How did everything started in Gezi Park?
Everything started just after PM, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, announced that it was supposed to build a shopping center or an Ottoman style old barrack on the area which is named “Gezi Parkı”. Everyone who has been to Istanbul knows the beauty of Taksim Square. In all this area, Gezi Park is the only green place which is surrounded by trees. Not so crowded, but about 500 people started to protest the decision of the PM. Just after a day of demonstrations, the PM stated that he had already made his decision about Gezi Park. It clearly means that he does not consider what his public thinks. According to the law in Turkey, the PM does not have a right to make decision about a city. It was the first point which makes people think deeply about what is happening.
As it was mentioned in the media, demonstrators were sitting in that park and reading books, dancing peacefully.
Demonstrators were under attack two nights in a row by policemen when they were sleeping in their tents. Until this point, it was about saving nature and trees. But after two days in Gezi Park, the government has shown that it is willing to once again interfere in people’s lives. Now all demonstrations are about demanding space to take a breath and saying “That is enough.”
There is no ideology behind demonstrations. I have never seen such a massive and heterogenous group in my country. There are socialists, leftists, university students, Kurd nationalists, ultra-nationalists, Muslims for revolution, LGBT (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transsexuals). A big lie was told by the PM when he stated that some terrorists and some marginal groups were organizing the demonstrations. In Istanbul, in Izmir, in Ankara, everywhere, ordinary public without organizations gathered in squares and streets.
There is no ideology behind demonstrations. I have never seen such a massive and heterogenous group in my country.
The first thing which must be mentioned is the police terror and dictatorship of the PM. One thing is certain – this is not a democracy. Because of the fear of the PM, Turkish mass media was sleeping and they did not broadcast anything but only penguin documentary. There was only one television which broadcast everything from the beginning. The others started to showing what was happening just this week.
During demonstrations, especially in Taksim Square, a new technology, called “jammer”, is used to block signals of mobile phones. It was aimed to stop connections between demonstrators. There were no connections. Because of this reason, people started to use “Twitter” as a tool of communication with each other. But he PM, Erdogan, identified “twitter” as troublemaker for the society on Monday in a press conference, just before he left Turkey. He also referred to democracy thus: “It is just voting, nothing else.”
People on the streets are against fascism. They are against police terror. They are against unlawfulness. They are against restrictions on consuming alcohol (the PM said on television that everyone who drank alcohol was an alcoholic). They demand their lives without government intervention, they demand their only green space in Taksim, and they demand to live in a country which is democratic.
Yargı Fırat Bildircin is a Turkish citizen who has been living in Klaipėda for almost a year. He is part of a group of activists who collect evidence of police brutality in Turkey on delilimvar.tumblr.com
