After Gezi: Erdoğan And Political Struggle In Turkey

‘After Gezi: Erdoğan and political struggle in Turkey’ chronicles a year of uprisings, resistance and repression since the Gezi uprising in Turkey.

from brandon jourdan on Vimeo.

Political struggles over the future of Turkey have left the country profoundly divided. Former prime minister, now president, Tayyip Erdogan, has fuelled the growing polarization through his authoritarian response to protests, his large-scale urban development projects, his religious social conservatism, and most recently, through his complicity in the Islamic State’s war against the Kurdish people in Northern Syria.

Turkey: Coal Mine Capitalists and Erdogan Government kept Miners in Harm’s Way

Soma, Turkey mine disaster creates widespread anger at Erdogan. Cartoon by Carlos Latuff

Hundreds of Miners Die, Turkish Government Sides with Company

May 20, 2014 / Emre Eren Korkmaz, Labor Notes

Coal miners in Soma waited for news from rescuers after the biggest workplace disaster in Turkey’s history. The prime minister has sparked renewed protests by defending the company, which had boasted of its cost-cutting business model. Photo: Hilmi Hacaloğlu (VOA).
People in Turkey are sad and angry.
At least 300 workers lost their lives in the May 13 mine accident in Soma, a small town 300 miles from Istanbul. It was the biggest workplace disaster in Turkish history.
But instead of punishing management and promising to improve safety, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan has openly defended the company.
Not just in Soma but in all parts of the country, people are angry and mobilizing against the government. The ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP) has reacted with police violence, pepper gas, and water cannons.
A May 15 general strike called by several union federations was one of the biggest strikes in years. Last summer, protesters defending Istanbul’s Gezi Park against bulldozers touched off national protests against the Erdoğan regime and its pro-business agenda, with significant union participation.

Taksim Commune: Gezi Park And The Uprising In Turkey

By Brandon Jourdan and Marianne Maeckelbergh, Global Uprisings, August 5th, 2013

This short documentary tells the story of the occupation of Gezi Park, the eviction on July 15, 2013, and the protests that have continued in the aftermath. It includes interviews with many participants and footage never before seen.

Since the end of May 2013, political unrest has swept across Turkey. In Istanbul, a large part of the central Beyoğlu district became a battle zone for three consecutive weeks with conflicts continuing afterward. So far five people have died and thousands have been injured.

The protests were initially aimed at rescuing Istanbul’s Gezi Park from being demolished as part of a large scale urban renewal project. The police used extreme force during a series of police attacks that began on May 28th 2013 and which came to a dramatic head in the early morning hours of Friday May 31st when police attacked protesters sleeping in the park.

Over the course of a few days, the police attacks grew to shocking proportions. As the images of the heavy-handed policing spread across the world, the protests quickly transformed into a popular uprising against the Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his style of authoritarian rule.

Turkey: Police detain protesters as thousands gather at Taksim Square

Hurriyet, ISTANBUL, Saturday,June 29 2013

[Protestors are detained by the plainclothes police officers during an anti-government protest at Taksim Square in Istanbul. REUTERS photo]

Thousands of protesters have gathered at the Taksim square June 29 to denounce the government’s response to the Gezi Park protests, a week after another demonstration was quelled with water cannons and tear gas. The demonstration has been carried out peacefully without tension and most of the protesters dispersed after a couple of hours following police’s warning to end the gathering.

Riot police pushed them away from the square with shields and slow moving water cannon trucks although no water was fired. Announcements were made for protesters to return to their homes.

However, part of the protesters remained in the surroundings of the Taksim area as police entered the side streets chasing the protesters who were gathering back. More than ten protestors were detained, according to Hürriyet. Live footages showed officer in plainclothes taking the protesters into custody.

Sky News: “Riot Police Clash With Protesters In Turkey”

Police push back against thousands of protesters in Istanbul as unrest returns to the city’s Taksim Square.

Saturday 22 June 2013

Riot police have fired water cannon to clear protesters from Istanbul’s Taksim Square, in the first clash at the site for nearly a week.

The demonstrators had converged at the square for a memorial to those killed in nearly three weeks of anti-government protests.

The protesters laid carnations and shouted anti-government slogans in remembrance of three protesters and a police officer killed in the unrest.

“We Are All Turkish Democrats”: Solidarity from South Africa

Tuesday, 11 June 2013
Press Release: Abahlali baseMjondolo

“We Are All Turkish Democrats”: a Statement of Solidarity with the Turkish
Struggle

Abahlali baseMjondolo is a democratic, membership based movement of shack dwellers and other poor people in South Africa. In 2005 our experience of suffering and injustice led us to decided to organize ourselves and to represent ourselves. We are struggling for land and housing as a vital step towards the restoration of our dignity and the recognition of our equality. We have been severely punished by those who want to keep us in our place and we have faced serious repression.

When we have come under attack we have received solidarity from across the world – from Auckland to Istanbul, Nairobi, London and New York. We have stood with comrades facing repression in places like Haiti and Palestine. Today we stand with our comrades in Turkey and with all Turkish democrats.

We keep over movement strong by making sure that it always remains in the hands of its members and that we take forward the struggles that affect people’s everyday lives. We call this a living politics. But we take very seriously the fact that the system that has marginalized and oppressed us here in South Africa is the very system that marginalizes and oppresses the people of Turkey. And we have not forgotten that the first people to be in solidarity with our struggle outside of South Africa were the comrades at Sendika and People’s House in Turkey.

TURKEY: “Seeds of a Turkish spring”

[Some call it the dawn of a Turkish Spring, but time will tell. 

Some, within hours, will call it a revolution.  But it is not a revolution.  If it deepens and grows, some will say it is phony, “another Velvet Revolution” instigated by the US, Assad. or

Israel, or al Qaeda.  But they had nothing to do with it.  The

sparks have long been bursting from many quarters wherever

the sting of Erdogan’s fascist rule has been felt, among

women, workers, students, among Kurds.  Now the kindling

is dry, and rebellion is in the air.   Does it threaten the regime?

No, not now, not yet.  Does it threaten the role of US and the

EU andNATO and especially Germany, as dominant

imperialists? No, not now, not yet.  Is it a dependable force

for Kurdish people?  No, not now, not yet.  But can it become

a force that changes the country and the region?  None can

say,not yet.  But unlike Egypt, or Tunisia, or Libya or Syria,

there is a significant and organized revolutionary force in

Turkey.  While they may have had no role in the beginning

of the Taksim Gezi park rebellion, proletarian revolutionaries

may move the events in a direction beyond where other

Springs could go.  Time will tell. — Frontlines ed.]

————————–

Istanbul park protests sow the seeds of a Turkish spring

Protesters in the capital, Ankara. Turkish politics is almost exclusively male-dominated. Photograph: Burhan Ozbilici/AP

A protest in a small Istanbul park has become a lightning rod for grievances against the government, and it could be explosive
Richard Seymour
guardian.co.uk, Friday 31 May 2013
http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2013/may/31/istanbul-park-protests-turkish-spring

This morning, Turkish police surrounded protesters in Taksim Gezi park, the central square in Istanbul, blocked all exits and attacked them with chemical sprays and teargas.

An Occupy-style movement has taken off in Istanbul. The ostensible issue of conflict is modest. Protesters started gathering in the park on 27 May, to oppose its demolition as part of a redevelopment plan. But this is more than an environmental protest. It has become a lightning conductor for all the grievances accumulated against the government.

Police have waited until the early hours of each morning to attack, just as police in the US did when dealing with Occupy protesters. They set fire to the tents in which protesters were sleeping and showered them with pepper spray and teargas. A student had to undergo surgery after injuries to his genitals.

The occupiers adapted and started to wear homemade gas masks. More importantly, they called for solidarity. In response to yesterday’s assault, thousands of protesters turned up, including opposition politicians. But this morning’s attack allowed no defence or escape. The park, and the area around it, is still closed, and still under clouds of gas.

Turkish protesters have long list of complaints

02 Jun 2013

ANKARA (AFP)  What started as a small group opposed to an development project in Istanbul has become an outpouring of national anger over how the Islamist-rooted government treats its citizens, testing Ankara’s quest to be a model country in its neighbourhood.Turks are increasingly frustrated about what they see as restrictions on their freedom after a series of last-minute reforms were rushed through parliament by the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), which enjoys an overwhelming majority.”This is a movement which is a result of growing frustration and disappointment among secular segments of society who could not influence politics over the last decade,” said Sinan Ulgen, visiting scholar at Carnegie Europe.

“This is an unprecedented, abrupt and unplanned public movement that has not been manipulated by any political party. It is a big surprise,” he told AFP.

A small park and its 600 trees at Istanbul’s iconic Taksim square was the spark for the protests that snowballed into one of the biggest nationwide campaigns against the ruling party’s ten-year rule.

Critics say that Prime Minister Tayyip Recep Erdogan’s rule has left Turkish society more polarised than ever, with opponents of the AKP government openly voicing concerns that Turkey is moving toward conservative Islam.

The ruling party has passed a series of reforms which have outraged many citizens who complain of a “fait accompli” and say it shows a slide toward an authoritarian and conservative agenda.

In 2004, the party attempted to submit a controversial amendment on banning adultery but had to back down amid criticism from opposition parties and women’s groups.

Last year, Erdogan provoked outrage when he likened abortion to murder, and his contentious education reform allowing clerical schools for the raising of what he described a “pious generation” was approved by the parliament in 2012, spreading fears among secularists.

More recently, Turkey’s parliament passed legislation curbing alcohol sales and advertising, which would be the toughest in the republic’s history if the president, a former AKP member, signs it into law.

In April, an Istanbul court ordered a retrial for world-renowned pianist Fazil Say, who was convicted earlier to 10 months in prison for blasphemy over a series of social media posts. The 43-year-old virtuoso has accused the AKP of being behind the case against him.

Critics accuse Erdogan’s government of using courts to silence dissenting voices.

Turkey is the leading jailer of journalists worldwide, imprisoning even more than China or Iran, according to rights groups.

Hundreds of military officers, academics and lawyers are also in detention — most of them accused of plotting against the government.

10,000 More Prisoners To Join The Kurdish Hunger Strikes In Turkey

Turkish riot police fire water and tear gas as they clash with Kurdish demonstrators during a protest in support of a hunger strike movement by Kurdish prisoners, on November 4, 2012, in Istanbul (AFP Photo / Bulent Kilic)

By Kurd Net, Ekurd.net, 06 November, 2012

ANKARA— Shortly after the pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) announced that thousands of more prisoners were to join a collective hunger strike, Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç made an open call to all prisoners to end the strike.

On Sunday BDP deputy Sabahat Tuncel said 10,000 more prisoners currently held in the country’s prisons for various crimes, including membership in the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) and its Iranian offshoot, the Party for a Free Life in Kurdistan (PJAK), would join the hunger strike on Monday.

Around 700 Kurdish prisoners began the hunger strike on September 12, with a host of demands including the release of the Kurdish (PKK) leader Abdullah Ocalan and demanding the right to receive an education in their mother tongue, Kurdish, and the right to address courts in Kurdish.

Protest in support of Kurdish hunger strikers in Berlin. Image by Thomas Rossi Rassloff via Flickr

Tuncel said on Sunday during a press conference she called after attending an Istanbul demonstration by pro-BDP protestors in support of prisoners on hunger strike, “Ten thousand more prisoners are going to join the hunger strike on Monday [Nov. 5] without a time limit or the possibility of backpedaling [before their demands are met by the government].”

Turkey: Turkish Arlines workers fighting strike bans and mass firings

[Turkish airline workers are fighting for basic rights, and are asking for international support and solidarity.  See the article and petition, below.  — Frontlines ed.]

Withdraw the ban on aviation strikes!  Solidarity with the Turkish Airlines workers!

Over the last 6 weeks Turkish Airlines (THY) staff have been fighting against unjust dismissals along with the ban on the right to strike. The attacks on the workers of Turkish Airlines are continuing and becoming ever more fierce as the management rely upon government support to do as it pleases.

The sudden proposition of banning strikes

Negotiations between HAVA-IS (Civil Aviation Union- Turkey) and Turkish Airlines has broken down after several months of meetings regarding Collective Bargaining Agreements (TIS) and has come to a point where a “middleman” is needed to continue the negotiations. In a space of 1 week after the breakdown, the government, after gaining approval from President Abdullah Gul, changed the laws and forbid workers in the aviation sector from taking strike action.

In response to the ban on strikes, THY staff stood firmly side by side and took one-day strike action as a warning to the government. The management of THY however, accused the workers of “illegally taking strike action” and shortly after sent mobile text messages to 305 workers notifying them of their dismissal.

The one-day strike action taken by the workers is legitimate and within the bounds of national and international regulations.