BREAKING NEWS:Turkey street riots

[Magda Hassan]

A War on Trees and a War on Booze.

Horrifically, at least six protestors lost an eye after being hit by gas canisters, suggesting the tear gas rounds were being fired directly at the crowd.

Yes, this was noted. Lots of head shots. Also some tear gas melts contact lenses. Some guy also nearly had his genitals blown off by a gas canister.

[Albert Doyle]

[ Well, it is Spring! Maybe someday it will come to my own decrepit country! Let's just hope this honest show of righteous indignation isn't hijacked as are many to most such movements.

Yeah, really. Over here they installed a sneering Bush Nazi torture government and the people voted for it!

[Magda Hassan]

[Magda Hassan]

[URL="http://www.citizen-k.net/blog/?p=554"]
On the ground in Taksim.[/URL]
June 2, 2013
Despite my reservations on the potential success of #occupyturkishhashtags, I went to Taksim today. The cops have surrendered it to the protesters, and from Istiklal to Mecedikoy there wasn't a polis officer to be seen (note: they were in Besiktas, gassing the crap out of everyone). The experience was interesting at times the atmosphere was like a giant political rally, at times it was like a football riot, at times it was like the sectioned area we had for two and a half days at S11 in Melbourne in 2000 a Temporary Autonomous Zone.
Finally, a statement from some anarchists in Istanbul, Massive Riot Against State Terrorism in Turkey' (June 1):

This is an informative mail about current situation in Istanbul, Turkey.
After two days of protest about the urban gentrification of Gezi Park (biggest park in Taksim where green areas continually being destroyed), people got fed up with police brutality and violence.
Especially silence of the media, increasing attacks of government and freedom of individuals, imperial aims of the state trying to take advantage of the Syria have expended the recent conflict in riots.
The clashes continued all day and night yesterday. At least seven civilians were murdered by the police attacks, hundreds were injured, hundreds are in custody where they are beaten up and some tortured.
All temples of capitalism had to close down in Taksim. There is a great deal of solidarity on the streets, many small shops and homes, universities; all pharmacies opened their doors to protesters. Turkish Chamber of Architects and Engineers Office is turned into a hospital with volunteer doctors and nurses. And they are treating wounded protesters.
In many places in Istanbul, police stations has been attacked. Fascist groups were beaten up by anarchists. People from the Asian side who wanted to join the riot were blocked by the police, but they walked on the highway after midnight, crossing the Bosphorus Bridge on foot and made it. The Prime Minister blamed the social web informing the murders, and ironically called the people who are sharing news as fascists.
The protest has spread all over Turkey. People are on streets in Ankara, Izmir, Eskisehir, Sakarya, Isparta and many others.
These protests are not only for the Gezi Park as state-suppressed mainstream media claims. The riot is now the revolt of the hundreds of thousands of people protesting against state oppression and violence. We as revolutionary anarchists have been and we are going to be on the streets, against the police violence state terrorism.
We are expecting solidarity action from all anarchists and anti-authoritarians all around the world.
Everywhere is Istanbul and everywhere is resistance against state terrorism, police violence and capitalist exploitation.
We will continue to report as riot continues.
http://slackbastard.anarchobase.com/

[Jan Klimkowski]

Turkish broadcasters have their sat trucks in key areas and are apparently showing soaps and cookery programmes rather than reporting the mass protests and state brutality.

On the breaking news channels, I've seen footage of riot police firing tear gas canisters directly at protestors who are just a few metres away. But Turks can't see such images on their TV screens.

Meanwhile, corruption rules.

"It is not [the] job [of police and officials] to protect the profitability of the contractors who will build a shopping mall on Taksim Square."

Turkey's building boom unrest conceals fear of corruption

Istanbul riots started over proposed parkland development but government's increasingly authoritarian policies fuel unrest

Peter Beaumont, foreign affairs editor
The Observer, Saturday 1 June 2013 19.44 BST

Turkish protesters take cover from police teargas in Taksim Square. Photograph: Bulent Kilic/AFP/Getty Images

The protests triggered in Turkey by plans to redevelop a park into a shopping mall at first seem an unlikely cause for public anger. In reality, the demonstrations over Taksim Square's Gezi Park go to the very heart of Turkey's modern discontents.

Why it has become such a fraught issue was hinted at in a statement issued in the midst of the protests by Istanbul's Chamber of Physicians, insisting: "It is not [the] job [of police and officials] to protect the profitability of the contractors who will build a shopping mall on Taksim Square."

The rapid urbanisation of Turkey and huge growth of Istanbul in the past two decades has defined the transformation of Turkish society and politics. The continuing migration from rural areas like eastern Anatolia to Istanbul has fuelled the growth of the city, driving a building boom. Politically, it has been prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's moderate Islamist AKP that has benefited from this expansion, the recently urbanised being more socially conservative.

While tension between Turkey's old secular elites and this new class have long been inevitable, two consequences have not been. As Transparency International made clear in a recent survey of Turkey, while its elections largely have been free and fair, corruption, especially linked to the construction industry, has been a growing problem. In April, for the first time ever, two officials in Turkey's public housing administration which enjoys a virtually unopposed monopoly to redevelop private and public land, including a 20-year, $400bn urban renewal budget were charged with extorting bribes and abuse of power.

Indeed those who have benefited from recent large projects have allegedly included key players in Turkish society, including members of Erdogan's own party, a company run by Erdogan's son-in-law and the Turkish armed forces.

The perception in Turkey that barely regulated development is being driven for the economic benefit of entrenched interests with links to party politics, rather than in the public interest, has been fuelled by the hard data about some of the most controversial developments, including Gezi Park.

As a recent article in Hurriyet Daily News made clear, Turkey, and Istanbul in particular, hardly needs more malls. Istanbul already has so many that 11 in the city have been forced to close down.

All of these are issues that have been exacerbated by the majoritarian political style of Erdogan and the AKP. In refusing to back down over the mall development in a speech on Saturday, Erdogan underlined suspicions that he has no interest in dialogue with those who oppose him at a time when he is being accused of leading his country down an ever more authoritarian route.

A new controversial law has limited the sale of alcohol in the country, journalists increasingly have found themselves in jail, and moves by Erdogan would replace the 1980 coup constitution with a presidential system where the president would be elected directly and would no longer be reliant on the confidence of parliament.

If there is one thing that links all the themes of Taksim Square together, it is the question of accountability. Or rather the lack of it.

[Keith Millea]

On the breaking news channels, I've seen footage of riot police firing tear gas canisters directly at protestors who are just a few metres away. But Turks can't see such images on their TV screens.

Yesterday I saw footage of a man kneeling in a doorway and shooting his firearm at protesters.He was with a group of police officers.Someone really needs to find that sequence and try to identify those who would shoot at protesters.I haven't heard if there are any protesters wounded by gunfire.YET.....

[Jan Klimkowski]

PM Erdogan, good friend of NATO, gags state media so they show "cookery programmes" rather than the riots, and then rants against social media as a "menace to society" for daring to show the crimes he has ordered censored.

Of course Erdogan is in charge of an authoritarian Islamic corporatist state structure, corrupt to the core, running drugs and guns for his geopolitical masters.

Social media and opposition to blame for protests, says Turkish PM

'Social media is the worst menace to society,' says Recep Erdogan after thousands take control of Istanbul's main square

Constanze Letsch in Istanbul
The Guardian, Monday 3 June 2013
Jump to comments (841)

Link to video: Turkey: police clash with protesters

Thousands of protesters have controlled Istanbul's main square once more after two days of violent clashes with rampaging riot police, as Turkey's prime minister vowed to press on with the controversial redevelopment that provoked the clashes.

Calling the protesters an "extremist fringe", Recep Tayyip Erdogan blamed the opposition Republican People's party for provoking the protests.

"We think that the main opposition party, which is making resistance calls on every street, is provoking these protests," Erdogan said on Turkish television, as an estimated 10,000 demonstrators streamed into the area waving flags and calling on the government to resign.

"There is now a menace which is called Twitter," Erdogan said. "The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society."

Protesters again clashed with riot police into the early hours of Monday, Reuters reported.

In the western port of Izmir, protesters threw fire bombs at the offices of the ruling AK party and television footage showed part of the building ablaze.

Bus shelters, paving stones and street signs were ripped up by protesters to make barricades that littered a major avenue in Istanbul where some of the heaviest clashes took place on Sunday night, Reuters said.

Roads around Erdogan's office in Istanbul were sealed off in the early hours of Monday. In the main street near the office, one demonstrator drove a small mechanical digger towards police lines as other protesters followed.

Police raided a shopping complex in the centre of the capital Ankara where they believed demonstrators were sheltering, detaining several hundred, Reuters said.

What started last Monday as a relatively small, peaceful protest to save an inner city Istanbul park from having to make way for a kitschy Ottoman-style shopping centre, rapidly snowballed into the largest and most violent anti-government protests that Turkey has seen in years.

Hundreds were injured, some seriously, by the heavy-handed police response and excessive use of teargas. Riot police withdrew from the city on Saturday evening, handing a victory to the demonstrators.

The protests had spread across Turkey to half of its 81 provinces by Sunday, the interior ministry, Muammer Guler, said. Guler said 1,750 people had been detained since Tuesday, but most had since been released, while damage costs have not yet been announced. The Turkish Doctors' Association said the demonstrations had left 1,000 people injured in Istanbul and 700 in Ankara.

"Erdogan does not listen to anyone any more," said Koray Caliskan, a political scientist at Istanbul's Bosphorus University. "Not even to members of his own party. But after the protests this weekend, he will have to accept that he is the prime minister of a democratic country, and that he cannot rule it on his own."

The dramatic events also exposed the complicity and almost complete government control of mainstream Turkish media, which has largely failed to report the protests.

"The Turkish media have embarrassed themselves," Caliskan said. "While the whole world was broadcasting from Taksim Square, Turkish television stations were showing cooking shows. It is now very clear that we do not have press freedom in Turkey."

Human rights groups have repeatedly expressed their concerns about the lack of freedom of expression in Turkey, and Erdogan routinely criticises media outlets and journalists who do not agree with his views and those of his ruling Justice and Development party (AKP).

Opposition politicians urged Erdogan to listen to people instead of trying to silence them.

Hasip Kaplan, an MP from the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy party, said: "After 1 June, the policy of 'for the people despite the people' is bankrupt. [The government] will have to listen to the people's opinions on mega-projects. Now is the time of participatory decision-making."

Despite opposition from urban planners and environmentalists, the AKP government is pushing ahead with several huge construction projects in Istanbul, including a third bridge over the Bosphorus, a third airport and a giant mosque.

Caliskan suggested that these plans might have to be buried or at least altered after the protests at the weekend, along with the AKP's recent plans to restrict alcohol consumption, ban abortion and install an Erdogan-led presidency in Turkey.

The prime minister's key political project is to enact a new constitution, making the government system presidential rather than parliamentary. After 10 years as prime minister, his aim is to become Turkey's first directly elected president with strong executive powers.

He may have hurt his chances of seeing that happen this weekend.

"Erdogan's dream of a presidency is over," said Caliskan, "as is the myth of his invincibility. The last five days have shown that he cannot simply ignore the people who criticise him."

Other analysts stressed that the PM is still one of Turkey's most popular politicians, and that while his image of being all-powerful may have been tarnished by this weekend's events, the AKP still benefits from the lack of a coherent and strong opposition to challenge him at the ballot box.

The battle appears far from over. Erdogan refused to back down on the development project that triggered the protests the demolition of the city centre park to make way for a shopping centre, mosque and a replica of an old military barracks.

"I am not going to seek the permission of [the opposition] or a handful of plunderers," he said. "If they call someone who has served the people a 'dictator', I have nothing to say. My only concern has been to serve my country … I am not the master of the people. Dictatorship does not run in my blood or in my character. I am the servant of the people."

[Dawn Meredith]

Social media is the biggest threat to MSM. Political forums, blogs, facebook, etc.
Pics and stories about these protests are all over facebook. As more and more people turn to alternative sources
for their news MSM is losing ground.

"They hate us for our freedoms"

Dawn

[Keith Millea]

Lots of interesting pictures showing up on the net.Here's one of my favorites....

[Jan Klimkowski]

Lots of interesting pictures showing up on the net.Here's one of my favorites....

The Merry Pranksters finally made it to the Bosphorus.....