“No matter what you do, we have reached a decision for Gezi Park and we will do it.”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan -Turkish PM, 31.05.2013
On 28th of May a demolishing plant has arrived to Gezi Park, Taksim starting an objected intervention, an operation against the will of the people. The plan was simple: A Shopping Mall was going to be constructed to Gezi Park, to the last green area of the central Istanbul and hence the park was going to be replaced yet with another site of buildings.
5 trees were ripped out that day. A group of environmentalists around 50 in the park stood against demolishers in order to prevent the operation; in fact they have succeeded and the number of the demonstrators in the park has grown within hours. They brought their children, tents, books and blankets to guard the green and started a peaceful protest which lasted 2 days.
On 31st of May early in the morning, precisely on 5 a.m., the riot police unexpectedly raided Gezi Park and interfered with pepper gas, water cannons, and set fire to the tents. It was an excessive attack against unarmed civilians, which had no proper reflections on the mainstream media; instead the news were spread by the social media, mainly via twitter and facebook. Unlimited flow of information through social media affected the range of the protests and everything expanded beyond the borders of Istanbul including the capital Ankara and Izmir.
Actually social media became the main source of information and communication during this resistance. It is indeed a resistance now, because neither the riot police, nor the government has tolerance for the rightful, democratic protests or any kind of expression against dominant vision and ideology. Excessive violence of the riot police has increased day by day in Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir on the one hand, and on the other, Turkish people for the first time in so many years have united despite their differences, raised their voices and stood up against the authoritarian acts as one, as solely civil. So basically while the riot police kept its excessive operations against demonstrators, the Gezi Park protests has transformed into something wider, bigger and something more than protecting the green.
“…Hopefully AKM (Ataturk Culture Center at Taksim) will be demolished and yes we will also construct a mosque to Taksim… I will stress clearly, we will not allow a few looters (çapulcu) to agitate the people with inaccurate information…”
Recep Tayyip Erdogan -Turkish PM, 02.06.2013
Interventions of the riot police continued until June 3rd and afterwards everything became peaceful once again when the police forces were told to stand back. In the meantime Erdogan kept his harsh sentiments and this time named the demonstrators as marginals and vandals, yet collective violence has not started till 11th of June. On June 11th a massive and excessive gas and water cannon operation was held on Taksim Square against civilians in a brutal and inhuman manner right after the Governor’s safety assurance to demonstrators. Moreover on the very same day 49 lawyers were taken into custody after a sudden raid to Caglayan Judiciary, who have been supporting and representing the arrested demonstrators.
What has happened in these two weeks constitute not only a Turkish civilian resistance, but an example of a societal explosion against increasing authoritarian and populist governance of Erdogan and his ruling party. Tayyip Erdogan – as it can be seen at the quotations above – gained a rigorous and rough character especially for the past 2 years, with reflections of a ”one-man governance” that directly lead to critics over AKP’s (Erdogan’s ruling party) lack of party democracy. This movement is about a prime minister who divides his own people, names them as looters and refuses to see any kind of request or expression against his decisions or beliefs and moreover a system in which all social and non-governmental oppositions are limited, media is controlled and manipulated, secularism is threatened and finally personal lives of the people are intermeddled. Such issues have brought the Turkish people to their limits and the resistance is precisely a mobility of such explosion for democracy and civil rights which was evolved by its own dynamics.
International media and their effects in this process were and still are very much crucial. As aforementioned during this process Turkish mainstream media was either biased or in complete blackout. Many Turks have started to trace the events from various international media sources. Turkish resistance owes a lot to social and global media.
As a result, after two weeks of resistance in various cities of Turkey; 4 people died, 7478 injured with the inclusion of 55 heavy injuries and 10 people lost their eye.
Still everyone keeps “Chapulling”.
