Gezi Park construction plan back on table says Erdogan
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has vowed to proceed with a controversial plan to construct over Istanbul’s Gezi Park, a move which, in 2013, sparked some of the largest protests in recent Turkish history.
“One of the subjects that we have to be brave is Gezi Park in Taksim,” Erdogan said at an event in Istanbul on Saturday. “Look, I am saying once again. We will construct that historic building there.”
When the plan to build over one of the few green spaces in the Taksim neighbourhood of Istanbul was first floated in 2013, a small sit-in led by environmental activists quickly grew into mass protests against the government of then Prime Minister Erdogan as well as police brutality and violations of democratic rights.
Estimates put the number of those who joined demonstrations over the summer as high as 3.5 million with protesters decrying what they called the increasing authoritarianism of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The police responded by violently evicting protesters from the park. Over the summer-long protests, eight people were killed, and some 8,000 were injured, including 104 with serious head injuries and 11 who lost an eye as a result of plastic police bullets.
The protests were also marked by a unity within Turkish society, with people from all sides of usually divisive issues coming together. As Rudaw’s columnist David Romano wrote at the time, “Perhaps most surprisingly, Kurdish nationalists ended up shoulder to shoulder with Kemalists and their traditional Turkish nationalist opponents. One popular photo shows a woman wearing a PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) flag standing next to another woman wearing a Turkish flag emblazoned with a portrait of Kemal Ataturk. Who would have thought this was possible?”
Many Turks reported becoming aware, for the first time, of the sorts of problems that the Kurdish minority has faced regularly: police brutality, government obfuscation, biased media reports, and images of officials congratulating security forces for their heroism after attacking peaceful protesters.
Erdogan also said on Saturday that the construction project may include a corner dedicated to German, French or American history in order to showcase the atrocities that colour those nations’ histories in an apparent reaction to the German parliament’s recent recognition of the Armenian genocide.
“One of the subjects that we have to be brave is Gezi Park in Taksim,” Erdogan said at an event in Istanbul on Saturday. “Look, I am saying once again. We will construct that historic building there.”
When the plan to build over one of the few green spaces in the Taksim neighbourhood of Istanbul was first floated in 2013, a small sit-in led by environmental activists quickly grew into mass protests against the government of then Prime Minister Erdogan as well as police brutality and violations of democratic rights.
Estimates put the number of those who joined demonstrations over the summer as high as 3.5 million with protesters decrying what they called the increasing authoritarianism of the ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP).
The police responded by violently evicting protesters from the park. Over the summer-long protests, eight people were killed, and some 8,000 were injured, including 104 with serious head injuries and 11 who lost an eye as a result of plastic police bullets.
The protests were also marked by a unity within Turkish society, with people from all sides of usually divisive issues coming together. As Rudaw’s columnist David Romano wrote at the time, “Perhaps most surprisingly, Kurdish nationalists ended up shoulder to shoulder with Kemalists and their traditional Turkish nationalist opponents. One popular photo shows a woman wearing a PKK (Kurdistan Workers’ Party) flag standing next to another woman wearing a Turkish flag emblazoned with a portrait of Kemal Ataturk. Who would have thought this was possible?”
Many Turks reported becoming aware, for the first time, of the sorts of problems that the Kurdish minority has faced regularly: police brutality, government obfuscation, biased media reports, and images of officials congratulating security forces for their heroism after attacking peaceful protesters.
Erdogan also said on Saturday that the construction project may include a corner dedicated to German, French or American history in order to showcase the atrocities that colour those nations’ histories in an apparent reaction to the German parliament’s recent recognition of the Armenian genocide.