A couple days after my last post, which was written half in fear, the police stormed Gezi Park intent on removing the protesters. Erdogan wanted to hold a rally for his supporters near the airport, and then one in Ankara, the capital of Turkey, and couldn't stand the dissidents.
A couple days after my last post, also, a gun started standing in Taksim Park, not in Gezi, which is now empty of protesters and occupied by police. This man stood for hours and was joined by other folks, just standing silently, in front of the buildings upon which police draped a picture of Atatürk (it always comes back to Atatürk). The folks stand out in the open with journalists and tourists buzzing around them, next to kids selling water and teenagers selling simit.
Unlike the earlier Gezi Park protest, which was shrouded with trees and barricades, these protesters stand side by side demonstrating their quiet and peace. They challenge the Erdogan, they challenge the media, they challenge the nation to listen by proving that they are not inciting riots, that they are peaceful and respectful, that they just disagree.
Via the (now!) ever-present cameras, they watch the government watching them. They silently provoke the government, challenging them to spin a hundred people standing into a public menace. They provoke the people in the city that aren't protesting and the people in their homes that disagree, by staying in the public sphere and staying visible. It's impressive how simple an idea like standing gained some much traction immediately.
What is clear from the interviews and the insight of my friends, this slow-burning revolution is full of working folks. It dies down for a while, people need rest, need to visit their parents, need to help their kids with homework. In other states, when the protest stayed burning hot for weeks and months, the working folks went home and the militant radicals took over. The face of the protest changes and it turns into war, as we saw in Libya, Egypt and Syria. The folks who do rage against the state, professionally, have the most practice and are ready to take the helm whenever it's clear.
That hasn't happened in Istanbul. The protest continues on but it changed, needed to change in order to keep the focus on dissent and not war. The protesters were accused of throwing molotov cocktails and, rightfully, of provoking police by breaking the concrete out of walkways and throwing rocks. The protesters were accused of all sorts of stuff that just doesn't hold water when it's just a bunch of folks standing in a park.
While personally (and I hate to be confused as an infiltrating foreign element), I think violence can have a place in protests and especially in revolts, and has often been necessary as a tool of the powerful and the powerless, the protests in Turkey have clearly not been about violent uprisal. The protesters, who never had a strong grip on the national and international narrative, were losing control even further, and were forced out of the park.
Instead of returning in battle gear, making soap in their bathtubs, they stopped reacting and regrouped. I think the standing man protests are operating on thought and not panic, which gives them more control, and it's a bunch of folks idling against the government, successfully! How novel is that!
It may be fashionable, all this standing, but it's not blind. It's a disorder of the normal politics in Turkey and no matter what the media says, it's not throwing rocks.
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