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Riots in Turkey

Big clean up effort downtown going on this morning after overnight trashing of glass paned bus stops, lit advert boxes, and bank windows. Lots of graffiti painted calling for revolution, and the old anarchy symbols. A couple of municipal juice vans were reduced to burnt out shells. The footpaths were being washed down, perhaps to deal with the crowd dispersant gasses used, which seemed to strongly hang around from last night.
 
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This is a quite informative article about the original issue and how the protests developed.

His supporters have attempted to paint the protests—currently in their fifth day, and gathering momentum—as the work of fringe anarchists, atheists, foreign instigators, and government detractors. They have cited ‘ulterior motives’ and alluded to secularist conspirators trying to unseat the ruling, religiously inspired AKP (Justice and Development Party).
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It's been a noisy evening again tonight. People chanting and banging stuff in the streets, emergency vehicle sirens and car horns.
 
Take care, Sid. I heard that the uncensored TV channel to follow is "Halk TV" - that is if you understand Turkish or are satisfied with watching policemen firing tear gas in unclear locations, as shown right now on this low-quality stream I found. The official website seems to be DDoS'ed atm and some other streams don't work.
 
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It's amazing that a small peaceful protest evolved into this. The riots and protests seems to be growing stronger every day.

I read in Norwegian papers today that PM Erdogan has claimed that Twitter is the greatest enemy to society today, and lays a lot of the blame of the riots on social media. As Childlike Empress' link says earlier, he's trying to portray the protesters as extremists, anarchists, criminals, foreign influence, etc. I think that's a huge mistake of him, considering how large the protests have become.

He's also trying to really clamp down on the media, and I keep seeing reports that the protests are hardly covered in Turkish media and that Turks have to rely on foreign news sources to find out what's happening.

Turkcell a private and biggest mobile network in Turkey states that they received orders and political pressure from the ruling party AKP and government to block the communications in Istanbul mainly Taksim square which they obeyed as well as the other 2 main networks! Turkcell and other main mobile network operators disabled the service in many other cities as the protests grew.
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http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-981808

ETA: I'm also seeing pictures a mass of people outside the offices of NTV News Channel, protesting their lack of coverage of what's going on.
 
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There have been a lot of Facebook comments criticising coverage or lack of.

There certainly are an element out their who are revelling in this, graffiting their fantasies of a "communist revolution" on bank buildings and burning municipal juice vans. But there a whole lot of very ordinary folk that I know who are very drawn into this and emotional.

And look at this:
Turkish intelligence looking into 'foreign links' to Taksim protests: PM
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/tu...s-pm-.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48097&NewsCatID=338

The habit around here of blaming covert foreign players for anything that goes wrong just ***** me.
 
Ryokan said:
From what I understand, this isn't being covered very well in Turkish media?

It's top story in Norwegian online newspapers at the moment. There's also lots of conflicting information all over the place.
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That's my understanding as well. Apparently the state run media is running story after story on Miss Turkey and the world's ugliest cat.
 
Yesterday saw an officially dead protester, although not directly caused by something Erdogan, who left the country for a week-long North Africa tour today, could be blamed for. These and much more news and details backed with links often to Turkish media in this - far more sophisticated than the title suggests - commentary: Erdogan is Toast
 
Childlike Empress said:
Yesterday saw an officially dead protester, although not directly caused by something Erdogan, who left the country for a week-long North Africa tour today, could be blamed for. These and much more news and details backed with links often to Turkish media in this - far more sophisticated than the title suggests - commentary: Erdogan is Toast
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That's a very good overview of the situation and where we might go from here.
 
This is an interestingly critical article from the conservative newspaper Zaman.

Now trying to shift the debate from building a shopping mall in Gezi Park to the building of a mosque instead is a prime example of how religion is used to cover up and generate popular support in Turkey. The ruling party seems to have been aware of the discontent in its grassroots and is trying to unite them behind the idea of building mosque in Taksim.

This is obviously a populist tactical move that attempts to imprison conservative and religious group within the AK Party block. The ruling party knows that as the debate revolves around Islamic symbols and references it can control and rely on the support of the religious masses. Polarization along secular and religious lines is expected to benefit the AK Party because it has the potential to mobilize the religious masses. In the past this was the method used by the Kemalists and secularists. They used to expect that raising secular themes and symbols would rally the people behind them. It did not work as people were interested in democracy as much as secularism and supported the AK Party, which promised greater democracy.​
http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=317225
 
Longest spring ever. I'll be watchin' ya, Turkey. Hope things pan out well, and things don't get too bloody.
 
Skeptic Ginger said:
It doesn't sound like Turkish Spring. I think it looks more like Occupy Taksim.
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How so? Granted, they peacefully occupied a public space, but it's sort of gone way beyond that. The American Occupy movement never clashed with the police on this level, nor did they go beyond peaceful protest. I think it's much more comparable to the protests in Egypt, hence the "Spring" part, than Occupy Whatever.

Just not seeing it. Can you explain why you see it that way?
 
I keep hearing reports about lots of Kurdish separatists with Kurdish flags among the protesters. Is this true?

There is a very good chance that Erdogan may get overthrown by the secularist military. They've done this several times before with overly tyrannical or overly religious prime ministers, and usually without large protests like this. I hope he falls and a more secular leader takes his place. I don't want any American involvement though.

In the early 1960s not only was Turkish PM Adnan Menderes overthrown by the military, he was eventually executed!
 
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Ryokan said:
One Norwegian newspaper picked up on this and compares Erdogan with Assad, saying their excuses sound so similar.
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As to this and your question to Skeptic Ginger - I think what we've seen in the "Arab Spring" revolutions is people peacefully standing up en masse against authoritarian systems run by despots. What we see now is people peacefully standing up en masse against a wannabe despot - who is a great argument for a general two-terms limit for politicians in powerful positions - running a fairly decent system he wants to "reform" in his megalomaniac image.

While what we see in Syria is a largely manufactured violent proxy war against an inconvenient authoritarian system with a leader who didn't come to power legitimately but isn't the problem, in fact failed to introduce reforms because of the system. There has never been any mass protest remotely that large in the big cities of Syria as there is now in Turkey.

And Erdogan was one of the loudest voices - and a serial liar on the topic until today - demanding Assad to step down from the very beginning. A beginning that saw some unjustified violence in the province of Daraa, but also unknown snipers shooting at the protesters AND the police, causing dozens of deaths on both sides. Imagine if that would happen in Turkey now. And contrary to the myth of several months of peaceful protests taking place, from the very beginning the southern Turkish Hatay province was one of the launching pads of the armed gangs infiltrating into the country and causing havoc, certainly not without knowledge of Erdogan. Financed, brainwashed and armed by Qatar and Saudi-Arabia and trained in "refugee camps" very near to big NATO bases. You can check some of my over 500 posts in the big Syria thread for very early evidence of that.

Skip to the latest pages for a reminder of how the stand on the Reyhanli bombing you started a thread about and fled it is now. Bordering LIHOP, certainly a ridiculous cover-up. And this was not kept from the Turks, the miscalculating "get rid of Assad by all means, won't take long" criminal policy of Erdogan is another cornerstone in his grave, as 80% or so of Turks oppose it.

And on the last page you can see the Syrian news agency gleefully putting out articles mirroring Erdogan's propaganda while he does exactly what he falsely accused Assad of - hilarious if not so many people would have had and continue to suffer from all of this.
 
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Ryokan said:
How so? Granted, they peacefully occupied a public space, but it's sort of gone way beyond that. The American Occupy movement never clashed with the police on this level, nor did they go beyond peaceful protest. I think it's much more comparable to the protests in Egypt, hence the "Spring" part, than Occupy Whatever.

Just not seeing it. Can you explain why you see it that way?
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Because, Turkey is already a democracy. The government is elected. They don't need to overthrow a military dictator.

How does an unpopular government stay in power, half the people vote for the candidates. I'm not seeing evidence the elections are rigged.

What about the Occupy Movement? The rich, powerful along with people who are sympathetic are in power. Not to start a flame war but right wing TEA Partiers come to mind. In the past when it was the "pave paradise, put up a parking lot" battle, it was the environmentalists vs people who believed jobs were more important. Today it's the rich and the people they've convinced to vote against their best economic interest by evoking the "I earned it" lie.

Here you have selective people in Turkey who would benefit from a mall and pricey housing and poor merchants and residents who stand to be displaced so someone else can make more money.


I'm not there. I don't know Turkey that well. But that's what it looks like to me, the more I read about what's going on.


BTW, the reason Occupy Wall St died out before you saw major riots like those in Turkey is our population is more easily mollified and the movement was essentially snuffed out by having the media ignore it. Turkish politicians might want to study the lessons from here. Ignore the protestors until the public gets bored, clear them out once or twice in a quiet collective effort, play down the sympathy by showing how they are trashing up the place. And whatever you do, minimize anything that might make the public empathetic with the protesters. The tactics were very effective here and no doubt well planned. People here may have also been less desperate, I'm not sure.
 
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