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Gezi Park - Istanbul

Sections of the media certainly dont look to be winning any popularity contents on the streets at the moment.

BL06RJoCQAAvipX.jpg:large
 
Correct, welcome to the world of hope.
I think it's going to kick off a LOT soon. I've been out all day and just come home.
Among the things I saw today:
Loads and loads of riot police on buses/in parks. Tear gas vans and water cannons lined up in Besiktas.
The whole of Taksim blocked off, people have constructed massive barricades at every entrance to the square.
Starbucks occupied by people handing out free medical supplies and water.
People donating food/water/clothes/medical supplies at a "free help centre" in the park.
People everywhere wearing gas masks and swimming goggles, some even with helmets on.

Right watching live feed now, it's about to kick off. Everyone is ready :-(
 
sihhi said:
To clear up confusion:-

I have no doubt Putin could well bring out 5 million onto the streets. (Putin also has a solid 64% behind him.
Since he took over after Yeltsin's ill health at the end of 1999, his bloc Edinaya Rossiya has won a whopping four presidential elections (three for him personally) and three legislative elections - comfortably winning every electoral challenge it has faced since then.) This is not the point.

The demands of the Taksim Platform (a coalition of greens, local people and leftists) are there though they have not been publicised effectively:- release of the Taksim raid arrestees, an end to all construction that threatens the park and is imposed without direct consulation with local residents incl. no shopping to be constructed, and freedom for protests in their 'traditional' home of Taksim and Istiklal Street.

The government is refusing to meet these points for its purposes - neoliberal gentrification and ending Taksim as a political site.

The general elections have been won under increasingly anti-democratic postures.
The last one in 2011 which managed to completely wipe out the proper Islamists and the centre-right into a hardened mass-rightist bloc with a 49.7% vote share of voters (still featured the 10% barrier which the AKP promised to do away with in 2001) was conducted with well over a thousand imprisoned BDP Kurish nationalist politicians under super-slow 'anti-terrorism' 'KCK' trials; a series of telephone conversations from the MHP opposition intelligence services leaked just before the election; a conversation from BDP leaders showing them up as grubby and cynical again intelligence services-leaked just before the election; raids on the centre-left CHP's Izmir offices in connection with corruption never charged never happened; ongoing imprisonment of students for protests under the anti-terrorism laws; KESK trade unionist militants still imprisoned from 2009 ie an overall non-democratic legal climate where a school student is imprisoned for six months for scrawling anti-drugs graffiti, where opening a piece of cloth saying 'Free Education' during the PM's speech at a university sees you imprisoned for 10 years in new isolation-cell prisons for the crime of aiding a terrorist association, because you've been seen at the events of the far left.

More generally use of the army and police to man AKP election rally logistics, whereas opposition rallies are located on edge of town marginal sites; police teargassing a leftist demonstration against natural resource privatisation in Hopa killing one injuring several others; 50 armed police clearing the way for around a hundred more to tear down opposition posters putting up AKP ones to ensure an AKP-adoring area to be shown on TV sets across the country.
Click to expand...
Erdogan seems to stem from an ideology which seeks Istanbul's return to the centre of islam on the Mediterranean. That might be an unfair characterisation. Not sure how he can settle that with his neoliberal programme. Would that not defeat the purpose of resurrecting the old Ottoman sphere of influence or ensuring some sort of distinct moral code on the Mediterranean?

I am not sure what Erdogan is doing with the mall. Why is this mall so important to him? Seemed an easy way to win some brownie points with the urban hipsters.

The clampdown on the left could really come back to bite him I suspect. With Syria awash with money and sophisticated weaponry and Turkey's rather ill-thought out intervention, all sorts of sections of Turkish society could become militarised. Although, that might actually benefit Erdogan in the short-run (what's a few bombs for another decade in power).
 
It was showing from a different camera a while ago. Loads of riot police heading up the small streets leading up to the square and something (a bus maybe) on fire.
Now it's back to the square.
 
Poo Flakes said:
Erdogan seems to stem from an ideology which seeks Istanbul's return to the centre of islam on the Mediterranean. That might be an unfair characterisation. Not sure how he can settle that with his neoliberal programme. Would that not defeat the purpose of resurrecting the old Ottoman sphere of influence or ensuring some sort of distinct moral code on the Mediterranean?
Click to expand...

I don't get the Ottoman thing totally, but I have to say that it does appear around a lot nowadays - half a dozen popular Ottoman weekly soaps, lots of rewritten history books downplaying the Kemalist reforms bigging up the Ottomans, choosing the Yavuz Selim for the 3rd Bridge name, bizarre monuments to Ottoman figures, memorial services not for Gallipoli (a defence against British invasion to occupy Istanbul and parcel up all of the Empire) the Kemalist norm, but also for Sarikamis an assault against the Russian Empire.


I am not sure what Erdogan is doing with the mall. Why is this mall so important to him?
Click to expand...

The aim is to clear all politics from the square - to depoliticise.

The clampdown on the left could really come back to bite him I suspect. With Syria awash with money and sophisticated weaponry and Turkey's rather ill-thought out intervention, all sorts of sections of Turkish society could become militarised. Although, that might actually benefit Erdogan in the short-run (what's a few bombs for another decade in power).
Click to expand...

With direct confrontation the anti-AKP working-class will lose heavily, as happened last night in Bagcilar in the street fist and club fights.
 
sihhi said:
With direct confrontation the anti-AKP working-class will lose heavily, as happened last night in Bagcilar in the street fist and club fights.
Click to expand...

Could you tell us more about this by any chance? appreciate all the effort you're going to in this thread.

I've seen a lot of people writing off the Turkish working-class as hopelessly conservative and loyal to the AKP, surely it's more complicated than that?
 
Dersim/Tunceli and Gazi, Istanbul are where live rounds are being used - both working-class non-Sunni areas, police apparently fed up, army commando teams are with them in Dersim.

(The pro-government lot are pretty vile their twitter tag is: #DirenZimbabwe - Resist Zimbabwe poking fun at actors who have tweeted #DirenTaksim

which features them laughing at black Africans

eg https://twitter.com/abdestalanlaik/status/341665863637803008 :rolleyes: )
 
Delroy Booth said:
Could you tell us more about this by any chance? appreciate all the effort you're going to in this thread.

I've seen a lot of people writing off the Turkish working-class as hopelessly conservative and loyal to the AKP, surely it's more complicated than that?
Click to expand...

I should have added the Sunni non-organised non-large-factory working-class - they are AKP, it's their base and always has been since the late 1980s.

Who is doing this writing off? Do you mean the Kurdish national movement?
 
sihhi said:
I should have added the Sunni non-organised non-large-factory working-class - they are AKP, it's their base and always has been since the late 1980s.

Who is doing this writing off? Do you mean the Kurdish national movement?
Click to expand...

Mainstream commentators (mainly the Guardian) who assume the whole Turkish working-class instinctively votes AKP, whereas I didn't know they had a class base like that and that the Turkish w/c was so politically homogenous.
 
Is there any chance the army might use this as a chance to move against the AKP (in a coup)? From what I understand one of the AKPs big achievement in the last decade has been to reign in the autonomous power of the army...

Anyone know what the current state of play between the army and the AKP is? I think the army tried to move agaisnt them in the past (IIRC)
 
Delroy Booth said:
Mainstreaming commentators (mainly the Guardian) who assume the whole Turkish working-class instinctively votes AKP, whereas I didn't know they had a class base like that and that the Turking w/c was so political homogenous.
Click to expand...

They have had an urban Sunni non-organised working-class base up to 2002, after that when they won their confrontation with the army by 2007 and didn't do anything too drastic, they won all the rural traditional voters too so 33% + 15% = near enough 50%.
There's been ten years of heavily unequal growth, "shocking" (as liberals might say) inequality in the sharing, but ten years of growth nonetheless, homes have been bought on the new (to Turkey) concept of mortgages, domestic production has rocketed in general. Southampton's Ford factory moved to Bursa, chemicals left Eastern Europe and went to Anatolia etc etc.

I am UK like most people on this thread.
 
Ok. Your knowledge of Turkish politics is far better than mine.
Police tear gassing around Besiktas stadium now. I was down there earlier and most of the people there seemed like high school students, some even in school uniforms. Hopefully all the kids went home by now.
 
miss direct said:
Ok. Your knowledge of Turkish politics is far better than mine.
Police tear gassing around Besiktas stadium now. I was down there earlier and most of the people there seemed like high school students, some even in school uniforms. Hopefully all the kids went home by now.
Click to expand...

Hopefully the police went home but the tear gas clouds say no.

A shot from a minute or so ago:

BL3evRLCQAAf1Qj.jpg
 
Not sure when this is from, but seems to sum up the joyful exuberance of the police targeting two water cannons on a single woman just for the fun:

BL3UJDfCIAAjteh.jpg:large
 
sihhi said:
I don't get the Ottoman thing totally, but I have to say that it does appear around a lot nowadays - half a dozen popular Ottoman weekly soaps, lots of rewritten history books downplaying the Kemalist reforms bigging up the Ottomans, choosing the Yavuz Selim for the 3rd Bridge name, bizarre monuments to Ottoman figures, memorial services not for Gallipoli (a defence against British invasion to occupy Istanbul and parcel up all of the Empire) the Kemalist norm, but also for Sarikamis an assault against the Russian Empire.
Click to expand...

Thanks a lot. Very interesting indeed. Did not know that. Has there not been two basic visions of Turkey within the elites? One as a regional power (Ottoman) and the other Turkish nationalist/secularist/European.
 
sihhi said:
Not sure when this is from, but seems to sum up the joyful exuberance of the police targeting two water cannons on a single woman just for the fun <snip>
Click to expand...

What brave men they must be. :rolleyes:
 
Potentially important - a 22 year old protestor has been killed in Hatay Armutlu according to centre-left's MP for Hatay on their TV station (which most can't access, you need a large aerial).
If they've got it wrong they will be fingered as causing anything that goes wrong from this point onwards by enflaming the situation etc.
 
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