Few lines about the protests in Turkey. The protests started with Istanbul Metropolitan
Municipality's plan to build up a mall into the Gezi Park in Taksim downtown of Istanbul.
Cops attacked few times to the people who had occupied Gezi Park in the very early hours
of the morning and civilian cops destroyed their tents. On Friday during a huge protest in
Taksim square, cops violently attacked again without warning people. This led many people
in lots of cities to full the streets in order to protest the government and police
violence. Downtowns of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir are all occupied with hundreds of
thousands of people. Cops never gave up throwing gas bombs on the people; hundreds of
people were "shot" with gas bombs, some lost his/her eyes, some were shot in their heads.
(one was shot with real bullet in Ankara) Over 1000 people got arrested countrywide,
however according to the latest news all those arrests in Istanbul got released, no info
from other cities. The people, ordinary people are fighting for freedom, defending their
urban areas, protesting police violence and neoliberal-conservative policies of the
Islamist-liberal government. They are from various backgrouds; mostly leftwing people even
some nationalists, radical left and anarchists. Most of them have just met with such
police violence, most may have never been in the streets before. Although some political
parties try to manipulate the protests, there exists no dominant figure. In neighborhoods
of many cities local residents organized marchs, those sitting in their homes made noise
with pots, chanted. The riot is probably the greatest in the history of Turkey (at least
in the West of Turkey- 'coz Kurds in the East are resisting for a couple of decades).
The interesting thing is that Erdogan leader of governing party AKP still defending the
project, didnot gave up and even mentioned about constructing a mosque in Taksim. (also
added that "twitter is a damn thing") Though they didnt censored internet or social media
yet, the media is fully "self"censored. People either get news from a few limited TV
channels or from social media (in some cases from international media). People are self
organized; lawyers, doctors, pharmacists helping activists and injured people for free. In
some cases, cafes, bars, hotels open their doors to the activists. We all need solidarity!
Please spread this and organize solidarity actions in front of Turkish embassies or
consulates in possible!
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» (en) Turkey in Riot