The people’s coup (San Diego Daily Transcript)

The people’s coup

By Dina Touta

Thursday, July 25, 2013

The people of Egypt have said their word. They have lined their future and nothing could stop them, they made a choice and are more than willing to pay the price of their freedom. They said no to radicalism and disguised terrorism, as the whole world watched, and remained mute.

So Egyptians walked out in their millions, they walked out against a year of misery the likes of which Egypt had not witnessed in all of its ancient or modern history

Exactly a year earlier, on June 30, 2012, the first democratically elected president had been chosen, Mohamed Morsi. A turning point in the modern history of Egypt that some received with immense hope while others received with great apprehension, Morsi, after all, had a long history as a devout member and a leader of the Moslem Brotherhood, a secret society for over 80 years of plotting, conspiracies, violence and blood, in Egypt, and in many other Arab and Muslim Countries.

But still, in the first free democratic presidential elections after the fall of Hosni Mubarak, Mohamed Morsi narrowly won, a very doubtful and controversial 51 percent of the votes, against his pro-Mubarak opponent’s exact share of 49 percent. Many Egyptians refused to vote for either candidate, for either’s notorious background, yet when all the signs pointed to a win by the old regime of a pro-Mubarak candidate, and under the nose of the interim governing Supreme Council of Armed Forces (SCAF), there was the last minute surprise Morsi-Muslim Brotherhood win. It is rumored and still believed till now that the Muslim Brotherhood threatened to burn Egypt down if they lose and that SCAF rigged the election results for fear of that. Egyptians stood hopeful and tried to overlook the fact that the president belongs to an organization that promotes terror openly, that is holy blessed by Al Qaeda’s leader Ayman Al Zawahry himself, and that even the Iranian Ayatollah, the Iranian God Father, gave a speech describing Egypt under the Brotherhood’s rule as “The New Iran.”

So Egyptians walked out in their millions, they walked out against a government that never kept its support of terror and terrorism a secret, shamelessly, whether inside Egypt or Internationally.

For it was among Mohamed Morsi’s early requests of the U.S. government was the release of Omar Abdel Rahman, the infamous blind terrorist who master minded the world trade center bombings of February 1993, and also known to be the head of Gama’a Islamiya, the Egyptian terrorist group, responsible for many horrific atrocities in Egypt, including the November 1997 Luxor massacre where 58 foreign tourists were killed and mutilated. Locally though, and to the shock and dismay of Egyptians, he released over 2,000 criminals already convicted in terrorist crimes (some facing the death penalty), and even allowed members of Jihadist groups, Egyptians and foreign, to flock back to Egypt.

And on Aug. 5, 2012, 16 soldiers were shot to death on the borders with Gaza, a brutal massacre that took place during the Holy Month of Ramadan as they were breaking fast. This accident would be one of many to be conducted on the borders with the Gaza Strip. The massacre left the army in fury, and it immediately launched a military operation to destroy the numerous tunnels that have been illegally dug from Gaza into Sinai, but lo and behold, Mohamed Morsi personally intervened (on behalf of the fellow Muslim Brotherhood of Hamas) and stopped the operation in its tracks, stopped the destruction of the tunnels, and gave a public speech that he would personally conduct investigations to reach the identity of the criminals, which he never did, as it turned out that one of them is a convicted terrorist who had been released through Morsi’s Presidential pardon.

Then on Oct. 6, 2012, when Egypt annually celebrates a National Victory Day, the date of the last confrontation with Israel in 1973, masterminded by the late Egyptian President Anwar Sadat, and with teary eyes, a shocked nation watched Morsi celebrate this day of honor with his special guest of “honor,” the infamous Aboud Al Zomor, one of the assassins who shot President Sadat to death on the same day in 1981.

So Egyptians walked out in their millions, they walked out against a governing entity set out to control all aspects of life in the country, with the sole purpose of extending their power from the formidable Middle Eastern core, Egypt, to all over the their planned targeted Arab, Muslim, and world domination.

The incompetence of Mohamed Morsi and his Brotherhood in steering state affairs had become as obvious as daylight as time passed by. He systematically changed and removed all heads, subheads, key figures and influential staff members of almost all state and civil ministries, organizations, and civil bodies, replacing them with members, followers and sympathizers of the Muslim Brotherhood who, mostly unqualified or fit for the job, caused only catastrophic problems and stirred national public anger. He appointed a governor of Luxor (where one-third of the world heritage exists; the pharaohs’ temples, treasures and artifacts), a member of, again, Gama’a Islamiya, the same terrorist group, with the blood of the Luxor massacre of 58 tourists on its hands. Deterioration befell the nation on every level, the increase of poverty became a time bomb. The Egyptian economy and stock market collapsed as never before. This in turn led to an unprecedented increase in crime rates and an unfamiliar state of absolute chaos. Morsi deliberately acted with great carelessness toward tourism, so it was only normal that historical sites became filled with thugs who terrorized and scared off tourists. And with the decay of tourism, the backbone of Egyptian economy, companies were closing up in their hundreds, so in his infinite wisdom, he tried to make up for the nose diving economy by indirectly introducing the idea of renting the Suez Canal to the state of Qatar for a 99 year lease, or, on another occasion, the idea was introduced to rent Egyptian antiquity; The Pyramids and the temples. Only the Muslim Brotherhood would contemplate a horrendous unthinkable idea of renting such a world heritage to the highest bidder.

Gas problem in Egypt escalated, Egyptians queued for hours at gas stations. Egyptians for the first time stayed in darkness and heat as electricity went out on neighborhoods for hours every single day. The president, as well as dominant figures in his organization, boldly gave speeches that it is the national duty to share fuel with his fellow Brotherhood in Gaza, as it turned out he was paying off an old debt to Hamas who helped him escape jail on the night of Jan. 28, 2011, when Mubarak’s regime was days from coming to an end.

So Egyptians walked out in their millions, they walked out against the Brotherhood of Darkness, the darkness that was set out to kill and extinguish any hope of democracy, and foundations of a free civil society.

Mohamed Morsi further dug his grave when he tailored a constitution of his own, on his own. Egyptians witnessed the constitution committee members resign one after the other, from a dummy body of legislators, yet he proceeded with his constitution. A constitution that gave no freedom to minorities, women, and more dangerously that gave him only, as the president, to decide where the borders of Egypt end and start, paving the way for him to give away land on the Gaza borders to Hamas militants, and on the Sudanese and Libyan borders to the extremist governing Muslim brotherhood there.

A self-proclaimed protector of freedom of speech in Egypt, his actions, as had become accustomed, never matched his words. The number of lawsuits the Egyptian presidency filed against journalists and anyone who dared to publicly oppose the Muslim Brotherhood, in one year, had exceeded the number of cases conducted by Mubarak in 30 years, not to mention the blasphemy cases, the hate preachers on religious channels, the public sermons inciting hate, the increase in violence against women, and the ever constant exponential rise in attacks against the Christian minority (nearer to 20 million minority), whether these attacks are physical; killing and kidnapping, or against the churches; burning and demolishing, or public and media stark direct mockery, foul verbal attacks and made up accusations, culminating in the infamous mob attack on the Coptic Orthodox Cathedral on April 7, 2013.

So Egyptians walked out in their millions, they walked out in a man made coup d’état, a nation made coup d’état, an Egyptian people self conceived and publicly unanimous coup d’état.

Yes it is a coup. A coup led by 33 million Egyptians who went out on the streets of Egypt. One third of the Egyptian population walked out to say “No” to Tyranny. And the Egyptian Armed Forces, that will always remain the jewel on the people’s crown, had a choice between giving in to terror or upholding their oath of honor to protect the Egyptian people, and they chose honor. They chose the people and sided with their future. In Egyptians’ Eyes, their Armed forces are the light that burnt the Muslim Brotherhood forces of darkness and evil. Today Egyptians tell the whole world “check mate.” They might not have much, but they are eternally gifted by a massive 7,000 year civilization backbone, that they will never shame.

So I walked out amongst the millions, I walked out and said “No.”

Touta, independent Egyptologist for over 20 years, is a popular speaker and lecturer at some of Egypt’s universities and international organizations. Touta lives in Egypt and is an advocate of women rights, secularism and civil transitions in evolving democracies.

Egypt Today ..

EGYPT'S COUP, OR NOT? The events in Egypt today have put the country on a path towards a very insecure future. President Morsi has been ousted by the military forces who have formally declared their commitment to the freedom of expression and the freedom of the media, wasting no time undermining their own claims by immediately closing down three local TV stations that were affiliated with the Muslim Brotherhood, even arresting the crew of the Misr25 channel. General al-Sisi stated that the armed forces have responded to the cries for help of the Egyptian people, and in a sense they have. Without the support of the military the masses on the street could never have ousted the increasingly authoritarian Morsi. Even now, the former president refuses to admit his loss and has released a statement in which he asks the people to reject the military coup d'état and asks the population not to respond to it - oblivious to the millions and millions of exuberant Egyptians flocking the streets as we speak. In order to prevent an irreparable rupture from dividing Egyptian society, the army has to make clear that there is a future for the Muslim Brotherhood within political arena, but fears are that it is already too late. Reports of clashes between supporters and opponents of Morsi, and attacks from both camps feed fears of a civil conflict. At the time it is impossible to say whether we have witnessed a coup d'état by the Egyptian military, it all depends on which route they will take from here. If they abide by the rules set out by their 'roadmap', all could end well. If, however, they will be corrupted by the taste of power they have now experienced, and decide to demand a larger piece of the national pie (of which they already own 25%!) the revolutionary story of Egypt is all but over.

via Roar Magazine

Egypt Update

NOW: Hundreds of thousands gather in front of the Presidential Palace in Cairo, as the armed forces give Morsi's government a 48-hour ultimatum to "meet the demands of the people". Egyptian TV stations are now showing the countdown on their broadcasts. Army helicopters flew over Cairo earlier carrying Egyptian and army flags. We may be witnessing the early stirrings of a military coup (albeit one with fairly widespread popular support).

LIVESTREAM: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rbL_q1i7-Pk

For more background, visit ROAR: 'Millions take to the streets in Egypt’s biggest protest ever'.

http://roarmag.org/2013/07/egypt-tahrir-revolution-biggest-protest-ever/

Turkey Update: Taksim Solidarity Platform

Taksim Solidarity Platform's announcement from the 19th of June:

"We are calling out from all across the country, from squares, parks, our homes, our rooms, unions, parties and wherever else we may be.We stand together in all aspects of life, with all our values and our colors, our unshakable common sense and strength to resist, our resolve and incredible creativity. We have not given up on our demands nor the things we've achieved so far."

Read more: http://taksimdayanisma.org/?lang=en

Turkey: A Lesson In Democracy

A follow up on the current situation in Turkey

Assemblies emerging in Turkey: a lesson in democracy

The protesters are starting to counter-pose their own direct democracy to the shame of a democracy proposed by Erdogan’s authoritarian neoliberal state.

Something quite amazing is happening in Istanbul. In addition to the silent “standing man” actions around the country, people’s assemblies are slowly starting to emerge in different neighborhoods across the city. As in Spain, Greece and the Occupy encampments before, the protesters in Turkey are starting to counter-pose their own form of direct democracy to the sham of a democracy proposed by Erdogan’s authoritarian neoliberal state. If there was ever any doubt, this shows how deeply intertwined the global struggles truly are.

As the state launched its merciless witch hunt on protesters, activists and Tweeters, thousands of people began to gather in dignity in various public spaces. As Oscar ten Houten reported from on the ground in Istanbul, the Beşiktaş Assembly in Abbasaga park, which has been going on for days, tripled its number of participants on Tuesday night, with a total of ten popular assemblies taking place in Istanbul alone and at least one more in Izmir. As Oscar writes on his great blog (which he started at the occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid in 2011):

These meetings have nothing to do with Taksim Solidarity any more. They are spontaneous initiatives by local people who are fed up with Erdogan’s disregard for the Turkish citizens, their rights and freedoms, their history, beliefs and traditions. … We arrive in Kadıköy, and truly, I couldn’t believe this was happening. Well over two thousand people were gathered on the green, to express their anger with the government’s eviction of Gezi, and to share their hope for a better Turkey. Like anywhere else, it was a cross section of the population, which included all races and creeds.

Interestingly, the members of the popular assemblies in Turkey use the same hand-signs as the indignados, indicating that some of the methods were directly inspired by the real democracy protests in Spain. This, in turn, seems to confirm the idea we raised very early on in the Turkish uprising, and a claim that many Turkish activists have been making from the very start: namely that this movement is not just a local or national protest, but part of a global struggle against the subverted nature of parliamentary democracy and for realdemocracy and total liberation.

What, then, is real democracy? Obviously it’s difficult to have a straightforward answer to such a complex question, seeing that different people will interpret the idea (and the ideal) differently. It is quite easy, however, to identify what it is not. Democracy stands for the rule of the people. As a result, when corporate interests and religious delusions begin to dominate government, that is not democracy. In fact, when a small elite of elected politicians is delegated to speak on behalf of the rest, that is not the rule of the people but their representation.

The worldwide experiments with direct democracy — in the form of horizontal self-organization through popular assemblies, decentralized mutual aid networks, thematic working groups, and so on — provide a glimpse of what another world could look like. Of course, none of this is to say that the protesters have a blueprint in hand for the ideal revolutionary society; but they are actively testing and trying out different models to see how large groups of people can effectively organize themselves without hierarchical and centralized leadership.

Last year, when shooting our first ROAR documentary – Utopia on the Horizon – in Athens, we interviewed Manolis Glezos, the 90-year-old Greek WWII resistance hero who is currently an MP for the coalition of the radical left. Glezos experimented with direct democracy when he was the mayor of a village on the island of Naxos. Even though Glezos still believes that a parliament controlled by popular forces can help activists on the ground, he insists that the citizens’ revolution as such cannot proceed if the people do not organize themselves from below.

So what about the popular assemblies in Syntagma Square, Puerta del Sol and Zuccotti Park? Was that real democracy? When we asked Glezos, he looked at us with an amused smile on his face, and — to our great surprise — just said: “No. This is not democracy. How can a few thousand people assembled in a square claim to speak on behalf of the millions that live in the region? This is not democracy — it’s a lesson in democracy. If this movement wants to survive, its direct democratic models will need to spread to the neighborhoods and to the working places. Only then will we start seeing the emergence of a genuinely democratic society.”

What Glezos is saying, in other words, is that for direct democracy to work, the assemblies need to be radicalized and extended into the working places in the form of workers’ self-management, as in the inspiring case of the Vio.Me factory in Greece. Obviously, none of this will be enough to overthrow the capitalist state as such; but it is a starting point to help engage people in different forms of decision-making, different forms of production, and different ways of being, thinking and interacting. In a word, it is about building the social foundations of self-organization that will allow us to replace the oppressive institutions of the capitalist state when the time comes.

But there is something more. The direct democracy of the squares is also about saying that we cannot wait for some distant revolution to overthrow the capitalist system. We are currently facing a global humanitarian tragedy, an ecological disaster and a profound social and political crisis. We have to act now. We cannot rely on corporate elites to do this for us. We cannot trust in political representatives to take the process ahead. The only ones we can trust are ourselves. We, the people, will have to carry this revolution forward. Starting now.

Still, on a more humble level — yet perhaps the most important of all — we should be careful not to fetishize direct democracy. At the end of the day, the assembly is a very simple phenomenon: it is about ordinary people craving to be heard and to have a say in their lives. Assemblies are a way to allow those who have been shut up for years to finally stand up in dignity and to speak their voice — and be heard. It is about recovering our collective sense of humanity from the rapacious claws and unrepresentive institutions of the capitalist state.

As such, the assemblies are a beautiful and crucial form of social engagement and political participation. In the future, they may well be expanded to cover more and more segments of the population. But even in these moments of elation, when we see the people taking matters into their own hands and enactingreal democracy in the places where they live and work, we should stay realistic: this is only just the beginning. The capitalist state survives, and creating our own parallel society is not enough. We must self-organize, and then push our quest for autonomy outwards to eventually encapsulate all of society.

Luckily, there is hope that such radical aspirations may not just be a pipe dream. In a sign that this leaderless and spontaneous movement is already deregulating the violent flow of authority unleashed by the Turkish state, the government is now doubling down on the repression, arresting random people who were sighted in the protests or who sent out “provocative” Tweets, and now even threatening to send in the army. As Oscar puts it, “the authorities still don’t understand what’s happening. They look for leaders, people to corrupt or to eliminate. But there are none. We are not an organisation, we are a world wide web. We are the people on the threshold of changing times.”

via Roar Magazine

In Memoriam: Turkey’s Democracy

I have a very simple message for our Turkish brothers and sisters: don’t let any European leader fool you into thinking that they are on your side in this struggle for real democracy. Your only real allies in Germany and Europe are those who take to the streets to fight for the same causes that you are fighting for: genuine freedom, social justice, and real democracy ..

Read why- http://roarmag.org/2013/06/merkel-condemns-turkey-violence-hypocrisy/

Who Are These Chapullers ?

Who are these Chapullers? These vandals and rioters? These violent elements of Turkish society squatting in a public park?? A short movie by Deniz Tarsus gives the answer.

“Apart from rescuing it, these youths can even find a whole new country”

http://vimeo.com/68130618#

“We are all responsible individuals. But until this struggle reaches its desired end, our main responsibility will be to resist. Otherwise, what does it mean to be a human being?”

We ask for your solidarity and support. Please spread this text. We need your insight and your solidarity in this matter.
We are a group of people who have come together to write this text as a result of the oppression in Turkey.
We have been taking a stand against police assaults for days now. We and countless other citizens.
The protests which were triggered after the ruling to demolish Gezi Park provided with a ground to a initiate a far belated struggle.
Numerous events brought us to this point in the struggle, including the devastating incidents at Reyhanlı and Roboski where many people were killed due to – if we are being politically correct – lack of foresight on part of the government; laws and the proposed legislations that violate our liberties such as abortion and alcohol; the negligent attitude of mainstream media; and many other legislations, events and public statements.
Some insist our struggle is an ideological one. Although we do respect them, we are not members of any political party or ideological group. This is a common struggle of the people; we are united in our cause. The Turkey-wide struggle cannot be attributed to anyone else but the people.

We face police attacks every day. Gas masks, vinegar, neutralizing solution have become vital materials we cannot leave home without. Plainclothes police and provocateurs run rampant among us; and because the mainstream media broadcasts mainly misinformation, we do our best to distinguish between truthful and misleading news on Facebook and twitter. While the struggle has spread throughout the country mainstream TV stations have been broadcasting documentaries and quiz shows.
We all help one another on the streets; when someone falls, people rush over to their side and help them up. We calm one another down, we protect one another. People who are unable to take to streets support us from their windows, open up their homes to us if needed. The pepper gas makes us sick, police brutalities result in various injuries.
From the government, we demand our fundamental rights and freedoms. We want the mainstream media to broadcast the truth, make our voice heard. We want the government to reconsider its policies, and withdraw the police forces. In short, we want to be acknowledged as human beings.
We are all responsible individuals. But until this struggle reaches its desired end, our main responsibility will be to resist. Otherwise, what does it mean to be a human being? 

SUPPORTGEZI.ORG

Turkey: The Triple Strike That Could Change Everything

By Jerome Roos On June 4, 2013

The confluence of a public sector strike, a manufacturing strike and an investor strike could combine to bring the Turkish government to its knees.

For days, Turkey has been rocked by massive street demonstrations and violent clashes between protesters and police. Ever since authorities brutally uprooted a peaceful sit-in in Istanbul’s Gezi Park, which the government intends to destroy as part of its urban ‘renovation’ projects, millions of Turks have taken to the streets in what amounts to nothing less than a spontaneous popular insurrection against the authoritarian neoliberalism of prime minister Erdogan’s Islamist government and a nationwide uprising for real democracy.

Now the obvious question on everyone’s lips is simple: what’s next? The honest answer is that it’s simply to early to tell. One development, however — largely overlooked by the mainstream media so far — might change everything. Historical “coincidence” has it that two major Turkish unions have independently announced two strikes for June: one by the confederation of public sector workers and one by the metal workers’ union. The former represents civil servants; the latter represents the workers of Turkey’s main manufacturing export engine.

As BBC Newsnight editor Paul Mason writes in his latest blog post, and as I argued in an earlier analysis of the ongoing protests, all eyes are now on the workers — for it is they who hold the key to the insurrectionary gateway that could turn this popular uprising into a full-blown revolutionary event. After all, Mubarak’s government in Egypt only fell after the young middle-class radicals who sparked the uprising managed to mobilize Egyptian workers — culminating into the February 8 Suez strike that threatened to cripple the Egyptian economy.

This is where the dual public sector and metal workers’ strikes may turn out to be crucial events in the development of the ongoing unrest. On Tuesday, June 4, the Public Workers Unions Confederation (KESK), representing 240,000 civil servants, will hold a 48-hour “warning strike” to protest “state terror” in the face of peaceful popular dissent. The strike had already been called last month but happens to coincide with the ongoing protests. If it is to be truly effective, however, this action needs to be turned into an indefinite general strike.

The Türk Metal Union has similarly been mulling a strike for June, although it is not yet known if and when it will take place. This strike could be the real game-changer. If the metal workers’ union manages to mobilize anything close to its 115,000 membership, the strike could paralyze the single most important export engine of Turkey’s manufacturing sector. Taken together, these two strikes could bring to a halt not only large parts of the the state apparatus but also the industrial base, putting major pressure on the government to back down.

Meanwhile, the stock market is collapsing, losing over 10 percent on Monday alone, hinting at investor fears that Turkey may no longer be the regional role model and capital safe haven it was once touted to be. Over the past decade, Turkey witnessed an investment boom of epic proportions, turning the country into Europe’s fastest-growing economy. Most of the recent inflows, however, are those of Arab Sheiks who fear that their investments are no longer safe in Europe due to both the eurozone crisis and a clampdown on ‘dictatorial’ bank accounts.

These Sheiks may now wish to deposit their money outside of Turkey, triggering a sudden evaporation of the financial base upon which the Turkish economic miracle of the past years ultimately rested. In other words, the ongoing popular uprising may trigger consequences far beyond those currently foreseen by most Western media commentators. The economy, as always, is the Achilles heel of the capitalist state, and by striking right at the heart of the process of capital accumulation the people can significantly weaken the government.

In the end, all of this comes down to a simple notion that I have expressed in a number of recent writings, including this conference paper. The capitalist state — regardless of whether it is developing or developed, democratic or dictatorial — is structurally dependent on capital. Without the constant circulation of investment in the economy, the state simply risks collapse. This is why a triple public sector strike, manufacturing sector strike and investor strike could be the unholy trinity that brings Erdogan’s authoritarian government to its knees.

Again, as I emphasized in my more extensive analysis of the protests and the prospects of revolutionary change in Turkey, all of this remains undetermined. The future is yet to be written. But the historical confluence of popular unrest in the streets, labor strikes in the public sector and manufacturing industry, and investor panic in the stock market may combine into a toxic potion that could take Turkey far beyond even the wildest dreams of those currently assembled in the streets. Again, all eyes are on the workers.

via Turkey: the triple strike that could change everything | ROAR Magazine.

It All Started With A Tree

loved the video ..

via It all started with a tree – YouTube.

No one claims there has not been any destruction but it STARTED PEACEFULLY and police triggered everything with gas bombs and violence. Thousands of people, if not millions, are on the streets. It is of course not nice but also not surprising that there are vandals among the protesters. Very importantly though, even if only %5 of the protesters tended to be violent, the cities would have been in ruins by now. Vast majority of the people there are against violence.

This is like reliving Egypt all over again ..

The Symbolic War At The Heart Of The Gezi Park Protests

By Izzy Finkel

This is a fight about trees – or so it seemed at the end of last week. The protests first came to the attention of the world through this image. Before journalists had cobbled together their copy, or before their editors had decided that events warranted any, Reuters photographer Osman Orsal’s photo of policemen firing pepper spray at close range in the face of a young girl acted as a widely-shared placeholder for the torrent of analysis that was to follow.

The caption reads: “A Turkish riot policeman uses tear gas as people protest against the destruction of trees in a park brought about by a pedestrian project”

I found the lady in the red dress a problematic icon for the unfolding events in Gezi Park. Not because she was doing anything wrong. Nor was the scene unrepresentative. With the benefit of hindsight her unresisting pose, arms by her side against an ostensibly unprovoked attack by a policeman seems perfectly to have foretold the waves of violence visited on unarmed protestors on the streets of Turkey’s cities in the days since. What troubled me was not the photograph itself but the caption beneath it, which would have its readers believe this was a fight all about trees. This compelling image seemed to be having much success in disseminating the tree narrative. By the 29th May, the photo was everywhere. In the best tradition of Turkish churnalism, those few who reported the incident reprinted Reuters’ incidental analysis wholesale, even after the protests had plainly grown beyond the issue of the park’s redevelopment.

.           .           .

Reducing the crowd’s concerns to environmental ones seemed destined to portray these protestors as marginal and weaken their ability to reach a wider audience. Since the Prime Minister broke cover to address the fact of the protests, this has become an explicit tactic. Both times Erdoğan has spoken on TV about the popular movement growing up in the city of which he was once a mayor, his insistence that this was a spat over a discreet number of trees in a park shows this rhetorical strategy at work: “Nobody has the right to protest against law and democracy, hurting others and increasing tensions for the sake of a few trees” he said on the 1st of June.

It is true that the protests centred around Gezi Park began 7 days ago when bulldozers moved in to rip up the park’s trees in preparation for the construction of a shopping mall. A group of people occupied the space with tents in order to prevent their reentry, and made heavily publicised attempts to replant the uprooted greenery the next day, even as the destruction continued around them.

A man attempts to re-plant a bush at Gezi Park

However by the time the Reuters photo had spread, what was happening in Gezi Park had become about more than just Gezi Park itself. Those tweeting from within the square and those of us called on to explain the events from outside were keen to emphasise that this was not just an environmental protest. Not only had a wider spread of grievances coalesced around the initial issue, as the police brutality the Reuters picture also showed became the principal focus of anger, but even the very evident and committed tree-hugging in the square was misleading when taken out of context. In a city of nightmare urbanisation like Istanbul, determined attempts to replant the uprooted trees of Gezi Park constituted a stand, not just against the city’s 109th shopping mall, but against impunity and corruption and the privatisation of public space without consultation. ‘Trees’ didn’t cover it.

.           .           .

There was undeniably a seed of truth to the tree narrative. More trees were harmed in the aborted razing of the park than in the reporting of the incident: most of Turkey’s print media chose not to address the topic at all, as can be seen from the cover of the next day’s Sabah, a formerly oppositional paper now controlled by the PM’s son-in-law, which is currently the subject of a boycott on behalf of the protestors.

Sabah had made no mention of the protests in their headlines, even by the 1st June

But it is arguable that trees were not even the initial spark for the protests – or at least not the only one. If this protest needed a trigger, those tired of sublimating their frustrations with the government had several to choose from. The 29th May was the day, not only that the bulldozer re-entered Gezi Park, but that a demonstration was held against restrictions aimed at both the advertising and the sale of alcohol. The protestors’ reaction was also directed in part at this encroachment by the conservative government on what many see not as a public health issue but as a matter of personal choice.

It was also on the 29th that the PM inaugurated the construction of the third bridge over the Bosphorus. Archival newsprint from the late 90s shows mayor Erdoğan calling this much delayed, controversial project tantamount to the murder of the city. We are back, unavoidably, to trees again, but merely the bridge’s infrastructural network requires cutting down 2.5 million of them; something that will irreparably damage both the climate and the water supply of the Istanbul area. 1 More species of flora are native to the threatened green areas around Istanbul than to the whole of the British Isles.

“No to the Third Bridge”

As write on the 7th day since the arrival of the bulldozers, reports show that protests have spread to more than 60 towns and cities, and it is ever easier to make the argument that the issue of flora has become peripheral. Police violence has generated so much indignation of its own. In the meantime however, I have changed my mind. I have decided to embrace the Prime Minister’s rhetoric. I do now believe this is protest is about trees. And not just the 2.5 million that the bridge will destroy, or the ’5-6′ the Prime Minister has numbered, but one measly tree.

Allow me to qualify my apostasy. The tree I see as emblematic of the protest is the tree which the Turkish news saw fit to print: a tree that was symbolically planted at a ceremony officiated by President Gül and Berdimuhamedov on his visit to Turkmenistan the day immediately following the inauguration of the bridge construction.

That Prime Minister’s diggers were uprooting trees in Istanbul’s civic centre while the President was planting saplings to much fanfare abroad was not just a grotesque irony, but the perfect articulation of what Istanbullus are angry about. This overly promoted tree is the perfect metonym for Istanbul’s distended, plastic urbanisation. What this government has imposed on the city over the last ten years is not so much a religious agenda but a savage neoliberalism, hell-bent on appropriating everything messy and particular to the city and offering up a sanitised and often privatised parody in its stead.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=RoA52Ms9Kyc
Like the foliage Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is now promising will garnish the evolving shopping mall/mosque/hotel redevelopment, often these projects pay only lip-service to whatever went before. This is true in the centre of the city: the protestors point out that with Gezi Park gone Istanbul’s most famous ‘park’ will now be Istinye Park, the fanciest of the city’s many shopping malls, just as everywhere on the outskirts of the city developers are buying up tracts of untouched land and turning them into luxury housing, later boasting in TV advertisements of the ‘high’ – but pitiful – percentage of green space inside them – green space which now sits behind a very high security wall.

Projections of the remodelled barracks in Gezi Park

And this is true of Gezi Park itself. A public space, whose decrepitude is only evidence of how very ‘public’ it is, is to be replaced by a private development which retains an ornamental garnish of trees. The Prime Minister’s  protestations that the shopping centre will, after all, sit inside a new replica of historical barracks which existed in the square before a previous round of urbanisation in the 1940s only goes to prove the point. This urbanisation’s principal technique is appropriation; appropriation gilded by nostalgia. Consultation certainly has no place in it, as the PM’s redoubled insistence on the necessity of this unwanted project in the last few days attests. In the Disneyland Istanbul this government has been gradually foisting on its citizens, cultural heritage is only to be preserved if it can be instrumentalised and turned to profit.

What I fear is that the government is trying to use Istanbul’s most iconic space to legitimate this urban strategy as it strays beyond the replication and into the actual colonisation of public and historical spaces. This is already happening nearby, with the recent news that the new seven star Shangri La hotel on the coast of Beşiktaş has been allowed to expropriate the ornate public ferry station in front of it. Closed now to boat traffic, and to the road traffic that used to go between the hotel and the station, the extra ten minutes added to the shared-taxi route which went that way affords every commuter ample time to wonder why a private company was abetted in such a feat. This is happening all over the city. A fire in the grand building of the waterfront Haydarpaşa train station last year was accompanied by fears that it would soon go the same way – arson is often the prelude to a sell-off – and indeed subsequently a massive development project aimed at cruise-ship tourism has been announced.

Opened in 1908, Haydarpaşa railway station was the Istanbul terminus of the Berlin to Baghdad Railway.

These are particular incidents amongst countless others, but the emergent pattern of the destruction of Istanbul through its re-articulation in a fake, commercialised form can itself be seen in this frame. After all the most egregious target of this technique is not a particular location within the city, but the actual city itself. The Prime Minister has plans to replicate the Bosphorus, the iconic central artery of Istanbul, wholesale, in a canal project with which he intends to inaugurate a ‘second Istanbul’: ‘safer’, ‘cleaner‘ and under firmer control than the original.

A symbolic tree designed to improve the government’s currency abroad, while the same government is decimating that sapling’s more mature counterparts in this most public of public spaces is therefore bountifully appropriate as a emblem of the protests, and protestors can only be grateful that their Prime Minister wishes to draw such attention to it. When it comes to the Prime Minister’s loosening grip on the semiotics of the protest, it is worth noting that the 29th was also the date, 560 years ago, of Mehmet the Conqueror’s conquest of Istanbul. This is no coincidence: Turkish commentators were unanimous in receiving the timing of the the bridge inauguration ceremony as an orchestrated attempt to link the birth of Istanbul as the Ottomans’ imperial city with Erdoğan’s own attempt to regenerate the city in era he sees as his own. But this time the city refused to be conquered. At Gezi Park, it decided to fight back.

.           .           .

Evidently Erdoğan’s command of his own imagery is not always watertight. Indeed, the Prime Minister’s  decision to labour the issue of trees may not even have succeeded on his own terms. Rather than marginalising protestors, forcing trees to assume a place at the rhetorical as well as the physical heart of these events has allowed them to become a technique in the arsenal of protestors; protestors who are still making determined steps to encourage each other to resist provocation and stay peaceful, but whose symbolic weaponry is becoming more sophisticated by the day. “Knock down Tayyip, not the trees”became the chant of those assembled today around an old man who had come to speak against the destruction of Gezi Park. If they compare the Prime Minister to a tree whose time is up, they hold each other up to be more like the sturdy trunks they are defending: the early twentieth century leftist poet Nazim Hikmet has a line “To live! Like a tree, alone and free/ To live! Like a forest in unity” which can now be seen adorning walls and placards all over the city.

Trees are therefore an inescapable part of these protests’ symbolism, but trees have other qualities beyond the merely symbolic. They can be used, not only as a ploy in a broadcast but to broadcast things themselves. The remaining trees in Gezi Park are now adorned with the names of unaccounted dead from recent bombings in the Kurdish South East: Uludere (Roboski in Kurdish), and Reyhanli on the Syrian border. These trees announce not just the names of the dead, but a sign that something is changing. The paucity of domestic coverage may, thus far, have saved the Gezi Park protestors from the echo chamber of reflections on their own actions, but it has given them ample cause for reflection on something else. What is slowly being realised is that a metropolitan city of 16 million, most of whom will never visit the South East, were getting their news about a 30 year war in the region from the very same media who are refusing now to the show the events they photograph, tweet about, and see with their own eyes.

UPDATE: The reign of the red girl continueshttps://twitter.com/snmakin/status/341994316832571393/photo/1

 Notes:

1. It was an overdetermined and provocative act that Erdoğan announced that the bridge would be named after Sultan Selim, the Sultan responsible for the conquest of the Arab world (throwing a bone to critics of neo-Ottoman imperialism) and also responsible for the massacre of many Alevis, a large minority liberal Muslim persuasion in Turkey who are discriminated against by the state which, though secular, prioritises the needs of the Sunni majority. In English, appropriately, Sultan Selim is ‘Selim the Grim’. 
   

Source : http://bulentjournal.com/gezi-park-is-all-about-the-trees/#oogleto:http://bulentjournal.com/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/treeduble.jpg

Naked Like A Tree

“Arms open, roots deep… every man and woman is naked like a tree, defenseless like a tree. All they want to do is feed from the soil, breath from the air. Each one may think differently, may like different men, may vote for different parties, may support different teams. But they all love their soil, want to breath air, do not want tear gas, and oppression, and darkness. Don’t they see the good intentions? Don’t they see the purity? Don’t they see this nudity, this defenselessness?? Then, birds will find other trees to built nests again, the see takes back what it gave. The intense roots dig down even deeper, new seeds emerge, nature will defeat you every single time! Do not oppose the nature of human beings!”