With protesters calling for a march on İstanbul’s Taksim Square, coffins symbolizing the death of justice and calls for resistance, the recent protests roiling Turkey have reawakened the Turkish president’s worst nightmare: the Gezi Park movement of little more than a decade ago.
It started out as a small protest against plans by then-prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to demolish Gezi Park — a small green space next to Taksim Square.
The move triggered mass protests in May-June 2013 that snowballed into a wave of public anger against Erdoğan’s Islamic-rooted government.
Eight people were killed and thousands injured when the protests were brutally suppressed by the police.
Although the demonstrations at the park itself lasted just over two weeks, its impact was huge.
Since then the government has tightly controlled any form of protest, barring gatherings at İstanbul’s central Taksim Square, be it for May Day, International Women’s Day or Pride marches.
And it has ruthlessly pursued anyone remotely connected to the protests with a vast array of investigations that are still being initiated to this day.
Within hours of the detention of İstanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu on March 19, the authorities moved to swiftly seal off Taksim Square as police fanned out across the city.
İmamoğlu, 53, of the main opposition Republican People’s Party (CHP), is widely seen as the only politician capable of defeating Erdoğan at the ballot box, and his arrest in a corruption probe has been denounced by his supporters as a “political coup.”
‘Take us to Taksim!’
Despite a protest ban, huge crowds have rallied nightly with the demonstrations spreading from İstanbul to at least 55 of Turkey’s 81 provinces.
From the outset, the protesters, many of them students, have been pushing for a return to the iconic square whose name crops up in chants and slogans.
“Everywhere is Taksim, resistance is everywhere!” they chant every night outside City Hall, a cry first heard in 2013.
“Wherever we go, we will fill the squares!” opposition leader Özgür Özel told the crowds on Thursday, who roared back, “Özgür, take us to Taksim!”
Initially restrained, the police took a much harsher line after some student demonstrators tried to cross the barriers to “go to Taksim.”
Since that moment, they have routinely used tear gas, pepper spray, rubber bullets and in some places water cannon every night.
For Aaron Stein, head of the US-based Foreign Policy Research Institute, Erdoğan is “absolutely” still haunted by the 2013 protests, which had a formative effect on his thinking.
“That period in history most certainly contributed to his paranoia about protests,” he told Agence France-Presse.
“It put in place the blueprint for stopping them before they get too large.”
Analyst Serkan Demirtaş agreed.
“Erdoğan doesn’t like street protests, because of his lack of commitment to democracy and also because they tarnish his image as a strong leader,” he told AFP.
‘Very unsettling’
The visual and performative elements of the Gezi protests have also found a clear echo in the current unrest.
One protester was seen hurling a copy of George Orwell’s “1984” at police; another sat cross-legged in front of riot police reading Erdoğan’s book, “A Fairer World is Possible.”
Even the haunting image of a whirling dervish in a gas mask in Taksim Square was repeated this weekend by City Hall.
But Stein said the reasons for the current upheaval was “very unsettling” and “so much more serious” than a protest about urban development.
“The protests now are about the imprisonment of the major opposition candidate, which upends the social contract Turks have with their government.”
İmamoğlu’s growing popularity and the risk of losing the next election “set off alarm bells” for Erdoğan, Demirtaş said.
In 2013 the anger was rooted in the government’s efforts to intervene in people’s lifestyles, he said, while “today’s protests were triggered by a great injustice in politics.”
Strengthened his hand
After Gezi, the government arrested civil society leaders, urban developers and activists who faced charges ranging from terrorism to spying.
One of the most high-profile cases was that of Paris-born philanthropist Osman Kavala, who is serving life on conviction of trying to overthrow the government — charges he vigorously denies.
The crackdown ultimately had a chilling effect, with large-scale protests largely absent in Turkey ever since.
Historian Doğan Gürpınar of İstanbul Technical University believes the protests strengthened Erdoğan, who used them to deepen polarization and “pivot the political agenda toward culture wars.”
“This is the battleground where he thrives, maneuvering with agility — and he emerged politically victorious,” he said.
But it is unlikely he could repeat the same thing with both his electoral and his social base “significantly eroded” since then.
“This time, it’s something qualitatively different from the standard cultural wars game lifted from the populist playbook.”
© Agence France-Presse