Gezi Park set for religious ceremony, Quran reading
Over 4,000 injured, two dead in Turkey’s nationwide protests: Association
Ankara police start public diplomacy campaign for night break to protests
Anonymous hacks Turkish PM website: claim
Protesters are young, libertarian and furious at Turkish PM, says survey
A majority of the Taksim Gezi Park protesters do not feel close to any political party and have.
Neither Turkish spring nor velvet revolution
Care for a side of red hot chili peppers and ironic social commentary with your protests? The photo that went viral this week of a policeman pepper-spraying a young woman in a red dress in Istanbul inspired a response from an unlikely place: the food section, Fork & Cork, of the Hurriyet Daily News.
Occupy Istanbul? Turkish Spring? The Turkish protest name game
It’s hard to believe it all started over a park.
With tens of thousands of Turkish citizens laying claim to the streets of Istanbul and several other major cities,
PM Erdoğan?s inflammatory policies point to the pitfalls of majoritarian style democracy in Turkey.
The anti-government protests last weekend demonstrate that a move to a more consensus model of government is needed to avoid conflict in the country.
In majoritarian democracies decisions are determined by a simplemajority/plurality of voters while in consensus democracies by ?as many people as possible?. Both options claim to foster moderation and effective decision-making either by privileging single-governing parties as in Turkey or by encouraging wider consensus and cohabitation in government of competing political forces as post-election coalition partners.
Turkish protests test Obama’s close friendship with Erdogan
World leaders don’t always have the liberty of choosing their allies, but they do get to pick their friends. And while Barack Obama has been criticized for hisVulcan-style diplomacy, the U.S. president has made a few buddies in office.
Erdogan backers pour scorn on protesters
Two years ago a sociologist at Stanford published a study which found that, concurrent with the widening division of wealth in the U.S., the standardized testing gap between high-income and low-income students had grown 40% to 50% since the 1960s. Since the education gap between blacks and whites is a common theme in left literature, it is worth noting then that the achievement gap by income is now nearly twice as large. Setting aside the moral questions raised by such a discrepancy, it merits serious consideration from a policy standpoint given the negative impact it has on the national economy. A McKinsey report published in 2009 showed that closing the income achievement gap from 1983 to 1998 would have increased GDP in 2008 from $400 billion to $670 billion.
What’s happening in Turkey? | Occupy Gezi
Text of the crowd-funded statement on Turkey’s protests that appeared in a full-page ad in today’s New York Times
Millions of Turkish citizens have been outraged by the violent reaction of their government to a peaceful protest aimed at saving Istanbul’s Gezi Park.
Taksim protest to change Ankara balances
From Tahrir to Occupy to Istanbul: An Anatomy of Current and Future …
By Brian Merchant ()
Neither Occupy Wall Street nor the gathering in Tahrir nor, certainly, Mohamed Bouazizi’s self-immolation in Tunisia nor the upheaval in Istanbul were pre-organized to be major events. A small group of proto-Occupiers strategized some in
Police Attacks As Thousands Bid Adieu
Thousands of people bid adieu to Abdullah Cömert, a Gezi Park resistance demonstrator who was killed in Hatay Resistance. Following the ceremony, police attacked the funeral crowd with pepper gas.
AKP is losing international reputation it built since 2002
The Battle of Taksim and beyond
Supporters send food to park online
What inspires Turkey’s protest movement?
What Did the Gezi Uprisings Mean?
I wrote a piece for CNN about Turkey?s uprisings. You can find it here.
So what are the issues?
Invasion of privacy: Just as pious Turks once were incensed by restrictions on Islamic expression and wearing of headscarves in certain public places and on other personal expressions of piety, Turks today are enraged by government intrusions into their private lives, what they should wear, what they should drink, and what they should do with their bodies (for instance, government urging that women should have three children and stay at home, and fiats restricting abortions and Caesarian section) and the increasing arrogance of AKP supporters in demanding that only their norms be represented in society (confronting men and women kissing in public or strolling in a park together).
Turkey seeks to reassure investors over protests
Turkey’s Erdogan: Successful leader or ‘dictator’?
Turks have many reasons to take to the streets, and the anger and resentment that is fueling the country?s ongoing protests has many sources. Secularists are speaking out against Islamists. Leftists are bucking conservatives. Middle-class Turks are rallying against the relentless development of central Istanbul. Many young people simply want to save the trees in Gezi Park, the small green space where the protests began last week. And the majority of protesters are just happy to be raising their voice against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and the ruling Justice and Development Party.
Turkish FM responds to Kerry for US criticisms on protests in Turkey
Turkey’s deputy PM Bülent Arinç meets protesters – video
A sixth day of tension between police and protesters is under way in Istanbul
Inside the People?s Republic of Taksim
Tweeting Turks sidestep mainstream media
‘Woman in red’ sprayed with teargas becomes symbol of Turkey protests
Images of a smartly dressed woman being sprayed with teargas by a riot policeman during protests in Istanbul’s Taksim Square have been shared on social media around the world
Istanbul’s police chief had said his forces would only use teargas as a last resort. But the images seem to show the officer targeting an unarmed woman.
I?ve written about the abject failure of Turkish media to adequately cover the news of the most important protests in the country since the 1980 coup. Many media outlets aired irrelevant documentaries and talk shows (talk show about legal definitions of theft, cooking shows, dolphin training, etc) while clashes spread to dozens of provinces and many neighborhoods in many major cities.
Turkish crackdown on protesters ‘wrong and unjust’, says deputy PM
Bulent Arinç, standing in for absent prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, offers to meet protest’s leaders in bid to ease tensions
Turkey’s deputy prime minister has offered a partial apology for the vicious police crackdown on protesters in Istanbul, in an apparent attempt to cool tensions after nine days of anti-government rallies across Turkey.
Publishing houses to unite in Gezi Park to distribute major resistance material: Books
White House welcomes Turkish deputy PM’s apology for excessive force
Fear and loathing grips Turkey as anti-Erdogan protests gather pace
The thousands gathering spontaneously in Taksim Square do not have an ideology. What they share is a sense of grievance
Beneath the trees of Istanbul’s Gezi park, a group of students was debating the tumultuous events of the past six days. Their unprecedented protest against Turkey’s prime minister, Tayyip Erdogan, wasn’t exactly a revolution, they agreed. So what was it: an awakening, a renaissance or a citizen’s revolt?
Gezi Park protests similar to Occupy movement, not Middle East uprisings: President Gül
Erdogan still a hero to some, in spite of violent protests
A stone’s throw from Taksim Square in the poor district of Kasimpasa, people still sing the prime minister’s praises
Recep Tayyip Erdogan, Turkey’s prime minister, might be looking rattled following days of protests demanding his resignation. But at Kardesler Berber, a small barber shop in the conservative neighbourhood of Kasimpasa, Hayri Göz is having none of it.
?This is not about a Park? by Ayşe Ezgi Gürcan
By Ayşe Ezgi Gürcan (Political Science, PhD, Istanbul ? Turkey)
In the 8th day of the occupation, the Park has already turned into a small campsite with its make-shift infirmarie
Taksim, 3 clichés et Baden Baden ?pardon Rabat.
J’ai choisi trois clichés sur le site d’Erkan Saka pour illustrer ces journées de protestations en Turquie. Celle-ci est pour ceux qui ont du mal (ou ne veulent pas) imaginer ce qu’arroser de gaz lacrymogène signifie.
?Some implications of the Gezi protests? by Dr. Mark Meirowitz
Dr. Mark Meirowitz (SUNY Maritime College, New York, USA)
1. The reaction of the Turkish Diaspora is very significant. The Turkish Diaspora has been key to Turkey?s ability to pursue its interests around the world, especially in the US. Now the Turkish Diaspora appears to have actively mobilized in public
Turkish PM receives honorary doctorate in Algeria for ?contributions to humanity?
Not two weeks ago I was at a conference in Istanbul where the philosopher Seyla Benhabib mentioned the growing public disaffection with plans to give over Gezi Park to yet another project for private profit. Her prescient invocation of this issue was made in the context of a discussion about the ?Arab Spring? as a victory for Islamists, and the possible success of a ?Turkish model? for their new regimes. I pointed out that one of the problems of such a discussion had to do with the idea of modularity, which has become a category of neoliberal thinking that brings Western ?experts? together with their Islamist subjects in an ironic if telling unity. By the same logic we can now claim Egypt as a model for Turkey in a circular and meaningless cycle of comparisons.
This is a fight about trees ? or so it seemed at the end of last week. The protests first came to the attention of the world through this image. Before journalists had cobbled together their copy, or before their editors had decided that events warranted any, Reuters photographer Osman Orsal?s photo of policemen firing pepper spray at close range in the face of a young girl acted as a widely-shared placeholder for the torrent of analysis that was to follow.
VIDEO: Timeline: How Turkish protests unfolded
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