Taxim Square

Many of you may be interested in my views and experience with the protests in Turkey in June.

In case you didn’t see it all over the news, here’s a quick recap of what happened. The protests began as a peaceful opposition to tearing down one of the last green spaces in Istanbul, Gezi Park, in order to build a new shopping mall. Then, the police became involved and used harsh chemicals and violence to stop the protest. This overreaction on the police’s part made the people of Turkey even more willing to protest. It turned from a peaceful park destruction protest, to a protest of the government and the current Prime Minister, Recep Erdoğan. After a week or so of violence, it calmed down. They even opened the park up to protesters and stayed like that for a few days, then it turned to hell again. I was actually able to go into Taxim Square and see Gezi Park (pictures later on).

Thankfully we left Istanbul to go to the Mediterranean Sea for vacation the day before the protests started. But once they started it was all over the news. Every channel must have had it on, showing everyone’s views: the police, protesters of all ages, and going over Instagram and Twitter updates of the protests. #occupygezi became a very popular hashtag on both Instagram and Twitter, as actual protesters would give real information, as opposed to the news altering it to make it look the way they want. Other protests, against the government, started popping up around every major city in Turkey, including the capital, Ankara, where the protests became very violent. Süleyman told me that many of the smaller, less violent protests were mainly because students wanted to avoid taking exams.

Most of the protesters were simply protecting themselves when they threw back the tear gas cannons that were shot at them. But when another group came into the picture, one thought to be the same group that attacked the American Embassy in Ankara, they would make and attack the police with Molotov cocktail bombs.

WARNING DISTURBING PICTURES: Here is a link to a very raw tumblr page full of pictures from #occupygezi. Be warned, it is gruesome and disturbing.

The following are pictures from my own experience in Taxim Square, after it had mostly calmed down.

 Here is a large group of people, hearing about the people killed in the protests. Some people were wearing pictures of the victims over their faces.

 There were lines of police buses and many police officers behind a line, waiting for any suspicious activity.

 This building is the Ataturk Cultural Center, or AKM, was an important symbol during the protests. Apparently the government was planning on demolishing the building and building a new one in its place. AKM is a symbol of the Ataturk, and many citizens are highly patriotic, hated the idea of destroying a symbol of the man who changed their country. Protesters climbed to the roof, hung flags and painted the windows.

 “Standing Man” was such a strong symbol during the protests. He silently and calmly stood, staring at the AKM for hours, before being forced to leave. He almost instantly became a viral hit, and many people joined him.

 Here are a few participants representing Standing Man. The woman on the left is facing Gezi Park, while the majority of the people are facing AKM.

 These two men show their pride for their country by waving the Turkish flag, and a modified flag with the Ataturk’s picture overlaying it.

 (photo credit) We ran into our own tension with the police. We went down to the Bosporus River to pick up a few friends who had arrived by boat, and we saw massive amounts of police officers running into Taxim Square and many slowly walking out, exhausted. We asked one of the police officers leaving Taxim Square about open roads and he could barely answer he was so exhausted. This was a terrible example of how the police weren’t very happy about the situation either, they were simply following orders.

 (photo credit) It wasn’t just protesters being attacked. Innocent people, and animals, not involved were injured as well. I even heard of a veterinarian who held a free clinic for injured animals of the attacks.

 (photo credit) This woman in red also became an iconic symbol of never letting down.

 Here is Taxim’s pedestrian shopping area, absolutely full of people, which was such a wonderful view for me, after seeing all of the violence on the television.

 Many of the businesses offered help and free water to protesters, especially after getting the chemicals in their eyes. But there were a few that refused to help. Most of those businesses were attacked by the protesters, as well as a few American businesses (for some reason), such as Starbucks and this Levi’s, which had cracks in the windows, like someone had thrown a large rock at it.

 This was another wonderful site for me to see. I have talked about the trolley before, how it does up and down Taxim and on the weekends, there is an extra car with a band on it. This particular weekend, we saw a wonderful LGBT pride band. They handed out posters with the LGBT rainbow flag on them and invited everyone to join them in a protest later on in the weekend. Turkey is about 99% Muslim, and in Islam it is a sin to be homosexual. While Turkey is not the most conservative country, especially not in Istanbul, it still has a lot of resistance to this group of people. They were very brave to go out in public singing about LGBT and being proud.

According to my family and friends, when they saw the protest on their news channels, it was overblown to look like another Arab Spring, like another revolution that would completely change Turkey’s future. This will definitely change Turkey’s future, but in a good way. This protest and violence shows that the people do have the power, not the government, and if they people want to change something they can and they will. It really is horrible that people had to lose their lives in order to prove a point to the government, but it will be better down the road. The government will learn from this and will change soon, I hope.

This is all of the information I have right now, but I can add more information as I find it, including pictures.

http://globalpublicsquare.blogs.cnn.com/2013/06/14/why-turkey-protests-are-a-good-thing/