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“SELF CONFIDENCE IS like a virus” explained Eser Sandiki, a young secondary school teacher and socialist activist in occupied Taksim Square on Friday night.
Her words ring true not just for Taksim, but across Turkey where the authoritarian Erdogan government faces an uprising.
Over 70 cities have seen mass protests and occupations involving more than a million people. Many of these, like at Taksim, are surrounded by protester-built barricades made of construction material and burnt out police cars, which make these police-free zones. Inside the barricades, councils of volunteers organise distribution of food, water, the provision of childcare, security and first aid.
Today, with the entire Taksim Square packed an hour after the scheduled time of a major demonstration, people continued to pour in from every street, with some estimating a crowd of up to 300,000.
Half of the crowd at Taksim Square. Pic: Paul Murphy MEP
The response of Prime Minister Erdogan has been brutal. There have been ferocious attacks by the police on protesters, with extensive use of harsh tear gas, burning the tents of those involved in the occupation and undercover police attacking protesters with knives and clubs. According to the most recent estimate of the Turkish Medical Association, over 4,000 were injured, which is likely to understate the reality. Three people have died so far.
This physical violence has been matched by rhetoric which dismissed the protesters as ‘capulcu’ (freeloaders). In response, signs around the square declare “we are all capulcu” and an online TV channel, ‘Capulcu TV’ has been launched. Erdogan also attacked social media, describing Twitter as a “menace to society”.
The reason is clear – while six Turkish newspapers led with exactly the same headline on Thursday morning, and NTV showed a documentary about penguins during the police assault on Taksim – multiple videos of police brutality have gone viral.
The final straw
The spark for the eruption of revolt was the moving of bulldozers into Gezi Park in Istanbul with a plan to replace one of the few green and public spaces in the city centre with a shopping mall. This was simply “the last drop of water making the glass fill over”, as Mucella Yapici, the Secretary of Taksim Solidarity explained.
She is a leader of the Chamber of Architects in Istanbul. Mucella described “the robbery of the city” over the last years – the destruction of public spaces, the eviction of working class people from their homes and gentrification of their areas, together with prestige projects such as a planned third airport and third massive bridge.
This process led to the enrichment of a construction sector extremely close to the ruling AKP party. This re-organisation of the city has also seen attacks on historic buildings representing secularist traditions in Turkey.
Candles spelling out 'Taksim is owned by the public'. Pic: Paul Murphy MEP
Another factor is the historic importance of Taksim Square for the workers’ movement. On 1 May 1977, 34 workers celebrating May Day were killed after the police fired on protesters.
This year permission for a May Day protest at Taksim Square was turned down. These elements, together with the aggressively authoritarian nature of the Erdogan government, including attempts to impose conservative restrictions on the selling of alcohol, and limitations on the availability of the contraceptive pill, provided the raw material for this social explosion.
Anti-government protests
Protesters coalesced around five key demands:
While these are the five official demands, the most popular slogan, which rings out 24 hours a day and spontaneously erupts even far from Taksim Square, is: “Tayyip Istifa” (Tayyip [Erdogan] resign). It is followed by the chant which moves thousands of people to jump as one: “If you don’t jump, you support Erdogan". This is a now an anti-government movement fighting for democratic rights and freedoms.
The protest movement has swept hundreds of thousands of people who have never been politically active before into action. A survey of protesters at Taksim found that 57 per cent had never been involved in protests before and 70 per cent didn’t support any particular political party.
A guide for dealing with tear gas. Pic: Paul Murphy MEP
Together with these previously inactive people, the movement has brought together unlikely allies. The football Ultras of the three teams of Istanbul, Besiktas, Fenerbahce and Galatasaray, renowned for pitched battles against each other, have joined forces at the front lines to keep the police out.
They are joined by activists from the left parties and unions who have plenty of experience of the repressive nature of the Turkish state. Feminist and LGBTQ activists are a visible force and challenge the sexist chanting of some sections of the protests.
At Taksim Square, flags of Kurdish leader Ocalan flutter alongside Turkish nationalist flags. The experience of police repression and media censorship has opened the eyes of some Turkish activists about the oppression of the Kurds.
For now, the police have given up trying to re-take Taksim Square, but massive violence continues in Ankara, elsewhere in Turkey and in the suburbs of Istanbul. On Saturday night, with the assistance of reporters Reuben and Gielty from Rabble and Turkish activists, I travelled to a working class neighbourhood called Gazi, where 400,000 predominantly Kurdish and Alevi people live.
(PaulMurphySP/YouTube)
Here, I witnessed the end of a massive street battle involving around 10,000 working class people against the police. Tear gas mixed with smoke from bonfires as the police’s water cannons fired towards us. A few days ago, 19-year-old Turan Akbas was shot in the head with a tear gas canister here.
He, together with nine others with similar injuries, is currently in a critical situation in hospital. For the Gazi residents and many others, this uprising is about decades of repression and brutality by the police and a lack of democratic rights.
Pic: Paul Murphy MEP
What next?
What happens next is not clear. Erdogan has taken an aggressive line, despite other more conciliatory voices in the establishment. Saturday’s leadership meeting of the ruling AKP party ruled out early elections and decided to organise major rallies of their supporters next Saturday and Sunday. Taksim Square is buzzing with rumours that the police will attempt to re-take the square on Monday.
If they do, they will face extremely determined resistance. Having felt their power, Turkish working class and young people are not about to surrender their control of public spaces without a fight. Many are actively studying the lessons of the Egyptian and Tunisian revolutions, seeking to avoid the setbacks experienced there.
The genie is out of the bottle for the Erdogan government – this uprising has the potential to become a revolutionary movement capable of overthrowing it and posing the possibility of radical democratic and socialist change. Solidarity action is now vital to show that the protesters are not alone and that the world is watching.
Paul Murphy is the Socialist Party MEP for Dublin. He will be speaking about his experiences in Turkey at 8pm on Thursday 13 June in Wynn’s Hotel in Abbey St.
I can’t see how issue can be taken with this article, the guy went to Turkey where massive change is taking place, an historic moment, and he’s relaying what he saw and providing his analysis of the situation along with the views of the protesters. He’s far more articulate and active than our dear leader and is also passionate. Hats off to you Mr.Murphy, don’t mind the whingers.
There is a protest outside the Turkish Embassy at 13:00 on Wednesday, for anyone that can make it.
You probably get more people turning up for that protest than any of the protest against our governments bull$hit
God not this guy again, could that column be any more patronising.
Good man Paul. You were irrelevant in Greece. You are irrelevant in Turkey. You are sure as hell irrelevant in Ireland. I presume you are paying for your irrelevant junkets with your salary as an unelected MEP. Please, please go away.
Oh if we only had their passion.
Absolutely. He’s a joke. When you’re heralding the heroism of Galatasaray & Fenerbahce Ultras you’re beyond redemption.
We do. It’s just not entirely negative.
Not a bit patronising, he went out there to meet the people, find out what they were protesting about, how they were being treated by their government who want entry to the EU. This is what MEPs are supposed to do, it’s just unusual to find ones who actually do it. Party hacks usually just go on junkets put on by governments to wine and dine them and keep them onside, he is a breath of fresh air.
Unelected…yawn. Go and actually read how European elections work before opening your mouth.
Paddy,
Paul Murphy is elected. When the electorate voted in Joe Higgins as an MEP, they also voted for his substitute list which included Paul Murphy. Murphy replaced Higgins as MEP when Higgins was elected to the Dail in 2011.
There are no by-elections to the European Parliament. If an MEP resigns from office or dies during his or her mandate, the vacancy is filled from a replacement list, which is presented by parties or independent candidates to the returning officer in their constituency prior to each European election.
I know how it works. But I have yet to meet ONE person who knew that Paul Murphy was one of Joe HIggins’s named substitutes. They didn’t vote for him. And while the system isn’t his fault, it is a faulty system which means, ultimately, that he IS unelected. It is a system we sure as hell wouldn’t accept for the Dáil.
Paddy,
We do accept a very similar replacement system in the county councils. If a councillor resigns etc, their party nominates a replacement without the need for by-election. Except in the case of independents, people are voting for a party as well as an individual. My local FF councillor is a hardworking and decent lad but I’ll never vote for him because of his party allegiance. In the last European election, Dublin people voted for the Socialist party as well as for Joe Higgins the man, and so Paul Murphy is an entirely legitimate replacement for the Socialist Party MEP seat.
I am not suggesting he is not legitimate. He is. But the system which legitimises him is flawed and undemocratic. I know it operates for councils. But what I said was that it would not be acceptable when it comes to the Dáil. And it wouldn’t be. My main point, though, is the irrelevance of his actions. He flew off to Greece. He flew off to Turkey. For what? At whose expense ultimately?
Murphy is a socialist. The purpose of the trips to Greece, Turkey and elsewhere is to highlight and assist if possible the struggle of ordinary people against the forces of capitalism. I found Murphy’s 2012 accounts published online if you are interested in how the visits are funded. But as far as I’m concerned its money well spent. We have plenty of MEPs who remain safely tucked up inside their Brussels offices and would run a mile at the first sniff of tear gas or sight of a police baton.
Relevance is subjective. What is relevant to you is not necessarily relevant to me. As Paul Murphy is a public representative, the question is whether the visits are relevant in terms of his stated objectives as a public representative.
Clearly, they are not relevant to the Chief Financial Officer of an IFSC firm. Socialist representatives will have different priorities and different objectives to Fine Gael representatives. Since the latter represent the interests of the rich, the rich have plenty of money to lubricate whatever visits and contacts are necessary.
What is more, the political system at both a national and European level is rigged in the interests of the rich. Unelected and unaccountable financial institutions exercise immense control over economic and social policy. The European Central Bank is effectively the political wing of the European banking sector. The European Commission is packed with right wing fanatics who want to hand every public resource and service over to the rich so that they can make a profit out of it. National parliaments are subject to the sovereignty of ‘the markets’, and populations in EU member states are expected to compete against each other in terms of who can live on the lowest wages and in the worst conditions.
In such a context, it is entirely appropriate for socialist representatives to seek to work within cross-border popular alliances against such an agenda, and to seek to broaden and strengthen these alliances. For someone who expresses a concern about undemocratic systems, I am surprised this is not obvious to you.
To people who support socialist policies due to these facts, such visits are both relevant and important. For those who identify with the priorities and the authority of the rich, less so.
Seems like a bit of real journalism for a change. Too much reality for some people maybe …
How’s the whole “not paying the property tax” working out for you there, Larry?
The Eric Daly column earlier was much better and informative.
“the possibility of radical democratic and socialist change”
choose one – you can’t have both.
have your say