Category Archives: Essays

Jadaliyya: Gezi, the Kurds, and our kids

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Those who wanted to march towards the Democratic Solution Tent were intercepted by gas bombs and water cannons. Yet you didn’t see them, although there were kids present in that march. You didn’t see them, because in fact you have been watching penguins every day for the past thirty years. “Wait a second…We have been watching Diyarbakir from the same [...] → Read the full article…

Jadaliyya: Erdogan’s masculinity and the language of the Gezi resistance

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Most observers of Turkey have been surprised by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s unwillingness to compromise with the Gezi Park protestors, whose resistance for the preservation of an İstanbul park has transformed into a nationwide wave of popular urban protests—despite ongoing efforts at violent suppression—and threatens to become a full-fledged political, and economic, crisis. When Erdoğan hastily left the country [...] → Read the full article…

Toronto Star: Iconography of non-violence and Turkey’s ‘standing man’ – Rick Salutin

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Turkey’s standing man is uniquely individual, even casual within the gallery of non-violent acts of resistance. It’s hard to say what’s so moving about him. He stands, sleeves rolled up, hands in pants pockets, gazing (in the original version) at a portrait of modern Turkey’s founder, Kemal Ataturk, clearly pondering it — for eight hours. It’s not overtly defiant but [...] → Read the full article…

Jadaliyya: Occupy Angara – A Situation assessment in a state of emergency

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[NOTE: Angara is an alternative pronunciation of the name Ankara, which reflects the peculiarities of the city and the country.] The Political Atmosphere Leading Towards Gezi Park Process It can be said that the Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi (AKP) was born as a hegemonic project in the wake of the economic and social crisis that Turkey faced in 2001. In [...] → Read the full article…

Jadaliyya: ‘All of a sudden!’: Gezi Park resistance in Ankara

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Perhaps the best words to express the beginning of the resistance in Ankara belong to the Turkish poet Orhan Veli Kanık: “Everything happened all of a sudden!” We had been following the developments in Gezi Park for four days. These developments were similar to what had happened with the Emek Movie Theater, which was constructed in 1924 and was destroyed [...] → Read the full article…

Jacobin: From Turkey with Love – Belen Fernandez

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The protests in Turkey are, quite simply, an assertion of humanity in the face of inhumanity. My first experience with tear gas took place last Tuesday in a rundown bar off of Istanbul’s İstiklal Street where my friend and I had come after visiting Gezi Park. The Turkish prime minister’s hallucinatory depiction of the composition of the anti-government protests had [...] → Read the full article…

Turkey’s false nostalgia

OP-ED CONTRIBUTOR ISTANBUL — THE demonstrators who have filled the streets of Istanbul and other Turkish cities for nearly three weeks complain that Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s Justice and Development Party, known as the A.K.P., has adopted an increasingly authoritarian attitude that threatens basic freedoms. They also resent his tendency to meddle in the personal lives of citizens — by [...] → Read the full article…

Jadaliyya: Defining the terrain of struggle in Taksim

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In the past weeks, the Gezi Park occupation has weathered a ferocious police deployment accompanied by an almost ceaseless barrage of tear gas, plastic bullets, and water cannons directed at the peaceful congregration at the heart of Taksim. According to the latest report of the Turkish Medical Association, as of 17 June, 7,882 people have been hospitalized; four are confirmed [...] → Read the full article…

Boyun Eğme // Don’t Bend Your Neck

“This is not your fight — it’s not your country, it’s not your Prime Minister,” my uncle writes to me in a Facebook message from his home in Moscow, where he got stuck for almost 22 years after bearing witness to the fall of the Soviet Union. “Stay away from this stuff.” *    *    *  As I walk up İstiklal [...] → Read the full article…

Roar Magazine: Assemblies emerging in Turkey: a lesson in democracy – Jerome Roos

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The protesters are starting to counter-pose their own direct democracy to the sham of a democracy proposed by Erdogan’s authoritarian neoliberal state.  Something quite amazing is happening in Istanbul. In addition to the silent “standing man” actions around the country, people’s assemblies are slowly starting to emerge in different neighborhoods across the city. As in Spain, Greece and the Occupy [...] → Read the full article…