase more weapons, ammunition and military equipment would primarily benefit the U.S. defense industry at the expense of their own domestic economies, he said. ■
