TURKEY: Echoes of Gezi

21.09.2013 by PostVirtual

New protests in Turkey. Via salzburg.com

September 19

Dear people,

In Turkey a new wave of protest is spreading through the country. This time, it comes from the capital Ankara, in particular the campus of METU, the Middle Eastern Technical University.

TURKEY: Our Rage is Growing, So Does Our Struggle!

11 July 2013 by Revolutionist Anarchist Action (DAF)

The going on occupation of the Taksim Square and Gezi Park has been attacked by the police this morning. After the meeting of the Council of Ministers yesterday, the police came to the square early in the morning at about 7 oclock, while shooting tear gas, the police made announcements that they are not going to attack to the park. Hundreds of police entered to Taksim Square pleading that there will be no attack to the park and saying that only the banners will be moved away. While the pankarts on AKM are moved away another group of police wanted to move away the tents on the square. The people wanted to stop the police and police attacked to the people with tear gas.

TURKEY: Interview: Anarchists in the Turkish Uprising

04.07.2013 by traven

To follow up our coverage of the uprising in Turkey beginning from Taksim Square, we’ve conducted an interview with anarchists in İstanbul. They talk about the background of the revolt, the relationship between this uprising and others around the world, and its implications for the future of Turkey.

TURKEY: Tear Gas & Twitter in Taksim – an anarchist eyewitness analysis from Gezi Park, Istanbul

June 25, 2013 by Andrew Flood – Workers Solidarity Movement – WSM

Tear gas is a very good place to start trying to understand what is happening in Turkey.  The main purpose of tear gas is to terrorise and thus break up large crowds of people.  In Istanbul over the last weeks huge quantities have been used over and over to prevent large anti-government demonstrations developing.

This wasn’t about ‘riot control’ – generally there was no riot to control.  In this piece I’m going to put the Gezi park revolt in the context of the cycle of struggles that began in 2010 and of the specific economic, politcal and historical situation of the Turkish republic to try and draw out the lessons for all of us fighting global capitalism.

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TURKEY: The Unspeakable

July 1, 2013 by Postvirtual

Shoes at the resistance monument in Besiktas

Istanbul, July 1

Dear people,

As millions of people took the streets in Egypt and millions of Spaniards finished to vote on popular democracy in a nationwide plebiscite, Istanbul celebrated the biggest Gay Pride parade in its history. It was the grand finale of LGBT week. As expected, the people of Gezi Park joined them in an extravaganza of colours, joy and rhythm, a celebration of diversity and resistance. It was a styleful conclusion of a month that people in Turkey will not lightly forget.

TURKEY: The Right to the City Movement and the Turkish Summer

01.06.2013 by Jay Cassano

 

[A protestor and police in Gezi Park. 31 May 2013. From Yücel Tunca via Nar Photos.]

As I write this, Istanbul is under siege. The might of Istanbul’s entire police force—the largest city police force in Europe—is violently cracking down on peaceful occupiers in Gezi Park.

The protest, which began on 27 May, is ostensibly over a planned shopping center to be built over a park in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square. Nevertheless, massive popular movements like this do not emerge out of nowhere. Typically, they are the result of the tireless groundwork of activists over the course of an extended period. And then, something happens: a spark sets off the lighter fluid accumulating unnoticed at everyone’s feet.

TURKEY: Press Release by Resisting Artists

WE CONDEMN THE CENSORING ATTITUDE OF THE MAINSTREAM MEDIA WITH REGARDS TO THE GEZİ PARK RESISTANCE

In the process initiated by the Gezi Park resistance, as filmmakers, artists and writers of this country, we condemn censoring and biased attitudes, that disregard principles of neutral and objective journalism, of all mainstream television channels, especially NTV, CNN Türk, Habertürk, Kanal D, ATV, Star, Show TV and TRT, and of some newspapers, especially Star, Sabah and Habertürk, that have always defined themselves as Turkey’s prominent, objective media institutions.

TURKEY: “It is only the beginning, our struggle continues”

02.-06.2013

by ROAR Collective on June 2, 2013

What Turkey is witnessing today is a broad-based popular rebellion against the authoritarianism of its conservative neoliberal Islamist establishment.