prikryl
prikryl
Post rating:
+
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
~
what is this protest about. because tv told me it was about alcohol and that SHOULD be restricted.
prikryl
prikryl
Post rating:
~
OCCUPY GEZI: POLICE AGAINST PROTESTERS IN ISTANBUL
POSTED BY ELIF BATUMAN
Gezi Park is a small rectangle of grass and trees just north of Taksim Square, in the center of European Istanbul. Separated by concrete barriers from a particularly congested traffic circle, it doesn’t have a lot going for it in the way of charm or landscaping. But it does have trees—six hundred and six of them, according to some reports—which makes it a distinct space in the heart of one of the world’s fastest-developing cities.
Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Gezi Park would be levelled to make room for a reconstruction of the Halil Pasa Artillery barracks, which had been built there under Sultan Selim III, more than two hundred years ago; the reconstructed barracks would then be converted into a shopping mall. On May 28th, a peaceful demonstration convened in Gezi Park to protest the bulldozing of the first trees. The weather was, and continues to be, beautiful. But over the course of the week, Occupy Gezi transformed from what felt like a festival, with yoga, barbecues, and concerts, into what feels like a war, with barricades, plastic bullets, and gas attacks.
Just before dawn on Friday, police raided the demonstrators’ encampment with tear gas and compressed water. Several people—twelve, according to Istanbul’s governor Hÿseyin Avni Mutlu, though participants say the number was higher—were hospitalized with head traumas and respiratory injuries. Twitter was flooded with images of violence, including one of a protester on his or her knees using a sign that read “CHEMICAL TAYYIP” as a shield against a police hose. Ahmet Sik, an investigative reporter who spent much of last year in jail, had joined the protests only to get hit in the head with a police gas canister.
I stopped by Gezi Park early Friday afternoon. It had been completely sealed off by police, hundreds of whom were standing inside the park in small groups, adjusting their body armor, snapping pictures of each other on their cell phones. Gas masks lay in the grass, as did a few trampled plastic forks and an abandoned tepsi börek (a phyllo pastry baked in a tray). Noticing a small crowd convened beside one of the barricades, I went over to see what they were doing. They didn’t seem to be doing anything.
Thinking the demonstration was winding down, I went back home and tried to work on my novel. The demonstration wasn’t winding down. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were flooding the streets. I texted the photographer Carolyn Drake, a friend and colleague. We covered our mouths with scarves and set out to meet each other. I started walking up Siraselviler, the street that connects Cihangir, where I live, to Taksim Square. It was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with demonstrators chanting anti-government slogans, some of them quite inventive. (When I asked about the meaning of one popular chant, “I’m sorry Tayyip but you look like a light bulb,” I was told that it alluded both to the light-bulb logo of Erdogan’s conservative Islamist A.K. Party, and to the shape of Erdogan’s head.)
I got as far as the German Hospital, where the crowd became too dense to penetrate. Carolyn meanwhile was stuck at the northern edge of the park. I never did meet her, though she’s been sending me the pictures she snaps from her cell phone. During the twenty minutes I spent standing in front of the hospital, two ambulances came careening in from Taksim. The crowds climbed up on walls to let the ambulances by, almost drowning out the sirens with their chants: “To your health, Tayyip!” Later, everyone started jumping up and down, chanting “Jump! Jump! Jump or you’re a fascist!” I, too, hopped up and down a little, to signal my disapproval of fascism. I tried to strike up conversation with a demonstrator, a young woman in her twenties with a surgical mask around her neck, but I could see I was interrupting her tweeting. In fact, I realized that almost every person there was either typing on a phone or recording the scene on a tablet.
Back in my apartment, I turned on the television. CNN Turk was broadcasting a food show, featuring the “flavors of Nigde.” Other major Turkish news channels were showing a dance contest and a roundtable on study-abroad programs. It was a classic case of the revolution not being televised. The whole country seemed to be experiencing a cognitive disconnect, with Twitter saying one thing, the government saying another, and the television off on another planet. Twitter was the one everyone believed—even the people who were actually on the street. In a city as vast, diffuse, and diverse as Istanbul, with so many enclaves and populations and interests and classes, and with such imperfect freedom of the press, gauging public opinion, or even current events, can be fantastically difficult. The Twitter hashtag #OccupyGezi brought up hundreds, maybe thousands of appeals urging BBC, Reuters, CNN, and other English-language news outlets to “show the world” what was happening in Istanbul—as if only the international media could do what the news is supposed to do: provide an objective view of what was going on outside.
The feeling of unreality and disconnect is at the heart of the Gezi demonstrations. Istanbul loves to demonstrate; I can’t remember ever walking through Taksim without seeing at least one march or parade or sit-in, and on weekends there are usually several going on at the same time. Usually, they are small, peaceful, and self-contained, and the police just stand there. For some time now, the demonstrations have had a strangely existential feel. Again and again, people have protested the destruction of some historical building or the construction of some new shopping center. Again and again, the historical building has been destroyed, and the shopping center constructed.
Nearly every slogan chanted on the streets right now addresses Erdogan by name, and Erdogan hasn’t been talking back much. On Wednesday, he told protesters, “Even if hell breaks loose, those trees will be uprooted”; on Saturday, he issued a statement accusing the demonstrators of manipulating environmentalist concerns for their own ideological agendas. It’s hard to argue with him there; there’s little doubt that the demonstrations are less about six hundred and six trees than about a spreading perception that Erdogan refuses to hear what people are trying to tell him. In recent weeks, he has overridden objections to the construction of a controversial third bridge across the Bosphorus, to be named after a sultan considered by some Turkish Alevis (members of a religious minority combining elements of Shi’ia Islam and Sufism) to be an “Alevi slayer.” Earlier this month, thousands of unionized Turkish Airlines workers went on strike to protest the firing of three hundred and five other unionized Turkish Airlines workers for participating in an earlier strike. The original workers were not rehired. Last week, he passed anti-alcohol laws, which outraged many secularists as well as the national beer manufacturers. On May Day, peaceful demonstrations were quashed by riot police with tear gas and hoses. Looking back, it seems inevitable that a larger uprising was to come.
So it wasn’t that surprising when yesterday’s court decision to suspend, at least temporarily, the construction at the park, failed to put an end to the demonstrations. At midnight, the street where I live was gas bombed. Demonstrators in gas masks and goggles marched below the windows, cheering “Spray! Spray! Let us see you spray!” Pepper gas poured through the open windows and immediately filled my seventh-floor apartment. Around one, a tremendous racket broke out as people all over the city started beating on cymbals, pots, pans, and metal street signs; I saw one man looking around in vain for a stick, and then cheerfully starting to bang his head against a metal storefront shutter.
I got in touch with members of Çarsi, the leftist fan club of Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team; I’d written about them for the magazine in 2011. They had come up with a new slogan: “Give us 100 gas masks, we’ll take the park.” I asked Ayhan Gÿner, one of Çarsi’s senior members, what he had to say to New Yorker readers. “Çarsi is the last barricade. Çarsi keeps alive the hopes of the people in the resistance of Gezi Park,” he told me. “This resistance has inspired the leaders of Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe”—rival Istanbul soccer clubs—“to come together. Damn American imperialism to hell.” Fifteen minutes later, I got another text: “Pepper gas is the Besiktas fan’s perfume. Nobody can intimidate us”; and, shortly after that, “We are the soldiers not of the imam, but of Mustafa Kemal” (referring to Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic).
This morning, forty thousand demonstrators are said to have crossed the Bosphorus Bridge from the Asian side of the city, to lend support in Taksim. Hundreds of backup police are reportedly being flown into Istanbul from all around the country. The conceptual artist Sibel Horada came by my neighborhood to pick up the gas mask she usually uses for casting polyester; she told me she ran into an old high-school friend who had dressed for the protests in shorts and Speedo swimming goggles. (“He had obviously never clashed with the police before.”) Shortly afterwards, she reported that police had briefly removed the barricades at Taksim and let the demonstrators in—then turned back and attacked them. On my street, spirits seem to be high. Someone is playing “Bella, Ciao” on a boom-box, and I can hear cheering and clapping. But every now and then the spring breeze carries a high, whistling, screaming sound, and the faint smell of pepper gas.
POSTED BY ELIF BATUMAN
Gezi Park is a small rectangle of grass and trees just north of Taksim Square, in the center of European Istanbul. Separated by concrete barriers from a particularly congested traffic circle, it doesn’t have a lot going for it in the way of charm or landscaping. But it does have trees—six hundred and six of them, according to some reports—which makes it a distinct space in the heart of one of the world’s fastest-developing cities.
Last year, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced that Gezi Park would be levelled to make room for a reconstruction of the Halil Pasa Artillery barracks, which had been built there under Sultan Selim III, more than two hundred years ago; the reconstructed barracks would then be converted into a shopping mall. On May 28th, a peaceful demonstration convened in Gezi Park to protest the bulldozing of the first trees. The weather was, and continues to be, beautiful. But over the course of the week, Occupy Gezi transformed from what felt like a festival, with yoga, barbecues, and concerts, into what feels like a war, with barricades, plastic bullets, and gas attacks.
Just before dawn on Friday, police raided the demonstrators’ encampment with tear gas and compressed water. Several people—twelve, according to Istanbul’s governor Hÿseyin Avni Mutlu, though participants say the number was higher—were hospitalized with head traumas and respiratory injuries. Twitter was flooded with images of violence, including one of a protester on his or her knees using a sign that read “CHEMICAL TAYYIP” as a shield against a police hose. Ahmet Sik, an investigative reporter who spent much of last year in jail, had joined the protests only to get hit in the head with a police gas canister.
I stopped by Gezi Park early Friday afternoon. It had been completely sealed off by police, hundreds of whom were standing inside the park in small groups, adjusting their body armor, snapping pictures of each other on their cell phones. Gas masks lay in the grass, as did a few trampled plastic forks and an abandoned tepsi börek (a phyllo pastry baked in a tray). Noticing a small crowd convened beside one of the barricades, I went over to see what they were doing. They didn’t seem to be doing anything.
Thinking the demonstration was winding down, I went back home and tried to work on my novel. The demonstration wasn’t winding down. Hundreds of thousands of demonstrators were flooding the streets. I texted the photographer Carolyn Drake, a friend and colleague. We covered our mouths with scarves and set out to meet each other. I started walking up Siraselviler, the street that connects Cihangir, where I live, to Taksim Square. It was packed shoulder-to-shoulder with demonstrators chanting anti-government slogans, some of them quite inventive. (When I asked about the meaning of one popular chant, “I’m sorry Tayyip but you look like a light bulb,” I was told that it alluded both to the light-bulb logo of Erdogan’s conservative Islamist A.K. Party, and to the shape of Erdogan’s head.)
I got as far as the German Hospital, where the crowd became too dense to penetrate. Carolyn meanwhile was stuck at the northern edge of the park. I never did meet her, though she’s been sending me the pictures she snaps from her cell phone. During the twenty minutes I spent standing in front of the hospital, two ambulances came careening in from Taksim. The crowds climbed up on walls to let the ambulances by, almost drowning out the sirens with their chants: “To your health, Tayyip!” Later, everyone started jumping up and down, chanting “Jump! Jump! Jump or you’re a fascist!” I, too, hopped up and down a little, to signal my disapproval of fascism. I tried to strike up conversation with a demonstrator, a young woman in her twenties with a surgical mask around her neck, but I could see I was interrupting her tweeting. In fact, I realized that almost every person there was either typing on a phone or recording the scene on a tablet.
Back in my apartment, I turned on the television. CNN Turk was broadcasting a food show, featuring the “flavors of Nigde.” Other major Turkish news channels were showing a dance contest and a roundtable on study-abroad programs. It was a classic case of the revolution not being televised. The whole country seemed to be experiencing a cognitive disconnect, with Twitter saying one thing, the government saying another, and the television off on another planet. Twitter was the one everyone believed—even the people who were actually on the street. In a city as vast, diffuse, and diverse as Istanbul, with so many enclaves and populations and interests and classes, and with such imperfect freedom of the press, gauging public opinion, or even current events, can be fantastically difficult. The Twitter hashtag #OccupyGezi brought up hundreds, maybe thousands of appeals urging BBC, Reuters, CNN, and other English-language news outlets to “show the world” what was happening in Istanbul—as if only the international media could do what the news is supposed to do: provide an objective view of what was going on outside.
The feeling of unreality and disconnect is at the heart of the Gezi demonstrations. Istanbul loves to demonstrate; I can’t remember ever walking through Taksim without seeing at least one march or parade or sit-in, and on weekends there are usually several going on at the same time. Usually, they are small, peaceful, and self-contained, and the police just stand there. For some time now, the demonstrations have had a strangely existential feel. Again and again, people have protested the destruction of some historical building or the construction of some new shopping center. Again and again, the historical building has been destroyed, and the shopping center constructed.
Nearly every slogan chanted on the streets right now addresses Erdogan by name, and Erdogan hasn’t been talking back much. On Wednesday, he told protesters, “Even if hell breaks loose, those trees will be uprooted”; on Saturday, he issued a statement accusing the demonstrators of manipulating environmentalist concerns for their own ideological agendas. It’s hard to argue with him there; there’s little doubt that the demonstrations are less about six hundred and six trees than about a spreading perception that Erdogan refuses to hear what people are trying to tell him. In recent weeks, he has overridden objections to the construction of a controversial third bridge across the Bosphorus, to be named after a sultan considered by some Turkish Alevis (members of a religious minority combining elements of Shi’ia Islam and Sufism) to be an “Alevi slayer.” Earlier this month, thousands of unionized Turkish Airlines workers went on strike to protest the firing of three hundred and five other unionized Turkish Airlines workers for participating in an earlier strike. The original workers were not rehired. Last week, he passed anti-alcohol laws, which outraged many secularists as well as the national beer manufacturers. On May Day, peaceful demonstrations were quashed by riot police with tear gas and hoses. Looking back, it seems inevitable that a larger uprising was to come.
So it wasn’t that surprising when yesterday’s court decision to suspend, at least temporarily, the construction at the park, failed to put an end to the demonstrations. At midnight, the street where I live was gas bombed. Demonstrators in gas masks and goggles marched below the windows, cheering “Spray! Spray! Let us see you spray!” Pepper gas poured through the open windows and immediately filled my seventh-floor apartment. Around one, a tremendous racket broke out as people all over the city started beating on cymbals, pots, pans, and metal street signs; I saw one man looking around in vain for a stick, and then cheerfully starting to bang his head against a metal storefront shutter.
I got in touch with members of Çarsi, the leftist fan club of Istanbul’s Besiktas soccer team; I’d written about them for the magazine in 2011. They had come up with a new slogan: “Give us 100 gas masks, we’ll take the park.” I asked Ayhan Gÿner, one of Çarsi’s senior members, what he had to say to New Yorker readers. “Çarsi is the last barricade. Çarsi keeps alive the hopes of the people in the resistance of Gezi Park,” he told me. “This resistance has inspired the leaders of Galatasaray and Fenerbahçe”—rival Istanbul soccer clubs—“to come together. Damn American imperialism to hell.” Fifteen minutes later, I got another text: “Pepper gas is the Besiktas fan’s perfume. Nobody can intimidate us”; and, shortly after that, “We are the soldiers not of the imam, but of Mustafa Kemal” (referring to Ataturk, the founder of the secular Turkish Republic).
This morning, forty thousand demonstrators are said to have crossed the Bosphorus Bridge from the Asian side of the city, to lend support in Taksim. Hundreds of backup police are reportedly being flown into Istanbul from all around the country. The conceptual artist Sibel Horada came by my neighborhood to pick up the gas mask she usually uses for casting polyester; she told me she ran into an old high-school friend who had dressed for the protests in shorts and Speedo swimming goggles. (“He had obviously never clashed with the police before.”) Shortly afterwards, she reported that police had briefly removed the barricades at Taksim and let the demonstrators in—then turned back and attacked them. On my street, spirits seem to be high. Someone is playing “Bella, Ciao” on a boom-box, and I can hear cheering and clapping. But every now and then the spring breeze carries a high, whistling, screaming sound, and the faint smell of pepper gas.
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
Post rating:
~
I saw one man looking around in vain for a stick, and then cheerfully starting to bang his head against a metal storefront shutter.
hmm.... no thanks.
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
Post rating:
+
prikryl
prikryl
Post rating:
~
prikryl
prikryl
Post rating:
+
McCaine approved analysis:
FROM PRIVILEGED ACTIVISM TO AN OUTCRY AGAINST REPRESSION: #OCCUPYGEZI AND AKP
When Erdoğan and his party participated in 2002 elections, though victorious they were the “underdogs”. Turkey stayed under constant threat of a coup by the ultra-nationalist, ultra-secular, Kemalist Military. Many in AKP, including Erdoğan himself, had been victims of corrupt and elitist Turkish judiciary that was not about justice but protecting the privileges of Kemalist Turks and the Military. We even saw Military’s intervention threats causing a call of early elections in 2007, from which AKP again came out victorious. From then on, AKP was on the rise. Coup plots were exposed, plotters from the Military being tried along with their “friends” in bureaucracy and media; the threat of a Military coup was finally more or less over. All the while, since 2002, AKP has built a strong economy, a rapid development especially in infrastructure and urban areas, a reliable welfare system and a great healthcare service; Turkey now has “healthcare tourists” from Europe.
But you see, AKP has no opposition; the currently most vocal and active opposition is actually the Kurdish movement’s BDP. Other than them we have MHP (ultra-nationalist) and CHP (ultra-nationalist Kemalist). The main opposition party CHP practically gets its votes from Kemalist political identity and its hard-line anti-AKP stance than any real policymaking. Having no real political competition, no real opposition that is actually capable of producing policies, and after successful counter-moves against unlawful political power of the Military, AKP now stands with no competition. In the last elections, out of every two Turkish voters, one voted for AKP. This absolute power has changed the rhetoric of the party and Mr. Erdoğan a lot; it not only became more right-wing but it also became definitely much, much more conservative and authoritarian. Not just the rhetoric either; policies, including some economic policies, have been quite along the lines of a “Muslim” reinterpretation of Neoconservatism.
Gezi protests started as a reaction to demolition of Gezi Park in Istanbul as part of the urban redevelopment project of Taksim Square. Truthfully, this is all in all a middle-class concern; while economy is growing, so is the income gap in Turkey. We have a large proletariat who barely survives thanks to the social safety net but as AKP turns more and more Neoconservative, even that is under threat. Poverty is still very much a reality, even as middle-class widens. So I must admit, urban redevelopment and loss of green spaces is not much of a concern for many ordinary citizens of Turkey from lower classes.* Rhetoric at Gezi protests were also very problematic as well as attendees; though the crowd was pretty diverse, we did see quite a few ultra-nationalists with racist tones. The singlemost important issue though was the fact that when it was first built, some of the area Gezi Park encompassed** was actually a centuries old Armenian cemetery just a couple of decades ago. Kemalist Republic in its early days forcefully and unjustly seized the property despite the efforts of Armenian communities in Turkey at the time. Some of the tombstones were used as part of the stairs. It was truly a terrifying and shameful injustice. Unfortunately, this very injustice on which Gezi was built, was (at least in their mainstream rhetoric) not part of the protests. So myself and several other friends discussed and criticised how this protest was disregarding historical and racial injustices and was only stuck within the interests of its own class and privileges, even if we agreed on their stances in urban redevelopment and green spaces.
Then something happened.
Around the dawn, police brutally attacked campers in the park; the whole area was drowned in tear gas, canisters of which were thrown at protesters almost as a projectile weapon according to eyewitnesses. Police brutality was everywhere and at a shocking level. This changed the whole course of the protest as well as perceptions of it.
From football fan clubs to solitary cynics, throughout Friday a great stream of people joined the protests in Taksim; the only response of the government was an escalation of police violence. One of the most well known tourist attractions and the most crowded place in Istanbul was turned into a battlefield as police chased down protesters in the historical narrow streets of the area. Photographs of civilians covered in blood, lying around, and of streets and buildings rendered invisible due to tear gas were shared online.
Police brutality is nothing new in Turkey; AKP and its voters know this first hand: a significant chunk of AKP’s voter base themselves were gassed and attacked for years as they protested against discriminative policies of the Kemalist regime. But as political sphere changed in Turkey, now police is the guardian of AKP’s interests. In 2010, in what would become an infamous saying of his, Erdoğan stated: “I will not let my police to be bullied!” - “My” is often a term of endearment in Turkish but here it was especially meaningful. What made this statement more horrible was the fact that it was said after a series of police brutality that had garnered some popular denouncement. Erdoğan’s stance practically gave a green-light to the violence police continuously exerts in every protest.
And this is why Gezi protests are now important: this is not about urban redevelopment or green spaces anymore. It is about how a government due to its immense popularity has been growing more and more intolerant of those minority or criticising voices. It is about how democracy should not be a tyranny of the majority. And most of all it is about police brutality, it is about taking police accountable to their wrong doings, and that the government should learn to respect freedom of expression and assembly (regardless of what they are for) and not crush it with repressive police force.
I sincerely hope that these protests will improve Turkey on these aspects and Mr. Erdoğan will also, may be, remember his old days: when he was jailed and his political rights were forcefully taken away from him, by a very repressive and intolerant regime, simply for reading a poem. He should know very well how precious rights and liberties are, so he should also know how heinous, restricting and repressing them are. A “natural” or “enforced” lack of political competition or opposition does not mean that you will not meet with resistance or opposition Mr. Erdoğan - the last few years of Arab Spring should have taught you that.
——-
Some of you may have heard this so I want to also note at a personal level: many religious and pro-AKP folk in Turkey now (from my observations) have taken an attitude of “if we don’t crush them, they will crush us” and they rather support this using some of the racist and Islamophobic slurs uttered by some among the protesters. As I said before, protesters are a very diverse group and yes there are quite a few racists, Islamophobes, and Kemalists among them. But this does not justify police’s violent attacks on them; nor does it mean all protesters belong to those categories - they do *not*. But even if they did, even if *we* the religious folk who have been oppressed for decades by Kemalists were now under a risk of being crushed again, I want to note that as a Muslim I would and will always prefer to be the one oppressed than to be the oppressor. Allah asked me to be righteous and not an oppressor and if this will cause me to be oppressed, then by God’s will I will be oppressed. What I am afraid of most, is not being oppressed, but to be an oppressor. May God bless us all with a just and merciful heart.
———
I wanted to clear a few things after some discussions:
* I do not think that any and all urban redevelopment is not a concern for lower classes; actually, some historically lower class neighbourhoods of Istanbul went through urban redevelopment and due to their good locations within the city, actual residents were often mistreated and in practice forced to relocate. This type of urban redevelopment acts have been a concern for lower classes and they did speak out against it at times; Gezi Park was just not one such case. Which class an urban redevelopment project disturbs is very dependent on the locale and the character of the redevelopment project.
** When Gezi Park was initially built it was much larger and within this larger area the Armenian cemetery had once stood. Later on, some hotels and other buildings were actually given parts of the Gezi Park which also happens to be the parts that were mainly the cemetery before. The currently much smaller space of the Park. according to some still covers some of the area of the cemetery (though not much) and according to some it does not cover any of it any more at all. Regardless, it is true that when Park was initially built it was by usurping Armenian cemetery there, and that precious Armenian tombstones were used as stairs in the Park. This very last action I think speaks well to what the “aim” was by usurpation of this land beyond the material gain.
FROM PRIVILEGED ACTIVISM TO AN OUTCRY AGAINST REPRESSION: #OCCUPYGEZI AND AKP
When Erdoğan and his party participated in 2002 elections, though victorious they were the “underdogs”. Turkey stayed under constant threat of a coup by the ultra-nationalist, ultra-secular, Kemalist Military. Many in AKP, including Erdoğan himself, had been victims of corrupt and elitist Turkish judiciary that was not about justice but protecting the privileges of Kemalist Turks and the Military. We even saw Military’s intervention threats causing a call of early elections in 2007, from which AKP again came out victorious. From then on, AKP was on the rise. Coup plots were exposed, plotters from the Military being tried along with their “friends” in bureaucracy and media; the threat of a Military coup was finally more or less over. All the while, since 2002, AKP has built a strong economy, a rapid development especially in infrastructure and urban areas, a reliable welfare system and a great healthcare service; Turkey now has “healthcare tourists” from Europe.
But you see, AKP has no opposition; the currently most vocal and active opposition is actually the Kurdish movement’s BDP. Other than them we have MHP (ultra-nationalist) and CHP (ultra-nationalist Kemalist). The main opposition party CHP practically gets its votes from Kemalist political identity and its hard-line anti-AKP stance than any real policymaking. Having no real political competition, no real opposition that is actually capable of producing policies, and after successful counter-moves against unlawful political power of the Military, AKP now stands with no competition. In the last elections, out of every two Turkish voters, one voted for AKP. This absolute power has changed the rhetoric of the party and Mr. Erdoğan a lot; it not only became more right-wing but it also became definitely much, much more conservative and authoritarian. Not just the rhetoric either; policies, including some economic policies, have been quite along the lines of a “Muslim” reinterpretation of Neoconservatism.
Gezi protests started as a reaction to demolition of Gezi Park in Istanbul as part of the urban redevelopment project of Taksim Square. Truthfully, this is all in all a middle-class concern; while economy is growing, so is the income gap in Turkey. We have a large proletariat who barely survives thanks to the social safety net but as AKP turns more and more Neoconservative, even that is under threat. Poverty is still very much a reality, even as middle-class widens. So I must admit, urban redevelopment and loss of green spaces is not much of a concern for many ordinary citizens of Turkey from lower classes.* Rhetoric at Gezi protests were also very problematic as well as attendees; though the crowd was pretty diverse, we did see quite a few ultra-nationalists with racist tones. The singlemost important issue though was the fact that when it was first built, some of the area Gezi Park encompassed** was actually a centuries old Armenian cemetery just a couple of decades ago. Kemalist Republic in its early days forcefully and unjustly seized the property despite the efforts of Armenian communities in Turkey at the time. Some of the tombstones were used as part of the stairs. It was truly a terrifying and shameful injustice. Unfortunately, this very injustice on which Gezi was built, was (at least in their mainstream rhetoric) not part of the protests. So myself and several other friends discussed and criticised how this protest was disregarding historical and racial injustices and was only stuck within the interests of its own class and privileges, even if we agreed on their stances in urban redevelopment and green spaces.
Then something happened.
Around the dawn, police brutally attacked campers in the park; the whole area was drowned in tear gas, canisters of which were thrown at protesters almost as a projectile weapon according to eyewitnesses. Police brutality was everywhere and at a shocking level. This changed the whole course of the protest as well as perceptions of it.
From football fan clubs to solitary cynics, throughout Friday a great stream of people joined the protests in Taksim; the only response of the government was an escalation of police violence. One of the most well known tourist attractions and the most crowded place in Istanbul was turned into a battlefield as police chased down protesters in the historical narrow streets of the area. Photographs of civilians covered in blood, lying around, and of streets and buildings rendered invisible due to tear gas were shared online.
Police brutality is nothing new in Turkey; AKP and its voters know this first hand: a significant chunk of AKP’s voter base themselves were gassed and attacked for years as they protested against discriminative policies of the Kemalist regime. But as political sphere changed in Turkey, now police is the guardian of AKP’s interests. In 2010, in what would become an infamous saying of his, Erdoğan stated: “I will not let my police to be bullied!” - “My” is often a term of endearment in Turkish but here it was especially meaningful. What made this statement more horrible was the fact that it was said after a series of police brutality that had garnered some popular denouncement. Erdoğan’s stance practically gave a green-light to the violence police continuously exerts in every protest.
And this is why Gezi protests are now important: this is not about urban redevelopment or green spaces anymore. It is about how a government due to its immense popularity has been growing more and more intolerant of those minority or criticising voices. It is about how democracy should not be a tyranny of the majority. And most of all it is about police brutality, it is about taking police accountable to their wrong doings, and that the government should learn to respect freedom of expression and assembly (regardless of what they are for) and not crush it with repressive police force.
I sincerely hope that these protests will improve Turkey on these aspects and Mr. Erdoğan will also, may be, remember his old days: when he was jailed and his political rights were forcefully taken away from him, by a very repressive and intolerant regime, simply for reading a poem. He should know very well how precious rights and liberties are, so he should also know how heinous, restricting and repressing them are. A “natural” or “enforced” lack of political competition or opposition does not mean that you will not meet with resistance or opposition Mr. Erdoğan - the last few years of Arab Spring should have taught you that.
——-
Some of you may have heard this so I want to also note at a personal level: many religious and pro-AKP folk in Turkey now (from my observations) have taken an attitude of “if we don’t crush them, they will crush us” and they rather support this using some of the racist and Islamophobic slurs uttered by some among the protesters. As I said before, protesters are a very diverse group and yes there are quite a few racists, Islamophobes, and Kemalists among them. But this does not justify police’s violent attacks on them; nor does it mean all protesters belong to those categories - they do *not*. But even if they did, even if *we* the religious folk who have been oppressed for decades by Kemalists were now under a risk of being crushed again, I want to note that as a Muslim I would and will always prefer to be the one oppressed than to be the oppressor. Allah asked me to be righteous and not an oppressor and if this will cause me to be oppressed, then by God’s will I will be oppressed. What I am afraid of most, is not being oppressed, but to be an oppressor. May God bless us all with a just and merciful heart.
———
I wanted to clear a few things after some discussions:
* I do not think that any and all urban redevelopment is not a concern for lower classes; actually, some historically lower class neighbourhoods of Istanbul went through urban redevelopment and due to their good locations within the city, actual residents were often mistreated and in practice forced to relocate. This type of urban redevelopment acts have been a concern for lower classes and they did speak out against it at times; Gezi Park was just not one such case. Which class an urban redevelopment project disturbs is very dependent on the locale and the character of the redevelopment project.
** When Gezi Park was initially built it was much larger and within this larger area the Armenian cemetery had once stood. Later on, some hotels and other buildings were actually given parts of the Gezi Park which also happens to be the parts that were mainly the cemetery before. The currently much smaller space of the Park. according to some still covers some of the area of the cemetery (though not much) and according to some it does not cover any of it any more at all. Regardless, it is true that when Park was initially built it was by usurping Armenian cemetery there, and that precious Armenian tombstones were used as stairs in the Park. This very last action I think speaks well to what the “aim” was by usurpation of this land beyond the material gain.
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
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ArisVelouchiotis
ArisVelouchiotis
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guidoanselmi
guidoanselmi
meet me in st louis
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tldr people didnt want a place, one of the few viable places for protest in istanbul, razed. cops suppress them. other people get pissed off at violent suppression and join in.
taksim is really central w/r/t public transit, very active for commerce and tourism, and location of most of the protests in istanbul. lovely place on any other day and home to the best pudding on earth: http://www.hafizmustafa.com/
taksim is really central w/r/t public transit, very active for commerce and tourism, and location of most of the protests in istanbul. lovely place on any other day and home to the best pudding on earth: http://www.hafizmustafa.com/
guidoanselmi
guidoanselmi
meet me in st louis
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honestly lack of access to pudding is the greatest tragedy.
_________//
an american
_________//
an american
redfiesta
redfiesta
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finally a rHizzonE thread where I can make a meaningful contribution!. For I'm a Turk in Istanbul you see...
Anyway that analysis few posts over is pretty good. You should read it.
Welp, that's my contribution!
Anyway that analysis few posts over is pretty good. You should read it.
Welp, that's my contribution!
[account deactivated]
slumlord
slumlord
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people are down at zuccotti right now planning something for tonight. illegally sleeping in the streets in solidarity, from the sound of it? i decided to go see a movie instead
vampirarchist
vampirarchist
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We are the soldiers not of the imam, but of Mustafa Kemal
AmericanNazbro
AmericanNazbro
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slumlord posted:people are down at zuccotti right now planning something for tonight. illegally sleeping in the streets in solidarity, from the sound of it? i decided to go see a movie instead
You should go see Jack Reacher. It's good.
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Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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these protesters are tools of mossad and nothing more, i hope they are crushed
mongosteen
mongosteen
sing hallelujah
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agricultural societies lived under kings exclusively for about 4000 years. the notion that human freedom is an inevitability is a joke
slumlord
slumlord
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mongosteen posted:agricultural societies lived under kings exclusively for about 4000 years. the notion that human freedom is an inevitability is a joke
::stares into a mirror with the lights out::: Çatalhöyük Çatalhöyük Çatalhöyük
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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mongosteen posted:agricultural societies lived under kings exclusively for about 4000 years. the notion that human freedom is an inevitability is a joke
why would kings be against human freedom? kings can be wise and just rulers.
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parabolart
parabolart
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kings are endowed with special skills in their head. thats why they need the crown to protect their head, which is precious. the throne is to protect the body and keep proper circulation to the head via spine. to keep the king's posture perfectly straight. so in a way kings are against their own freedom to slouch, which is human freedom.
wasted
wasted
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kings can be good rulers when they let their advisers run the show and he just has to have his stupid failson who unfortunately will have the resources and authority to fuck up something as simple as sitting on a chair all day. see: wilhelm II
Edited by wasted ()
parabolart
parabolart
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this case is so common that in fact there is special i- ching hexagram number 88
dirt hell above
wet diaper below
the superiour man is dead. he was the king.
the inferior man, his son, takes the throne.
there is hell in the air and wet diapers everywhere
dirt hell above
wet diaper below
the superiour man is dead. he was the king.
the inferior man, his son, takes the throne.
there is hell in the air and wet diapers everywhere
SariBari
SariBari
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wasted posted:kings can be good rulers when they let their advisers run the show and he just has to have his stupid failson who unfortunately will have the resources and authority to fuck up something as simple as sitting on a chair all day. see: wilhelm II
wasted for zzone historian. I'm so excited that we have a live Turk for this and Ofc it's prodigal son redfiesta. Welcome back to the curdled teat of home. Please report in regularly as Gulen Movement bureau chief of correspondence.
clanzy
clanzy
jiggago
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one of my friends is in istanbul on a study abroad thing atm, how strongly should i encourage her to set cops on fire
parabolart
parabolart
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its all over for now eerybody's having the best sleep of their lifetimes
swampman
swampman
Dont Mess With Sucess
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clanzy posted:one of my friends is in istanbul on a study abroad thing atm, how strongly should i encourage her to set cops on fire
long live the vicarious victory of the other peoples' war
wasted
wasted
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dogstomper420
Ironicwarcriminal
Ironicwarcriminal
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Although the demonstrators are a mixed bunch of people with various agendas, they are being cheered on by a growing group of people who the Turk's call Tiki's: a vacuous, narcissistic, materialistic slice of the country's middle class that sneer at the religious observant as lower class citizen's, and would walk a mile rather than be seen in a public space that has head-scarfed people in it. People like that will be in the ascendancy if the AKP are overthrown
I suspected as much, anyone who tweets should automatically be considered consumer compradors and israeli/CIA agents trying to subvert the solidarity and coherence of their native society.
Let's hope Erdogan sweeps these parasites into the Bospherous.
wasted
wasted
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get a god damn job, Al!
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
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kings are part of the means of bourgeois revolution, they go in the bin after that. let's keep Based in history
getfiscal
getfiscal
Mike Nelson here.
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daddyholes posted:kings are part of the means of bourgeois revolution, they go in the bin after that. let's keep Based in history
maybe they really get into their element once communism hits.
corey
corey
corey "of "fail aids" fame"
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wats going on in turkey right now
gyrofry
gyrofry
Kurdt
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partly digested with moderate gizzard activity
cars
cars
UNUSUALY COOL
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can anyone point me toward a reliable biography of Cemal Gürsel; all i keep finding is a bunch of gushing about how he was a saint among men, beloved by all, and advanced the brave Kemalist democratic cause against the evil anti-democratic Democrats and was super-secretly opposed to everything bad that happened during and after the coup that put him in power and also told great jokes etc. the Wikipedia article is especially batshit
babyfinland
babyfinland
tardy on these heaters
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redfiesta posted:finally a rHizzonE thread where I can make a meaningful contribution!. For I'm a Turk in Istanbul you see...
Anyway that analysis few posts over is pretty good. You should read it.
Welp, that's my contribution!
can you help me find a cheap place to live near boğaziçi üniversitesi this september? i hear rumeli hisarüstü is a good neighborhood for that
Edited by babyfinland ()
cleanhands
cleanhands
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corey posted:wats going on in turkey right now
stinky turk stuff