Turkey, clashes between the people and the government
«I’m warning those who came there with honest feelings – they have been subject to illegal groups, they should not comply with them. I plead that they immediately end this protest». These were the words by the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan in the face of the mobilizations of civilians who are currently manifesting against the government’s decision to demolish the Gezi Park near Taksim Square in order to rebuild the military barracks and make space for a new shopping centre.
Erdogan added that he deems the protest more “ideological” that “environmental” and warned «we remained patient, we are still patient but there’s a limit to our patience».
That of Taksim Square is only one of the manifestations of people’s impatience towards Ankara’s government and the pinnacle of the series of protests that began last month. The complaints seem, in fact, have surpassed the ecological motivations and given recognition to the mood of a country tired of the authoritarianism of a government that has imposed limits to individual rights and to freedom of speech and press.
The protests, initially circumscribed in Istanbul, have then spread all around the country and have determined, so far, five deaths and hundreds of wounded. The police has used tear gas and water cannons to contain the protesters who clamor for Erdogan‘s resignation.
Some demonstrators have been arrested with the accusation of “encouraging violence” because of some messages diffused on Twitter. The government abhors the usage of social media, defined as a “gangrene” and a “menace“, while the dissidents – some of whom joined the group “occupygezi” – use the social platforms as their privileged form of expression.
The same accusation has been addressed to four local TVs, fined for the coverage given to the protests against the government; the Anadolu Agency, the Turkish official news agency (http://www.aa.com.tr/en), seems to give, instead, a less dramatic version of the events, claims that the protests were planned months ago and that a few NGOs are by the establishment’s side.
The will to destroy the trees in the city to make room for a shopping mall has the powerfully symbolic and explicative valence of a regime that keeps losing consent. Dictatorship is stranger to real life. Authoritarianism pursues uniformity and disdains the extraordinary variety of people and things. Totalitarianism doesn’t understand or tolerate the natural, and inescapable, evolution of history. The nature of things must be eradicated.