facility:taksim square

Thousands hold #sit-in protest in İstanbul against ongoing state of emergency

Thousands of people affiliated with the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP) held a sit-in in İstanbul’s Taksim area on Monday protesting government plans to extend a state of emergency, known as OHAL, which was declared following a failed coup attempt in July 2016.

Police teams prevented the crowd from entering Taksim Square, forcing the group to gather on İstiklal Street.

Emergency rule was declared for three months on July 20, 2016. It was extended for another three months on Oct. 19, 2016, Jan.19, 2017, April 19, 2017, July 21, 2017, Oct.16 2017 and Jan.18, 2018.

On Wednesday, the Turkish government is expected to extend the emergency rule for the seventh time.

The CHP supporters chanted slogans saying, “Don’t be silent, scream ‘no to OHAL’,” “Shoulder to shoulder against fascism” and “Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance.”

CHP İstanbul deputy Mahmut Tanal, who was among the participants of the protest, said the independent judiciary and media in Turkey have been destroyed during the state of emergency.

“During the Nazi era in Germany, the press didn’t write anything other than what the government said. There are now innocent students who are in jail. There are teachers who have been removed from their posts. OHAL is the enemy of democracy. OHAL brings injustice,” said Tanal.

Under emergency rule, the government has pressed ahead with many controversial decrees that have the force of the law and are not required to be approved by Parliament. In line with these decrees, more than 150,000 people have been purged from state bodies on coup charges.

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Architecture of Commons – Archifutures
▻http://archifutures.futurearchitectureplatform.org/volum-2-the-studio/architecture-of-commons

http://archifutures.futurearchitectureplatform.org/wp-content/uploads/VOL2_04_merve_bedir_giordano_ambrosi_camping_in_gezi.jpg

The demonstrations against Turkish government action to demolish Gezi Park in Istanbul in 2013 prompted the self-organisation of its citizens and a new grassroots understanding of the notion of the “public”. Urbanist, writer and curator Merve Bedir, took part in the protests. Here she analyses what happened back then and how the seeds of a new type of urbanism were sown.

The ambiguity surrounding the future of the park kept people guessing for a long time, until the day an excavator entered the park and ripped up a tree from its roots.

The ensuing protests on the streets continued uninterrupted for 20 days; with crowds gathering in Gezi Park, Taksim Square and the surrounding areas. Despite all their differences, the citizens of Istanbul were united in claiming what they commonly understood to be theirs: the tree, the park and more. This event marked a threshold moment in which the people remembered the notion of “common(s)” – one that they have been re-discovering and exploring ever since, through all the possible spatial and political meanings of the word.

The forums were held for people to discuss further collective action. As spaces for exercising direct democracy, the parks in the city became forums, agoras and common(s). The results of the various discussions were shared around the city and a daily report on each forum disseminated via a newsletter and blogs. These forums made people remember their public parks again, and their relationships to one another. Local inhabitants started maintaining the parks in their neighbourhood, using and programming them in ways that had never been experienced before.

Without doubt, the understanding of common(s) is as a new kind of (urban) space that is outside the dichotomy of public and private; a space that is created by collective action, by people; not trying to be permanent but looking for the transforming capacity of the temporary. Learning from the dynamism of the temporary is certainly inspiring for designers and other creative disciplines.

The most important thing is creating new common(s), by the people, particularly in the cities. We know we all have a thousand virtual friends, but we only have a small number of real friends. Ivan Illich talked about his polyphilia, the need to be with friends. He elevated friendship as the main category for the reorganisation of our society, for reconstructing it in a different way, as the starting point of hope.

Friendship as common(s) is a working methodology bringing people together towards collective imaginaries that also acknowledge the individual within them. This working methodology could be an inspiration for designers to position themselves, as well.

#Communs_urbains #Mouvement_des_places #Parc_Gezi #Istanbul

#erdogan urges youths not to answer “terrorist” calls to protest
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/erdogan-urges-youths-not-answer-terrorist-calls-protest

Thousands of Turkish police mobilized Saturday in central #Istanbul ahead of demonstrations to mark the first anniversary of last year’s protests that mushroomed into a revolt against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s rule. Erdogan’s government deployed thousands of riot police and police in civilian clothes to enforce a ban on protests at #Taksim Square, the epicenter of last year’s demonstrations, an AFP reporter said. read more

#Gezi #turkey

Mass trial opens over 2013 #turkey #street_protests
▻http://english.al-akhbar.com/content/mass-trial-opens-over-2013-turkey-street-protests

http://english.al-akhbar.com/sites/default/files/imagecache/4cols/leading_images/847044-01-08.jpg

A Turkish policeman tries to remove a banner made of flowers reading “First of May” as police try to disperse a May Day rally near Taksim Square in Istanbul on May 1, 2014. (Photo: AFP - Bulent Kilic) A Turkish policeman tries to remove a banner made of flowers reading “First of May” as police try to disperse a May Day rally near Taksim Square in Istanbul on May 1, 2014. (Photo: AFP - Bulent Kilic)

More than 250 people, including seven foreigners, went on trial in Turkey on Tuesday over mass anti-government protests that rocked the country last year. The 255 suspects face a range of charges including violating laws on demonstrations, damaging a place of worship and injuring civil servants. The defendants face up to 12 (...)

#Gezi_Park #Top_News

Alignments of Dissent and Politics of Naming : Assembling Resistance in Turkey
▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12001/alignments-of-dissent-and-politics-of-naming_assem

Je découvre par hasard cet article du doctorant en anthropologie Emrah Yildiz (qui est d’ailleurs l’un des éditeurs d’un des 1er ouvrage collectif sur le mouvement Gezi ▻http://tadweenpublishing.com/blogs/news/12194385-new-jadmag-resistance-everywhere-the-gezi-protests-and-d). En décentrant entre autre géographiquement son regard des lieux de contestation, pas uniquement concentrés sur Taksim, l’auteur remet en cause l’idée admise que seules les élites séculières ont initié, structuré et contrôlé le mouvement de résistance. Selon lui, la variété des profils sociaux et des revendications observés durant le mouvement qui se sont auto-enrichis entre elles, invite à une reconsidération des anciennes catégories d’analyse des classes sociales en Turquie à travers notamment une lecture de leurs relations avec la technologie et en particulier les technologies de l’information.

Over ten thousand people took over the streets of Ümraniye, a working-class neighborhood on the Asian side of Istanbul, at around 10 pm on Sunday 2 July to stand in solidarity with the demonstrators not only in the grounds of the Gezi Park in Taksim Square, but also with those demonstrating in sixty-seven cities all over Turkey from Ankara and Izmir, to Adana and Hatay. Gathering on the main avenue of the May 1st Mahallesi (district) of Ümraniye, a neighborhood always imagined as a stronghold of AKP politics and home to a socially conservative lifestyle among the diverse districts of Istanbul, over ten thousand Ümraniye locals marched onto the main artery of Istanbul’s highway system connecting the European and Asian sides of the city via the Bosphorus Bridge, known as TEM in Turkey. Chanting the signature slogans of “shoulder to shoulder against fascism” and “resist Gezi [Park] resist!” of the demonstrations that ensued from Taksim square, the Umraniye locals formed a human blockade and closed the highway artery to traffic. Disregarding all signs alerting the drivers to the blockade miles ahead, a speeding black luxury car, described either as an Audi A6 or a BMW by eyewitnesses, ripped through the crowd, seriously wounding two peaceful demonstrators, associated with the Socialist Solidarity Platform, Sosyalist Dayanışma Platformu (SODAP) in Turkish. The 17-year-old SODAP member and high school student Sezgin Kartal remains in critical condition in Göztepe Eğitim ve Araştırma Hospital as I write this piece. The 19-year-old factory worker, and member of the socialist hackers’ network, Redhack, in Turkey, Mehmet Ayvalıtaş, on the other hand, has unfortunately passed away in the same hospital despite all the attempts to save his life.

What is more upsetting to me, however, is the analytical myopia that underwrites the politics of naming what is happening and the actors who are doing the resisting in Turkey on the one hand, and the utter disregard for stories like that of Mehmet’s, since they do not neatly fit into the banally familiar and mutually exclusive positions of the entrenched elite secularists vs the overly-confident working-class Islamists in Turkey. The seemingly strange alignments the “resistance” has been breeding in Turkey should not be explained away in such abstract and categorical terms, but approached as vital social grounds through which we can rethink these categories, both in our representational practices and analytical endeavors. Mehmet’s story, peppered with information about where he comes from, his participation in Redhack while being a factory worker, for instance, might help us rethink not only the secularist elite/Islamist working-class binary, but also the assumed class positions of social media users and online activists in particular and the more abstract relationship between social class and technology in the age of late capitalism

In other words, there is an ongoing process of seeming strange alignments among many different individuals and groups with wildly diverse ideological stances and social identities that are teaching and learning from one another, yet continue to stand together. Under such indeterminate circumstances, a struggle over context and its overriding meaning produces the problem of managing this assemblage, and the secularists are definitely serious contenders for the role, but not the only ones.

#Gezi
#Turquie

Turkish protests: Police reportedly shoot down demonstrators’ drone. [VIDEO]
▻http://www.slate.com/blogs/future_tense/2013/06/24/turkish_protests_police_reportedly_shoot_down_demonstrators_drone_video.html

The activist, who goes by the name Jenk K, has been posting a series of excellent videos of the large demonstrations that have swept Istanbul in recent weeks. Using a micro-drone, he has captured aerial footage of protests at Taksim Square, recording the historic scenes both during the day and at night. Jenk’s drone has helped document heavy-handed tactics being used by Turkish authorities to suppress the protests, including the use of water cannons, tear gas, and plastic bullets.

However, the security forces do not appear to have taken kindly to the drone keeping tabs on their actions. Last week, as TechCrunch reports, Jenk posted a new video of what he says is his drone being shot down by the cops. Footage of the incident shows a small drone aircraft hovering in the sky before being abruptly smashed to the ground by what appears to be a gunshot of some kind.

#drones #répression #turquie

Is Everywhere Taksim?: Public Space and Possible Publics

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12143/is-everywhere-taksim_public-space-and-possible-pub

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/3/heryergezi.jpg

« Everywhere is Gezi Park. Everywhere is Resistance," in Taksim, Istanbul. Image by Elizabeth Angell »

In a speech on 1 June, responding to the wave of protests sweeping through Turkey, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan proclaimed that “the issue is not the five to ten trees that are being removed.” By calling the demonstrators “ideological,” and suggesting they were simply opposition cadres or opportunistic rioters using the debate over the redevelopment of Istanbul’s Taksim Gezi Parkı to stoke unrest against his government, Erdoğan meant to discredit them. But on this point, the prime minister and the crowds of people in the streets calling for his resignation would agree: this is now about something much broader than the few hundred trees threatened by the plan to rebuild an Ottoman-era barracks in place of the park, or even about the preservation of a small green space at the center of a sprawling concrete city.

#turquie #contestation #résistance

The Right to the City Movement and the Turkish Summer

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/11978/the-right-to-the-city-movement-and-the-turkish-sum

As I write this, Istanbul is under siege. The might of Istanbul’s entire police force—the largest city police force in Europe—is violently cracking down on peaceful occupiers in Gezi Park.

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The protest, which began on 27 May, is ostensibly over a planned shopping center to be built over a park in Istanbul’s central Taksim Square. Nevertheless, massive popular movements like this do not emerge out of nowhere. Typically, they are the result of the tireless groundwork of activists over the course of an extended period. And then, something happens: a spark sets off the lighter fluid accumulating unnoticed at everyone’s feet.

Occupy Gezi: The Limits of Turkey’s Neoliberal Success

▻http://www.jadaliyya.com/pages/index/12009/occupy-gezi_the-limits-of-turkey%E2%80%99s-neoliberal-succ

There are two telling, though widely neglected, details about what initiated and popularized the groundbreaking protests in Taksim Square, Istanbul: the protests started out as a response to the governing neoliberal party’s project of urban transformation or urban renewal; yet, urban questions quickly took a backseat as the protests became massive. Understanding these two facets of the mobilization sheds much light on what is happening in Turkey and why.

http://www.jadaliyya.com/content_images/3/AP173293481807-1.jpg

#turquie

The Events in Turkey: A Virtual Theme Issue for Background | Society and Space - Environment and Planning D

▻http://societyandspace.com/2013/06/05/the-events-in-turkey-a-virtual-theme-issue-for-background

In recent days, protests have swept Istanbul, where plans to demolish the Gezi Park in Taksim Square [1] unleashed a torrent of anger at the administration of Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the country’s prime minister since 2003. These protests in Istanbul, at the crossroads of East and West, now stand to make explicit the great contestations of contemporary politics, including secularism and religion,[2] the spatialisation of the urban,[3]and the neoliberal closing—literally here—of the public space. Taksim Square was the site of the last green space in Istanbul, and was to be bulldozed for the sake of a replica of a 19th-century Ottoman barracks meant to house, yes, a shopping mall. Could there be a better symbol of the confluence of authoritarianism and neoliberalism? Like the Occupy movement[4] and the early protests in Tahrir Square[5] two years ago, the protests are the result of no particular party or particular program. Erdoğan has already rejected comparisons to the Arab spring,

#turquie

First Person Singular - LRB blog

▻http://www.lrb.co.uk/blog/2013/06/03/caglar-keyder/first-person-singular

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan spent yesterday talking. On Saturday, the authorities relented and withdrew the police from Taksim Square, when it became clear that serious clashes would be unavoidable. Crowds were approaching from four different directions and the police were trying to stop them before they reached the square, but they kept coming; at around 4 p.m. news came that the police were pulling back. Many thought that this might be tactical. In the end, however, the demonstrators had Taksim to themselves. On Sunday morning, under a drizzle, they peacefully cleaned up the square while Erdoğan made the rounds, denouncing the extremists, justifying his actions and defiantly repeating his commitment to overhaul the social and physical space of the meydan.

#turquie

Turquie (2 juin 2013)
How Democratic Is Turkey?

Not as democratic as Washington thinks it is

STEVEN A. COOK, MICHAEL KOPLOW, Foreign Policy, 3 June 2013

►http://www.foreignpolicy.com/articles/2013/06/02/how_democratic_is_turkey?page=full

"It seems strange that the biggest challenge to Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s authority during more than a decade in power would begin as a small environmental rally, but as thousands of Turks pour into the streets in cities across Turkey, it is clear that something much larger than the destruction of trees in Istanbul’s Gezi Park — an underwhelming patch of green space close to Taksim Square — is driving the unrest.

The ferocity of the protests and police response in Istanbul’s Gezi Park is no doubt a surprise to many in Washington. Turkey, that “excellent model” or “model partner,” is also, as many put it, “more democratic than it was a decade ago.” There is a certain amount of truth to these assertions, though the latter, which is repeated ad nauseum, misrepresents the complex and often contradictory political processes underway in Turkey. Under the AKP and the charismatic Erdogan, unprecedented numbers of Turks have become politically mobilized and prosperous — the Turkish economy tripled in size from 2002 to 2011, and 87 percent of Turks voted in the most recent parliamentary elections, compared with 79 percent in the 2002 election that brought the AKP to power. Yet this mobilization has not come with a concomitant ability to contest politics. In fact, the opposite is the case, paving the way for the AKP to cement its hold on power and turn Turkey into a single-party state. The irony is that the AKP was building an illiberal system just as Washington was holding up Turkey as a model for the post-uprising states of the Arab world."

Understanding people’s anger at Tayyip Erdoğan

Emre Uslu, Columnist, Today’s Zamman, 2 June 2013
▻http://www.todayszaman.com/columnistDetail_getNewsById.action?newsId=317219

“Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is a legendary leader who has managed to win elections in the last 10 years. However, in the last 10 days, the protests in Taksim Square in İstanbul revealed public anger toward him too. One needs to examine why people rebelled against Erdoğan? And more importantly, how do Justice and Development Party (AKP) supporters see what Erdoğan is doing?

When I ask people on the street these questions, there are various explanations. In a way, everyone has his or her own reason for being against Erdoğan. However almost all of them, including AKP supporters, agree on one thing: People no longer respect Erdoğan as they used to. For instance, a local AKP official told me that, “There are people in my district, a district where the AKP received 80 percent of the votes, who used to say “I love Erdoğan so much that I cannot sleep before I listen to what he said that day,” but now, the official says, “people no longer have such affection for Erdoğan.”

When I asked what made people change their opinion, he said, “The main reason that people stop admiring Erdoğan is because he acts as if he is the only one who knows anything and as if he does everything better than anyone else.”

However, he adds, this does not mean people stop voting for the AKP. The AKP still has the same voting base because there is no alternative. People are even ready to accept one who is not as good as Erdoğan in terms of leadership, or delivering speeches, etc. but there is no such alternative. Thus, people continue to support Erdoğan."

squattercity: Istanbul at war with itself
▻http://squattercity.blogspot.fr/2013/06/istanbul-at-war-with-itself.html

“Across the city, the urban poor are being paid to leave their homes so that contractors — many with ties to government officials — can build gated communities.”

This factoid was buried in a New York Times article about the Taksim Square protests in Istanbul.

http://reclaimistanbul.files.wordpress.com/2011/04/map1small.jpg

#bidonvilles #logement #turquie #cartographie_radicale

What is Happenning in Istanbul ? | İnsanlik Hali
▻http://defnesumanblogs.com/2013/06/01/what-is-happenning-in-istanbul

To my friends who live outside of Turkey:

I am writing to let you know what is going on in Istanbul for the last five days. I personally have to write this because at the time of my writing most of the media sources are shut down by the government and the word of mouth and the internet are the only ways left for us to explain ourselves and call for help and support.

Last week of May 2013 a group of people most of whom did not belong to any specific organization or ideology got together in Istanbul’s Gezi Park. Among them there were many of my friends and yoga students. Their reason was simple: To prevent and protest the upcoming demolishing of the park for the sake of building yet another shopping mall at very center of the city. There are numerous shopping malls in Istanbul, at least one in every neighborhood! The tearing down of the trees was supposed to begin early Thursday morning. People went to the park with their blankets, books and children. They put their tents down and spent the night under the trees. Early in the morning when the bulldozers started to pull the hundred-year-old trees out of the ground, they stood up against them to stop the operation.

They did nothing other than standing in front of the machines.

No newspaper, no television channel was there to report the protest. It was a complete media black out.

But the police arrived with water cannon vehicles and pepper spray. They chased the crowds out of the park.

In the evening of May 31st the number of protesters multiplied. So did the number of police forces around the park. Meanwhile local government of Istanbul shut down all the ways leading up to Taksim square where the Gezi Park is located. The metro was shut down, ferries were cancelled, roads were blocked.

Yet more and more people made their way up to the center of the city by walking.

They came from all around Istanbul. They came from all different backgrounds, different ideologies, different religions. They all gathered to prevent the demolition of something bigger than the park:

The right to live as honorable citizens of this country.

They gathered and continued sitting in the park. The riot police set fire to the demonstrators’ tents and attacked them with pressurized water, pepper and tear gas during a night raid. Two young people were run over by the panzers and were killed. Another young woman, a friend of mine, was hit in the head by one of the incoming tear gas canisters. The police were shooting them straight into the crowd. After a three hour operation she is still in Intensive Care Unit and in very critical condition. As I write this we don’t know if she is going to make it. This blog is dedicated to her.

These people are my friends. They are my students, my relatives. They have no «hidden agenda» as the state likes to say. Their agenda is out there. It is very clear. The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government, for the construction of malls, luxury condominiums, freeways, dams and nuclear plants. The government is looking for (and creating when necessary) any excuse to attack Syria against its people’s will.

On top of all that, the government control over its people’s personal lives has become unbearable as of late. The state, under its conservative agenda passed many laws and regulations concerning abortion, cesarean birth, sale and use of alcohol and even the color of lipstick worn by the airline stewardesses.

People who are marching to the center of Istanbul are demanding their right to live freely and receive justice, protection and respect from the State. They demand to be involved in the decision-making processes about the city they live in.

What they have received instead is excessive force and enormous amounts of tear gas shot straight into their faces. Three people lost their eyes.

Yet they still march. Hundreds and thousands of citizens from all walks of life then joined them to support for the protestors. Couple of more thousand passed the Bosporus Bridge on foot to support the people of Taksim. They were met with more water cannons and more pepper spray, more hostility. Four people died, thousands of people were injured.

No newspaper or TV channel was there to report the events. They were busy with broadcasting news about Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”.

Police kept chasing people and spraying them with pepper spray to an extent that stray dogs and cats were poisoned and died by it.

Schools, hospitals and even 5 star hotels around Taksim Square opened their doors to the injured. Doctors filled the classrooms and hotel rooms to provide first aid. Some police officers refused to spray innocent people with tear gas and quit their jobs. Around the square they placed jammers to prevent internet connection and 3g networks were blocked. Residents and businesses in the area provided free wireless network for the people on the streets. Restaurants offered food and water for free.

People in Ankara and İzmir gathered on the streets to support the resistance in Istanbul. Demonstations spread to other cities where citizens were faced more brutality and hostiliy from police. Hundred of thousands kept joining.

Mainstream media kept showing Miss Turkey and “the strangest cat of the world”.

*

I am writing this letter so that you know what is going on in Istanbul. Mass media will not tell you any of this. Not in my country at least. Please post as many as articles as you see on the Internet and spread the word.

I do not belong to a political party. I don’t believe in politics. I don’t defend any ideology and I am not on the side of any regime. Like many others in Turkey I am tired and frustrated from the polarization between Kemalist seculars and the Islamists. I don’t belong to any of them. I believe in moving away from polarization and towards a new way of relating. I know many people who are out on the streets of Istanbul share the way I think and I know we are not the only ones. We just want to live our lives with human dignity.

As I was posting articles that explained what is happening in Istanbul on my Facebook page last night someone asked me the following question:

«What are you hoping to gain by complaining about our country to foreigners?»

This blog is my answer to her.

By so called «complaining» about my country I am hoping to gain:

Freedom of expression and speech,

Respect for human rights,

Control over the decisions I make concerning my on my body,

The right to legally congregate in any part of the city without being considered a terrorist.

But most of all by spreading the word to you, my friends who live in other parts of the world, I am hoping to get your awareness, support and help!

Please spread the word and share this blog.

Thank you!

For futher info and things you can do for help please see Amnesty International’s Call for Urgent Help

Erdogan Verbatim

Taksim Square cannot be an area where extremists are running wild

▻http://humanrightsturkey.org/2013/06/01/abuses-against-protestors-in-turkey-amnesty-calls-for-urgent-acti

..some of the protesters a[re] terrorists

▻http://www.ft.com/intl/cms/s/0/350d5756-cab6-11e2-82bc-00144feab7de.html

#déjà_vu

“Tarlabaşı Is Renewed” | Near East Quarterly
▻http://www.neareastquarterly.com/index.php/2011/06/11/tarlabasi-is-renewed

The Istanbul neighbourhood of Tarlabaşı has long been the black sheep of the chic and rapidly gentrifying central Beyoğlu district. While in the proximity of Taksim Square, Cihangir and Galata, very few Istanbul visitors would ever stray into Tarlabaşı and most Istanbul residents avoid setting foot in the area, for fear of its reputation as being inhabited solely by robbers, drug dealers and ‘terrorists’. But the current AKP Municipality under Mayor Ahmet Misbah Demircan is now set to change the image of the neighbourhood by implementing a radical urban renewal project dubbed Tarlabaşı Yenileniyor – Tarlabaşı Is Renewed.

(...)

Critics of the project say that Tarlabaşı Yenileniyor is not only a fierce attack on the historical fabric of Istanbul, but also on its growing Kurdish population: about 80 per cent of Tarlabaşı inhabitants have migrated there from the Kurdish Southeast. As a result of the intensifying Turkish-Kurdish civil war, Tarlabaşı began to receive a large number of Kurdish migrants in the early 1990s. Many of those newly arrived had been forcibly displaced from their villages; those who were too poor to move elsewhere settled in the small, run-down apartments on the lower, less popular side of Tarlabaşı Boulevard. (...)