Victory to the Taksim Gezi movement
This morning the Taksim Gezi protest movement put out this call following yesterday’s brutal police attacks, the reported killing of at least two people and the wounding of 300 more. The attacks, which include tear gas and water cannon, were made on a peaceful protest to prevent building development at Gezi park in Istanbul:
‘Attention! Turkish democracy needs you!
After a series of peaceful demonstrations for preserving a recreational area in Istanbul city centre which is planned to be demolished for the construction of a shopping mall, Turkish police attacked the protesters violently with tear gas and water cannon, directly targeting their faces and bodies. Dozens of protesters are hospitalized and access to the park is blocked without any legal basis. Turkish media, directly controlled by the government or having business and political ties with it, refuse to cover the incidents. Press agencies also blocked the information flow.
Please share this message for the world to become aware of the police state created by AKP of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, which is often considered to be a model for other Middle Eastern countries. Turkish democracy expects your help. Thank you! ‘
Within hours, tens, if not hundreds of thousands of people had arrived in support.
40,000 people have crossed the Bosphorous bridge which is closed to pedestrians. A cohort of doctors and medics has arrived to support and treat the protesters.
Turkish prime minister Erdogan has said police may have used excessive force but that the park development will go ahead. Earlier on Saturday, he called for an end to the protests, saying Taksim Square “cannot be an area where extremists are running wild”.
Murat Yetkin in the newspaper Hurriyet says the “disproportionate” response of police to the protests “has managed to turn a pacifist and modest protest into a public protest movement”.
The protesters say the park is one of the few green spaces left in Istanbul, and that the government is ignoring their appeals for it to be saved. But what started out as a local issue has now spiraled into widespread anti-government unrest and anger.
Police have now withdrawn from Taksim Square.
“Athens is with you”
Messages of support are flooding in from around the world.
Left Unity sends solidarity greetings to the Taksim Gezi protest movement.
#OccupyGezi
#OccupyTaksim
6 comments
6 responses to “Victory to the Taksim Gezi movement”
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Think we should be very careful about our attitude towards things like this. Don’t wish to pass judgement on the protest movement itself without actually having seen it with my own eyes, but the line that “Erdogan has created a police state” is in my experience normally one you hear from the secularist/Kemalist opposition who sometimes demonstrate in European cities with sizeable Turkish emigrant communities. Which would be all well and good (and clearly freedom of expression and journalists is to be defended) except that many of these people remain enthusiasts for the era when rigid secularism was imposed on Turkey not by popular enthusiasm but by military dictatorship – and indeed if the current government is to be believed there are recurrent conspiracies heading in the direction of military coups designed to resurrect that system.
Defend the right to protest, yes. Support protesters against police violence, always. Be wary and critical of wider movements and agenda these protesters might be linked to before expressing unconditional solidarity? Definitely.
Spot on Ed.
is this the long awaited spread of the arab spring? lets hope so – set the dictatorship a light! free kurdistan! solidarity with the turkish uprising!
what dictatorship?
I wish to send my UNCONDITIONAL support to the protesters in Turkey, and haope that revolutionary forces win
Spend a sec to chuck an email direct to the inbox of Turkish PM Erdogan supporting the demands of the Turkish unions: http://www.labourstartcampaigns.net/show_campaign.cgi?c=1840