#occupyturkey

Why do we resist

It should be known by all that the recent Taksim protests started as a simple and peaceful sit-in action in the Taksim Gezi Park, organized by a few environmentalist groups. They were inspired by the famous #occupy movement. Taksim Gezi Park is today the only Park left in this core district of Istanbul.

Recently the Istanbul Metropolitan Municipality declared their decision to redesign Taksim Square neighboring the Gezi Park, which is not only the biggest square in the city but also bears a significant symbolic meaning related to the history of political activism in Turkey. The municipality wants to build a shopping mall (there are already 93 of them built in the recent years in Istanbul) on the site where we today call Taksim Gezi Park.

It ought to be stressed once again: The entire action had actually started as a small sized peaceful protest. But that was until police intervened brutally. For two consecutive nights, they attacked the peaceful protesters with excessive amounts of tear gas (gas-grenade-throwers aimed directly on individuals) and water cannons just because they refused to surrender the park.

The mainstream media coverage was strongly biased with misleading headlines, not to mention that there was almost a complete media-blackout on the issue: ‘’Marginal groups clashed with police, disturbing the public peace’’ 

On the 4th day of the sit-in people reacted with anger because of the police brutality that started early in the morning. Police continued their malicious use of tear gas the entire day but the crowd got only bigger by every passing hour thanks to ordinary citizens standing up. Police started losing ground. By the Saturday afternoon June the 1st they started pulling back from the Square. But it didn’t simply end.

Shortly news arrived that many protesters in other districts of the city and even the ones leaving the square were again attacked by the police and got spammed by tear gas. The excessive use of tear gas was so absurdly drastic that they were compelled to use expired material after a while because of ammo shortages. It is still going on for almost 72 hours straight since protesters in Istanbul and other cities simply refuse to give ground and continue to resist.

At the moment it is no longer a small environmentalist protest. It is now about ordinary people having had enough of an arrogant government, violations of democratic rights, lack of accountability in governmental matters, arbitrariness in the legislative, recent state interventions on “public morality”, police brutality and a patronizing, cocky prime minister, namely Recep Tayyip Erdogan.

The most significant quality of #occupygezi protests is its participants. Many of them are middle class citizens who used to have no political engagement at all. Yet the crowd is very diverse; there are leftists, liberals, Kurdish political activists, nationalists, Muslim activists, members of the Christian minorities, the LGBT community, students, professionals, workers, prostitutes, elderly people and so on. In short, individuals who were raised in an politically apathetic fashion decided to take action and raise their voices. These people are simply fed up with a moral whoring government that aims to engineer a “youth” consisting of conservative, non-smoking, non-drinking, hard-working, consumerist citizens (Erdogan’s own words).

As of June the 3rd, 3 o’clock a.m. people still resist the police brutality in Taksim, Harbiye and Besiktas as well as several other neighborhoods of Istanbul and in many other cities.

At that moment no one can make clear guess about how the clashes will but the government should better bear in mind that Istanbul has up to 20 million residents and not near enough policemen to beat a fraction of that.

PM Erdogan has been clearly provoking the people by his divisive tongue during his last public statements and spreading hatred among the citizens. He held two speeches over the weekend and both times his entire message could be summed up in two words: “No compromise.” 

His crippled and antiquated understanding of democracy only comprises the general and local election campaigns held every four years, any kind of public debate and democratic participation between the elections being neglected.

The AKP government has had the absolute majority in the parliament over the last three terms, having finally acquired 50% of the votes during the 2010 general election. Today, they feel no obligation to pay attention to the views of any kind of opposition. They don’t even feel obliged to properly explain their projects and discuss them with the public.

In sum, no one questions the democratic means by which they came to power but rather the way they exercise it.

We are civilians, we are citizens and we resist!

Against all kinds of discrimination and oppression, for democracy and fraternity!