What is Happening in Istanbul?
defnesumanblogs.com
defnesumanblogs.com
It's now a full blown anti-government riot. The park issue was just the last straw that set it off.
The original poster was telling the truth now stop arguing about shopping malls.
*Yes, I know how sad of a question that is.
Despite what people on reddit, and other fringe internet forums would have you believe, The United States has some of the strongest personal liberties in the world.
In most jurisdictions, it's illegal to wear a gas mask during a protest. The ostensible logic for this is that they, as with all masks, obscure the face and hinder personal identification by police (which we'd call "internal security forces" if it were Turkey or China or someplace).
If you're caught wearing one during a protest, you can be arrested ipso facto, and it will be confiscated and not returned to you, and you'll be subject to legal penalties merely for wearing it.
Adorable. Try actually exercising them and get back to us.
I must disagree. Any government that would prohibit free agriculture is already on the road to tyranny. Every dictatorship, no matter its form, allows for the existence of some personal liberties as it limits the rest.
> The military has been handing out gas masks to civilians and there is a video of then getting into verbal arguments with the police. Although the gendarme look as if they are in with the government the majority of the military look as if they're going to sit this one out while quietly supporting the protests.
Knock yourself out.
You, as far as I gathered, and probably depending on state etc, have a constitutional right to arm yourself to the teeth; somehow, gas masks seem a bit trivial compared to rifles.
http://www.zaman.com.tr/ Democratic, Islamic, Liberal ENGLISH: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
http://www.posta.com.tr/ Populism
http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/anasayfa/ Nationalism, Kemalist, Centre-Right ENGLISH: http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
http://www.sabah.com.tr/ Liberal Conservatism, Center-Right
http://www.sozcu.com.tr/ Nationalism, Kemalism, Secular
http://www.milliyet.com.tr/AnaSayfa/ Kemalist, Nationalist, Secular, Center-Left
http://www.haberturk.com/ Nationalism, Conservatism, Right-Wing
http://www.turkiyegazetesi.com/ Conservatism, Right-Wing
http://www.stargazete.com/ Liberal Conservatism, Center-Right
http://www.gazetevatan.com/root.asp Kemalist, Nationalist, Secular
http://www.bugun.com.tr/ Conservative-Democrat, Nationalism, Center-Right
http://www.takvim.com.tr/ Center-Right
http://www.aksam.com.tr/ Center-Left
http://yenisafak.com.tr Islamism, Conservatism, Right-Wing
edit: added some English links above. Also http://www.goodmorningturkey.com/
Ideology that Kemalism brings defines the fundamental principles of Turkish Republic.
The bridge pictures here appear to be legit. http://www.rightnow.io/breaking-news/turkey_bn_1369752659185...
Perhaps it is a popular crossing that gets filled up whenever major events are happening?
EDIT: it looks to me that at the beginning of the video you can spot the feet of another person behind him.
But even in the event they did not see them, you just don't drive a tank against a barrier where you don't know if there are people or not.
There is slow motion on youtube?
"Erdogan’s vision of Turkey is one full of citizens who piously pray in the country’s ubiquitous mosques and then go shopping at one of its equally ubiquitous malls, which are frantically being built in urban areas.
As long as the imports, credit card, and debt-driven Turkish economic bubble remains intact, the government will continue to pursue these and other neoliberal policies to the great praise of western think-thanks, private equity firms, and politicians who all repeat the fallacy of the ‘Turkish [success] model’.
Notwithstanding these neoliberal economic policies, Erdogan is still extremely popular among Turkey’s poor and working people in both urban and rural areas. Most western observers have missed this crucial fact and are, therefore, quick to enthusiastically compare the Gezi Park protests with the ‘Arab Spring’.
One has only to speak with blue-collar workers in Turkey to understand popular attitudes toward the government. Whenever I am in Istanbul, I engage in political small talk with people from various walks of life, including waiters, construction workers, and young men working on the ferries crossing the Bosporus. I also frequently visit my family members, who are from a poor Anatolian background.
In my conversations with these people, I have heard nothing but firm support for Erdogan. When asked about Turkey’s unemployment rate or the Prime Minister’s nepotism, most of these individuals do not hesitate to say, “I know that Erdogan is also ‘siphoning the cash’ (hortumluyorlar). But good for him (helal olsun). At least he is leaving us some crumbs. The previous bastards never gave us everything.” Memories of many decades of economic and political oppression by secular elites are still fresh for many Turks. Because of the AKP, these people now have access to things like privatized health care, credit card use, and unprecedented infrastructure development."
http://muftah.org/why-the-gezi-park-protests-do-not-herald-a...
What puzzle me the most, is the voluntary cooperation of the media with the government. Even if the media does not support this event, how they not cover it at all? sad, I always thought of Turkey as the most successful example of a Muslim democratic state.
Whilst the constitution makes the country ostensibly secular, the AKP has been slowly turning it into an Islamist state. I assumed that's what was fundamentally behind the protests, but maybe it's just another anti-corporate thing.
If you recall the London riots (during which I was in Wales), rude attitude of police and political scandals were among the suggested reasons, which are also among the facts that inducted things happened here in Turkey.
The next elections will be held on 2015, at which I expect that the votes are going to be distributed even among the three major parties, where two of these are CHP and MHP, which are defined to be social-democrat-left and nationalist-concervative-right (with no apparent tendency towards theocratic ideals) respectively. AKP will probably be in the parliament, albeit lack the dominion present today.
Actually it's not a bug, if they would allow smaller parties they would have 10,20,50 parties in there, some with only one person. It would be a mess - hard to make any decision.
There are very, very few religious democracies, and if you only consider those both officially and effectively religious, I won’t be able to name a single one.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancasila_(politics)
In Indonesia, you are not allowed to be atheist. You must declare yourself as a follower of one of the 6 state sanctioned religions.
UK?
Turkey has been a successful majority Muslim but very secular and democratic state for a very long time. Maybe that’s changing …
(Ah, decisions, decisions. Sometimes I think the EU should have accelerated making a move on letting Turkey join. There are substantial risks associated with that, sure, but I also think that the EU would have had a significant chance of changing the trajectory Turkey is on.)
Uhm. Military coups in: 1960, 1971, 1980, as well as substantial intervention in the succession of power in 1997 that many considers a coup.
The secular nature of the Turkish state has largely remained as secular as it is because the Turkish military has a tendency to conduct coups whenever they deem someone is trying to introduce religiously motivated laws, coupled with a legal system that is frequently used to shut down political parties that mix politics and religion.
Turkey does not exactly have a very solid democratic tradition yet.
We have yet to see if the "Memorandum" issued in 1997 and allowing the current government is a sign the military has softened it's stance, but it's very clear that so far at least, the elected Turkish governments serve at the mercy of the military.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...
Append "?share=1", and the dumbass registration wall goes away.
Eliot is an interesting example of one a single well-connected individual can accomplish in the digital age: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-brown-moses-blog/x/255....
His feed is a bit of a firehose feed, so I recommend you only follow him, whenever you need to immerse yourself in an ongoing story.
The things going on in Turkey are so insane, they have to be seen to be believed.
EDIT: His YouTube playlist with videos of the clashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvUktDH-OBM&list=PLPC0Ude....
On top of all that, the government control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, cesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the color of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses."
It sounds as if the protestors, if the author is genuine, are protesting something I call "Singaporification." It's the fusion of authoritarian quasi-fascist rule with capitalism-- a kind of socially conservative, often (but not always) religious conservative, but economically neo-liberal state of affairs. On the surface it sometimes looks theocratic, but in reality it's more of a dictatorship of gentrification. Religious morality (or sometimes secularized versions thereof) is used as a facade to condemn any form of social deviancy and especially to mentally control the lower classes by manipulating their religious faiths.
(We see the latter in America with the "culture war," which is a way of distracting the largely-religious working classes while their future is sold out from under them.)
In conversations with fellow techies, it's disturbed me to what extent many seem to tacitly support this kind of thing. I've been in many conversations explicitly praising Singapore -- a country that permits death sentences for minor infractions -- as a viable model of the future.
The thing that makes Singaporification scary is that it works. The scariest dystopias are not hideous hellscapes where nobody would want to live, as those tend to self-destruct or at best persist in tiny enclaves and never catch on. Who would want to emulate North Korea? But seductive dystopias are dangerous because they can catch on. Who wouldn't want low crime, clean streets, and a wonderfully healthy economy? In that sense I find Singapore to be the scariest dystopia in the world today.
Historical precursors include Franco's Spain. Think of Singaporification as a gentler, less overtly violent form of Spanish fascism. But as we see if you openly challenge it, the gloves rapidly come off and your shiny clean utopia busts out the tanks, tear gas, and death penalty sentences.
Edit: on second thought, it also represents a fusion of liberal nanny-statism, conservative social authoritarianism, and neo-liberal economics. Government by and for the uptight, culturally xenophobic urban professional.
As Benjamin Franklin said: those who sacrifice liberty for security and prosperity deserve neither.
Worth watching: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0066434/
"Buy, and be happy."
If action flicks are more your thing, this is a fun and a bit underrated riff on the same theme: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0106697/
I am speechless.
As someone who was born and raised in Turkey, and visited Singapore for long periods of time, let me say very clearly: you have absolutely no idea what you're talking about.
Turkey and Singapore are two completely different worlds, with different histories, cultures, and geopolitical situations, and are not related in any shape or form. There may be a few surface-level parallels, but that's where the similarities end.
I am stunned however that a person who very likely has never even visited either place (much less lived in them) has the gall to call what Turkey is going through "Singaporification." I mean, it's not like I haven't noticed the anti-Singaporean sentiments on HN lately - they don't surprise me, since a lot of HN folks are white middle/upper-middle class and lean libertarian[1], which is the exact opposite of Singapore. But using the events in Istanbul as an opportunity to bash Singapore is just... petty and shameless.
I would love to give you a detailed breakdown of the differences between Singapore and Turkey, but that would be an essay. I'll highlight a few important ones.
Singapore is one of the least corrupt countries in the world. Turkey on the other hand is rampant with corruption, especially the current government. That's part of the reason why the protests started: the contractor that was going to build the mall on top of Gezi Park has ties to the Prime Minister, who was going to profit from it. That's just ONE example.
Singapore is extremely diverse culturally. There are several religions and languages. As a result, there are often no culturally accepted behaviors. In a sense, Singapore does not really fit the traditional definition of a nation, and instead has been called a society in transition. In contrast, Turkey has a very strong cultural identity rooted deeply in the country's history and predominant religion, Islam.
The two country's governments are also extremely different. Singapore is a de-facto one-party state; the dominant party, the PAP, has won every single general election since the first one. In contrast, Turkey is a multi-party system, which creates very complex dynamics in the political landscape.
I can go on, but you get the idea. Hopefully.
[1]Table 10 in http://www.cato.org/sites/cato.org/files/pubs/pdf/pa580.pdf
As for corruption in Singapore, well, let me just say that one of the caveats of these corruption indices is that whether you perceive it. If you are a foreigner visiting Singapore or even a local living here for a while, your daily life in general will probably be pleasant as long as you are not involved in any form of political activism.
Most of the shenanigans in Singapore are related to politics and how the incumbent party has maintained its power. There is a reason for Singapore being placed in the nether regions (144th rank in the Press Freedom Index) in various press freedom rankings and why we are labeled as a "hybrid regime".
As for people who keep gushing about Singapore and how awesome our country is, all I have for them is a wintry smile and the old phrase, "Not all that glitters is gold".
- Singapore is the least corrupt country in the world because of extremely tough laws that were enacted in the past.
- I'll give you that Singapore is much more diverse, but note that China also wants to adopt a Singapore model and has an incredibly strong cultural identity.
- A quick lookup shows that Erdoğan has been in office for the longest time since the 60s (three terms). To me, fears of Turkey becoming a de facto one-party state seems justified, at least absent any other information.
I'm not sure if listing the differences and similarities of the two countries is even relevant to this particular discussion. The thesis was that Turkey might be trying to adopt a Singapore model of using economic growth and social order to offset the demand for political freedom. It doesn't actually matter how different the countries are if the government objectives are similar.
Corruption on upper levels probably never disappears, but at least on the lower levels, where people really got hurt and dreaded most, things got better with current government. As someone who lived in Turkey for quite long time, I can say I was pleasantly surprised that one didn't have to bribe anyone buy a small property. Before, it would be impossible to buy property without bribing everyone in the land register office including janitor and tea server.
Also, in the recent perceived corruption index charts Turkey's position is not so bad, wish it is much better (54.th in 176 countries, Singapore is 5th. Source: http://www.transparency.org/cpi2012/results)
I haven't lived in either, but I did live as a child under dictatorship until I was 7 years old and 1989 happened. My parents and grandparents have fresh memories of the dynamics at play in our country and did their best to explain them to me.
I do have a problem with the quoted statement.
It really depends on how you define corruption. If you define it as fraudulent behaviour by those in power, well, technically those in power do not need to behave fraudulently if they bend the law to support whatever they want to do. On paper, at some point Romania was amongst the least corrupted countries in the world. In practice, our society was rotten at its core.
Ending corruption is not the end goal in itself, corruption being a symptom of other problems in society, like the ability to live free, free to build a business, free to own stuff, free to put food on the table, free to have your own voice and your own opinions and beliefs, free to be happy. Not having corruption can either mean that the problems have been solved, or that those in power forwarded whatever agenda they wanted while crushing all opposition. This is especially doable if the country is doing well economically, such that its citizens do not have to worry about putting food on the table, or providing quality health-care to their family or whatever basic needs humans have. The true test that a form of government faces in regards to corruption is not when things are going well economically, but rather when things go awry and one thing to keep in mind is that corruption also goes bottom-up, starting with normal people closing their eyes at fraudulent behaviour of which they themselves are guilty of.
Also, I do have Turkish friends and I have visited Istanbul twice and judging by their own stories of Istanbul, by how the city evolved during my visits and by how dynamic it is, Istanbul is in my top 10 cities I'd want to live in, while Singapore is not.
EDIT: all these debates have the political reek of programming language wars... US <-> Lisp; Singapore <-> C++.
To be honest I doubt Singapore is on the radar of most HN participants in any shape or form whether positive or negative. Thats not to say that its insignificant - its just that there haven't been any 40k people riots there lately...so not at the front of people's minds.
Of course, not even living anywhere near where you are, I cannot qualify this myself. But my question (that I hope you won't understand as offensive) to you is: Is it possible that you are victim to your somewhat limited horizon and to the possibly biased information that you get from your government?
You should ask Shane Todd about that.
I love how people always cast Singapore as some kind of horror story cautionary tale. No-one seems to have told the actual people of Singapore, who are perfectly free to leave their nightmarish dystopia at any time, and yet seem perversely inclined to stay. Somehow this obvious, central, crucial fact gets left out of the "we don't want to turn out like Singapore!" narrative.
I think the real reason people demonise Singapore isn't because it's a bad place to live; it's because it is actually a really good place to live, and this fact causes a certain conflict in the libertarian mind, a fundamental undermining of the whole axiomic structure of their beliefs and no-one wants to face that. So, instead, they try to villify it in vague terms of being some kind of anti-freedom devil state - a North Korea that, by Satan's blessing, works.
I'll tell you the really scary thing about Singapore. It's a better place to live than 99.9% of these so-called "freedom" countries. I'd live there over any city in America bar maybe NYC, and certainly over Istanbul. The scary thing is that, when you consider the outcome, maybe the Singapore formula is a better form of government, and a lot of people don't even want to contemplate that.
Many (native) singaporean are too poor to leave the country.
For migrant workers?
For gay people?
Then there's the caning, censorship, draconian drug laws etc. - doesn't seem like that nice a place to live if I'm honest.
Absolute power can scale up to a certain point. At the end of the day, the dictator-for-life can drive around and see things in his city that need fixing. He can also limit rivals to the throne by centralizing authority.
In a larger country, you can't scale up the dictatorial machine as effectively... you're dependent on the bureaucracy or governors/viceroys to run things in the provinces, which creates a raft of other problems.
Right, I dont want to contemplate that.
What many younger people here might not know is that only 12 years ago, life in the US was different. You could board planes without going through ridiculous levels of non-security. Your family could actually meet you as you came off the plane. In the first week after 9/11, there was a global outpouring of support for us. There were candlelight vigils held in places like Tehran, Iran for us. In the first few weeks after, there was a growing feeling that maybe this was finally the time that the US would straighten out and take a deep and serious look at our own actions and policies. As you can see, that didn't happen.
We got "buy more stuff" from the president. Indefinite detentions. Men who are still in a prison in Cuba who were kidnapped from their own countries. Whether guilty of something or not, they should have been tried years ago.
We get the FTAA protests in Miami. You get the Democratic convention in Boston and "freedom areas".
You get the Boston of just a couple months ago. A massive police and state over reaction to find one young man. At no other time in American history has an entire metropolitan city of that size been systematically shut down to find one criminal. And everyone went along with it to "feel safe".
Have kids? There's an overwhelmingly large but amorphous in number group of pedophiles waiting to get their hands on them.
You get fear. Be Afraid is the message. And young people have been taught that for so long now, and now they can vote and have kids. And this is how culture changes and restricts.
If you follow Occupy, that didn't start recently. That was going back at least as far as Seattle in 1999.
Don't be afraid. People die and get hurt. Sometimes it's other people that do it to others. Our freedoms collectively are more important than our deaths individually.
As has been said many times before, I may not like what you have to say but I'll punch someone in the nose to make sure you are able to say it.
I agree we did overreact, but this sentence is just nonsense. Are you really implying that our actions and policies are what caused muslims to hate us, and that therefor we should change them???????????
Some stuff is not like other stuff -
http://pawelmorski.com/2013/06/02/turkey-some-stuff-isnt-ver...
This is messy and local and not understandable through pie-in-the-sky comparisons and metaphors and abstractions (or by reading clippings-job 'intelligence services', ZeroHedge-meets-Mossad-reject conspiracy theorists, or the propaganda plants of every Middle Eastern talking-point mill)
Just read TFA and ignore the out-of-body hallucinatory comments.
Hugh Pope is also pretty good
http://hughpope.com/2013/06/01/a-ringside-seat-as-istanbul-p...
http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2012/03/12/120312fa_fact_...
The Turkish Prime Minister expressing his concerns on news spreading, "There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
http://goo.gl/MLTCL (Washington Post)
Were the two ever separate?
Modern societies have never really lived without a large state. So almost every new society (or post-revolution) in history adopted that same practice. But usually with new limitations.
The problem is that once the state is instantiated and given broad power, their power continues to grow and expand out of self-interest and desire for control.
Regardless of capitalism or socialism.
As Rothbard said: "the true utopian is the man who puts all the guns and all the decision-making power into the hands of the central government and then says, 'Limit yourself.'".
"The Fascist State lays claim to rule in the economic field no less than in others" - Benito Mussolini, The Doctrine of Fascism. http://www.worldfuturefund.org/wffmaster/Reading/Germany/Mus...
Fascism calls for state control and direction of the economy, which ultimately means Fascist Party control of the same because Fascism denies the legitimacy of any other party to ever govern the state. Capitalism calls for few to no state controls over economic activity so as to allow all businesses to operate with minimal interference.
Germany followed Italy's lead in state direction of the economy and notoriously seized the assets of Jews and sent them to "work" camps in the name of increasing the productivity of their labour. Franco banned international trade and watched his economy crash for a decade.
The problem in Turkey is more depressing than "Singaporification": Turkey economy is growing but political, administrative, and legal system is not keeping with it. For instance, corruption is still rampant.
This seems to be the sort of opinion only a person who does not live in said hideous hellscape could support. While I (Singaporean) do not agree with everything the government does, I would definitely much rather live here than in North Korea.
This article is grossly misleading. Papers and televisions are showing what is going on, one can read from internet [11, 12, 13], and express his opinion. I live in States and even I can access all these information from here. Turkey is a democracy with multi party system similar to France since 1946. Unfortunately the minority group who held the power in Turkey for decades lost their control of most of the government and state after years of corruption with 2002 elections. In 2001 Turkish economy experienced a similar economic meltdown after a "soft" coup of the people who support and make the current demonstrations. The economic repercussions was so deep it effected almost everyone similar to what has been going on in Greece and Spain. Since then the new government handled economy and democratic process so well, even in the current terrible economic situation of the world Turkey managed to become the fastest growing economy in Europe. Turkey has made the last debt payment to IMF couple of weeks ago. For the first time her existence Turkish economy's credit rating became investment grade by Moody's on May 17th this year[1]. Most importantly the clash with the Kurdish minority ended with a new peace process. This is by far the most important achievement of the current government given the 30 years of history of violence in South Easy of Turkey. Over 40K people have died since it started in 1980.
The person who wrote this article and those demonstrators are hoping to show their anger towards the government akin to Egypt's Tahrir Square demonstrations. However this is all reading it backwards. Current government is popularly supported by the people and the support has increased with each consecutive poll since 2002, leading to 50% [3] of the popular vote the last time. This government is leading a commission and effort to write a new constituition to raise the standards of human rights in Turkey. This is one of the biggest selling point to end the Kurdish violence since they now feel their rights will be protected better in the future. Current constitution is put together in 1980 by the people who engineered the last "hard" coup in Turkey [5], a coup literally executed with brute force, guns and tanks. With this government the efforts to get into EU increased tremendously [6] and actually it has been their strategy to balance the power in Turkey against Military's long standing anti-democratic ambitions and practices.
Recent demonstrations at a park in Istanbul got bigger by exploiting the grossly wrong police brutality. Unfortunately where there is demonstration be it in US [7], Spain [8] or Greece [9], in any country the police is very heavy handed. Otherwise the park that is in middle of the city is part of project [10] that will transform the area and close all the motor vehicle traffic and allow only pedestrians. This is going to be done by diverting traffic to underground roads that will be build as part of the project. Decision for the project taken by the people who was elected including members both from ruling and opposition party, and was voted unanimously.
Author of this article and those demonstrators are supporting the old regime. A regime that dictates certain ideology build around a cult leader like the ones in former Soviet Union, China and North Korea. Ours is Ataturk. You have to think like them, act like them, speak like them, live like them. During my mandatory military service I was forced to memorize who is Ataturk which was a list of 10 items that goes like this: 1) Ataturk was the best person in the world 2) Ataturk was best statesman in the world 3) Ataturk is the best military leader in the world. And thise list goes on and on...
Let me give you an example of what this people againts. Can you buy liquor after certain hours in States? Can you walk with an open beer can, alcohol bottle? No, because in States, varying by state, shops can not sell alcohol after 10pm or 2am. For example in England even places where liquor served as part of the service has to close by 1am. When this government made a similar, banning sale of alchol from 10pm to 6am, these people made a big noise. This is one of the arguments they have been telling during these demonstrations.
edit-1: I added some more references.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-16/turkey-raised-to-in... [2] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/25/turkey-justice-central-ku... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13740147 [4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-10/turkey-s-kurtulmus-... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Turkish_coup_d%C3%A9tat [6] http://www.cfr.org/turkey/turkeys-eu-bid/p8939 [7] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Davis-pepper-spraye... [8] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/29/spain-riot-polic... [9] http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-police-brutality-2011-6 [10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opean5HeR-8 [11] http://gundem.milliyet.com.tr/basbakanlik-a-yurumek-isteyen/... [12] http://www.hurriyet.com.tr/gundem/23426620.asp [13] http://www.radikal.com.tr/turkiye/gosterilerde_ilk_can_kaybi...
This wraps up the 'real' situation perfectly. Well put, sir. As a Turkish citizen, thank you for speaking the truth!
today the minister called, 'there is this damned twitter, ruining our society...'
so turks use now, twitter, facebook, foursquare, ustream tv, tumblr as 'the media'..
The youths are protesting because what was once a fairly liberal set of standards is rapidly being removed.
Ironically, it was the military that protected this set of freedoms.
Erdogan's big accomplishment was to be moderate enough in his political Islamism that he didn't trigger a military coup. Further, the European Union disapproved of Turkey's history of military coups, making it clear that they weren't going to admit a country that relied on military coups to defend its constitution from democracy. So the military did not remove Erdogan, despite the AKP's moderate Islamic agenda.
The military is a conservative force in Turkish society insofar as it defends an interpretation of the constitution and politics rooted in Ataturk's ideology from the 1920s. But it is not a conservative force in the socially conservative political Islam sense. You should not be surprised that secular urban youth and the Turkish military end up on the same side.
This is a general problem I have with such active counter-protests, be they to stop a station from being built (Stuttgart 21, [0]) or to block a legitimate demonstration of right-wing idiots. The rights to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate are important, but in my opinion the right to demonstrate/protest in a specific location does not trump the right of the majority to implement a democratically made decision or the right of a minority to voice their opinion.
That said, there are obviously cases were a small minority has the right to (even violently) protest a decision made by the majority[1], but building a shopping mall in a park is not one of them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution , e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
I think this is getting at the heart of civil disobedience: the violation of laws or decrees considered unjust.
I know nothing about the Turkish protests, but another example of civil disobedience is Martin Luther King, Jr. He committed crimes, technically, as he protested. But I don't think that it makes sense to say that MLK's protesting == overturning democracy in America. By analogy, it's hard to imagine civil disobedience in Turkey to be overthrowing democracy there.
No, it appears rampant corruption in the construction industry (with the perception it is privately benefiting the Turkish PM and his political party) led to a decision not 'in the name of the people'. [1]
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
If we assume the reporting so far is reasonably accurate, they are protesting against the erosion of democracy by an increasingly authoritarian PM and corrupted political party which he leads.
It is darkly ironic that you'd attempt to portray their efforts as anti-democratic.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-tur...
how so? democracy is not limited to counting votes and stfu until the next election. it's not like authorities haven't been removed from office before and decisions haven't been changed due to public disapproval. getting into office is not a free pass for half a decade. acta protests were anti-democratic too?
I'd bet that the reason this has grown so quickly doesn't have much to do with individual gripes but that lack of trust and a feeling of disenfranchisement from that government. Compounded with rumours that government they don't have faith in could very well be going to war against a country with stock piles of nerve gas capable of hitting major settlements. Offering the crowds some security within themselves that the government is no longer emanating.
Ask yourself in that scenario, with the risk of sarin gas hitting your home, families home, government cold and distant,would you also go protest? I know I would.
I think this is serious misunderstanding of what is now going on in Turkey. The 'mall in park' thing was just a trigger. I understand that you are somehow comparing this to Stuttgart protests but from what I read about it I think this is totally different situation.
Example: I was born in a country occupied by Russians. And there were some protests (even violent) triggered by things like our hockey team beating Russian team at the Olympics. Of course that this had nothing to do with ice hockey and everything to do with the tension and unhappiness that builds up for years.
Initial protest was quite small and not many people paid attention to it until the police used ridiculous level of force to disperse the protesters. That's the action that triggered mass protests all over the country.
So true democracy is a bunch of people who stand up for their community, or at least that is far less flawed or corrupt than the system as it stands.
As for the right wing idiot thing - I disagree. I love the place I live in, if some arseholes come along and threaten, intimidate people here, then of course I think it just to counter-protest, vastly outnumber them, and make it clear that they are not welcome.
So what? If yours "democratically-elected government" orders you("in the name of the people", of course) to kill jews, will you comply?
> are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
So what? When majority votes, does it protect personal interests of someone else?
> e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
You have so much subordination to government-made law, so even if you would really want to overthrow tyrannic government, you would stop because there is no law allowing you to revolt?
Even with that background, the reporting by the mainstream media about the events of the last couple of days has been a disgrace, and social media is filling the void.
The following is the most insightful analysis I've seen on this topic "Is there a Social-Media Fueled Protest Style? An Analysis From #jan25 to #geziparki "http://technosociology.org/?p=1255
"There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan
said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me,
social media is the worst menace to society."
Oh, also he had portrayed himself as a victim. This is the achilles heel of Turkish people. They love you unconditionally if they think you are victim. (I am Turkish)
AFAIK, general population is no more or no less liberal compared to 10 years ago. Honestly they weren't/aren't quite liberal.
I should note that Hürriyet is historically quite unfriendly to Erdoğan; in particular (IIRC) it raised quite a bit of noise when Doğan Holdings, which owns Hürriyet, underwent tax fraud investigations that may have been politically motivated.
[1] for example: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...
(from saurik's comment)
A chemical weapons expert interviewed by a Swedish newspaper said that it is unlikely that Turkey actually used agent orange. They do refer to it Orange Gas but I don't know if that is actually different from Agent Orange?
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/polisen-anvander-kemiska-st... Unfortunately only available in Swedish, but Google translate should make it at least somewhat readable.
I'd find it hard to believe that anything closely resembling it is used by any sane police force, that seems like it would be classified as chemical warfare?
Why would Turkey resort to chemical warfare when they don't have to, why risk the wrath of the international community when you can 'just' use tear gas and such?
> > It is incredibly toxic and forbidden by the UN after the horrific effects it had on both the Vietnamese and Americans exposed to it.
It's not forbidden by the UN, the active ingredient is 2,4-D and is the 3rd most used herbicide in america.
The other ingredient 2,4,5-T is non toxic, but making it commonly contaminates it with the very toxic 2,3,7,8.
It might very well be sort of 'we are going to kill this park one way or the other' type of situation. Once all the trees are dead, they could properly develop the park with relatively few protests.
It is insane, of course, but it seems that some governments are prepared to do absolutely anything to their citizens so long as they think they can get away with it and while they usually can get away with it they also have no understanding that getting away with these kinds of things are like a cliff-drop: you can go closer and closer to the edge and then you go one step too far and the entire thing unravels.
Usually at this point the governments try to oppress them a little more, rather than back away, and that is when the real explosion happens.
All the media and reddit pictures are from the side of the protesters, a few pictures of people who get knocked in the head with a tear gas container != cops beating and shooting innocent people as they would have you believe.
Also from empirical evidence as an American who spent two weeks in Istanbul last year I've found the city and police to be totally welcoming and open ... to include bar crawls around taksim, walking 20 miles on foot through every nieghborhood in the city, to visiting some of the holiest artifacts in Islam at topkapi palace.
I'd like to see the other side of this... I understand the government has been culling the ranks of the top military to weaken their influence and push the Islamist agenda.. I do, but that said, turkey is not syria or iraq, it is a large cosmopolitan and wonderful country I would hate to see it destroyed.
Edit: I'll add for reference if it matters I'm a large, shaved headed and tattooed, obviously american man, who was a solo traveler.
http://gothamist.com/2010/06/01/cooper_union_student_loses_e...
At this point they're lawless thugs with guns.
How to help: Even sending a picture, with your city name and a support message (even only a support message) may be will change his mind. Please send your tweet with support message and #direngeziparki #direnturkiye or #direnankara hash tags. (which means in order "resist gezi park", "resist turkey", "resist ankara". gezi park is the start point of the protest, Ankara is (the captial) city where cops hitting people right now)
Even writing in your language will help us to reach more people. You could write whatever you think about "fascism". For sure he got 50% vote, but it does not mean he will not listen the other 50%.
First, it's not an Istanbul thing anymore, many Turkish cities, especially Izmir and Ankara witnessed large protests and clashes with the police in the past couple of days.
On paper, this started with a small group of protesters sitting in the park to stop its demolition and cutting down the trees on Monday. That evening and at 5am on Tuesday morning they were violently attacked by the police. The attacks continued on Wednesday. The appalling police brutality unfortunately is nothing new in Turkey but this time it triggered an unexpected reaction from a wide swath of people.
People's discontent with AKP has been rising for some time, although they have provided a stable economy for the past 10 years. Some of the recent events have really notched it up, though, e.g.:
* The fact that government made no official plans to celebrate the May 19th holiday, which is an important day in the creation of the Turkish Republic (mirroring their approach to the October 29th holiday, which is like July 4th for Turkey)
* Lack of adequate response from PM Erdogan to the bombing in Reyhanli. Rather than cancel his visit to the US to visit the town, he went with his original plan. A lot of people thought that he brought such terrorist activities on Turkey due to his agressive rhetoric on Essad and his strong support of the dissidents there.
* The recent ban on the sale of alcohol between 10pm and 6am (http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/may/31/turkey-alcohol-l...). This was an unheard-of move that angered a lot of people, not because Turkey consumes a lot of alcohol but it was interpreted as a step to the Islamic Law.
What really surprised me (and I witnessed many a protest and a few military coups there) was the exponential growth of the protest and its apolitical nature. Before, people used to write the usual leftist slogans on the walls, this time there were a lot of funny graffiti about Erdogan, the police and the pepper gas (examples at https://eksisozluk.com/gezi-parki-isgali-duvar-yazilari--385..., for Turkish readers).
Due to the wide use of social media there were some disinfomation as expected, spread around by excited people, e.g. that the police was using Agent Orange. This was due to the China-like complacency of the Turkish media. In fact, when CNN International was transmitting live from the riots in Istanbul CNN Turk was running a documentary about penguins! The reason for this is two-fold: the intimidation of reporters in the past 2-3 years (e.g. see the OdaTV case, where the owner of a TV station and reporters were swiftly jailed with scant evidence when they criticized the government: http://www.nytimes.com/2012/12/28/world/europe/soner-yalcin-...). The other reason is the financial blackmail that the government exercises over large media conglomerates, e.g. when the Dogan group got a colossal $2.3B tax fine in 2009.
People gathered back at 1pm, and did yet another peaceful sit in. Protestors red eachother and the police books, sang songs. Police attacked them yet again with tear gas and pressurized water. Strike #2.
They kept doing do over and over again for the next few days even though the protestors STILL were not causing damage. Strike #3.
They, "unknown" civilian groups were photographed, carrying sticks and beating people while the police is holding them. Police beating people. Police aiming with tear gas guns at people and hitting them with it at close range (can cause severe trauma by the sheer speed of the canister), and then dancing afterwards in joy. Strike #4.
Also, you seem to be a Turkish speaker, so you know the significance of all those things that you're saying "Seriously?" to. Trivializing it won't help.
As for the "police sprayed my friend yesterday", it wasn't just that, the level of brutality was amazing.
For example, while there are no doubt many shopping malls in Istanbul, I doubt there is "at least one in every neighborhood!" (unless that word is better translated as something more like a suburb)
This makes it harder to trust all of the details of the more serious accounts of police aggression, or the simplifed context of things like "The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government". As another commenter has pointed out, even photos can end up being from unrelated events.
This is not to say that this person's perspective is not extremely important, or that the Turkish state is not committing indefensible acts of aggression. It's just harder for outsiders to piece together a full and accurate picture of what is happening. Fortunately, multiple individual perspectives can help corroborate and enhance the picture to quite a degree.
Edit: Certainly media has biases too, although there are at least in theory standards for verifying reported facts, and the bias is (often) more about what they choose not report or what context is not given.
Edit: good points by buro as well. This account and others may well be very reliable, I'm more speaking from experience with past events that were reported in similar ways where key important facts turned out to be wrong or missing. (I know, that happens sometimes in traditional media too)
And yup, there are a phenomenal number of shopping malls, some only a couple of hundred meters from another.
I did spot check quite a few, looked at a few of the websites, and they are all multi-level, large shopping malls.
In fact this one is a mere 300m from Gezi Park: http://www.demirorenistiklal.com/
The great thing about the internet is that it is possible to get a sense of whether a claim is true or not very swiftly.
On the one fact you doubt and then use as an example to undermine the rest of the argument, a quick search verifies that claim. (Should you revisit the doubt you extended to the rest of the argument in light of some evidence to the claims that you used to undermine it?)
Of course there is emotion in there too (the government selling the nation to corporations), but we're mostly rational and will spot that surely.
The fundamental question is whether or not the reports in general speak of a true event, and overwhelmingly they do appear so. The level of consistency in the very many reports and sources is too much to be attributable and dismissed as any individual being emotional... of course they are emotional; some of their friends, family and fellow citizens are dead, others are in hospital or jail.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=shopping+mall&hl=en&l...
These results seem pretty lousy and not particularly different from those from Istanbul.
"Shopping centers can be considered as a very young concept in Turkey, since the history goes back only to the late 80s. However, once the malls appeared on the shopping scene, the Turks embraced them. Almost every neighborhood has at least one." http://www.wittistanbul.com/magazine/top-9-shopping-centers-...
That said, it's not a literal statement. It's about rapid gentrification. It's happening all over Europe if not the world. It can get especially nasty when mixed with corruption, since there is great incentive to support large businesses over local ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/05iht-m05... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1011/abstract
This is true for well-reported or over-reported events too. It's always an individual who reporting things, and thus the process of reporting itself involuntarily bakes in the opinion or ideology of the agent reporting the issue. It's up to us to take whatever we'd want to as credible.
Also in the context of Internet it is more likely to be the absolute truth, after Streisand effect and everything else is done with.
My assumptions in situations like this: No smoke without fire.
Just did a small search on Youtube and found out that reports of civilians been crushed under Panzers is TRUE [1]. And now the discussion on testing credibility and stripping out emotions from reporting standards sounds bullshit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H...
[Edits: Added a link to a video of individual being crushed under a anti-riot Panzer vehicle. Not very graphic, but serious.]
This kind of comment appears in practically Every. Single. news discussion. Can't we just make a blanket statement like this as a sticky, and put it at the top of each story? A kind of brief disclaimer or IANAL?
Take the Arab Spring: is there more liberty, better law, better civil rights in the countries where the dictators were overthrown? I'm unclear on that, and certainly some places have moved from secular, predictable dictatorship to a very unpredictable, unstable situation.
The original protest was about the ruling party abusing their majority at the polls in such a way that they didn't feel bothered to listen to any opposing view or legitimate concern.
After the unjust and extremely heavy-handed police response, the original protest turned into something much larger, with new support from concerned regular citizens. In fact, since the police response has not become any better, some of the people that voted for the ruling party seem to have changed their positions in support of the protesters.
As a result, I think the Turkish PM lost whatever credibility he had abroad, along with his perceived role as a mediator for the Syrian conflict. I hope these demonstrations conclude in a peaceful way and cause Erdogan to rethink his (obviously limited) understanding of how democracy should work. If not, I'm afraid the country may not be able to hold off the fraction of the Turkish military that would want to step in and take over once again.
Besides the philosophical question of whether it's a good thing for a city, I just don't understand the economics of it. How do all these places coexist? Where does the demand and up-front money come from? Is there actually real demand at all, or is it just completely manufactured/delusional (build it and they will come!)? When I lived there, people's shopping needs seemed fulfilled, and the population has flatlined since then [1]. I heard tell of some EU grants involved. Overall, it just doesn't seem sustainable from an economic perspective, even in the short-term.
[1] http://www.citypopulation.de/php/poland-zachodniopomorskie.p...
Thousands of people of all ages gathered without any formal notice, just by friend to friend, neighbour to neighbour; didn't allow provocation; resisted days of assault; assured the security of the park; almost all of the other big cities supported by protesting; protesters cleaned up their own mass, junks collected;
I guess this is a simple description without political adds.
Any of those places reporting troubles? Or is it all in the streets and park itself?
* Evidence collection site for police violence: http://delilimvar.tumblr.com/
* Police and pro-government militia attacking innocent people: http://pic.twitter.com/QTunT6irOF
http://f.cl.ly/items/263f2A3T0b093I2D0r2G/alsancak%2002.06.2...
http://24.media.tumblr.com/339ecfc6a17e0d372896dcf1065672b6/...
* Streets and residential areas indiscriminately turned into gas chambers: http://youtu.be/WaDT1KPEuB8
* More photos: http://geziyardim.com/
* [Turkish] Live feeds: http://www.geziparkicanli.com/
Him and his wife were caught in the midst of a riot and teargassed. They saw tons of public urination and most of the protestors are 25 or younger and drunk + smashing beer glasses all over...
Wait, I thought Syria/Assad is the bad guy. The Turkish people support Assad but the Turkish government doesn't? Now I'm confused.
And the "people" don't always support things that a western person would agree with. People always assume that if there is a popular revolt it would always be in the direction of democracy and secularism - it's not so at all.
Don't support a popular revolt just because it's by the populace. Support it if you think it's right. And if you don't understand the situation then reserve judgment.
Turkey people haven't support Assad or the groups against to him. Turkey folks always supported helping to syrian refugee, thats all. As folk wanted, Turkey government helping the syrian refugee while supported the groups againist to Assad. The supporting groups goverment's initiative.
The problem of the Turkey is between folk and government. Its not unfixable, we'd like to government's support even small groups like gay's, homeless people, women rights. We don't want despot behaviours form cops to folk. Basicly the protests are about small problems, to be have better democracy, as well as better even some part of europe/usa.
edit: typo
Isn't this what is going on? Terrible if you're a native of Istanbul, but hardly something to worry about if you're one of the 50 million Turks that doesn't live in Istanbul and doesn't share that city's liberal standards?
How does a NIMBY protest turn into Tiananmen Square? Does someone in government actually say, "They don't want malls? THEN GIVE THEM TANKS!!!"
Why would a government that has "sold out to corporations" restrict the sale of lipstick and alcohol?
Governments are groups of people that are at least partially restrained by the wills and opinions of other, much larger groups of people. People are very complex. If you are expecting the government to have rules that it follows 100% of the time, you will be disappointed.
A rule such as restricting lipstick sales is something that is mostly inconsequential that the government can still point to and say "See, we don't just blindly do what megacorps tell us to!"
What it really does is to keep the government in power by pandering to extremists. Rational and well-informed people don't respond well to the imposition of corporate oligarchy. If that's what you intend to do, you've lost the support of those people. Now you need the support of someone else. Religious extremists fit the bill nicely, because although hardly anyone will actually prefer corporate oligarchy, there are people who place more value on "conservative values" than they do on economics, so you ban some lipstick and you restrict abortions and those people support you no matter what else you do.
You see the same thing with the Republican party in the US.
"Court suspends planned Artillery Barracks project to replace Gezi Park. An administrative court has suspended the conversion project in the lung of Istanbul."
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/court-suspends-planned-arti...
Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops. You are always ultimately responsible for you own actions, and you're also responsible for being associated with bad actions if you stand by quietly when they are going on.
Considering that the Turkish government is trying to make the protestors look bad so they have justification for going overboard in their earlier treatment of them, it's more likely that plain-clothes police officers looted those stores and overturned the cars.
When something violent and destructive happens, look at who did the last such thing.
What's worst is that Erdogan is a strong-arm leader who most likely won't be going away anytime soon. The best hope for these protesters is that the opposition party gets their act together, which I see no evidence of; they've had the same idiot running against Erdogan for as long as I can remember.
http://www.firstpost.com/world/protesters-defiant-as-turkey-...
https://www.facebook.com/geziparkidirenisi (330,000 Likes in less than 72 hours)
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22744728 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22744895 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740506 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20028295 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740038
Why would you say something so absolute with out even checking? Are you one of those weirdo instant BBC haters?
Anyway, I think you are wondering why this news is on Hackernews. I'd say it's because there are a lot of politically conscience people here, who care about what's going on in the world.
One point I think people miss is that the content of this site does not necessarily have to be related to tech (though usually is). I personally come here for the discussion that results from the submissions, and world news like this is important to me. And I'd like to be able to discuss the news/situation with other people of similar educations, vocations and mindsets.
At some point people have to be held personally responsible for their wrong doings. They shouldn't be absolved of personal responsibility just because they're in the police force, which is being commanded by some nutcrack dictator.
Please think before you write such things. That's not outright hate speech but it sure leads to hateful actions.
In the end it's people from within the society that join governmental organizations and inflict torture / injustice on rest of the society.
The person who wrote this article and those demonstrators are hoping to show their anger towards the government akin to Egypt's Tahrir Square demonstrations. However this is all reading it backwards. Current government is popularly supported by the people and the support has increased with each consecutive poll since 2002, leading to 50% [3] of the popular vote the last time. This government is leading a commission and effort to write a new constituition to raise the standards of human rights in Turkey. This is one of the biggest selling point to end the Kurdish violence since they now feel their rights will be protected better in the future. Current constitution is put together in 1980 by the people who engineered the last "hard" coup in Turkey [5], a coup literally executed with brute force, guns and tanks. With this government the efforts to get into EU increased tremendously [6] and actually it has been their strategy to balance the power in Turkey against Military's long standing anti-democratic ambitions and practices.
Recent demonstrations at a park in Istanbul got bigger by exploiting the grossly wrong police brutality. Unfortunately where there is demonstration be it in US [7], Spain [8] or Greece [9], in any country the police is very heavy handed. Otherwise the park that is in middle of the city is part of project [10] that will transform the area and close all the motor vehicle traffic and allow only pedestrians. This is going to be done by diverting traffic to underground roads that will be build as part of the project. Decision for the project taken by the people who was elected including members both from ruling and opposition party, and was voted unanimously.
Author of this article and those demonstrators are supporting the old regime. A regime that dictates certain ideology build around a cult leader like the ones in former Soviet Union, China and North Korea. Ours is Ataturk. You have to think like them, act like them, speak like them, live like them. During my mandatory military service I was forced to memorize who is Ataturk which was a list of 10 items that goes like this: 1) Ataturk was the best person in the world 2) Ataturk was best statesman in the world 3) Ataturk is the best military leader in the world. And thise list goes on and on...
Let me give you an example of what this people againts. Can you buy liquor after certain hours in States? Can you walk with an open beer can, alcohol bottle? No, because in States, varying by state, shops can not sell alcohol after 10pm or 2am. For example in England even places where liquor served as part of the service has to close by 1am. When this government made a similar, banning sale of alchol from 10pm to 6am, these people made a big noise. This is one of the arguments they have been telling during these demonstrations.
[1] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-16/turkey-raised-to-in... [2] http://www.hrw.org/news/2013/04/25/turkey-justice-central-ku... [3] http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-13740147 [4] http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2013-05-10/turkey-s-kurtulmus-... [5] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980_Turkish_coup_d%C3%A9tat [6] http://www.cfr.org/turkey/turkeys-eu-bid/p8939 [7] http://www.sfgate.com/bayarea/article/UC-Davis-pepper-spraye... [8] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2012/sep/29/spain-riot-polic... [9] http://www.businessinsider.com/greek-police-brutality-2011-6 [10] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Opean5HeR-8
It's nice to see that the fight against heroin prohibition is being fought in Turkey too!
That is extremely serious. My condolences with those who lost their lives, and best wishes for your friend to recover from her injury.
While we all discuss and throw ourselves around when a dying industry (read Hollywood) misbehaves and tries to screw with our Internet freedoms, free speech etc. I wonder what would when happen when the same fate, and it is coming, falls on the Governments of the world.
A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
That said:
> A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
You haven't paid much attention these last 250 years?
Deleted comment
On the Amnesty International blog they wrote this (but it does not talk about any deaths): http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=20803
Most citizens never hear about it until it's too late because it's not easy to find out about the latest zonings. Trying to have a say in the process? Well, that's a whole new level of obfuscation.
The process is confusing for a reason: to keep concerned citizens like you and me out.
What is happening in Istanbul is happening here too.
The horror!
Educate yourself on urban sprawl and "smart growth": http://www.smartgrowth.org
Or at least that's how it started.
It's not a meme. As long as the people are protesting there, the idiots in the government can't claim they have no problem.
Well, it never has been anything else.
Since I see that some friends have got excited about the recent events in Turkey I decided to write something about it and provide some context. I think it is good to know a bit of history of Turkey before AKP to understand what is going on there. It has been more than 10 years that AKP is in power so people might not know or may have forgotten the situation before AKP.
Turkey was ruled by ultra-nationalist ultra-secular militarist groups for decades. The military overthrow several elected governments and jailed politicians. Torture, extra-judicial killings, suppression, and corruption were widespread. The laws that people often object to are from that area and the constitution written by Turkish military, including insulting Turkishness being a crime. These groups who are sometimes referred to as Kemalists had the control of military, judicatory, academia, media, etc. Yet, they couldn't tolerate even the government being in the hands of people they didn't like. The large majority of Turks who are practicing Muslims were excluded. It was illegal to wear a head-scarf in universities and government departments in a country where over 70% of women wears head-scarf. Essentially these women were banned from attending university. Public officials and even university professors would be thrown out and even jailed if they showed any sign of nonsecular tendency. Writers and intellects were jailed for expressing opinions against Kemalist ideology. Erdogan, the current prime minister was jailed and banned from politics for 10 years for reading an old poem while he was the mayor of Istanbul. The existence of Kurds who are around 20 percent of Turkey's population were completely denied (not a joke)! Speaking or reading in Kurdish was banned and the popular Turkish singer Ahmad Kaya was forced to exile for saying that he will record an album in Kurdish. Popular political parties were closed regularly even when they won elections decisively. The news of corruption in police and politics was a regular daily routine as was the news of human rights violations.
In the years before AKP there were several short-lived governments by parties both on the left and on the right. Inflation was very high (hyperinflation), unemployment was high, governments were unstable. The value of Turkish lira dropped to a third in one night. Nightly interest rates tripled to completely ridiculous amount of 139%. You can look at Greece these days to have an idea of Turkey of that time. Turkish foreign policy was essentially dictated by the US government. There was a very harsh IMF imposed economic program so Turkey could pay its debts and a technocrat from world bank was imposed as the economy minister on the Turkish government to make sure they will implement what IMF wanted. The government and the country were in such a bad shape that it is almost unimaginable today after 12 years of AKP.
AKP was formed at that time. Erdogan was still under the ban from politics as well as many prominent politicians from his previous party. But some other politicians from the party were not under the ban. They created a new party: AKP (Justice and Development Party). Its members were moderate and pragmatist politicians from the banned party plus several other pragmatist and moderates from other right of the center parties. The current Turkish President Gul became the head of the party though Erdogan was significantly involved behind the senses. The party won a landslide election and has been continuously doing so for over a decade, increasing its share of votes in every election. You have to know that the length of Turkish governments before AKP to get a feeling of its significance: a few months!
Over a decade AKP has modernized Turkey, removed many of the laws that EU objected to, fought corruption in police and politics, improved the economy to its current amazing state, forced military out of politics, ... Until Syrian crises it had perfect relations with its neighbors. It followed what I would consider an awesome independent foreign policy. It is trying to find a political solution to the Kurdish "problem" and the right of Kurds have improved significantly under AKP. The list of AKP's achievements can go on.
So what is the problem? The problem is that the support base of AKP is not the western oriented seculars, it is the conservative majority who didn't have a voice in politics for decades (the silent majority) as the Kemalist and what Turks call "Deep Government" didn't allow the political parties supported by them. In all elections AKP has lost in the touristic Mediterranean coastal cities and European parts. You can find the map of the last general election results here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Turkish_general_election,_2011
Yellow is AKP, red is CHP, and light green is MHP. The south eastern parts are Kurdish areas where independent Kurdish politicians won.
The protests that you see these days are by this secular minority who has been voting for CHP (around 25%, significant, but still a minority).
Now, what are these alternative parties?
MHP is an ultra-nationalist racist conservative far-right party. Look up Wikipedia if you want to know more about them.
CHP is the party of the founder of the Turkey, ruled Turkey for decades in a one-party system, is a Kemalist party. It had strong relations with Turkish military, right now it is essentially the party supported by the elite who ruled Turkey before AKP and their supporters. The elite tried to topple AKP government undemocratically. Try to see if they objected to continuous serious violations of human rights before AKP.
Obviously I don't agree with everything that AKP and Erdogan do. However, AKP (and Erdogan) is definitely the best thing that has happened to Turkey over many decades, and Turks know it. That is the reason AKP keeps increasing its share of vote in elections. They are creating a strong developed democratic lawful independent Turkey. When you hear about protests in Turkey against AKP and Erdogan being authoritarian it is good to remember this context.
One final thing: AKP is often criticized for ignoring secular Turkish citizens who have not voted for AKP. Watch Erdogan's victory speech after winning the last election in which AKP further increased its share of votes. His attitude was completely humble and reconciliatory.
The problem, in my humble opinion, is not Erdogan and AKP being arrogant and authoritarian, but rather the secular minority demanding more than their fair share. I mean they objected to the removal of the ban on head-scarves for students attending university and consider it Islamization of Turkey (a country where over 70% of women wears head-scarf).
>>However, AKP (and Erdogan) is definitely the best thing that has happened to Turkey over many decades, and Turks know it.
Wrong. Although Erdogan and his goons in the Turkish media do their best to give this impression. Turkey was not a perfect country before. But it was actually secular. And that makes it objectively better than what it is today. Forget about the surface-level improvements Erdogan made. He may be wearing sheep's clothes, but deep down inside he's a wolf who wants Turkey to become another Iran.
I think that the problem might be that the (nonsecular) east wants to rule the (secular) west and viceversa.
I think that a person has a right to wear whatever clothing they feel appropriate, assuming they aren't committing indecent exposure and they don't have giant spikes protruding from their clothing that could endanger others.
Can you clarify what individual rights you think exist on university campuses, and how these interact with your goal of keeping universities "religion-free"?
I agree universities should be "Religion free" there are two ways of achieving that, you don't care about religion, you allow all people form all religions fair and square, or second option, you ban people with "certain" religious beliefs from schools. Guess which one got applied in Turkey.
Is it the eastern part trying to impose its will on the western part or is it the eastern part trying to remove what western part imposed on them over decades?
Here are what I see people are claiming to be signs of AKP Islamizing Turkey: allowing women with headscarves attend universities, forbidding shops sell alcohol in late night hours (after 10PM).
In Ontario only government owned LCBO can sell liquor and its shops close at 6PM. The consumption of liquor in public places is forbidden completely in Canada. Surely Canada is not an Islamic state. Are we sure Turkey is a Muslim majority country?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Drinking_in_public#Canada
He says he doesn't remember a source but he has heard it several times that over 70% wears headscarf. I found this article by Google:
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/default.aspx?pageid=438&...
What you say makes a lot of sense, but can you comment on how this generally "good" government seems to be using excessive force, and the claimed media blackout on the protests?
I understand that the government may be more respectful of democracy than their opponents, but is it possible that the protesters still want more freedom and democracy, rather than supporting the Kemalist ideology?
AKP basically used EU as a cover to weaken other significant forces like legal bodies, media, military. Now, they are in phase 2, using their power to crush all others who do not live like them. For example, until late yesterday, there were no major TV channels airing the news. We communicated via Twitter, and the only live broadcasting TV was from Norway!
With the weaking of all opposing forces, there is no significant power left against them, or at least, that was what they thought.
The recent ban on alcoholic drugs, Erdogan's constant mention of the Ottomans as his ancestors, his constant stress during his speeches that he dreams of a religious and obedient youth is what we are opposing.
The notion of democracy Erdogan has is very primitive. In his speeches, basically he sees the voting which takes place every 4 years as the only democratic right a person can have.
It is true that in the past, the Turkish state oppressed some religious groups or major minorities like the Kurdish; but the attitude this government and its proponents have is basically contained with revenge. Just to give a final example, the Major of Ankara, a significant figure from AKP, just yesterday tweeted the following:
"You should thank God that we believe in democracy, otherwise we would drown you in a spoonful of water."
The propaganda this government makes is, quite literally reminiscent of 1984. How they re-define words, how they contradict with themselves at each sentence is stunning. They usually say they are the forerunners of "advanced democracy", when they cannot envision a life form other than their own. Of course, every such speech of them ends with the following lie: we respect everyone's lives, everyone can live as they please. It is like the old Ford saying, everyone can lead the life they like in Turkey, as long as it is approved by AKP.
Maybe those two links might help to understand the vision of "democracy" of Erdogan :
http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-4387396,00.html
http://www.quora.com/Turkey-country/How-can-the-Turkish-publ...
As far as I have checked major Turkish media outlets, they are reporting the situation and there is no media black out as claimed in the post you have linked to. I find such claims quite dishonest. You should know that making such easily refutable claims will cast doubt on your whole position, you should be more careful about your claims.
When I protested in my homeland I heard accusations of being paid to do this, even the price was specified ($20). Twenty bucks to go into a harsh cold night to be assaulted by police and possibly imprisoned on terrorism charges, what a deal :)
The automatic reaction from some muslims will be that it is US-sponsored. Given the US's long track record of sponsoring coups and pro-western/secular movements, you can't really blame them.
The so called Egypt Revolution was also backed by US initially to kick Mobarak out. Later things got out of control when Ikhwan got dominated.
The so called protest is nothing but an attempt to sabotage Erdogan govt after his recent Islamic moves. Nobody is seeing the fact Erdogan helped Turkey to getrid of IMF and put turkey on right direction.
Thousands of people are protesting in Bangladesh against cruel government who has killed thousands of Muslims so far. Since the govt is secular hence their evil doings are not being promoted anywhere including so called unbaised social media.