During the Gezi resistance Mehmet Istif (36) was sprayed into his face with pepper gas causing severe injuries to the inside of his mouth. These injuries have been treated for the past month. Istif, who has lost one fourth of his tongue and has difficulties in speaking, said, “I will apply to the judiciary for the identification of the chemical [...] → Read the full article…
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…
Two plain-clothes officers posing as well-wishers attempted to enter the Taksim Ilkyardim Hospital Intensive Care Unit where 16-year-old Mustafa Ali Tombul was being treated after a tear gas canister broke his skull. Tombul, a high school student, had brain surgery after being injured during demonstrations in the Tarlabaşı neighborhood of Istanbul. New details relating to the police assault on Mustafa [...] → Read the full article…
Gökhan Biçici was detained on 16 June after being battered and dragged on the floor by the police. And after he was released, he told us the police violence he experienced Gökhan Biçici, a member of broadcasting board in Emek Dünyası Net and the program editor of Emek Dünyası on İmc TV, went to Şişli to watch the protests against [...] → Read the full article…
You are never quite able to forget the first time you are teargassed. If you’re fortunate, you see the tear gas first being deployed and have enough time to make sure you avoid the canisters’ ballistic paths (police often aim for your head when firing them). Immediately after, the loud hiss of the gas pouring out of the cans drowns out every other [...] → Read the full article…
The course of the protests that started as a demonstration against the construction of a shopping mall in place of Gezi Park under the guise of building a replica of former Ottoman military barracks influenced people in different ways. As a Kaldıraç (a monthly revolutionary socialist magazine) poster hanging in Taksim says, “Now everyone has a resistance, solidarity and violence [...] → Read the full article…
ISTANBUL, Turkey (CNN) — Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan slammed protesters Sunday, the tenth day of demonstrations against his government, warning that “even patience has an end.” He gave a series of speeches to supporters in the nation’s capital, Ankara, as well as in the southern city of Adana. “We have been patient. We will be patient, but even [...] → Read the full article…
I’ve written about the abject failure of Turkish media to adequately cover the news of the most important protests in the country since the 1980 coup. Many media outlets aired irrelevant documentaries and talk shows (talk show about legal definitions of theft, cooking shows, dolphin training, etc) while clashes spread to dozens of provinces and many neighborhoods in many major [...] → Read the full article…