Backed against a wall and Backed against a wall

Yesterday, June 13th, Turkish PM Erdoğan announced that he was rather tired of all the protesting shenanigans. He would much rather take a quick referendum on the park conversion and for protesters, çapulcular (marauders, or riff raff) to get picked by their mothers and ushered home (he actually said this). Erdoğan is done with the protesters and would like to resume with his big boy politics, this coming from a man who said that one drink and you're an alcoholic.

He also stated that he planned to clear out the park within 24 hours of June 13th. Alexi, a friend in my cohort, and I went into Gezi Park to conduct some interviews for our internship (the absence of roadblocks and barricades was eerie), but we cut out before 6 pm, when I heard police were going to come in. No word yet about what's happening tonight, but the clearing and the referendum will happen soon. The referendum is a measure to divide the protesters, because they really can't say no when their first and only clear demand (outside of a return to democratic politics) is to keep Gezi Park and not create a mall. The protest is so much bigger than that, though. It's about justice and democracy and identity, and increasingly about the authoritarian and anti-democratic moves by the leaders of the majority party. The protesters (and the public) can't say no to the referendum, but it will appear to solve their problems.

In the past few days, there has a sharp increase of violent clashes between the protesters and the police but from the interviews with protesters yesterday, it seemed there was consensus that the protesters throwing molotov cocktails at police vans were not part of the generally peaceful protest. Some of those interviewed had pictures of the violent protesters with walkies and guns on their sides, looking exactly like plain clothes officers around the fringe of the protest. The same day as the molotov cocktails were thrown, some 70 lawyers defending the protesters were arrested and beaten in a courthouse by the police. Fascinating times to be in Turkey.

So why do people protest in the first place? Why not just vote your stupid leaders out of office? In talking to some of the disheartened leftists in Istanbul, the hope for a long-term change out of this protest seems quite diminished. CHP, the main opposition party in Turkey, only gained 23% of the vote in the 2009 election and hasn't been in control of the nation since its heyday under a single party state immediately after the founding of the republic. There are strong feelings of support for CHP, and what CHP stands for (the legacy of Atatürk, secularism), but their leadership is obtusely hierarchical and they don't pose a real alternative to the current government.

AKP, the conservative majority party, has a hold over several sectors of the government, as well. The main contributors to the opposition have been undone and replaced by AKP members or supporters. The judiciary in Turkey was more radical in the past, and now houses many conservative judges. The Turkish media too, which failed to report the protest well or at all, tries not provoke the government. One of our interviewers described a striking example of biased coverage: CNN International reporting from the front lines of Taksim, and CNN Türk reporting from the police barracks.

The military of Turkey has played a decisive political role in keeping the autocrats (and the Kurds, and the Armenians, and anyone, really) in check throughout Turkish history. Because of this, they are often called the "Guardians of Kemalism" and secularism. The military posed many coups, including the one founding the state, and has operated outside the scope of the government as part of a "deep state" for a hundred years. AKP, in the last ten years however, has defunded and regulated the actions of the military to the point that their insider-political machinations are basically absent. Even a lot of the public workers have their jobs because of who they know in AKP.

What's most interesting for me is the organization that I started working for, Mazlumder, is on the other side of the debate. It was formed in 1991 by lawyers, authors and businessmen to support the human rights of Muslims denied by the state at that time. Muslim women who cover are still discriminated against in a state that is as rigidly secular as it is Muslim.

Fascinating times to be in Turkey, but Turkish politics is defined by pendulum swings from one pole to the other, where some leader is representing only part of the public. Secular people feel today that the new AKP laws discriminate against them, but the government 20 years ago discriminated against Muslims. There seems to be little, and decreasing, middle ground, nationally. AKP provided a glimpse of a middle ground, working with Kurdish nationalists as no other party had done before, but is instead increasingly defined by its heavy-handed and violent politics.

Taksim looks like the best place for middle ground, but it certainly doesn't represent all of Turkey.

Mazlumder is a strange place to work, and I'll write a lot more about it as time passes. They're a Muslim human rights organization with informal ties to AKP, but has been critical of its policies. I'll find out more about their official stances soon.

I'll try to stay more on top of writing in the next couple of days. I feel overwhelmed with the writing. There's a lot to do and I've got a cold, but I'm still pumping along. Hagia Sofia and the Black Sea this weekend, maybe. Until then, I'm drinking some tea and watching cartoons.