Turkey: “You are beautiful when you are angry”

Turkey is fac­ing the fiercest anti-gov­ern­ment move­ment of its his­to­ry. It is described as a his­tor­i­cal union of peo­ple, as it unites sec­u­lar nation­al­ists, Kemal­ists, rev­o­lu­tion­ary social­ists, Kurds, labour unions, stu­dents, rival foot­ball team sup­port­ers, house­wives, young and old peo­ple. A week has passed since the protests begun. Today, one of Turkey’s big trade unions declared a two-day strike, to demon­strate their sup­port of the grass­roots move­ment in Turkey and to protest against the vio­lent police inter­ven­tion against unarmed citizens.

“Turkey: You are beau­ti­ful when you are angry”: Cov­er of the week­ly humor mag­a­zine Penguen.

The Gezi Park protests in Taksim spreading nationwide

Gezi Park, known as the last green spot of Istan­bul, was occu­pied by hun­dreds of peo­ple oppos­ing the urban rede­vel­op­ment plan includ­ing the demol­ish­ing of the park and con­struc­tion of a shop­ping mall instead. Occu­py-style protests began on 27 May. Pro­tes­tors were play­ing gui­tars, read­ing books, and basi­cal­ly “hang­ing out” in the park. The reac­tion of the police was exces­sive, ear­ly in the morn­ing when peo­ple were sleep­ing, set­ting their tents on fire, show­er­ing peo­ple with pep­per spray and teargas.

Soon after, the park was occu­pied again. This time more crowd­ed with the back­ing of some celebri­ties, authors, and musi­cians. As the police dis­persed the peo­ple with heavy-hand­ed meth­ods, protests just esca­lat­ed. This time, thou­sands of peo­ple with diverse back­grounds gath­ered in the famous square of Tak­sim. Simul­ta­ne­ous gath­er­ings occurred nation­wide, main­ly in the cap­i­tal Ankara, Izmir, Eskise­hir, and Antalya.

Sup­port­ers of the Nation­al­ist Move­ment Par­ty and Social­ist Par­ty next to each oth­er. These two groups of peo­ple have known to be rivals (pho­to: Yunus Emre Sel, DHA)

Viva Social Media

Many com­plained about the media ignor­ing the grow­ing protests. CNN Turk was espe­cial­ly crit­i­cized as the chan­nel was broad­cast­ing a doc­u­men­tary on pen­guins the night that the streets of many cities were turned into a bat­tle­field between pro­tes­tors and the police. 

Polit­i­cal pres­sure on the media has been heavy the last cou­ple of years in Turkey. The coun­try is known to be one of the largest pris­ons for media.

So it was no sur­prise that social media became the source of infor­ma­tion and knowl­edge. Peo­ple have been tweet­ing from the streets, pub­lish­ing pho­tos, exchang­ing vol­un­teer doc­tor and lawyer con­tacts for the pro­tes­tors, and pok­ing the offi­cial Twit­ter accounts of the main­stream TV chan­nels for their ignorance.

Bus­es from Turk­ish news chan­nel NTV have been the tar­get of pro­tes­tors for neglect­ing to cov­er the demon­stra­tions. (Pho­to from Diren Gezi Park (Occu­py Gezi Park) Face­book page.)

Con­cern­ing the issues, Turkey’s prime min­is­ter Recep Tayyip Erdo­gan blamed the oppo­si­tion­al par­ty for pro­vok­ing the mass­es, and lashed out at the role of social media in help­ing orga­nize and co-ordi­nate ral­lies. “And now we have this men­ace called Twit­ter,” said Erdo­gan in an inter­view with Haber­turk Sun­day evening. In the after­math of Erdogan’s speech, 25 peo­ple were detained in Izmir because of their tweets, on the grounds of spread­ing “mis­lead­ing and libelous infor­ma­tion”, Ana­to­lia news agency reported.

A graf­fi­ti from Istanbul.

Although the prime min­is­ter, who is on a polit­i­cal trip to Moroc­co, has not tak­en a step beck, deputy prime min­is­ter Bulent Arinc apol­o­gized on Tues­day “for the police aggres­sion against our cit­i­zens who were involved in the ini­tial protests and act­ed with envi­ron­men­tal con­cern,” as Anadolu news agency report­ed. He said secu­ri­ty forces had been ordered to only use gas in self-defense. Yet, the mass­es have not calmed down. It is obvi­ous that the demands are no longer mere­ly about the Gezi Park or the urban rede­vel­op­ment plan of Istan­bul. Pro­tes­tors keep say­ing it loud­er that it is more about democ­ra­cy and the free­dom of speech, free­dom of lifestyle.

Here is an inter­view with a pro­tes­tor, the well known actor Mehmet Ali Alab­o­ra on CNN International.

Invasion of the Private Sphere, Bodies, Thoughts, Tweets

Erdo­gan’s Jus­tice and Devel­op­ment Par­ty (AKP) is pop­u­lar with con­ser­v­a­tive Islam­ic politi­cians and vot­ers in Turkey. It has won three suc­ces­sive par­lia­men­tary elec­tions, gain­ing almost 50% of the vote in 2011. Polit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty has been accom­pa­nied by eco­nom­ic growth. Accord­ing to gov­ern­men­tal sta­tis­tics, “Turkey is expect­ed to be the fastest grow­ing econ­o­my of the OECD mem­bers dur­ing 2012–2017, with an annu­al aver­age growth rate of 5.2 per­cent.” In oth­er words, Turkey does not have a seri­ous finan­cial bag­gage like its Euro­pean neigh­bors. Of course, one should check how this growth affects the every­day life of cit­i­zens. Researchers draw atten­tion to region­al and gen­der dis­par­i­ties con­cern­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of the wealth.

Protests in Eskise­hir, Turkey (pho­to: showdiscontent.com)

Yet, do the con­fi­dence of the par­lia­men­tary major­i­ty of the rul­ing AKP and the eco­nom­ic growth mean that the gov­ern­ment can play the three mon­keys (not hear­ing, speak­ing, see­ing) when faced with society’s demands? Last year, Erdo­gan pro­voked out­rage when he likened abor­tion to mur­der. Only a month ago, a Turk­ish court con­vict­ed pianist and com­pos­er Fazil Say of blas­phe­my and incit­ing hatred over a series of com­ments he made on Twit­ter last year. More recent­ly, Turkey’s par­lia­ment passed leg­is­la­tion curb­ing alco­hol sales and adver­tis­ing.

What we see today on the streets of Turkey is a group that is heav­i­ly con­cerned about their per­son­al space where they think and act freely. They are angry at the way that the author­i­ties try to label them as mar­gin­al or a mem­ber of an orga­nized unit. I guess one of the best insid­er com­ments is from a bisex­u­al blog­ger:

We ran and stood, aid­ed or got aid, side by side with peo­ple who would get dis­gust­ed by my sex­u­al pref­er­ences, who would con­demn me for my reli­gious view or crit­i­cize me for my polit­i­cal opin­ions, because we have one com­mon qual­i­ty, we are still HUMAN.

Despite the soft­en­ing reac­tion of gov­ern­ment mem­bers (except the prime min­is­ter him­self, who seems to be the direct tar­get of the protests), resis­tance is still on. Peo­ple are wait­ing for an offi­cial guar­an­tee of the abol­ish­ment of the rede­vel­op­ment plan of Gezi Park, legal action on the exces­sive and abu­sive police inter­ven­tion and fur­ther actions to ensure the free­dom of speech.

It is impor­tant to remem­ber that it all start­ed with pro­tect­ing the trees. It was a bunch of young peo­ple occu­py­ing their last green spot in the city of Istan­bul. It is too ear­ly to com­pare the hap­pen­ings to the Arab Spring. It is more like an awak­en­ing and sweep­ing away of the fear to raise a voice against the unjust. What Turkey is wit­ness­ing today is, apart from cer­tain groups that have a clear polit­i­cal agen­da, a uni­ty of peo­ple who are basi­cal­ly offend­ed by not being heard, get­ting beat­en by the police force, and being psy­cho­log­i­cal­ly sup­pressed. What is hap­pen­ing in Turkey indi­cates people’s con­cern about free­dom. It should not be mere­ly cap­tured with­in the polar­iza­tion of the sec­u­lar­ists and the Islamism. As the well-known jour­nal­ist and lawyer Özgür Mum­cu wrote in his col­umn on Radikal on June 3, there is no need to seek con­spir­a­cy the­o­ries behind the most spon­ta­neous upris­ing of Turkey. The rea­son is the arro­gant stance of the peo­ple in pow­er who do not want to lis­ten to the demands of the cit­i­zens. Peo­ple are fed up being sup­pressed each time they want to pub­li­cal­ly crit­i­cize the gov­ern­ment or dis­play dis­con­tent of cer­tain poli­cies. It’s as sim­ple as this. 

Remem­ber­ing the famous line from the poet Naz­im Hikmet:

To live! Like a tree alone and free
Like a for­est in brotherhood