MANILA, Philippines - My invitation on Facebook says, “Join the Gaz Festival†again today. I call some friends: Who is coming, when, where are we going to meet? It’s already dark outside my home in Istanbul, but the air is warm and filled with shouting, singing voices and sounds all around the neighborhood. I am grabbing my good shoes, no makeup, just a gas mask, my keys, and I am off. I follow thousands of other people, holding Turkish flags and wearing Guy Fawkes masks. We are going protesting in Taksim, at the Gezi Park.
These protests started about one week ago, when about a hundred protesters occupied Gezi Park for a peaceful demonstration. See, Gezi Park is one of the last remaining green places in the center of Istanbul, a city that has been hugely urbanized in the last decades. The park was going to be demolished in order for a shopping mall to be built on its grounds, and the protesters came to protect it.
But in the early morning of May 28, the police came and violently tried to empty the park by using water cannons and tear gas. They emptied the tents and burned them down. People ran away, but the word was spread. The following day, about 1,000 people came to sympathize with the demonstrators and again the police came, now with more force, to make the demonstrators leave.
They closed down Taksim, a main transportation hub and touristic center, to keep protestors away. Tear gas was being shot into the crowd, a foreign girl being hit on the head by one of the gas bullets fell into a coma. The police were fast and violent. Because of the gas, people couldn’t see or breathe and they fell, got wounded, and hit by the police. The surrounding hospitals got filled with demonstrators. A huge gas cloud, seen from a hundred meters far away, filled the air in the center. While none of that was properly reported in the national news, it spread on social media.
DEFENDING FREEDOM
On the 1st of June, tens of thousands of people made their way up to Taksim. There is a huge bridge that connects the Asian and the European side of Istanbul that is divided by the river Bosphorus. Public transportation would not bring the demonstrators to the European side, where Taksim is. So people started walking, crossing the huge bridge in the morning light. Nothing would stop them, not even the violent force from the police, because this demonstration had become about more than just defending a park and its trees. It was about defending the roots of freedom in Turkey: freedom of peaceful demonstration, freedom of speech, freedom of being able to be involved in politics and decisions for the own nation.
Erdogan, the prime minister, has ignored the protests, saying that he doesn’t have to ask “marauders†(capulcu in Turkish) for permission for his urbanization projects, indicating that the demonstrators are only a few young crazies that aren’t to be taken seriously. But the protests have started spreading to our capital city of Ankara and other cities all over Turkey. People from all walks of life have come, despite their religious or political points of views, despitef their cultural backgrounds. Turkey is a multinational nation, but its citizens have united in order to uphold their own human rights, and in solidarity for the people wounded by their own state.
TAKSIM IS OURS
Taksim is ours right now. The police had to give up. They couldn’t stop hundreds of thousands of people coming every day. We meet there. We call it our Gaz Festival, because still there are regular waves of gas striking the Taksim place, even if there is no police to be seen. And Turkey, people are “chapulling†(from capulcu). There is already a Wikipedia article explaining the word. It means: peaceful demonstration for one’s rights while the police are attacking unnecessarily, violently. Turkish humor, I would say. The lyrics of that song by LMFAO are turned into, “Everyday I’m chapulling†by dancing people; dancing with the gas. There is a video on YouTube showing it.
Social media has been a good friend to share the truth. And we are chapulling. People all over Turkey are. People all over the world have been sending their support. And things have changed already. Now the two big national news stations are freely reporting. The police hasn’t come back to Taksim for a few days now. But in Ankara people are being wounded. In other cities, one person reportedly died. In Izmir yesterday, about 20 people were imprisoned because of their posts on Twitter. But the people will not give up. And we need the international media not to give up either. Because no one knows where this is going.
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Marie Hartlieb is a 24-year-old student from Germany who has lived in Istanbul since 2010.