Gezi Park Resistance Article Series – No. 4
The Gezi protests: Local Struggle, Global Struggle
Now that we are on the twelfth day of the protests in Turkey, the most basic facts are well known. An initially small urban protest quickly gained a lot of support, which only grew further after the police interfered with heavy force and material. After two days of intense clashes, the police retreated from the central areas of Istanbul and since then the protesters seized the park and the adjacent Taksim area again. The park and square have been cleaned, kitchens are being build and supplied with food by sympathisers and neighbours, there is a small library for the ones in need of further entertainment and there are several info-stands to coordinate it all. The whole area is a constant stage for tens of thousands of people, either led by conviction or curiosity, and they are singing, dancing, shouting slogans, or bursting into spontaneous applause at random moments and places. It seems that a historical moment is indeed in the making.
It is a good analysis of what exactly going on in Turkey right now. The writer is very succesful is in explaining the protests in a broad spectrum – especially the link between the neoliberalisation process and the conservatist policies of AKP and how they have culminated anger with in the society.
The protests are not only due to neither a mall construction nor authoritarian conservatism of AKP. It is more than that and this article is quite successful in presenting it.