{"id":42631,"date":"2013-06-17T13:37:22","date_gmt":"2013-06-17T12:37:22","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/garbage-and-gas-inside-turkeys-protest\/42631\/"},"modified":"2013-06-17T13:37:22","modified_gmt":"2013-06-17T12:37:22","slug":"garbage-and-gas-inside-turkeys-protest","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/breaking-news\/garbage-and-gas-inside-turkeys-protest\/","title":{"rendered":"Garbage and gas: Inside Turkey's protest"},"content":{"rendered":"
\n\t\t\t\t\t<!–Nadezhda Kevorkova<\/a>–><\/p>\n

Nadezhda Kevorkova is a war correspondent who has covered the events of the Arab Spring, military and religious conflicts around the world, and the anti-globalization movement.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n

On Saturday night Gezi Park was flooded with people playing guitars and singing songs: the protest was clearly stagnating.<\/p>\n

\n I was there with a local Muslim man who had come to the park for
\n the first time in two weeks to see what was going on, and
\n he met lots of his friends from the neighborhood. Most of them
\n had little to do with the protest itself: they just wanted to
\n have a look.\n<\/p>\n

\n At the same time Prime Minister Erdogan gathered a few hundred
\n thousand of his supporters in Ankara, and the rally was broadcast
\n by most TV channels. Some people were even upset that all the
\n media were talking about Gezi Park and no one said a single word
\n about the international Turkish language contest attended by
\n 40,000 Turks from across the world.\n<\/p>\n

\n At sunset, street vendors flooded Taksim Square, offering food,
\n helmets and gas masks. These people clearly have an incredible
\n flair for making money! But there is no price boosting: pastry,
\n kebabs and cherries in Taksim Square are no more expensive than
\n elsewhere.\n<\/p>\n

\n The weekend demand for a snack was clearly higher than for a gas
\n mask.\n<\/p>\n

\n One could hardly spot a policeman on the square \u2014 they were all
\n strolling around the back streets, posing for photos as the
\n locals and tourists. The general atmosphere was nothing if not
\n peaceful.\n<\/p>\n

\n I had spent the whole day talking to social scientists and
\n political analysts, all keen to discuss what stands behind the
\n Taksim uprising. And no one acknowledged there were long-standing
\n problems that finally came to a head and spurred a reasonable
\n protest. But was it reasonable at all?\n<\/p>\n

\n \"A<\/p>\n

\n The protest slogans range from telling Erdogan to step down to
\n cheering a caf\u00c3\u00a9 owner, \u2018Hold on there, kebab!\u2019<\/i> in the
\n middle of a gas-covered street.\n<\/p>\n

\n Erdogan\u2019s supporters call the unrest a problem.\n<\/p>\n

\n Erdogan\u2019s opponents call him a dictator, however, citing few
\n arguments.\n<\/p>\n

\n Intellectuals speculate that foreign-funded organizations engage
\n in scheming and intriguing to undermine Turkey because the West
\n envies its economic growth.\n<\/p>\n

\n The future scenarios were simple and straightforward. Some
\n believed the police would raid Gezi Park from time to time \u2014 only
\n to see it full of protesters again the very next morning. Others
\n said it would slowly fade away in eight months \u2014 when the
\n elections will start. Many hoped the protest would die a natural
\n death, as Erdogan enjoys obviously stable ratings of at least
\n 62%. The Erdogan elite often recalls a poll conducted by a
\n pro-American institute, which ranked Erdogan as the most popular
\n leader in the world today, who left behind even President Obama
\n and David Cameron. The idea of a massive violent crackdown by the
\n security forces on the protester\u2019s tent camp was not even
\n considered.\u00a0
\n <\/p>\n

\n By 9 pm, the idle bystanders had gone. Young people started
\n pouring into Istiqlal and the adjacent streets in groups of
\n twenty to thirty. For about an hour and a half they kept yelling
\n \u2018Erdogan must go!\u2019<\/i> and throwing garbage at the policemen.
\n Then the security forces arrived and chased the protesters away,
\n firing tear gas at the tent camp. It took them two hours to clear
\n protesters out of the place.\n<\/p>\n

\n Even if you are not in the thick of the events, you quickly learn
\n what is going on: your skin and eyes itch, and then you have gas
\n coming in through the windows. If you don\u2019t close them, you are
\n going to have a tough time.\n<\/p>\n

\n Turkish tear gas is different from other substances I have been
\n exposed to covering other protests. If you use a wet cloth to
\n breathe, like you would do in any other gas attack, it makes your
\n face burn. So do the tears. But it\u2019s a perfect ‘Hollywood’<\/i>
\n gas, coming out in puffs from a small box and carried away by the
\n wind \u2014 a very cinematic picture. If you have a gas mask on and
\n the wind blows in the right direction, you can put together a
\n wonderful snapshot portfolio. Every third protester was carrying
\n a professional camera. I\u2019d never seen so many well-equipped media
\n in Iraq, Lebanon, Palestine or Syria.\n<\/p>\n

\n \"Protesters<\/p>\n

\n Tear gas streaming down the face is not the only hurdle if you
\n want to make your way through the streets. To get to my hotel, I
\n was to cross the street and walk some 500 meters. I put on a hood
\n and the people told me, you look so much like the protesters that
\n the police will target you. I put on a headscarf and the people
\n told me, you look like a Muslim woman, protesters may hit you.
\n They told me a terrifying story of how the protesters attacked a
\n young mother, the sister-in-law of a local official, who was
\n waiting for her husband in the street. They stopped short of
\n beating her to death, calling her \u2018Erdogan\u2019s whore\u2019<\/a><\/i>.\u00a0\u00a0
\n <\/p>\n

\n The young guys who hurled stones tried to work out an escape
\n strategy for me. They told my companion, \u2018Take her by
\n the hand, pretend you two are in love and walk in front of the
\n police. Hopefully they will let you go safely.\u2019<\/i> Unfortunately
\n the plan wouldn\u2019t work: I had left my gloves in the hotel, and a
\n gloveless woman cannot touch a Muslim man who is not her husband.
\n My companion was keeping strictly to Muslim rules.\n<\/p>\n

\n Then came another gas attack, so we ran to the nearest hotel. The
\n owner was so kind as to offer free rooms for a while to those who
\n were carrying no money. I had some cash on me, so they gave me a
\n single room where I stayed alone.\n<\/p>\n

\n Meanwhile, the protesters weren\u2019t going anywhere. When the gas
\n and dust settled down, they would yell again, \u2018Erdogan must
\n quit!\u2019<\/i> The closer they came and the more garbage they hurled,
\n the faster the security forces would respond with tear gas.\n<\/p>\n

\n Finally at 4 in the morning, the streets went quiet. At dawn,
\n trucks were already collecting refuse at Istiqlal. Taksim was
\n fully cordoned off by the police. The pink tractor, symbol of the
\n unrest, had gone, and so had the protesters. We saw CNN
\n journalists reporting live from the empty square in Istanbul,
\n which would host a rally of Erdogan\u2019s supporters later that day.
\n <\/p>\n

The statements, views and opinions expressed in this column are solely those of the author and do not necessarily represent those of RT.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

This article originally appeared on: RT<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

<!–Nadezhda Kevorkova–> Nadezhda Kevorkova is a war correspondent who has covered the events of the Arab Spring, military and religious conflicts around the world, and the anti-globalization movement. On Saturday night Gezi Park was flooded with people playing guitars and singing songs: the protest was clearly stagnating. I was there with a local Muslim man […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[487],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-42631","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","6":"category-breaking-news"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42631","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42631"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42631\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42631"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42631"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/rinf.com\/alt-news\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42631"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}