southeastern europe

This is a second effort to comment on the recent protest in Turkey. This 'second take' is informed by having had the opportunity to talk  over the past couple of days  to a number of people  in Istanbul  with diverse opinions on the situation  . In an article  I wrote back in 2007 on the events of the summer of that year in Turkey, I had tried to develop a reasoning that countered the way in which the military-bureaucratic establishment in Turkey framed Islamism in general, and the AKP in particular, as the ‘Other’, as an outsider to the Turkish body politic that threatened to destroy the achievements of the secular, modernizing forces that had built the Republic. I was arguing then it is evident that, contrary to the attempted simplification of the current political situation into one characterized by the irreconcilable conflict between a monolithic and fundamentalist Islamist camp bent on introducing Şeriat (sharia law) and Turkey’s secular for...

The protests that spread from the relatively small and rather underused Gezi park in Istanbul to a host of cities and towns throughout Turkey are not likely to overthrow the AKP government. As I was pointing out in another note , the demonstrations had a dual effect. On the one hand they were an indictment of the the arrogance and contempt for dissenting opinion displayed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and an expression of increasing unease at the way the party has been introducing issues of public morality in the political agenda as new alcohol regulations and the Ankara Metro protests indicate. And, it is becoming increasingly clear that they constituted a condemnation of the alliance of the AKP with particular corporate elites that seem to benefit from the capitalist development model the party has promoted. On the other hand, they inadvertently exposed the irrelevance and lack of vision of the opposition parties. The protests are likely to fizzle out, the AKP will probably stay on ...

Taksim Meydanı has been a focal point of political protest in Turkey for the best part of the last one hundred years. It has also seen its fair share of violence and destruction: the Kanlı Pazar (Bloody Sunday) of February 1969, the Kanlı 1 Mayıs (First of May massacre) of 1977 are the most well known such examples. Traditionally the location of choice for the celebration of the 1st of May for the Left, it was off limits this year as the May Day events were not allowed to take place there. As a result, small scale skirmishes between Left-wing activists and the police took place in the surrounding streets a month ago but the area was soon back to normality.  So, earlier last month, no one would have imagined that Taksim would once more become the arena of the violent events of the past few days. The few protesters that started gathering and organized a sit-in at the site of Gezi Park in the run-up to 26 May to protest against the destruction of Gezi Park and the rebuilding ...