GENEVA (18 June 2013) – UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Navi Pillay on Tuesday welcomed last week’s decision by the Turkish Government to put on hold further action on the Gezi Park development in Istanbul until there is a court decision, and then to submit the issue to a local referendum. She urged Turkey’s government and civil society to [...] → Read the full article…
Reporters Without Borders strongly condemns the continuing arbitrary arrests and escalating violence against journalists covering anti-government demonstrations in Turkey. At least eight journalists were briefly arrested yesterday in Istanbul. Violence spread after the police retook Istanbul’s Gezi Park on the evening of 15 June. Media personnel were kept at a distance from the police operation and access to Taksim Square [...] → Read the full article…
ÇGD, TGC, TGC (Journalist Unions and Associations) protested the police as they were detained, exposed to violence and prevented from doing their jobs. The protest of Journalism Associations took place as a reaction against the statements of the government targeting journalists, prevention of making news related to Gezi Parkı protest and the violent attacks of the police. Protesting the blocking [...] → Read the full article…
ISTANBUL – Everyone who enters Istanbul’s Taksim Square, the heart of nearly 20-day-long protests against the government, will be considered a member or a supporter of a terrorist organization, Turkey’s European Union minister said in a televised interview late last night. “I request our citizens who supported the protests until today kindly to return to their homes,” Egemen Bağış said [...] → Read the full article…
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 [...] → Read the full article…
Thousands of women filled the streets and squares in Ankara and took them back: spraying anti-teargas solutions in someone’s eyes, picking up the trash, advising people not to use swear words, but still talking, screaming, not keeping silent, swallowing, and walking, and walking again. The Gezi Park protests can be, and are being, analyzed in multiple ways. Meanwhile, on its [...] → Read the full article…
ISTANBUL — After 18 days of antigovernment demonstrations that presented a broad rebuke to the country’s leadership, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan ordered the riot police to storm the center of the protest movement in Gezi Park on Saturday evening, setting off a night of chaos in downtown Istanbul. As protesters fled the tear gas and water cannons, the police [...] → Read the full article…
Police entered the Hilton hotel in Istanbul to tackle the protesters who have used the facility as a safe-haven, on 15 of June.
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s insistence on demolishing Gezi Park and building a shopping mall on it was only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the causes behind the demonstrations that have shaken Turkey. The real reason is composed of three elements: rising authoritarianism, declining secularism, and stalled democratization. On 28 December 2011 at 9:37 pm, [...] → Read the full article…