Category Archives: Personal stories

Firatnews: It turned out to be that the bullets used were not harmless but had small metal balls in them

yarali

Police forces firing rubber bullets at the Gezi Park resisters from anti-riot armored vehicles, aka scorpions, used bullets containing metal balls and not colored dye. The bullet that wounded tradesman Volkan Kesanbilici and caused him to lose his left eye had dozens of metal balls in it. Kesanbilici was hit on May 31 by a police bullet fired from a [...] → Read the full article…

Başka haber: On the night Ali İsmail Korkmaz was beaten “They were hitting to kill”

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Ali İsmail Korkmaz, 19, who was beaten up by an unidentified group while he was runing away from tear gas firing of the police at Gezi Park solidarity demonstrations in Eskişehir on 2 June 2013, has passed away at Osmangazi University Hospital. An entry on Ekşi Sözlük – an online urban dictionary in Turkish – tells about the events of [...] → Read the full article…

Etha: Fascists attacked, the police watched

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Upon the Taksim Solidarity’s call, people wanted to enter the Gezi Park yesterday and confronted once again with the police crackdown by pressurized water and tear gas bombs; they even tortured the protestors in the middle of the streets. Besides the police, some civilians with machetes also attacked the protestors. Özgür Doğan tells us one of such incidents that he [...] → Read the full article…

habersoL: The victim of people with machetes told what she has gone through

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The woman who was attacked by some machete weilding people in Taksim before the very eyes of the police told her story to SOL. The individuals who attacked people in Taksim in front of the police became the main agenda of Turkey today. People took pictures of the attacks and shared them instantly on social media. In one of the [...] → Read the full article…

Türkiye’den Şiddet Hikayeleri: “I was tortured for hours, physically and psychologically”

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During the Gezi protests, the night of 2nd June, Anatolian University student Caner Ertay was subjected to police torture, first by the riot police and then by the anti-terror branch. Ertay told what happened that night to ‘Stories of Violence from Turkey’, how he was carried in the trunk of a car rom hospital to hospital. This was the same [...] → Read the full article…

The marginal chappuler in the video images of the Dolmabahçe police violence: “Why was I the last man down?” Selçuk Uygur

kiyafet01

Hello everybody, I would like to tell you about the incidents myself as the main protagonist of the videos showing the “Dolmabahçe Polis Violence” recorded on the 2nd of June 2013 at night in Dolmabahçe and broadcast on youtube. I am the person that the police tried to lynch in those images after the Billboard Resistance. Those of you who are [...] → Read the full article…

Yurt: Life transformed in Abbasağa

NEWS CENTER- After Gezi Park protests, the resisters we talked during the forums in Abbasağa pointed out that nothing would be the same. The resisters do not want to turn back to their previous lives, they call each other all the time and they say that all these events   prove that their dreams are to be realized. The resisters think [...] → Read the full article…

Gezi defence: Why was I there?

I hear certain people singing to me, “You are dead for me now”, while some others sing to me “You rose up to my heart like sunshine”… Some request my books enthusiastically, saying “write and send it to me” and some spill out their hatred in a “burn all the memories” fashion. But, what business did I have in the [...] → Read the full article…

Technosociology.org: “Come, Come, Whoever You Are.” As a Pluralist Movement Emerges from Gezi Park in Turkey

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After the Gezi Park occupation was dispersed, dozens of neighborhood forums popped up around Istanbul where people get together to discuss a variety of issues. I’ve been attending these neighborhood forums, which are are organized in an “agora” format where speakers line up and take turns to speak. While media attention remains on the  frequent Taksim Square demonstrations, the forums [...] → Read the full article…

Hürriyet: “My twelve-year-old son was arrested. I almost lost my mind.”

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    We continue Gezi testimonies with Derya. What she has been through is nerve-racking . Her twelve-year-old son, Alperen, was arrested. Inside an armed riot vehicle called Scorpion, he was taken around Ankara.  The police hit his head over and over again and kicked him numerous times. Mistaking the woman next to Alperen as his mother, the police made her kiss their [...] → Read the full article…