The Protests in Turkey, Explained
The story behind the #direngezipark protests.
—By Josh Harkinson
Mon Jun. 3, 2013 1:35 PM PDT
Turkey is experiencing its largest and most violent riots in decades as tens of thousands of young people voice opposition to the moderate Islamist government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Hundreds of protesters and police have been injured as authorities try to quell the fourth day of demonstrations with tear gas, water canons, beatings, and a tightening grip on the media. Today, Erdogan accused the protesters of "walking arm-in-arm with terrorism." Yet his defiant response is only making the crowds larger. In an echo of the Arab Spring and the Occupy Wall Street protests of 2011, the movement has been galvanized by images disseminated on social media, such as a picture of a policeman spraying tear gas at a young woman in a red summer dress, her long hair swept upward by the blast. "The more they spray," reads a popular Twitter caption, "the bigger we get."
Why are people protesting? Nominally, the protests were sparked by a government plan to replace Istanbul's leafy Taksim Gezi Park with a touristy shopping mall—what the country's leading historian, Edhem Eldem, sardonically derides as a "Las Vegas of Ottoman splendor." Trees are especially precious in Istanbul, where only 1.5 percent of land is green space (compared to 17 percent in New York). But the protests quickly became symbolic of much broader concerns about Erdogan's autocratic and socially conservative style of government.
Istanbul's secularists chafe at the way he has rammed through development projects in this cosmopolitan cultural crossroads with little regard for the European and non-Muslim aspects of its history; a 19th-century Russian Orthodox Church may be destroyed as part of an overhaul of a port. What's more, Erdogan has placed new restrictions on the sale of alcohol and availability of birth control. And he has jailed political opponents and members of the media.
How widespread are the protests? Since Friday, there have been demonstrations in 67 of Turkey's 80 provinces, according
http://www.motherjones.com/politics/2013/06/instanbul-erdogan-turkey-protests-explained
For a photo gallery of truly gruesome injuries suffered by protestors, go here.
http://imgur.com/gallery/Rg62e
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