{"id":29551,"date":"2013-06-03T12:00:01","date_gmt":"2013-06-03T11:00:01","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/?p=29551"},"modified":"2015-05-06T12:52:59","modified_gmt":"2015-05-06T11:52:59","slug":"who-are-turkeys-protesters-the-view-from-taksim-square","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/2013\/06\/who-are-turkeys-protesters-the-view-from-taksim-square\/","title":{"rendered":"Who Are Turkey\u2019s Protesters? The View from Taksim Square"},"content":{"rendered":"

I was, in my capacity as a reporter, among the thousands of citizens who thronged the streets of central Istanbul on May 31 [2013] in what some are labeling \u201cA Turkish Spring\u201d and \u201cA Turkish Occupy\u201d movement. Other commentators have resorted to the lazy old clich\u00e9s of \u201csecularists versus Islamists<\/a>.\u201d\u00a0\u00a0Turkey\u2019s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan<\/a> insists they are “provocateurs.”<\/p>\n

None of these capture the nature of protests<\/a> 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.<\/p>\n

Destination Taksim<\/b><\/p>\n

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, \u201cErdogan resign! Government resign!\u201d\u00a0 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,\u201d Selin Bayraktar told Al-Monitor<\/i>.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhy would he do that?\u201d I asked.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe initially joined the demonstrators to protect our trees, nothing political,\u201d explained Bayraktar. But when Erdogan, \u201cimperiously\u201d waved aside their objections, declaring that the project would proceed, \u201csomething snapped,\u201d she said. \u201cWe are not for or against any political party, we are against dictatorship, Erdogan is a dictator, write this if you dare.\u201d<\/p>\n

Farther on, members of the main opposition Republican People\u2019s Party<\/a> (CHP) linked arms to form a human chain. There may have been around 50-60 of them. I couldn\u2019t quite tell, but they were a minority. Ilhan Cihaner, a CHP lawmaker, nodded at me bleary-eyed. \u201cPepper gas,\u201d he said. \u201cThe 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.\u201d Never mind that CHP members on the city council voted in favor of the project. Time to move on.<\/p>\n

As I get closer to Taksim, the smoke thickens. I feel dizzy and my lungs begin to burn.<\/p>\n

The scenes are increasingly chaotic. Water cannons spray the crowd. Police in riot gear are dragging a man toward an armored van.<\/p>\n

\u201cFor me, it’s only about the trees, nothing else. I voted for Erdogan,\u201d piped up an unfazed 30-something housewife, her hair covered Islamic-style. \u201cDestroying all the green space, where will my kids play? It’s not right.\u201d And her name? \u201cNo need,\u201d she responded as a youth with a pierced nose and tattooed arms sprayed a milky liquid on her face.<\/p>\n

\u201cIt’s for the tear gas,\u201d he explained. His name was Mert and he was in his final year at the nearby German Lycee. Were his parents worried about him? \u201cNo, they support me. Look, we are talking about one and a half million trees.\u201d What? Had he seen the park? It couldn\u2019t even fit a hundred, let alone a million. Disinformation, it seemed, was flowing as fast as the gas. He shrugged and continued to spray.<\/p>\n

Above the din, one slogan sounds awfully familiar: <\/i>\u201cAzatutyun,\u201d the word for \u201cfreedom\u201d 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. \u201cThe park and all those hotels on top of an Armenian graveyard,\u201d says a young woman I know\u00a0called Melis Tantan.<\/p>\n

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. \u201cIt’s always about money, cutting trees for money, its not Islamic,\u201d she says.<\/p>\n

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\u2019s embrace of cowboy capitalism runs roughshod not just over the environment but over Islamic principles as well.<\/p>\n

My overall impression, and it\u2019s commonly shared, is that the Taksim Park project has morphed into a vehicle for popular resentment against Erdogan\u2019s increasingly dismissive and authoritarian ways. Under a decade of AKP rule, Turkey has become the world\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

Be it through restrictions on alcohol<\/a> or disregard for the environment, people who do not share Erdogan\u2019s worldview are being made to feel like second-class citizens. The sentiment is especially strong among the country\u2019s large Muslim Alevi minority<\/a> whose long-running demands for recognition continue to be spurned much as they were by past governments.<\/p>\n

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 \u201cIslamist\u201d 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\u2019S 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.<\/p>\n

Erdogan\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n

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<\/a>, his fate will be decided at the ballot box, not in the streets.<\/p>\n

______________________________<\/p>\n

Amberin Zaman<\/i> is an Istanbul-based writer who has covered Turkey for <\/i>The Washington Post, <\/i>The Los Angeles Times, <\/i>The Daily Telegraph and <\/i>the Voice of America. A frequent commentator on Turkish television, she is currently Turkey correspondent for\u00a0<\/i>The Economist, a position she has retained since 1999.<\/i><\/p>\n

Go to Original \u2013 al-monitor.com<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I was, in my capacity as a reporter, among the thousands of citizens who thronged the streets of central Istanbul on May 31 [2013] in what some are labeling \u201cA Turkish Spring\u201d and \u201cA Turkish Occupy\u201d movement. The Taksim Park project has morphed into a vehicle for popular resentment against Erdogan\u2019s increasingly dismissive and authoritarian ways. Under a decade of AKP rule, Turkey has become the world\u2019s top jailer of journalists.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[58,45,59,66],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-29551","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","category-activism","category-nonviolence","category-middle-east-north-africa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29551","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29551"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29551\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29551"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29551"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.transcend.org\/tms\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29551"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}