#OccupyGezi: Dispatches from Istanbul

“Imagine that there is a war happening in Times Square and there’s no news broadcast in the country about this. This is actually what’s happening now in Turkey…” – reporter for CNN International

ATLANTA, 3 June 2013 at 11:00 am EST for Distilled Magazine.

At Distilled Magazine, we have always insisted that events that happen in one part of the world can help us tell a broader story about who we are and where we are going as a global society.

Such is the case in Istanbul these last few days. As we described in our first piece covering the protests in Turkey, it all started with a small environmental occupation to save Istanbul’s last public park (Gezi Park) from becoming a shopping mall – the city’s 94th. The shopping mall, in the shape of military barracks, would hearken back to the original barracks that once stood in that location during the nation’s founding days (1930s shortly after the country’s founder, Ataturk, guided Turkey out of the wreckage of the Ottoman Empire).

Taksim Square on a dreary April day in

These barracks were demolished sometime in the 1940s, and the space turned over to one of Istanbul’s first football stadiums until the 1960s. Since then that space has been a park, and is held dearly by many Istanbullus, much in the way New Yorkers cherish Central Park or Londoners Hyde Park. These original protesters were dismissed as the usual tree-huggers, and when the government was pressed on the environmental consequences of their demolition of the park, they insisted that there will still be plenty of trees in that space – inside the shopping mall.

The protest movement, however, spread like wildfire once the police actively moved into the area to clear the protesters (much like the original Occupy Wall Street protest in Zucotti Park). On the 6th day, 30 out of Turkey’s 81 provinces had joined in these protests.

On Saturday, Prime Minister Erdoğan, the most visible target of the protesters’ ire, insisted that “Police were there yesterday, they’ll be on duty today and also tomorrow because Taksim Square cannot be an area where extremists are running wild”. He then went on to threaten that “if this is about staging a protest, about a social movement, I would … gather 200,000 where they gather 20, and where they gather 100,000, I would gather 1 million party supporters. Let’s not go down that road”.

The US and EU Commission have issued their standard response praising the value of peaceful protests in a functioning democracy, but have yet to reprimand Erdoğan and his ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP). Even the Syrian government has weighed in deploring the heavy-handed measures the Turkish government has taken against peaceful protestors!

The violence is extreme; tear gas directly fired into the crowd or fired from helicopters, use of plastic bullets (which caused two people to lose their eyes), etc.

Marchers along İstiklâl Caddesi, a main shopping street leading up to Taksim Sq.

United in Solidarity

To find out more about the situation in Turkey, I spoke with Muzaffer Kaşer, a PhD student at the University of Cambridge and former resident of Istanbul. Kaşer has participated previously in several May Day protests when he was working as a medical doctor.

According to Kaşer, these protests aren’t merely about some park. They are a fundamental reaction to Erdoğan and his way of governing. Whereas in previous protests, protesters wore labels and waved banners:socialists, Kurdish activists, trade unionists, Kemalists, etc. Because of the government’s heavy handed response to previous protests, these groups are more united in solidarity than ever before. Even the AKP’s attempts to reconcile with the Kurds (leading to the most recent five months of peace in Eastern Turkey) were not enough to prevent Kurds from coming out en masse to these protests.

These protests have engendered such a big tent that they have even incorporated anti-capitalist Muslims (who hold little sympathy to the pro-Muslim ruling party) and football supporters of all stripes (who many have perhaps prematurely blamed for inciting violence among the protesters).

A popular image on social media showing the various warring football tribes of Istanbul united as one.

Kaşer points out that the most surprising group of protestors for many Istanbullus, however, have been the cool, young professionals of Istanbul’s middle and upper class. For many observers seeing a pious muslim next to a secular socialist next to a football hooligan was not as big of a shock as seeing hipsters among the crowd!

It seems that for the environmental movement in Turkey, this most recent protest and not their earlier actions against the building of hydroelectric and nuclear power plants over the last several years may be their greatest legacy. Not only have the environmentalists united various warring factions in opposition, they’ve managed to be the spark that ignites a new generation of protesters out of apathy and into direct civic engagement.

As for Turkey’s military, Kaşer believes them to be a non-entity. Turkey since its inception has been a country where the military has been a fundamental institution and center of power (owing to Ataturk’s military background). Despite its intrinsic illiberal tendencies, many Turks have claimed that the military was the bulwark against religious zealots and instability (despite the military’s role in Turkey’s coups, including the most recent “postmodern” coup in 1997).

Turkish youth have been particularly averse to politics over the last 30 years. These Millenials were raised by a generation of parents that understood very well the consequences of protesting, having lived through the 1980 military coup d’etat. Many of the protesters today are children of people who were jailed or oppressed during that time in the early 1980s.

In any case, the level of political engagement among Turkey’s students and young professionals is unprecedented. As Deniz Duru Aydin (@durua) noted on Twitter “A generation that had been purposely raised as extremely apolitical has woken up. This is what Turkey gained.”

In 2007, Erdoğan fired several of Turkey’s top generals, accusing them of plotting yet another coup against his conservative religious Justive and Development Party. Since then, the remaining military brass has been slowly assimilated into the AKP. Kemalists, supporters of the military, are keen to position the military in favor of the protesters, but Kaşer insists that at this stage it is necessary to take reports of the military siding with protesters with a grain of salt. The protesters have declared that this is a civil movement, independent of the military and without any bonds to a group. They have emphatically declared “we are the people”.

Overwhelming Force and the Police State

To gain a clearer idea of the development of these protests, I spoke to Sinan Odabaşı, a licensed lawyer not practicing law but studying cinema at a university in Istanbul. He also writes a sports column every Friday.

Odabaşı, a veteran of several May Day and other protests since the mid-1990s, recounts that the Gezi Park protests were originally organized by the Taksim Solidarity (Taksim Dayanışması) committee starting last Sunday. At first there were only 10-20 people, but this number grew steadily each passing day until by Friday it had reached around 100 people. On Friday, between 4 and 4:30 am, the police began attacking the protesters, and developers began uprooting trees from the park.

By Saturday, there were hundreds of thousands of protesters in the Taksim area, the most he has ever seen in his life (even having attended major protests in the 1990s). By the time he left Saturday night at 9pm, thousands of people were still filing into the Taksim area from all around Istanbul.

Tear gas was shot from rifles and dropped from helicopters, meaning they were being used to cause significant bodily harm and not just as a deterrent. Sinan considers himself lucky: he had four canisters fall a behind him, in front of him, and to his sides, yet he escaped with no injuries.

For many outside observers, it’s not entirely clear what the protesters want. The original Taksim Solidarity committee merely wanted plans to raze Gezi park to be rejected, and still hold to this original demand. But many protesters have now taken to calling for the resignation of the government – a demands that must be tempered by the AKP’s significant support across the country, especially in Anatolia. The AKP even won a decisive victory the last election cycle with over 50% of the vote. Yet many critics still decry the AKP’s failure to adequately represent secular Turks.

The frustrations of the secular class in Turkey have recently come to fore with a law passed a little more than a week ago restricting the sale and distribution of alcohol. On top of that, Istanbullus have long been battling the destruction of entire neighborhoods and communities to accomodate the city’s increasingly rapid gentrification. The Taksim Solidarity committee that started the #OccupyGezi protest originated from a resistance movement against the demolition of an old theater hall in the Taksim area some months ago. Many of the core protesters today graduated from that resistance action.

Many Turks around the country are also frustrated by the government’s handling of the recent Reyhanlı bombings near the Syrian border, with the government desperately casting about for some external enemy. Adding to the frustration was a government mandated broadcast ban on coverage of these bombings issued by the Turkish TV Radio Council. As a result, more and more Turks are starting to believe that it was the government’s Syria policy that ultimately led to the bombing of their fellow citizens on their soil.

Despite these frustrations, what seems to really drive the protesters’ fury is a long-simmering tension between them and the police. These protesters are sick of the heavy-handed tactics of an increasingly authoritarian government and police, according to Odabaşı. The ostensibly democratic AKP government has long had a poor reputation in the international community for jailing journalists and exercising overwhelming force against protesters.

As for the police, Odabaşı describes how even minor altercations between schoolchildren in minor league football matches in Istanbul are now being handled through the use of teargas. Following this year’s May Day celebrations, the government banned public demonstrations in Taksim Square, and have used tear gas throughout the month of May to clear out demonstrators. For many residents of Istanbul, they feel that they have no say in their community, and that when they do speak up that they will be repressed by overwhelming force.

What is at stake?

Are protesters all over Turkey merely fighting over some green space and trees? Yes, but it’s much more than that. Gezi Park is a symbol of a way of life, one that is not dulled by the relentless pursuit of stuff for sale in a shopping mall, and enhanced by the freedom of not living in a militaristic police state. Gezi Park, since the start of these protests, has become a festival ground, a place where people from all walks of life in Istanbul and Turkey can meet and freely discuss the issues that face their community.

Gezi Park has become a symbol of a humanity that cannot be repressed.

Odabaşı insists that the critical days for the future of this movement have been yesterday and today, Monday. Today is a work day, and many worry that the protests will not survive the burdens of daily work life. But as long as the police continue using heavy-handed tactics, Odabaşı believes that the protests will continue in full force as a reaction to overwhelming force.

There were fewer people at Taksim Square and Gezi Park on Sunday. “They sang songs, shared food, clear the mess of the streets and Gezi Park which remained from the clashes from Friday and Saturday” remarks Odabaşı.

While Taksim square remained peaceful as of 11pm last night, the police again began attacking people around Beşiktaş at around 9pm. Sadly, Odabaşı notes, the mainstream media is still nowhere to be found as protests continue to spread throughout Istanbul and the rest of Turkey.

Yet, these protests shows us that the great gifts of liberalism and social cohesion are fragile, and that without constant vigilance it can easily be destroyed. Yet, these protests also show us that solidarity and community will ultimately resist and triumph over the drive toward authoritarianism.