Hello friends! It’s been awhile since I’ve blogged, and
that’s because the last six weeks have been a flurry of activity – we spent a
week in Ankara wrapping up my hubby’s green-card application and when we
returned to Istanbul, it was time to sell our furniture and pack our things in
preparation for a June 1 move-out date. Since then, we’ve been traveling around
Turkey, visiting various relatives, and Internet in some places has been scarce.
So it’s a little late, but I wanted to talk about Gezi
Park again. The international media has moved on to Egypt (a coup being
ironically a godsend for Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan) and the national television media from
the beginning has barely covered the protests, so admittedly, it’s been a
little hard to know what’s going on. Now that we’re not in Istanbul, it’s like
the whole thing never happened – aside from the occasional graffiti, there are no
signs that anything in this country is amiss. It’s just…weird.
The biggest development in recent days is that Gezi Park was reopened to the public. I believe it is generally open now, though we have not been in Istanbul since before then, so I can't be sure. On our last day in the city, we passed by Taksim Square and could see
construction workers busily beautifying the park. Word is that the municipality
planted flowers and trees, but the biggest change that I could see (from the outside
– no one was allowed in at that point) was that they created a grassy slope on
one side, a definite improvement giving better access to Gezi Park.
But it’s also
very weird – there’s that word again. I mean, the prime minister wanted
(wants?) to rebuild these old military barracks on the site and not once has he,
arguably the sole holder of any real power in this country, acknowledged the
validity of the protesters’ concerns. In fact, he continues to lecture on how
very wrong everyone else has been. And thus, the government chose to improve
the park? I almost feel like I’m living in Alice in Wonderland – it’s hard to
explain, but it’s like they’re trying to confuse the issue, acting as if they
always meant to improve the park, and the protests were just these little anarchistic
acts perpetrated by marginal groups. But I was there, and that’s not what
happened. An estimated 2.5 million people across Turkey, in something like 80
cities, came out in support of the Gezi Park protests, and they came out
despite the tear gas and water cannons and police blockades. They’ve been
ordinary people, and they weren’t bused in/fed/coerced to show up as was seen with the AKP’s recent rallies.
Things had seemingly settled down at the end of May,
after the police cleared the park and surrounding area. As I mentioned before,
everyone felt really angry, but without being able to gather in Taksim, the protests seemed to lose steam. There was never one group organizing the
protests, so there was no one to re-organize the protests. I was in Taksim at
the end of May, on two subsequent days, and there wasn’t a lot going on. The
first night, June 25, the police had physically ringed the monument and Taksim
Square, presumably to block people from putting up banners on the monument and
from continuing the Standing Man protests in the square. The friend I was with that night wrote an interesting column about how protests like this force the police into "dilemma actions" -- in other words, into absurdity.
But other than that, people were going about their business; there had been a march an hour or so earlier, and some of the marchers were hanging around, but that was it.
The next day, I was there in the afternoon, and although there was still a large police presence, nothing was happening. The only form of protest I could see was a few “standing men” at the end of the square, looking up at the large portrait of Ataturk hanging down from the cultural center.
The story of Ali Korkmaz brings up one of the most
disturbing things about the Gezi Park protests, and that is the violence that has been perpetrated against the protesters, or anyone seen as not supporting the AKP. The horrible stories spread around by government officials of protesters assaulting women in headscarves, cavorting in a mosque with alcohol or violently attacking the police have mostly been proven untrue. Protesters have thrown rocks, certainly, but it hasn't been proven that they were the wielders of Molotov cocktails, and anyway, most people believe those men were undercover police. But acts of violence against protesters? The tear gas and water cannons are one thing, but protesters are also being physically attacked by those who don't support the cause. I have read about some awful things, none of which have been disproved. In my last post, I mentioned how participants in a Gezi Park group meeting in a park were attacked, and the attack was allegedly led by the neighborhood's headman. Last night, shop owners threatened protesters with wood batons. My friend has told me of watching from her window protesters being attacked with rocks. I also read the story of a friend's friend on Facebook -- a less reputable source, of course -- who attended a press event for another urban project as an accredited journalist, was harassed by the project's supporters, and then had her press pass circulated on Twitter with the allegation that she is a foreign spy. There's also video footage of a man chasing people with a machete and then kicking a woman -- but the police ultimately let him go, and he fled to Morocco.
What the hell is going on here? And where is the international media? As usual, stay tuned...I still can't say where this is all going.
