Cav's Place

As you should already know, things are getting ugly in Turkey. If you want more details, I have seen a New York Times article being shared as explaining some things reasonably well, and the Al Jazeera live blog on the topic was indicated as a way to keep track of events on the ground. I picked up this view from “a ringside seat” from there, detailing the events as seen by someone living in the area and looking out the window.
It all started from the plans to destroy one of the few remaining parks in Istanbul, which already has extremely few green areas left, but that should probably only be noted as an encouraging development, being an environmental “spark” instead of an economic one, but otherwise it was obviously only the proverbial last straw. It likely still wouldn’t have been enough if the police wouldn’t have been so violent in trying to clear the protesters from the area, but they were and it all escalated and spread from there, because many people were already unhappy about many things. Worse, anti-government protests attempted a month ago by workers and unions were also violently stamped out by police, so many were itching for another opportunity.

As I understand it, past the localized issue of the park itself, the main complaints have to do with the increasingly authoritarian regime, which controls a large part of the media and tends to stamp out any contrary opinions, with the fact that State policies are increasingly rooted in Islam, going against the concept of separation of Church and State, with the government’s drive for economic development at any cost, creating a potential real estate bubble and destroying ecosystems in the process, with the construction of a third bridge over the Bosphorus and with the lack of protection for minorities, be they ethnic, religious, sexual or of any other kind, all of which are definitely worthy goals. However, to quote another analysis I read last night, the protesters range “from anarchist, socialist, and communist groups and parties, trade unions, feminists, environmental activists, LGBT activists to a huge number of soccer fans and nationalist-secularist groups”, so disagreements between the many groups are very likely once anything moves past the one common goal, which is to bring down the government.
The protests also appear to be against the Turkish government’s support for the Syrian rebels, which is the one issue that I have trouble with, as whatever few true rebels are left on the ground in Syria deserve all the support they can get, caught as they are between the regime’s forces and the fundamentalist al-Nusra group and being largely leaderless, seeing as those who try to lead them end up losing themselves in endless bickering. Still, it may well be that the problem the protesters have with this is that Turkish people are starting to suffer as a result of the government’s stance, considering what’s been going on close to the border, so it may be that they’re asking to be better protected, which is an entirely legitimate concern, but I guess I’ll need to look more into the specifics of this particular request.

Today, people across the world are showing their solidarity with the Turkish protesters, as the events taking place in cities such as New York, Brussels, Madrid, most major German cities or Helsinki prove. One such event is scheduled in Bucharest as well, so I’ll be heading there now, after posting this. As citizens of the world, we are in this together and, while it’s always difficult when many groups with very different goals join together, worthy causes are worth fighting for and regimes that treat their own people in such a manner are worth fighting against, no matter where it happens or who’s involved.