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Standing people movement spreads across Turkey as new tactics evolve in response to government suppression
June 19, 2013
Lunchtime in the waterfront district of Beşiktaş in Istanbul on Tuesday and Ismail Orhan has been standing silently under a yellow parasol in the blistering heat for more than four hours.
“We’ll be here for weeks, for months,” said the 25-year-old, as office workers used their lunch break to join a new wave of passive resistance to the authorities.
Instantly dubbed the “standing man” or “standing people” protest, fuelled rapidly by Twitter and other social media, the mute, peaceful, immobile gesture of resistance to a government that has used brute force to dispel three weeks of protest was launched on Monday evening in Istanbul’s Taksim Square by a performance artist, Erdem Gündüz. The “stand-in” instantly spread like a virus.
Silent protesters swelled into hundreds across different parts of Istanbul, to Ankara, Izmir and Antalya. About 10 were detained by police in Istanbul after refusing to move, but were quickly released.
In front of Orhan, by a sculpture of an eagle, were two pairs of flipflops, two pairs of trainers and a pair of tiny baby’s bootees – in remembrance of the four people killed during the unprecedented street unrest of the past three weeks and for the pregnant woman who lost her baby when riot police teargassed a luxury hotel on Saturday where terrified protesters and wounded were sheltering.
Tahsin, 63, a bank employee who did not want to use his full name, spent his lunch break joining the handful of protesters, who included elderly women.
“I’m supporting everything that’s been going on peacefully for the last two weeks. I wouldn’t think we could be arrested. That would be really far fetched,” he said.
Hundreds more joined them at different locations. Some brought books to settle in for a long haul. Bottles of water were the most common accompaniment in a poignant and dignified display of rebellion against a government increasingly seen as high-handed and out of touch.
“I’m just stopping, standing, not speaking. Just drinking water,” said Merve Uslu, 21, a student. “I heard about the standing man and it touched my heart so much. I don’t support clashes with police but we’re just resisting basically.”
Elsewhere in the city early on Tuesday, however, the Turkish police swooped on dozens of hard-left activists, arresting more than 90 people in the first big clampdown since the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, ordered police to fire tear gas and use water cannons in their attack on Saturday evening to clear Gezi Park of thousands of demonstrators, inciting a night of violence across much of central Istanbul.
Erdoğan’s confrontational response to the challenge to his 10-year rule has shocked much of Turkey and brought growing criticism internationally.
On Tuesday, the UN’s human rights commissioner, Navi Pillay, called for officials and security forces using excessive force to be punished.
“It is important that the authorities recognise that the initial, extremely heavy-handed response to the protests, which resulted in many injuries, is still a major part of the problem,” she said.
But the message from Erdoğan was the very opposite as he divided Turkey into friends and foes, and characterised the largely peaceful protests of recent weeks as orchestrated violence.
“Thanks to this process, we know our enemies and allies as they came out and showed their true colours,” said the prime minister.
“The police have been represented as using violence. Who used violence? All of the terrorists, the anarchists, the rioters … In the face of a comprehensive and systematic movement of violence, the police displayed an unprecedented democratic stance and successfully passed the test of democracy.”
In addition to Tuesday’s arrests, at least 90 protesters were detained during the weekend violence. According to Turkish media reports on Tuesday, most have been released but 13 are to be brought before the courts, which human rights monitors say have been increasingly politicised under Erdoğan.
A lawyer who wished to remain anonymous said the number of arbitrary arrests was very worrying. “Many of those arrested over the course of these protests have been denied access to lawyers for hours; they were made to wait for a long time, some are still waiting,” she said. “A red line has definitely been crossed with this.”
The prime minister also came under strong attack from other parts of the political spectrum. Selahattin Demirtaş, a co-leader of the main Kurdish political party, the BDP, harshly criticised the government’s stance.
Directing his remarks at Erdoğan, he said: “At the moment you look like a leader who tries to stay in power with the help of tanks and batons … This is a movement of the people and you are trying to pit the people against the people.”
With the police still out in force on Taksim Square and municipal workers rolling out new lawns, planting rose gardens and new magnolia trees in Gezi Park, the cradle of the rebellion, there were calls for the protest to shift to other park areas across the country on Tuesday evening.
Police weariness appears to be growing, as well as sympathy for the mainly young people they have been confronting for weeks. “This is a good way of demonstrating, a very good way,” one riot police officer said of the stand-in. “There is absolutely nothing wrong with peaceful protests; that should be everybody’s right.”
He laughed when asked if he would consider joining: “I have been standing here for two weeks already anyway.”
Determined to carry on with his act of civil disobedience, Orhan said he and his fellow protesters just wanted “peace and democracy”. If protesting entailed the prospect of arrest, so be it.
“Under normal circumstances it should not be a crime to just stand here peacefully. But in Erdoğan’s Turkey, everything is possible.”
Unions give lift to Turkish protest movement
June 18, 2013
Turkish labor groups fanned a wave of defiance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authority, leading rallies and a one-day strike to support activists whose two-week standoff with the government has shaken the country’s secular democracy.
Riot police again deployed in Turkey’s two main cities, and authorities kept up their unyielding stance against the street demonstrations centering on Istanbul’s Taksim Square. But Monday’s police sweep was less forceful than in recent days, with only scattered firing of tear gas and water cannon on pockets ofprotesters.
After activists were ousted from their sit-in in adjacent Gezi Parkover the weekend, two labor confederations that represent some 330,000 workers picked up the slack Monday by calling a strike and demonstrations nationwide. Unionists turned up by the thousands in Ankara, Istanbul, coastal Izmir and elsewhere.
The turnout defied Turkey’s interior minister, Muammer Guler, who warned that anyone taking part in unlawful demonstrations would “bear the legal consequences.” But one analyst called the rallies a “legitimate and a lawful expression of constitutional rights.”
“People are raising their voices against the excessive use of police force,” said Koray Caliskan, a political science professor at Istanbul’s Bosphorus University. Demonstrators, he said, were showing they were no longer cowed by authorities, and “the fear threshold has been broken.”
In a sign that authorities were increasingly impatient, Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc floated the prospect that authorities could call in troops to quash the protests.
Erdogan’s opponents have grown increasingly suspicious about what they call a gradual erosion of freedoms and secular values under his Islamic-rooted ruling party. It has passed new curbs on alcohol and tried, but later abandoned its plans, to limit women’s access to abortion.
This should be the role of unions in movements - support, solidarity, militant organizing.
The fight to save San Francisco’s Gezi Gardens
June 15, 2013
In all the cities we’ve traveled to for our project, we’ve seen so much resistance against the gentrification of low-income communities. But we’ve most recently immersed ourselves in the fight to save San Francisco’s Gezi Gardens, which was once known as Hayes Valley Farm, a three-year permaculture project recently renamed in solidarity with our friends in Turkey.
Gezi Gardens was an autonomous open green space for providing food for the surrounding neighborhood & was recently sold by the city to a private developer, Avalon, to create 180 luxury condominiums. Although the developer has mentioned building low-income housing, investors usually put that money toward shanty housing in other parts of the city to further gentrify neighborhoods & kick out poor people of color to make way for things like trendy beer gardens & upscale boutiques.
Since June 1, dozens of activists occupied Gezi Gardens to fight the privatization of the land & gentrification in San Francisco. Six tree-sitters set up platforms up in the eucalyptus trees as occupiers rebuilt raised beds, set up a library, a free kitchen and a free store. Political ideas & strategies were exchanged throughout the days of the occupation to figure out a way to keep the land that is also home to native birds & hummingbirds, as well as the site of an indigenous sacred burial ground.
The gardens were supposed to host a Liberate our Land festival this weekend, complete with hydroponic workshops, basic gardening teach-ins, local music & food. But in the early hours of Thursday morning, more than a 100 riot cops stormed the farm with batons & guns drawn. Citizen journalists (including us) were threatened with arrest for filming the raid as four occupiers were arrested. The three tree-sitters holding the land after everyone was evacuated were all arrested as well; one even fell from his platform as an officer cut his rope he was holding onto & was later hospitalized. Another activist is still in jail on a lynching charge with a $54,000 bail.
But the resistance continued. Yesterday, Gezi Gardens organizers & supporters marched around the farm, shutting down two intersections during rush hour. The National Park Service was also called to the space after hummingbird carcasses were found, as well as nesting crows in the eucalyptus trees, so the construction & demolishing has been halted (for now)! An archaeologist has also been called to go into the land to confirm that it is a sacred indigenous burial ground.
The struggle to save Gezi Gardens is something many cities are familiar with. As green space in urban areas becomes more & more endangered & low-income communities of color get pushed farther out of cities, resistance becomes necessary. We wanted to share this story with our readers in hopes that this resistance can spread to other cities being threatened with devastating gentrification. Together, we can organize to create a sense of community & a pushback against the capitalist measures that threaten to destroy our neighborhoods.
We’ll continue to update our Facebook & Twitter with times/dates for meetings & the next steps organizers will take. You can also stay updated by visiting HumanBeIn.org. Also keep an eye on our YouTube channel for bunch of videos from the last few days.
Erdogan’s lip service to possibilities isn’t enough to stop this movement
June 15, 2013Protesters will press on with their sit-in at an Istanbul park, an activist said Saturday, defying government appeals and a warning from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the two-week standoff that has fanned nationwide demonstrations to end.
The announcement from Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements in Gezi Park, is likely to return the spotlight on Erdogan’s government — and how it will respond. He already has offered to defer to a court ruling on the legality of the government’s contested park redevelopment plan, and floated the possibility of a referendum on it.
Tayfun Kahraman — a Taksim Solidarity member who met with Erdogan in last-ditch talks that lasted until the pre-dawn hours Friday — said the protesters had agreed to continue their sit-in after holding a series of discussions about their response to the pledges made by Erdogan.
“We shall remain in the park until all of our democratic rights are recognized,” he told The Associated Press, insisting that four key demands laid out by protesters in the talks had not been met.
The group has insisted that apart from the park being left intact, it also wants anyone responsible for excessive police force to resign or be fired, all activists detained in the protests to be released, and for the police use of tear gas and other non-lethal weapons to be banned.
The “struggle will continue,” Taksim Solidarity said in a statement posted on its website and later read out in the park adding that “we shall continue to keep watch over our park.”
Happening now: Taksim Square is being attacked with tear gas & rubber bullets. From a comrade in Istanbul -
“Cops are heavily attacking Gezi park right now. Cops are attacking injured people in the infirmary there. There are many injured children, and there was a call out for donations of blood for the children. 10,000 people are on Istiklal (street coming off Taksim) fighting the police. Also in Harbiye people are fighting the cops. Someone has been crushed by a water cannon tank. In Ankara today Erdogan has said on the state TV the cops will use guns with live ammo if needed. Every ten seconds there are announcements to help the injured. Cops are attacking hotels and coffeeshops that have been helping resistors. They are destroying Gezi park and arresting and beating everyone. Please spread the word.”
(via tree-ghost)
Erdogan’s lip service to possibilities isn’t enough to stop this movement
June 15, 2013
Protesters will press on with their sit-in at an Istanbul park, an activist said Saturday, defying government appeals and a warning from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan for the two-week standoff that has fanned nationwide demonstrations to end.
The announcement from Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella group of protest movements in Gezi Park, is likely to return the spotlight on Erdogan’s government — and how it will respond. He already has offered to defer to a court ruling on the legality of the government’s contested park redevelopment plan, and floated the possibility of a referendum on it.
Tayfun Kahraman — a Taksim Solidarity member who met with Erdogan in last-ditch talks that lasted until the pre-dawn hours Friday — said the protesters had agreed to continue their sit-in after holding a series of discussions about their response to the pledges made by Erdogan.
“We shall remain in the park until all of our democratic rights are recognized,” he told The Associated Press, insisting that four key demands laid out by protesters in the talks had not been met.
The group has insisted that apart from the park being left intact, it also wants anyone responsible for excessive police force to resign or be fired, all activists detained in the protests to be released, and for the police use of tear gas and other non-lethal weapons to be banned.
The “struggle will continue,” Taksim Solidarity said in a statement posted on its website and later read out in the park adding that “we shall continue to keep watch over our park.”
Happening today: Turkish police push into square near park protest
June 11, 2013
Riot police officers moved into Taksim Square in central Istanbul on Tuesday, firing tear gas grenades and water cannons and enveloping the center of this city with smoke and the sounds of ambulance sirens. The square, which has become a sprawling and eclectic hub of grievance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was transformed into a tableau of urban chaos.
The operation took all day and was still in progress as the workday ended, when more protesters began reoccupying the square and police officers cleared it again with tear gas. The scene took on the air of a movie set: fireworks lit by protesters and nonlethal sound bombs set off by the police punctuated the chants of “Istanbul is ours! Taksim is ours!”
At intervals during the day, the police would advance into part of the square, then retreat again to rest, as officers mingled with onlookers, smoked cigarettes or bought snacks from street vendors. Short outbursts of clashes with protesters alternated with intervals of calm, allowing onlookers and tourists to gather in relatively safe spots and watch the action unfold, and then flee down side streets when the tear gas became too thick.
The police advance was far from decisive in quashing the protest movement that has risen to challenge the rule of Mr. Erdogan and his conservative Justice and Development Party, which has roots in political Islam: Gezi Park, whose preservation was the initial focus of the protests, was left alone to its occupiers, who have erected a tent city there and have vowed to stay.
“We are here for the park and the park only,” said Murat Bal, 27, who stood in the edge of the park as other areas of Taksim Square were being tear-gassed. “We will not yield to the provocation of stone throwers or police violence. We will stay in the park until the end.”
The ongoing crisis that has engulfed Mr. Erdogan’s government and threatened to tarnish the image of Turkey as a rising power, which he has helped craft, played out in other venues simultaneously Tuesday: at an Istanbul courthouse, several lawyers who had supported the protesters were detained, and as tear gas filled Taksim Square, Mr. Erdogan addressed his party in a speech broadcast to the nation.
Mr. Erdogan, in keeping with the defiant tone of his recent speeches, called the protest movement “an uprising against the democratic administration.” He described the banners of leftist groups that had decorated the square in the absence of any government authority as those of “terrorist organizations.”
“When I speak against all that, they say, ‘The prime minister speaks very harshly.’ If you call this harsh, sorry. Tayyip Erdogan never changes.”
An early morning Twitter message from the provincial governor announced the impending operation, and he promised that the police would leave Gezi Park alone. “This morning you are in the safe hands of your police brothers,” wrote the governor, Huseyin Avni Mutlu.
The burst of civil unrest in Turkey began after a relatively small protest to save Gezi Park, which is to be demolished by the government and converted in to a replica Ottoman-era army barracks, was harshly attacked by riot police officers on May 31. The brutality of that crackdown sparked a spontaneous uprising among Turks whose anger against a government they see as increasingly authoritarian had been building for years.
On Tuesday, officers were visibly more restrained than they had been on May 31. They fired tear gas mostly when provoked, and did not seem to fire indiscriminately at protesters.
The protesters represent a cross section of Turkish society, including the secular middle class, youth, urban intellectuals and a mosaic of other interests. They cite a litany of complaints against the government, including its vast urban development plans in Istanbul, a crackdown on alcohol and Mr. Erdogan’s leadership style, which they see as increasingly dismissive of the views of those who did not vote for him.
Despite the government promise to leave the park alone, many inside it on Tuesday were girding for an attack. People wrote their blood type on their arms with markers as a precaution. Doctors in a makeshift medical tent tended to protesters suffering the effects of tear gas.
Still, others seemed oblivious to the action. A few napped, and some students were studying for a coming physics exam. “I’m not going to fail my exams and become a bum because of Tayyip,” said Emre Can, 24, a mechanical engineering student.
He added: “We don’t care about the square. If they come into the park that is when we will stand up.”
In leaving the park alone for now, the government sought to divide the movement between the original protesters and the marginal, mostly leftist, political groups that have co-opted the protests. The banners placed around the square by these groups were removed by the police, who in some corners of the square fought battles against hooligans throwing Molotov cocktails.
The police also cleared banners from the facade of the Ataturk Cultural Center, an old opera house awaiting destruction by government decree, but left hanging a poster of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of modern Turkey, and a Turkish flag.
The vast majority of the protesters have been peaceful, and have disavowed the violence of some groups. “It started with throwing stones, but now the extremists are sinking to the level of the police by throwing fireworks and firebombs,” said Ece Yavuz, 36, who was on the park on Tuesday. “We will not participate in this violence.”
The operation came a day after the government appeared to change tactics, with Mr. Erdogan agreeing to meet with protest leaders on Wednesday. It was the first public sign that Mr. Erdogan, a popular but stubborn leader who has broadly denounced the protests as the work of looters and thugs, was willing to directly engage at least some of the organizers in dialogue.
Three people have been killed and more than 2,300 injured in the violence, which has revealed deep-seated resentment toward Mr. Erdogan. Although he has widespread support across much of Turkey, the protests presented him with one of the biggest political challenges since he became Turkey’s leader a decade ago.
The movement has mostly been an undertaking by secular Turks against a government many believe is trying to impose its religious views. But in a striking scene Tuesday, a small group of women, including two with headscarves, sat on the ground between police officers and protesters.
“We all have different beliefs and views but we must unite against violence,” said one of the women wearing a headscarf, who refused to give her name. “That is why we should all sit here in silence and resist together.”
San Francisco sends its love & resistance to Turkey
This is what Taksim Square in Istanbul looks like right now.
You want demands? Istanbul has got ‘em - Ankara, Hatay, Istanbul RESIGN!
June 6, 2013
With a measure of calm returning to a city that for days has been a cauldron of antigovernment passions, representatives of a group that helped incite protests that have been roiling Turkey opened dialogue on Wednesday with the government.
It gave a list of demands to the country’s deputy prime minister as the police expanded security operations and detained several dozen people accused of provoking illegal acts on social media networks.
The demands include: the dismissal of the governors of Istanbul, Ankara and the city of Hatay; as well as the heads of the security forces in those three cities, the release of detained protesters, an end to the use of tear gas by the police, as well as the cancellation of the project that started the protests: the construction of an Ottoman-era replica that would destroy a park in Taksim Square in Istanbul.
At least two people have been reported killed and at least 2,300 injured in protests that spread to about 60 cities across the nation as people inspired by the protests at Taksim Square took to the streets to air broader grievances against the government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has been out of the country since Monday on a good-will tour of North Africa.
At Taksim Square, a popular occupation that began Saturday took on a sense of permanence with another day of gatherings that felt festive, with music, food and the steady bursts of chants against Mr. Erdogan’s government. But many were anticipating Mr. Erdogan’s return to the country, due on Thursday, and what he might say to either calm or inflame the situation.
A spokesman for Taksim Solidarity, which led the protests to save Gezi Park in Taksim Square, held a news conference that was broadcast live after meeting with Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc.
“Mr. Arinc received our list of demands and said they would assess it,” said the spokesman, Tayfun Kahraman. The government made no comment.
Turkish police officers have already interrogated more than 1,700 people in connection with the protests. The bar association in the Aegen town of Izmir said Wednesday that 36 high school and college students there had been detained for investigation on charges that they provoked illegal acts via Twitter.
Twitter became the leading platform for information about the protests, in part because the country’s mainstream media (like corporate media around the world often are about human rights & protests) were silent as the protests broke out on Friday.
Ozkan Yucel, a member of the Izmir Bar Association, said that the police had given no information to the families of those detained, and that parents were left to simply wait anxiously in front of various police stations. “There is nothing lawful about these detentions,” Mr. Yucel said.
On Wednesday evening, undeterred Turks converged for a sixth day on Gezi Park for a gathering that has become the symbol of civic resistance, bringing together many strata of society in a showcase of anti-government solidarity.
Volunteers walked around with trays of Turkish bagels, part of a local Muslim tradition which millions celebrated Wednesday as one of the sacred days leading up to the holy month of Ramadan.
Artists lettered T-shirts, bags and pants with “capulcu” (meaning “looter,” the dismissive term Mr. Erdogan used for the protesters), and “Everyday I’m Capuling,” a formulation that rhymes with a line from the popular dance pop song “Party Rock Anthem.”
On Twitter, people exchanged the Turkish adaptation of the song and a short recording of Noam Chomsky, the American linguist and left-wing figure, saying in Turkish, “Taksim everywhere, resistance everywhere.”
Many young people in the park criticized the detentions of Twitter users as “scary” and “a violation of freedom of expression.”
Orhan Pamuk, the internationally acclaimed Turkish novelist and a Nobel laureate, came out in favor of the protests against the government-backed project to restructure Taksim Square.
“Planning major changes in this area that holds memories of millions and in the park behind it without any consultation with Istanbullites and hastily bringing it to a stage that involved cutting trees was a major mistake by Erdogan’s government,” he said, in an article posted by various Turkish publications on Wednesday. “Seeing that Istanbullites would not easily give up their right to political protest and memories gives me trust and hope for future.”
Occupy Gezi: International solidarity for Turkey’s uprising
June 3, 2013
A relatively small protest at Turkey’s Gezi Park to prevent the ripping out of trees to make way for the building of a shopping mall has erupted into an uprising in which over 1,900 people have been arrested and reports of 1,700 more injured. Protesters say the harsh treatment by police, such as shooting tear gas and water cannons at protesters, is just one more symptom of Prime Minister Erdogan’s authoritarian rule.
Iconic images of Turkey’s uprising quickly appeared on the Internet. There was the image of a young woman defiantly kicking back a tear gas canister toward police, and a young man casually strumming his guitar as he approaches a wall of officers. Then there was the incredible photo of another youth standing upon a flattened improvised barricade, waving Turkey’s flag, reminiscent of Enjolras’ last stand. Occupy Wall Street showed its support when hundreds of protesters gathered at Zuccotti Park, a k a Liberty Park, over the weekend. The “peaceful international solidarity event” is being held “with the goal to direct public attention to Istanbul Gezi Park protests and consequent police brutality of AKP/Erdogan government!” Occupy Wall Street announced.
Overall, the social media response to the protests has been staggering. Between Friday and Saturday, at least 2 million tweets mentioning hashtags related to the protest (#direngezipark, #occupygezi, #geziparki) were sent. At one point, more than 3,000 tweets about the protest were published every minute. Even Erdogan weighed in on the Twitter factor, calling the social media tool a “menace.” “There is now a menace which is called Twitter,” Erdogan said. “The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
Making a small concession, Erdogan did admit the police had made “mistakes” in their initial response. Foreign Minister Ahmet Davutoglu took to Twitter to warn citizens: “The continuation of these protests…will bring no benefits but will harm the reputation of our country which is admired both in the region and the world.”
What’s clear is that Twitter is certainly a menace to unchecked power, and those who wield that power against citizens.
Al Jazeera reports that what makes this social media phenomenon especially unique is that unlike some other recent uprisings, around 90 percent of all geo-located tweets came from Turkey and about 50 percent from within Istanbul. For comparison, only 30 percent of those tweeting during the Egyptian revolution were actually in the country. Approximately 88 percent of the tweets are in Turkish, suggesting the audience of the tweets are other Turkish citizens and not the international community.
Al Jazeera speculates that Turkish protesters are replacing traditional reporting with crowd-sources accounts of the protest due to being unsatisfied with the local media’s coverage of the uprising. In addition to being a tool for reporting, Twitter has allowed activists to share information about resisting police brutality. Under the Turkey subcategory on Reddit, a user posted an Occupy Wall Street guide to defending against teargas for Turkish activists.
Over the weekend, numerous countries expressed support for Turkey’s protesters. Turkish nationals gathered in front of the EU Parliament in Brussels to protest against police violence in Turkey, many chanting anti-government protests and holding up banners. Similar rallies took place in London, Egypt, Canada, Helsinki and outside the Turkish Embassy in Nicosia, Cyprus. The ripple effect continued to Amsterdam and Germany, with its significant Turkish population.
“The police were too violent with the demonstrators,” said Hakan Tas, a local councillor. “There is talk of a thousand injured, some seriously. There are unconfirmed reports of deaths. We are here to show our solidarity with the people in Turkey and in Taksim Square, and that is why we are here today in Berlin.”
Overnight in Istanbul, the situation appeared to escalate again in what the BBC called “some of the worst violence since unrest erupted three days ago.”
Protesters in Besiktas district tore up paving stones in order to build barricades, and police responded with tear gas and water cannons. Mosques, shops and a university in Besiktas have been turned into makeshift hospitals for those injured in demonstrations. Witnesses say the protesters were coughing violently and vomiting after police fired tear gas canisters into the crowd. Akin, a protester who spoke to Sky News as he camped overnight at Istanbul’s Taksim Square, said, “We are not leaving. The only answer now is for this government to fall. We are tired of this oppressive government constantly putting pressure on us.”
Perhaps offering the best summary of the events of the past few days, he added, “This is no longer about these trees.”
Pictures from Turkey posted June 3, 2013 (presumably taken on June 3 as well).
A beautiful report from a Turkish journalist regarding mass consciousness in revolutionary moments:
My friend, who was completely uninterested in politics until six days ago, had never been in conflict with the police before. Now, like hundreds of thousands of others in Turkey, she has become a warrior with goggles around her neck, an oxygen mask on her face and an anti-acid solution bottle in her hand.[…] It is like a civil war between the police and the people. Yet nobody expected this when, six days ago, a group of protesters organised a sit-in at Istanbul’s Gezi Park to protect trees that were to be cut down for the government’s urban redevelopment project.
As a writer and a journalist I followed the Egyptian and Tunisian uprisings. As I wrote at the time, Arab people killed their fear and I saw how it transformed them from silent crowds to peoples who believe in themselves. This is what has been happening in the last six days in Turkey. Teenage girls standing in front of TOMAs (vehicle-mounted water cannons), kids throwing tear gas capsules back to the police, rich lawyers throwing stones at the cops, football fans rescuing rival fans from police, the ultra-nationalists struggling arm in arm with Kurdish activists… these were all scenes I witnessed. Those who wanted to kill each other last week became - no exaggeration - comrades on the streets. People not only overcame their fear of authority but they also killed the fear of the “other”.
As I write, Istanbul, Ankara - Turkey’s capital - Izmir and Adana are burning. Massive police violence is taking place. And in my middle class Istanbul neighbourhood, like many others, people are banging on their frying pans to protest. People are exchanging information about safe places to take shelter from police, the telephone numbers of doctors and lawyers. In Taksim Square, on the building of Atatürk Cultural Center, some people are hanging a huge banner. There are only two words on it: “Don’t surrender!
Also, Turkey’s Public Workers Unions Confederation (KESK) said on Monday it would hold a “warning strike” on June 4-5 to protest at a crackdown on anti-government protests over the last four days.
“The state terror implemented against mass protests across the country … has shown once again the enmity to democracy of the AKP government,” said a statement from the leftist confederation KESK, which has some 240,000 members in 11 unions.
Protesters & riot police clash for a second day in Istanbul on Saturday, a day after environmental protest flared into a massive outcry against Turkey’s government!
June 1, 2013
The unrest, which has spread to other cities, marks one of the biggest protests since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan first came to power in 2002.
On Saturday police fired tear gas at protesters gathering in Taksim Square, the epicenter of the demonstrations that have left dozens of people injured and have earned Turkey a rare rebuke from its ally Washington. Hours earlier, several hundred protesters waving Turkish flags advanced despite police firing water cannon and crossed the Bosphorus Bridge to the European side of the city, according to local media.
The unrest erupted into anti-government demonstrations after police on Friday moved into Taksim to break up a protest against the razing of a nearby park. Clashes raged during the night, as thousands of people marched through the city, some banging pots and pans as residents shouted support from the windows.
Others held up cans of beer in defiance of a recent law, supported by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which restricts the sale of alcohol and prohibits it during the nighttime hours. Critics of the law see it as a sign of creeping conservatism in predominantly Muslim but staunchly secular Turkey.
The unrest on Taksim Square, where a sit-in has been held for several weeks to protest against plans to raze a nearby park in order to build a shopping mall. Critics say that the park is the last patch of greenery in the commercial area. Its razing is part of a wider, controversial construction project that aims to turn the area around Taksim – a traditional gathering point for protests and a popular tourist destination – into a pedestrian zone.
After several days of growing protests at the square last week, riot police moved in to break it up on Friday with tear gas and water cannon. Protesters responded by hurling stones, chanting: “Government resign!””The trees, it’s the drop that made the vase overflow,” said Ozkan, a philosophy student in Istanbul.
“People are sick and tired of everything that this government is doing to them.”
As tear gas blanketed the area, thousands of people poured out into the streets in support of the demonstrators in other Turkish cities, including in the capital Ankara, the western cities of Izmir and Mugla and Antalya in the south.
Authorities said that a dozen people were being treated in hospitals for injuries received in the clashes, but Amnesty International said more than 100 protesters were reportedly injured.
More than 60 people have been detained as a result of the unrest, according to regional authorities. Even in Washington, the State Department said it was concerned about the number of people injured as a result of the protests.
Thousands have voiced support for the protesters on social media in recent days, while Amnesty International urged Turkey to “halt brutal police repression” and investigate abuse claims.
See these photos & more from this movement at this Tumblr devoted to the current protest uprising in Turkey.
Istanbul park protests sow the seeds of a Turkish spring
May 31, 2013
This morning, Turkish police surrounded protesters in Taksim Gezi park, the central square in Istanbul, blocked all exits and attacked them with chemical sprays and teargas.
An Occupy-style movement has taken off in Istanbul. The ostensible issue of conflict is modest. Protesters started gathering in the park on 27 May, to oppose its demolition as part of a redevelopment plan. But this is more than an environmental protest. It has become a lightning conductor for all the grievances accumulated against the government.
Police have waited until the early hours of each morning to attack, just as police in the US did when dealing with Occupy protesters. They set fire to the tents in which protesters were sleeping and showered them with pepper spray and teargas. A student had to undergo surgery after injuries to his genitals.
The occupiers adapted and started to wear homemade gas masks. More importantly, they called for solidarity. In response to yesterday’s assault, thousands of protesters turned up, including opposition politicians. But this morning’s attack allowed no defence or escape. The park, and the area around it, is still closed, and still under clouds of gas.
In April, a Justice and Development party (AKP) leader warned that the liberals who had supported them in the last decade would no longer do so. This was as good a sign as any that the repression would increase, as the neoliberal Islamist party forced through its modernisation agenda.
The AKP represents a peculiar type of conservative populism. Its bedrock, enriched immensely in the last decade, is the conservative Muslim bourgeoisie that first emerged as a result of Turgut Özal’s economic policies in the 1980s. But, while denying it is a religious party, it has used the politics of piety to gain a popular base and to strengthen the urban rightwing.
It has spent more than a decade in government building up its authority. The privatisation process has led to accelerated inequality, accompanied by repression. But it has also attracted floods of international investment, leading to growth rates of close to 5% a year. This has enabled the regime to pay off the last of its IMF loans, so that it was even in a position to offer the IMF $5 billion to help with the Eurozone crisis in 2012.
In the meantime, the AKP has gradually consolidated its support within the state apparatus and media, and no longer needs its liberal backers. The Turkish military leadership has been compelled to accept the Islamists, having suffered a significant loss of power relative to other branches of the state such as the police and judiciary. While the erosion of the military’s power should be a gain for democracy, journalists have also ended up in jail on charges of plotting coup d’etats.
Of course, there is a history of coup plotting. And the government charged 86 people with plotting to bring down the government in 2008, as part of its investigation into the Turkish “deep state”. But it has been able to use this fear to conflate all opposition with anti-democratic instigation, and crush it ruthlessly. During this time, its vote has risen from 34.28% to 49.90%.
It has also demonstrated confidence in the way it has attempted to deal with the Kurdish question, and in its regional strategy. The government embarked on significant new negotiations with the Kurdish Workers party (PKK) in 2009, partly because it wants to forge a lucrative relationship with the Kurdish regional government in Iraq.
Under the AKP, Turkey has been increasing its relative autonomy from traditional supporters in the White House and Tel Aviv, forging close relations with Iran, Hezbollah and even – until recently – President Assad of Syria. This has been interpreted, hysterically, as “neo-Ottomanism”. It is simply an assertion of Turkey’s new power.
Thus strengthened, the government is on the offensive. It has never needed the left or the labour movement, which it has repressed. It no longer needs the liberals, as its attacks on women’s reproductive rights, and its imposition of alcohol-free zones, show.
This is the context in which a struggle over a small park in a congested city centre has become an emergency for the regime, and the basis for a potential Turkish spring.
TRIGGER WARNING: RAPE, SEXUAL ASSAULT, VIOLENCE
I saw this on Facebook shared by one of my friends. It’s from Feminist India’s Facebook page. It’s from September 2012. The text says:
REVENGE ON RAPIST
A woman made pregnant by a rapist shot him ten times and cut his head off after authorities refused to let her have an abortion.
The victim hurled the severed head into her village square, shouting that her attacker had ‘toyed with her honor’.
The man had taken nude photos of her and blackmailed her before raping her repeatedly.
The 26-year-old has been hailed as a heroine for her actions by women’s groups in Turkey.
And then based on this CNN report uploaded to Youtube, the Turkish authorities STILL would not allow the woman to have an abortion, which she continued to express that she wanted to have.
I just looked up an update to the situation here (and had to google-translate the page) which says that Nevin Yildirim (the victim of rape) was forced to carry the child full term and gave birth in November. Unbelievable.
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Kurdish protesters clash with police in Turkey
October 31, 2012
Turkish police used tear gas and water cannons to disperse thousands of Kurdish protesters, who organized a rally in the southeastern city of Diyarbakir, demanding increased rights.
Demonstrators threw firebombs and stones at the police which caused many local residents to barricade themselves in their homes, preventing their children from going to school.
The rally began when thousands of angry Kurds marched to a prison in Diyarbakir in order to show their support for prisoners who went on hunger strike six weeks ago. They’re demanding the right to use the Kurdish language in Turkey’s education and legal systems, and an end to the solitary confinement of Abdullah Ocalan – the imprisoned leader of the Kurdish armed movement, the PKK.
Ocalan was sentenced to death in 1999, though that was later commuted to life imprisonment following the abolition of the death penalty in Turkey in 2002. Most of the prisoners on strike are serving time for alleged links to the PKK, who are deemed terrorists by Turkey and its Western allies.
Turkey’s government has tried to reconcile with members of the Kurdish minority, which makes up nearly 30 percent of the country’s population. However, activists who seek autonomy in the mostly Kurdish southeast say state concessions have not gone far enough.
The PKK has waged an armed campaign in southeast Turkey for more than 25 years, fighting to create an ethnic homeland for the Kurdish people.
