Police barricade in Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations (May 2013). Credit: Wikimedia Commons

By Tessa Love
ISTANBUL, Oct 14 2014 (IPS)

A year after the Gezi Park uprising – a protest that began as an act to save trees – exploded into anti-government riots around the country, sparking cohesive community efforts to fight urban sprawl, the face of environmental activism and awareness in Turkey has changed.

“It’s no coincidence that the demonstrations were ignited by an ecological issue, by concerns of urban development,” said Morat Ozbank, an assistant professor of political theory at Bigli University and a board member of the Turkish Green Party. “And this later became an issue of human rights and democratisation.”

At 11 pm on May 27, 2013, bulldozers moved into Gezi Park – one of the last green spaces in Istanbul’s Beyoğlu district and an “oasis” in Taksim Square, a large stone plaza of mostly open space with a few statues, fountains and entrances to underground stations.  They were there to clear the trees for the controversial construction of an Ottoman-era style shopping mall.“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul. All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction” – Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners

Within 20 minutes, throngs of people filled the park to block the construction, and they stayed for 20 days before being forced out by police.

The proposed shopping mall was just one of a long list of mega-projects spearheaded by Turkish president Recep Tayyip Erdogan. Other projects include a third bridge across the Bosphorus, a tunnel for private vehicles beneath the same waterway, the world’s largest airport, and a second Bosphorus on the Asian side of the city.

Many of these projects are being carried forward despite opposition from bodies such as the Union of Chambers of Turkish Engineers and Architects (TMMOB), which is responsible for assessing the potential impact of proposed projects and advising against those that could be detrimental to the environment.

According to Akif Burak Atlar, secretary to the board at the Turkish Chamber of Urban Planners, all of these projects fit that description.

“The mega-projects are disastrous for Istanbul,” he says. “All development is hurting something. Urban planning is a rational profession, but the government does not listen to this rationale. They take our public spaces and sell them for construction.”

Atlar believes that every neighbourhood in Istanbul should legally have a certain amount of green space to uphold urban planning standards. Nevertheless, public parks are being destroyed and, beyond the city limits, miles of wild forests have been destroyed to make way for the third bridge and the second Bosphorus.

While all of these projects had elicited outcries from various small organisations and legal action from TMMOB before May 2013, nothing came close to the response at Gezi Park.

“Gezi was a unique moment is Turkish history,” says Atlar. “There was no leader, no formal organisation. It was an awakening.”

One year later, this movement is still alive and although policies regarding urban planning have not changed at governmental level, grassroots organisations have joined forces in the hope of making changes where they can.

One of these – Northern Forest Defence – is a movement organised by free volunteers to defend the last forests of northern Istanbul. Known as the “Child of Gezi,” it works to halt the development of mega projects like the third bridge, as well as working within small communities to stop the destruction of public parks for development.

While many of these efforts are small, Cigdem Cidamli, a founding member of the organisation, believes that they are essential to the progress of urban defence. “Small movements can’t change as much as big movements,” she says, “but we can’t have big movements without the small ones. So now we are trying to create more integrated channels of solidarity.”

Cidamli, Atlar and Ozbank all agree that the integration of organisations is the most recognisable accomplishment of Gezi so far. Many neighbourhoods now have an urban defence group to discuss a wide range of issues including urban development.

Many of these groups have come together to form larger organisations such as Taksim Solidarity, Istanbul Urban Defence and Northern Forest Defence.

One small group, Caferaga Dayanismasi, is a collective in the Kadikoy neighbourhood that conducts meetings and organises activist movements from a “squat” – an abandoned building that members have occupied and are renovating.

Bahadir, a member of the squat, says that the best thing they have done as a group is to have occupied and cultivated an empty lot that was going to be turned into a car park. Now it is a community vegetable garden where neighbours, both the young and the old, get their hands dirty.

Cidamli is thankful to Gezi for this development. “After Gezi, people are looking inward to create solidarity in small ways,” she says. “We can’t have Gezi every day. So, instead, we cultivate tomatoes.”

With this growth in community-minded activism, Bahadir says that the city cannot cut down a single tree without sparking a protest.

But so far, the only major development that has successfully been halted is the shopping mall at Gezi.

“The funny thing is, they can’t do anything in Taksim Square right now,” says Ozbank with a smile. “They can’t touch anything … not even to beautify the place.”

(Edited by Phil Harris)

A woman collapses in front of a police barricade during one of the Occupy Gezi protests. Credit: Arzu Geybulla/IPS

By Ariam Frezghi
ISTANBUL, Jul 13 2013 (IPS)

Among the many issues bringing protestors together at Gezi Park, the now-iconic site of struggle in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, is the demand for women’s liberation.

Coming from many walks of life and expressing a myriad of ideals and values, the women of the Occupy Gezi Movement have nevertheless voiced a collective desire: to fight the undercurrent of deeply entrenched patriarchal values and reclaim autonomy over their own bodies and lifestyles.

These demands are now coalescing around proposed legislation from the country’s Health Ministry that will call on pharmacies to limit the sale of oral contraception known as the morning-after pill only to those with a doctor’s prescription, a practice that is uncommon for most drugs available to the public here.

Under Turkey’s conservative-leaning Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, women are encouraged to have at least three children to help maintain population growth rates.

Feminists and women’s rights groups representing almost 400 people say the new legislation is part of government attempts to impose traditional values onto their lifestyle, and will only reinforce stereotypes about the “ideal” Turkish woman, while stigmatising those who stray from this image.

“I can’t go to the family doctor (for my contraceptive needs) because it is a secretive issue for me,” said Merve Kosar, a 26-year-old Istanbulite who relies on the pharmacy to replenish her supply of the drug.

In Turkey, most non-narcotic drugs are available for purchase over the counter. Insisting on a prescription from a family doctor, who can report to other members of the family, places added pressure on women to conform to conservative mores.

Women like Kosar, who make the conscious decision to have sex before marriage, are worried about having fewer options to guard against unwanted pregnancies.

Nearly 34 percent of once-married and currently married women said they use morning-after pills as their main form of contraception, according to the 2008 Turkey Demographic and Health Survey.

Still, the possibility of parliament passing the bill under a larger package of reforms sometime this year seems likely and concerns women’s rights groups who say the announcement will hinder some from asking pharmacies for pills.

An article in the Hurriyet Daily News cited a notice from the Health Ministry, which stated that “growth hormones, antibiotics, antidepressants, and antihistamines” must be sold with a doctor’s prescription to reduce the misuse of drugs.

According to Zerrin Guker, a pharmacist in the commercial neighbourhood of Karakoy who sells 15 to 20 boxes of the morning-after pill per month, some customers have been misusing the drug by purchasing it a few times per week, which can cause hormonal side effects.

A 27-year-old protestor named Elif, who declined to give her last name for fear of retribution, said she suffered blood clots and nausea after taking the pill once; yet she still believes in a woman’s right to choose and says the government’s proposed restriction is designed to prevent unmarried women from having sexual relationships.

“Most women can’t even buy tampons or feminine products from stores because they are ashamed,” she told IPS, stressing that the culture of shame has become entrenched in society.

A long fight to overturn these attitudes is slowly showing results: ideals about abstinence until marriage, for instance, are shrinking, as women continue to speak out about their grievances with men including harassment and sexist swearing, practices that have infiltrated the Occupy Gezi Movement.

At a recent meeting in Yogurtçu Park in Istanbul’s Kadikoy district, more than 100 women gathered to discuss their experiences at Gezi Park.

One protestor said a drunken man grabbed her buttocks one night, while bystanders justified his actions saying he had been under the influence.

Another woman read out a list of complaints with the governing party, which included attempts to get rid of “dekolte” (low-cut dresses) and state attempts to ban abortions and “keep women at home.”

A year ago, Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan called for tighter restrictions on reproductive health by drafting a bill that would shorten the time period in which women can have an abortion from 10 weeks to eight weeks.

“There is no difference between killing the foetus in a mother’s womb or killing a person after birth,” Erdogan said in a speech before female politicians in the capital, Ankara, last year.

His words drew the ire of around 3,000 to 4,000 protestors, mostly women, who marched against the anti-abortion law in Kadikoy last June, waving banners proclaiming statements such as: “It is my body, so who are you?”

When abortion became legal in 1983, the Turkish Population and Health Survey found that 37 percent of once-married Turkish women had at least one abortion. As of 2008, that figure stood at 14.8 abortions per 1,000 women.

While the latest call to limit oral contraception has yet to spark demonstrations, many believe it will eventually ignite the tensions that have been simmering for years now.

Ayse Dunkan, journalist and activist, believes the outcry will pick up momentum, with more people rebelling against the “conservative concept (that) women (must) stay home and raise children.”

Such ideals, she told IPS, have resulted in Turkey having the world’s second highest population growth rate after China.

Selime Buyukgoze, a volunteer at Mor Cati, an Istanbul-based network for battered women, called the proposal “problematic” since the morning-after pill must be taken within 72 hours of having unprotected sex and few women will be able to reach their doctors that soon.

Like most others, though, her biggest fear is that doctors will break a woman’s confidence by reporting her lifestyle to the family.

Ahmet Kaya, a family doctor who sees almost 150 patients a week, rebukes that claim. “If your patient doesn’t want you to inform her family, you can’t make that call,” he told IPS.

At the moment, pharmacies are continuing to sell the pill without asking for a prescription

It remains to be seen whether or not the government will push ahead with the law, or whether it will respond to the will of more than 1.5 million female protesters.

A smashed NTV satellite van in the centre of Taksim Square in Istanbul highlights protesters' frustration with how Turkish media has covered their movement. Credit: Jillian Kestler-D'Amours/IPS

By Jillian Kestler-D'Amours
ISTANBUL, Jun 7 2013 (IPS)

Sitting with hundreds of other protesters in the centre of Istanbul’s Gezi Park Thursday night, Arzu Marsh rummages through her backpack to show off what she calls her makeshift “emergency kit”: medical masks, a red spray-bottle filled with a liquid that lessens the effect of tear gas, a scarf and some food.

But perhaps the most important item is what’s sitting in her lap, and, every few seconds, lights up with incoming text messages: her cell phone.

“I’m from Ankara, so all my friends and all my family are from Ankara, and as soon as I put [photos and videos on] Facebook, everyone saw it, and of course they also shared,” Marsh explained, referring to images of recent anti-government protests in Istanbul.

“Now, we are all following…Facebook or Twitter. We are not following any [traditional] news,” she said.

As spontaneous chants of “Everywhere is Taksim! Everywhere is resistance!” spread through the crowd, and a banner reading “Keep resisting Ankara – we are with you” hung overhead, Marsh told IPS that sharing information on social media about protests across Turkey has not only helped keep activists motivated but also built solidarity across political and geographical divisions."We all follow Facebook or Twitter. We are not following any [traditional] news."
--Arzu Marsh

“Yesterday we heard that… there was a [protest] in Rize, so we had an applause for Rize. It was very emotional, and it motivates you,” she said.

Distrust of traditional media

A smashed, bright yellow, satellite TV truck, belonging to one of Turkey’s leading broadcasters, NTV, sits in the centre of Taksim Square. Its doors are ripped off, windows shattered and tires punctured.

It is also covered in graffiti and highlights protesters’ frustration with the mainstream media in Turkey.

At the height of police violence in Istanbul’s Gezi Park last week, most local television networks ignored the events and instead continued with their regular programming, including cooking and travel shows.

While these same stations are now reporting on the protests – and NTV issued an apology for its initial lack of coverage – activists say social media continues to fill an important void and is the primary source of information for many.

“There’s a new, young generation that does not trust mainstream media broadcasts and they seek information that is independent and objective,” explained Emrah Ucar, an Istanbul-based activist who founded a popular social media network, called “Ötekilerin Postasi”, or “The Other Post”.

Indeed, as demonstrations continue across the country against the government’s increasingly authoritarian controls, protesters have developed an elaborate – and often times, humorous and creative – social media network to organise and sustain their protest.

The “Ötekilerin Postasi” now gets 1.7 million clicks per day, Ucar said, and is reaching a more widespread and politically diverse segment of Turkish society than it ever did before.

“What’s most important about social media is making people feel that they are participating in the production of news. When they get this feeling, they make it an issue for themselves and they participate in the commenting and spreading of the news,” he told IPS.

Government policies create ‘chilling effect’

Widespread arrests and detention of journalists, defamation lawsuits and government pressure on critical media outlets and columnists – including Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s publicly calling out journalists for their reporting – has had a “chilling effect” on the Turkish media, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists (CPJ).

Turkey jailed the highest number of journalists worldwide in 2012, often through the use of draconian and easily applied criminal laws. The government has also imposed fines on major media conglomerates, forcing them to sell off assets and downsize their operations, and helped facilitate the transfer of large news outlets to pro-AKP owners.

“We have seen changes in the editorial management of newspapers, firing of critical columnists, and a gradual but consistent shift away from commentary and news that are unpleasant or critical of the government,” Asli Aydıntasbas, a columnist at the daily Milliyet newspaper, told CPJ.

“Newspapers routinely exercise self-censorship and suppress critical information and news—even in the face of declining circulation,” Aydıntasbas added.

According to Selcan Kaynak, a political science professor at Istanbul’s Boğaziçi University, the media’s failure to promptly report on the Gezi Park protests reflects its overall refusal to report on issues that are critical of Turkey’s Justice and Development Party-led (AKP) government.

“It’s really, in one word, hegemony that is being established. There are some critical columnists, or independent newspapers, but they’ve been marginalised. There [have] been very strict controls [of what goes] reported and unreported,” Kaynak told IPS.

Still, the fact that there was a complete media blackout at the start of the recent protests in Istanbul was “shocking”, Kaynak said. “They thought, I guess, that by ignoring this, the rest of Turkey…would have no idea, and it would just go by and they would go on with the usual business.”

Social media ‘menace to society’

According to Aslı Tunç, head of the media and communications department at Istanbul Bilgi University, social media helped give a platform to opposition voices in Turkey that were growing online, even before the protests began.

“This didn’t happen overnight,” Tunç told IPS. “Those voices were there already. But the mainstream media did not cover [them], did not give them a voice on their televisions or [in their] newspapers, and they tried to marginalise [them].”

On Wednesday, 29 people were arrested – and later released without charge – in the city of Izmir for allegedly “inciting riots and conducting propaganda” after posting things about the protests on social media website Twitter.

In a speech last weekend, Erdogan himself called Twitter “a menace to society”. He also said “the best examples of lies can be found there”.

The defiant prime minister, who just returned from a diplomatic visit to North Africa and has refused to back down from his aggressive position against the demonstrations, has also called protesters deviants, extremists, and even looters – “çapulcu”, in Turkish.

In response, protesters quickly re-appropriated the word, and are now proudly calling themselves Çapulcu, using it in posters around Taksim Square, and in photos and updates shared online. Protesters even created a website, called ÇapulTV, where they are live streaming from Gezi Park, while an Anglicised version of the word – “chapulling” – has taken on the new meaning of fighting for your rights.

“[The protesters] proved that Twitter, social media, is a very powerful organisational tool,” Tunç said. “The young people especially proved that social media is part of media now. You cannot ignore the power of social media.”