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Who Are Turkey's Protesters? The View From Taksim Square

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  • Who Are Turkey's Protesters? The View From Taksim Square

    AL Monitor
    June 1 2013

    Who Are Turkey's Protesters? The View From Taksim Square

    By: Amberin Zaman for Al-Monitor Turkey Pulse Posted on June 1.

    An eyewitness report from Taksim Square in Istanbul.


    I was, in my capacity as a reporter, among the thousands of citizens
    who thronged the streets of central Istanbul on May 31 in what some
    are labeling `A Turkish Spring' and `A Turkish Occupy' movement. Other
    commentators have resorted to the lazy old clichés of `secularists
    versus Islamists.' Turkey's Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan
    insists they are "provocateurs."
    None of these capture the nature of protests that have engulfed the
    country. These began when police staged a predawn operation on May 31
    to disperse citizens who were demonstrating peacefully against a
    government-backed development project that would uproot dozens of
    trees in Taksim Square. The diversity of the protesters defies any
    such neat categorization.
    Destination Taksim

    It was close to 8 p.m. as I inched my way along Istiklal Avenue, one
    of the main commercial arteries leading up to the square. When I hit
    the historic Francophone Galatasaray Lycee, the crowds grew. I could
    barely move. Amid all the clapping and chanting, there was one common
    refrain, `Erdogan resign! Government resign!' Early on, I encountered
    a group of young men and women who were all wearing the same white and
    yellow masks to shield themselves from the acrid stench of tear gas
    that pierced the air. They said they worked for an advertising
    company. "Our boss printed special T-shirts for us and gave us the
    masks; he encouraged us to be here,' Selin Bayraktar told Al-Monitor.

    `Why would he do that?' I asked.

    `We initially joined the demonstrators to protect our trees, nothing
    political,' explained Bayraktar. But when Erdogan, `imperiously' waved
    aside their objections, declaring that the project would proceed,
    `something snapped,' she said. `We are not for or against any
    political party, we are against dictatorship, Erdogan is a dictator,
    write this if you dare.'

    Farther on, members of the main opposition Republican People's Party
    (CHP) linked arms to form a human chain. There may have been around
    50-60 of them. I couldn't quite tell, but they were a minority. Ilhan
    Cihaner, a CHP lawmaker, nodded at me bleary-eyed. `Pepper gas,' he
    said. `The protests will continue until the park is saved. But it's
    not just about the park, it's about this repressive regime: People are
    fed up. They have to go.' Never mind that CHP members on the city
    council voted in favor of the project. Time to move on.

    As I get closer to Taksim, the smoke thickens. I feel dizzy and my
    lungs begin to burn.

    The scenes are increasingly chaotic. Water cannons spray the crowd.
    Police in riot gear are dragging a man toward an armored van.

    `For me, it's only about the trees, nothing else. I voted for
    Erdogan,' piped up an unfazed 30-something housewife, her hair covered
    Islamic-style. `Destroying all the green space, where will my kids
    play? It's not right.' And her name? `No need,' she responded as a
    youth with a pierced nose and tattooed arms sprayed a milky liquid on
    her face.

    `It's for the tear gas,' he explained. His name was Mert and he was in
    his final year at the nearby German Lycee. Were his parents worried
    about him? `No, they support me. Look, we are talking about one and a
    half million trees.' What? Had he seen the park? It couldn't even fit
    a hundred, let alone a million. Disinformation, it seemed, was flowing
    as fast as the gas. He shrugged and continued to spray.

    Above the din, one slogan sounds awfully familiar: `Azatutyun,' the
    word for `freedom' in Armenian. It's being chanted by a handful of
    Istanbul Armenians who say they are taking part because they are
    opposed to the destruction of the park. `The park and all those hotels
    on top of an Armenian graveyard,' says a young woman I know called
    Melis Tantan.

    A slender girl with a headscarf and a knee length raincoat catches my
    attention. Her name is Busra Guney. The 17-year-old is in her final
    year at the nearby Kagithane clerical training school. `It's always
    about money, cutting trees for money, its not Islamic,' she says.

    Her words remind me that an Islamic group called Anti-Capitalist
    Muslims is also among the protesters, though I did not run into any.
    Their presence ought to worry Erdogan more than any other because, as
    they see things, AKP's embrace of cowboy capitalism runs roughshod not
    just over the environment but over Islamic principles as well.

    My overall impression, and it's commonly shared, is that the Taksim
    Park project has morphed into a vehicle for popular resentment against
    Erdogan's increasingly dismissive and authoritarian ways. Under a
    decade of AKP rule, Turkey has become the world's top jailer of
    journalists. Its interventionist policy in Syria is causing alarm. The
    systematic and disproportionate use of force against the slightest
    display of dissent obscures that the AKP was democratically elected
    and remains the most popular government in modern Turkish history.
    Yet, egged on by the slavishly self-censoring Turkish media, Erdogan
    seems increasingly out of touch.

    Be it through restrictions on alcohol or disregard for the
    environment, people who do not share Erdogan's worldview are being
    made to feel like second-class citizens. The sentiment is especially
    strong among the country's large Muslim Alevi minority whose
    long-running demands for recognition continue to be spurned much as
    they were by past governments.

    Hard-core secularists who massed in the district of Kadikoy, a CHP
    stronghold on the Asian side are keen to paint the protests as a
    backlash against the `Islamist' AKP. It's not just CHP supporters who
    feel their lifestyles are being infringed upon. Conscientious
    objectors, atheists and gays, almost anyone who falls outside the
    AKP'S conservative base is feeling squeezed. The majority, however,
    are sick of old-style politicians and their tired ideas. So where will
    they go? The question is growing ever more pressing in the run-up to
    nationwide local elections that are to be held next year.

    Erdogan's political fortunes hinge on how the government handles the
    crisis. Pulling back the police and allowing the crowds to gather on
    the second day was a step in the right direction.

    Turkey is not on the brink of a revolution. A Turkish Spring is not
    afoot. Erdogan is no dictator. He is a democratically elected leader
    who has been acting in an increasingly undemocratic way. And as
    Erdogan himself acknowledged, his fate will be decided at the ballot
    box, not in the streets.

    Amberin Zaman is an Istanbul-based writer who has covered Turkey for
    The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Daily Telegraph and
    the Voice of America. A frequent commentator on Turkish television,
    she is currently Turkey correspondent for The Economist, a position
    she has retained since 1999. On Twitter: @amberinzaman

    http://www.al-monitor.com/pulse/originals/2013/06/istanbul-protests-who-are-protesters-turkey.html

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