From Taksim Square and Beyond

Laal­tain: How come a small protest against gov­ern­men­t’s deci­sion to con­struct shop­ping mall in a park turn into such a mas­sive phe­nom­e­non?

İpek*[i]: Turn­ing point, which is 31st of May, was quite unex­pect­ed. First cou­ple of days was a nor­mal protest. The police was attack­ing the peo­ple who stayed at the park every morn­ing from 28th to 31st of May. How­ev­er, on 31st of May, they attacked heav­i­ly and more than once. After see­ing this vio­lence, the crowd, which was unex­pect­ed­ly big, start­ed gath­er­ing around 7 in the evening to take the park back. That night didn’t end till the six in the morn­ing nei­ther for the police nor for the pro­test­ers. At the end on Sat­ur­day, the police backed down, the pro­test­ers took the park back. This was a huge suc­cess and after that Gezi Park became a sym­bol for every­one. Every­day thou­sands of peo­ple start­ed com­ing to the park.

Laal­tain: What is the social, polit­i­cal and ide­o­log­i­cal make up of most of the pro­test­ers? And how the agen­da for the pro­test­ers is being set?

İpek: The com­po­si­tion of the pro­test­ers isn’t homo­ge­neous at all. There are envi­ron­men­tal­ists, left­ist groups, LGBTs, sec­u­lar nation­al­ist (ulusal­ci) and anti-cap­i­tal­ist Mus­lims. These groups have nev­er been togeth­er before. This diver­si­ty with­in the group makes the move­ment unique and more mean­ing­ful in Turkey. Major­i­ty of them (79%) are not asso­ci­at­ed with any civ­il soci­ety organ­i­sa­tion or polit­i­cal par­ty. They are also the young ones usu­al­ly referred to as 90s gen­er­a­tion. Around 56 per­cent are university/master grad­u­ates, while 45% of the pro­test­ers have nev­er attend­ed a protest before.

The agen­da and the demands are being set at the meet­ings orga­nized by Tak­sim Sol­i­dar­i­ty (an umbrel­la organ­i­sa­tion). How­ev­er, the Sol­i­dar­i­ty has been crit­i­cised for not being able to rep­re­sent all of the fac­tions present in the park.

Laal­tain: There has been mas­sive media black out about the protests. How were the pro­test­ers able to com­mu­ni­cate with rest of the world and has the inter­na­tion­al cov­er­age and fram­ing of the issue been fair?

İpek: The media black out was a shame in every way. For exam­ple, on 31st of May, when we were going to the protests, we were real­ly scared and wait­ing for a heavy attack. When I talked to my fam­i­ly, they did not have any idea about what was going on at Tak­sim. The social media was the best thing hap­pened to the pro­test­ers, I guess. Peo­ple were using twit­ter and face­book to post about exact time for gath­er­ing, inform­ing about the police vio­lence with pic­tures and videos, and ask­ing for pos­si­ble help from lawyers and psy­chol­o­gists.

The inter­na­tion­al cov­er­age was essen­tial when you don’t have any news on your con­ven­tion­al media. It did have some dis­ad­van­tages though like there were spu­ri­ous analy­ses as nam­ing PM as dic­ta­tor and call­ing the move­ment Turk­ish Spring. Live broad­cast­ing for 8 hours by CNN has been heav­i­ly crit­i­cised by the gov­ern­ment for pos­si­ble manip­u­la­tive fram­ing. Yet, I still believe that inter­na­tion­al cov­er­age was quite impor­tant because it made the pro­test­ers feel being heard.

Laal­tain: Ana­lysts say this is kind of a cit­i­zens’ fight for urban space. To what extend do you agree with that and what else is at stake?

İpek: It is absolute­ly a fight for urban space. Yet, we can extend the def­i­n­i­tion of urban space by adding the free­doms like drink­ing alco­hol or pub­lic dis­play of affection/love. The gov­ern­ment was not only tak­ing our park but also late­ly try­ing to take our free­dom in pub­lic place. The alco­hol sales reg­u­la­tion, the pub­lic pres­sure for moral val­ues and a sug­ges­tion for the ban on abor­tion were the exam­ples why peo­ple felt stuck in their own coun­try. They need­ed to breath freely and hap­pi­ly. In addi­tion to this, the way the PM deals with the issues is prob­lem­at­ic because it is like dic­tat­ing his own val­ues on soci­ety. He was not real­ly involv­ing any oth­er about the pol­i­cy deci­sions he was com­ing up with.

Laal­tain: Is the peren­ni­al ten­sion in Turkey between Islamism and Kemal­ism also a dri­ving fac­tor in the protests? If so, to what extent?

İpek: In the begin­ning, it was not the case. How­ev­er, when the protests became huge and had some media cov­er­age, Kemal­ists  and sec­u­lar nation­al­ists joined the move­ment. Their dri­ve was aimed against the Islamist out­look of the rul­ing AK Par­ty and the gov­ern­ment. This is why as the gov­ern­ment and PM just heard these voic­es, they hat­ed the move­ment. Rather than lis­ten­ing to the oth­er peo­ple, the gov­ern­ment thought that the move­ment is led by the Kemal­ists, so they sup­pressed it bad­ly. Yet, it was not the case at all. The move­ment was much more than that. For exam­ple, on two Fri­days when some o f the pro­test­ers at the park were pray­ing, the left­ist groups stood hand-in-hand sur­round­ing them in order to secure their space for the pray. These kind of exam­ples are sim­ply ignored by the PM who appar­ent­ly does not want to hear them.

Laal­tain: In what ways does this gov­ern­ment dif­fer from the past ones? When it comes to state repres­sion, how would you com­pare it with the mil­i­tary or with deep state sup­port­ed regimes?

İpek: It is dif­fer­ent because it has the major­i­ty of the seats in the par­lia­ment after a long spell of inef­fi­cient coali­tion gov­ern­ments. It enjoys mas­sive sup­port from the busi­ness world for their focus on eco­nom­ic growth. It has done good work in elim­i­nat­ing army’s high­hand­ed role in pol­i­tics and for the peace process in Turkey. As it became stronger with increas­ing sup­port, it has been act­ing like a state on its own at the cost of democ­ra­cy. Also, the PM is a fig­ure that makes this gov­ern­ment dif­fer­ent. He does not know any diplo­mat­ic way of com­mu­ni­ca­tion; he is too straight­for­ward and nev­er thinks before he talks. He behaves at the same time like a dad, gov­er­nor, may­or, every­thing to the soci­ety.

Laal­tain: How have you been involved in the protests and how have they been mean­ing­ful to you per­son­al­ly?

İpek: I went to the park every­day after work. I suf­fered from tear gas when the police used it around the park. Yet, I have not stayed at the park in the tents. It was real­ly mean­ing­ful to me. Just to see those dif­fer­ent groups togeth­er was an amaz­ing feel­ing. I did not think that peo­ple in Turkey would be so keen and brave to be there for that long time. I have more faith in Turkey’s future now.

Laal­tain: What are the recent devel­op­ments and where is the sit­u­a­tion lead­ing to?

İpek: After the huge attack and kick­ing peo­ple out from the park on 15th of June, the resis­tance has not stopped. Peo­ple are gath­er­ing togeth­er every night at 9 at their local parks. It is an open forum, every­one has a chance to talk. Some of them talk about their expe­ri­ences dur­ing protests, some of them talk about next steps of the move­ment. Now, the meet­ing notes are shared at a blog. It is very inter­est­ing to see that peo­ple did not give up. Also the qual­i­ty of the dis­cus­sion is great as well because peo­ple now talk about LGBT rights and Kur­dish issue so open­ly. The move­ment might come up with a can­di­date for the local elec­tions against the rul­ing par­ty. There­fore, I would say that the move­ment will be evolv­ing into some­thing more mean­ing­ful and con­crete.

Laal­tain: Any mes­sage for the rest of the world?

İpek: Thanks for the sol­i­dar­i­ty and sup­port. Her yer Tak­sim her yer Direniş (Every­where tak­sim every­where resis­tance)