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Devan Wells: I had an early morning flight from Tbilisi, which meant that I boarded without any sort of update or beforehand information about the protests. I had no clue that there were ongoing protests until later on that day, when I learned the hard way.
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I walked up the hill from Cihangir to try and change my Georgian Lari at one of the exchange booths along Taksim Square. As I approached the square, I felt a strange, queasy sensation. Shortly after, I inexplicably began crying. Like, pouring tears. Initially, I felt as if I was the victim of an elaborate street crime. However, as I looked around, seeing all of these panicking people, I realized that we had all been gassed. By then, I still hadn’t seen any riot police or law enforcement, so I figured that the gas emanated from a sewer pipe or whatever. At that point, I would have never guessed that protesters and police were having full-on, Tahrir Square-style battles.What does it smell like? Taste like? Does it have a physical presence?
You don’t notice the smell as much as this distinct, stinging pain. Before swelling up with tears, I would always smell a foul, rancid-smelling odor. It smelled like a spent firework canister. It burned right through the typical Istanbul fragrances: gasoline, kebab stands, the sea, throngs of chain-smoking Turks. Tear gas is light and airy, but it’s also contagious. If you rub your eyes, you get it on your hands, spreading and prolonging the effect. It’s a nightmare.Tell us about when you got gassed.
In total, I was gassed seven times. Twice outside of my apartment in Cihangir, three times in the (unavoidable) vicinity of Taksim Square, and twice in Sisli—a well-off neighborhood far from the initial unrest.
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The name is spot-on. You begin to cry—and cry a lot—soon after initial contact.During the process, you feel as if your throat and lungs are burning. It felt like how I imagine it would feel to have my throat and lungs doused with acid. Also, your nose is running, with snot and tears mixing together to form this especially foul-tasting product. Once your face dries, you have to scrape dried-up tears from your cheeks and the corners of your eyes. You are temporarily blinded, which makes you panic and feel like you have to stand still. You feel like, if you’re exposed to it a few more times, maybe you could go blind forever. None of it is any fun.What do you think about the fact that the Turkish police are using this stuff?
Even though Los Angeles has had its share of disorder, I had always considered riot police as a “last line of defense”: defending the City Hall, police stations, the airport, and key locations of commerce and trade. Stuff like that. I had never seen them actively engaging protesters, at least not violently. I had never seen them turned against their own people, charging down streets in armored vehicles that wouldn’t seem out of place in Afghanistan, or randomly firing tear gas into pedestrian-heavy areas; hosing crowds of non-violent protesters with pressurized water cannons.And that is not to mention the people who have been arrested or run into hiding for tweets, or groups created on Facebook. That is something altogether more sinister.For breaking updates on the situation in Istanbul, check out Tim Pool’s Live Stream on Vice.com.