The Turkish Grand National Assembly on Tuesday banned Coca-Cola and Nestle products from being sold on the parliamentary campus because the companies allegedly support Israel in its war against the terrorists of Hamas.
“The products of companies that support Israel will not be sold in restaurants, cafeterias and tea houses in the parliament campus,” the Grand National Assembly said in a statement.
Assembly Speaker Nama Kurtulmus said the ban was issued to “support public sensitivity regarding boycotting products of companies who have openly declared their support for Israel’s war crimes,” which he claimed included the “killing of innocent people in Gaza.”
A parliamentary source told Reuters the ban was specifically targeted at Coca-Cola and Nestle, which were the only brands actually removed from menus on the parliamentary campus Tuesday. The source said there has been a “huge public outcry against these companies.”
Reuters wryly noted that Kurtulmus, the inside source, and the public statement all failed to explain exactly how Coca-Cola and Nestle are supporting Israel’s war effort against Hamas. However, the source’s description of Turkish social media bubbling with activist anger at the two companies was accurate.
There are few concrete answers as to why Turkish pro-Hamas activists are singling out Coca-Cola and Nestle for boycotts; it could be largely a case of those two product lines being popular, so calling for them to be banned gets attention.
Al-Monitor could come up with nothing linking Coke and Nestle to Israel except Nestle’s announcement last month that it would “temporarily shut down” a plant in Israel as a “precaution.” Nestle chief executive Mark Schneider told reporters the decision was made because the company is focused on “keeping our colleagues and employees safe.”
Nestle has appeared on anti-Israel boycott lists several times over the years, for unclear reasons. The company actually issued a statement in 2017 insisting that it does not “fund, donate, or give financial aid to Israel” after pro-Palestinian activists added it to another boycott list.
Coca-Cola very quietly scrubbed references to its financial support for Black Lives Matter (BLM) from its website in late October after BLM expressed support for the Hamas murderers and rapists. The quickly forgotten story does not seem like something that would outrage activists in Turkey, but both Turkish and international journalists struggled to come up with other reasons why Coca-Cola would be added to “pro-Israel” boycott lists.
The Hindustan Times on Tuesday suggested Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the parliamentary ban on Coca-Cola and Nestle, perhaps as a flex of his authority and a sop to Turkey’s pro-Hamas activists, although the Hindustan Times did not elaborate on its theory.
Turkey’s Daily Sabah on Monday listed numerous other boycotts of goods from Israeli and pro-Israel companies, briefly mentioning Coca-Cola as one of the targeted brands but not explaining why.
Other boycott targets in Turkey include Unilever, Starbucks coffee, and McDonald’s restaurants. A group of “tech-savvy youth” created a Google Chrome browser extension called “PalestinePact” that automatically blurs online advertising from any brand added to the boycott list.
Politicians from Erdogan’s ruling AKP party have encouraged boycotts of Israeli and putatively Israel-friendly products “until the establishment of a fully independent Palestinian state with Jerusalem as its capital,” as the head of the AKP branch in Istanbul put it.
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