What is happening in İstanbul? | Hacker News Reader

What is happening in İstanbul?

whatishappeninginistanbul.com

127 pointsekurutepe36 comments

It started as a civilian resistance for excessive police force. Unique and special part of this movement was political distribution of people in it. Erdogan's party rule 3'rd times the government. At this point they changed from independent, democrat, liberal party to totaliter one. So people in the movement is consist of multiple former Akp (Erdogan's party) supporter, too. That's why it should be important for Erdogan. But instead he's arguing that most of them provoked by other forces so ignoring. But now, 3'rd day of activity, it changed from civilian movement to anarchist, provokative anti-governmental and mostly illegal movements. That's why now people should calm down. Because initial point of movement succeed it's purpose. Park is safe (court decision), police is off the Taksim Square.

ps: i'm talkin as person who was in activity actually and hurted by police brutality. #direngeziparki

I read his son secretly owned the park and sold for a huge profit to an extremely wealthy individual who fell in love with the location.

People have also written that the new rule banning alcohol at 10 pm is making secular society nervous.

I've been there in Ankara protests last 2 days / nights.

I have several light burns around my body. Got hit by a gas canister. Seen people shot down with plastic bullets and got sprayed with an orange liquid that burns like hell.

The PM says social media is a damnation of god and we had several outages of twitter and facebook.

Meanwhile, CNN Turk shows penguin documentaries.

Solidarity!

Non-violence is the greatest force at the disposal of mankind. It is mightier than the mightiest weapon of destruction devised by the ingenuity of man.

Peace and love to you all.

People started gathering in front of a mainstream media outlet. They started broadcasting about the riots.

Blood must be shed. a.k.a Kızılejder

While I'm glad that people from Turkey are voicing there opinions here, I think there is also danger in being too credulous. The people who use English speaking social media are not necessarily representative of the whole population and the fact that people are able to spread their message on social media doesn't make them right.

I am still waiting to see confirmation of the existence of a media blackout in Turkey by the mainstream media, and the more general claims about the current regime are even harder to judge for an outsider.

Perhaps you can watch these videos of police brutality while you are waiting for the official statement from The Ministry of Censorship.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TqQjPHtAZ6c

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UPsPC4TPAMc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XThjR-7F0io

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tQHOo2rOmWc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Y409ZrNLFqM

Of course, just because the cops are assaulting unarmed civilians doesn't necessarily mean they are wrong.

(edit: added one more video)

Yeah you're absolutely right. While I'm in protest, my father in another city talkin about provocateurs about us without knowing I'm part of it (btw not a provocateur). So there is two side of coin. About media blackout, there's no official claims but all media company are heavily in business with government so they can do it without any official requests. Which they did it because media during protests only broadcast cartoon movies and other stupid stuff. Here is the biggest mobile network of Turkey Turkcell -> http://ireport.cnn.com/docs/DOC-981808

And here is the social media outage during the hottest time of protests -> http://techcrunch.com/2013/06/01/as-anti-government-protests...

Uh, I am moving there at the end of the summer. That is pretty much last thing I want to see at the moment. I am hoping they manage to finish this thing before.

Although, I would prefer Turkey to be peaceful, I do understand and agree with these protest.

If there happens the worst case scenario and real revolution, does anyone have info, how safe it is after that usually?

sorry @DocG but I don't think revolutions happen that often to be able to say how safe they are with any kind of statistical significance :)

But as far as I can tell, the government seems to be starting to accept the blame and even Erdogan will probably fall in line in a few days. It probably won't escalate anymore. I wouldn't worry if I were you.

If this makes you uncomfortable DO NOT google Turkey's neighbor Syria and the FSA.

Turkey live feed from the protests:

http://www.livestream.com/globalrevolution?utm_source=lsplay...

Great idea, I was trying to figure out the story! I've read there's been an internal blackout -- the turkish media isn't covering the event.

Yes, I heard they also placed jammers inside the protest areas. I imagine this didn't help very much. I was unable to find the source again though.

Technology seems to play a larger and larger role in providing freedom by giving individuals a voice and the power to exercise it.

Hm, I saw the opposite. Mainly every time there was poor reception it was due to overloaded cells.

TurkCell installed mobile repeaters in Taksim square yesterday. Even in the most heated of confrontions I still had cell, data and voice reception.

Jammers is not working everywhere. We can communicate. We rely on twitter/whatsapp/sms generally.

Check this out btw: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GdeJX0qYmnc

Might check out 57un's twitter feed. Lot of info on this.

https://twitter.com/57un

Thanks for covering this @ekurutepe.

This is not my blog. I came across it and seemed very accurate and unbiased. Thought I'd share here.

Is Gezi Park a _public_ or _private_ park?

According to Wikipedia it's a public park http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taksim_Gezi_Park (sidebar "Type: Urban Park")

And what does such a distinction mean in Turkey?

It's a public park.

There might be parks within the walls of a gated community. Or there might be special parks, like a bird park or a japanese garden you might then need a ticket to enter.

Gezi Park is a public area in the heart of Istanbul. The value of the land must be astronomical. That's another reason why the government has no issues attacking the civilians. And they get this brutal because the value of each individual life (in their minds) is very very low.

(I used to live 500 meters away from Gezi Park, and I have spent a considerable amount of time there)

Pretty sure if Turkey falls we'll end up with a new Islamic caliphate in the next 10 years. Who doesn't see one sweeping over this shattered region. For 90% of its history (600 to 1900) the middle east has been under a single empire or another. What we should really be afraid of is some kind of galvanizing leader or force to come out of this.

Nationalism is a thing, you know. The Turks look down on the Kurds and the Arabs, the Levantine Arabs think the Mashreqis are a bunch of hicks with oil, the Maghrebien middle and upper class are very French indeed and Iran is Shi'ite and will not be having anything to do with the Turks or Arabs if possible. And the ex-Soviet stans have two, three generations of official atheism.

I could see, maybe, the unification of some of the Arab states but that's really about it, and I wouldn't bet that way. Pan-Arab nationalism probably reached its apotheosis with Nasser in the 70's. This is not to say that the next twenty or thirty years will be wine and roses. Yemen is going to look like a vision of hell for one thing.

Out of interest, could you elaborate that last statement?

Poor, no oil, no water, no human capital, really high birth rates, highly religious, no trust in the state.

Bullshit. They've had a common enemy for sixty years and it hasn't enabled them to overcome their differences. Different nations are different. Turkey is completely unique. Look at their system of government, it's secular, and has been for years, and they got there on their own. The Arab Spring protesters were very mixed, but largely Islamist. These protesters are largely secular. Look at Iran. I'd say it's much more likely they secularize their government in the next ten years than any kind of substantial caliphate spring into existence.

Having a caliphate was one thing when you had one rich city-state dominating a vast poor expanse. It's a very different story when you have a dozen rich countries, each with their own tiny army, each with their own couple ethnicities, each one wanting to pronounce everything differently and quite unable to agree on who succeeded Mohammed.

It would be really convenient to be able to paint all our troubles with a single brush and a single color of paint, but the truth is much more complex and interesting.

>> For 90% of its history (600 to 1900) the middle east has been under a single empire or another.

That is so totally wrong I don't even know where to begin. For starters the caliphate was only a political force until the emergence of the seljuk turks. The turkish empire was European focused and never controlled persia or arabia.

Persia was never an Ottoman posession but Arabia was, or at least most of it was. I'm too lazy to look it up on my phone. Caliph was among the titles claimed by the Ottoman Sultan and his claim was taken seriously by almost all Sunnis, particularly after the dethronement of the Mughals.

They didn't consider it among their more important titles until quite late, preferrimg Qaysar-i-Rum or Emperor of the Romans, but their claim to the Caliphate was long standing.

Wikipedia must be wrong then you should correct it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caliphate

That will never be allowed to happen. A united middle east would be undesirable. The current state of chaos and poverty is ideal.

Personally, I wouldn't want that to happen either.

'Not allowing it to happen' would probably be the most galvanizing thing the world could possibly do. Basically damned if we do, damned if we don't. That's why a new caliphate seems like a real possible outcome. Also a new Islamic empire would most likely ally with Russia and China. Already they veto action on anything middle east related in the UN.

You seem to think that the various factions in the Middle East, just because they share a common religion, actually like each other. Even their religion has a few divisions that really don't like each other. Really, I doubt that you'll see any sort of large unified Middle East. It is just too hard to get them to agree on anything.

I regret I have but one downvote to give you, sir.

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