For the records: On Saturday 15 June, police who fired water cannons, sound bombs and tear gas was aware that there were many children and elderly people on site at Taksim.
Unfortunately. I happen to sense some events in advance. It happened again. It was around 8:00 pm. I stayed at Gezi Park for about an hour and listened to the elegies and folk songs people were chanting for the lost ones. Kurds, nationalists, members of communist party, LGBT groups etc. all sorts of people were standing side by side and it was so beautiful… I left the park and got on a mini-bus to Kadıköy. Then I changed my mind and got off, started to walk towards Taksim. For days police was just sitting infront of AKM (they even brought benches and cahirs there). I was planning to walk down to Beşiktaş if this was still the case, however …
The scene was as follows: Tens of police officers up and ready to depart… Before we could figure out what was going on (our) mothers entered the square around 8:15 saying “We are proud of you!”. Then we heard a police paging on loudspeaker: “Evacuate the area!”. Mothers started to form a chain holding hands and saying ‘We won’t let you take our children’. But upon insistent “Evacuate!” commands from the police, almost 90% of the resisters understood that there would be an intervention and headed to the park stairs. Police went on announcing for another 10 or 15 minutes: “This is illegal, evacuate the site, if you do not we will be intervening by tear gas and water cannons”. However nobody did move.
We were counting on our press ID cards but we were asked to leave as well. Surely non of the journalists at the square left. At 8:55 TOMA’s (Riot Control Vehicle) started to move towars us, then came the sound bombs and tear gas firing…People thought that they could be relatively safe in the park, that didn’t come to be true. There was teargas firing from all corners of the park and there were no place to hide. Young people were quite used to it but elderly people were unable to move, children were throwing up. This time almost everbody was unprepared; after two calm days many people didn’t have their helmets, goggles, masks and talcid-milk solutions with them. This led to a more wide spread panic.
Together with Elif (Ekinci) from Radikal newspaper we left the park and started to walk down next to Divan Hotel. In all the side streets there were 10-15 riot police. We were trying to get to The Marmara but an officer made us go back and directed to a back street. On that street riot police was ready. They said ‘We can’t let you pass this street” but when we answered and said that another officer has just directed us here they replied “Not with the helmets!”. He attempted to get the helmet from Elif’s head. When we said that they cannot get it for security reasons, 6-7 police officers moved towards us and attempted at their sticks. We presented our press ID cards. After replying “F**k the press”, one of them raised his hand to hit me. A group of 4-5 people who entered the street following us came to help and stood between us. A couple of times I asked the question “What have I done to you, why are you attempting to hit me?” couple of times and not surprisingly didn’t get an answer… Eventually, we walked back from that street.
We walked down to Dolmabahçe from the stadium but it is important to note that the street lights were turned off at around Taş Kışla and police instructed even from which sidewalk we should use.
When we got to Beşiktaş there was a huge group of riot police infront of PM working office. While the police was being protested by honking cars horns, the chief officer was making a count. We headed towards the Kadıköy boat pier, a group of civil police officers were busy eating sunflower seeds. And on the Üsküdar boat people were talking about the police and the PM, not surprisingly with unpleasant words. But my mind was hooked on the disabled young man I saw at the entrance of the park and on the couple aged 60-65, holding hands and waiting for the TOMA…
İpek İzci
16 Haziran 2013
Haberin başlığı için tıklayınız; radikal.com.tr
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