The response of prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to this summer’s protest movement in Turkey made clear his worsening authoritarianism. Yet his AKP party was founded on inclusivity and pragmatic compromise. As Turks struggled to grasp the impact of this summer’s protests in Istanbul and other cities across the country, Yeşim Arat, professor of political science at Bogazici University, pointed [...] → Read the full article…
Erdogan’s Islamist government accused of exploiting religious divisions in Antakya, long renowned for its ethnic diversity By Constanze Letsche – ANTAKYA Nearly a quarter of the 2 million people who have fled the crisis in Syria – some 460,000 – have made their way into Turkey, the UN high commission for refugees announcedon Tuesday. While many find themselves at the [...] → Read the full article…
Ender Imrek is a member of the Taksim Platform, the key organising centre during the Gezi Park protests. He is also former vice-president of the revolutionary socialist party Labour Party-Turkey (EMEP) and a central executive member of left-wing umbrella group the People’s Democratic Congress (HDK). The HDK played a key role during the Gezi protests, when police brutally evicted protesters seeking [...] → Read the full article…
Members of resistance movements from Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia come together on Gezi Radyo to compare experiences, discuss ways to cooperate and debate how to build a better future. Gezi Radyo organized a mid-August meeting between members of the three resistance movements for change from Egypt, Tunisia and Turkey: Sameh Naguib, co-founder of Egypt’s Revolutionary Socialists Souheil Idoudi from Tunisia’s Union of [...] → Read the full article…
Okan Göçer sustained head injuries due to a tear gas canister on June 1st on Istiklal Street where he had gone to participate in the Gezi protests. He was in a coma for twenty one days. The left side of his head collapsed as a result of his broken skull. We met with him at Okmeydanı Hospital. He wore a [...] → Read the full article…
What made Gezi Experience particularly striking is that through the commoning of Taksim (that is, its ‘enclosure’ against the state), and collective production of space, people were already actively producing a different kind of urban life. The Gezi struggle therefore was not simply about the conservation of an existing commons, but the defense – through production – of a future urban commons. [...] → Read the full article…
Dozens of Gezi Parkers gathered in Mamak Halkevi in Ankara on Sunday after the appeal “Bring your book and attend our concert” – a campaign that aimed to turn the house into Ethem Sarısülük Library. Dozens of Gezi Parkers gathered in Mamak Halkevi House in Ankara after the appeal “Bring your book and attend our concert” – a campaign that [...] → Read the full article…
How Prime Minister Erdoğan accidentally fostered a generation of Turkish liberals. On Aug. 5 a court in western Turkey handed down life sentences to a score of retired military officers, including the former chief of the general staff, as well as politicians and media figures, for plotting attacks that would have hurled the country into chaos in preparation for a [...] → Read the full article…
It is a sunny afternoon in August. Sitting under the dappled shade of the plane trees, I watch a group of council workers tend the flowers by the central fountain of the park. A stray dog idly lies on the grass to escape Istanbul’s heat, while men and women stroll by, some with kids. This is a far cry from [...] → Read the full article…
One of the greatest accomplishments of the protests, for these three individuals, was the chance to meet and experience unity with people from different religions, classes and ethnicities. Although the Gezi protests may have faded a little over the past six weeks, they haven’t for protesters. No youngster in Turkey has ever seen such massive state violence in action before. Before [...] → Read the full article…