What Is it Like To Be Tear-Gassed in Istanbul?

Photos by Devan Wells.

So I feel kind of bad. Last month, before anything went down, I came back from Istanbul all full of good news: “It’s great! Totally interesting! Cute little breakfast places!” Life in the shallow end, I guess. Fun stuff. Naïve stuff.

You may remember this particular bout of exuberance from my “Death to the LCBO” article, in which I gloried in the relative liberalism of Istanbul’s liquor laws, in comparison to those in Canada, and generally went on a tear about the place.

Like a lot of my bouts of exuberance, this one proved ill-timed—and not just for me.

While I was in the Turkish metropole doing things like eating thinly-sliced eel and making little comments about what it tasted like, I was also spreading the word. In particular, I was exhorting my friend, L.A.-based photographer and blogger Devan Wells, to check the place out.

“It’s great!” I said. “You need a week at least—ten days probably.”

“Try the eel!”

So he went. And as soon as he arrived on May 31st, it all changed. The liberal liquor laws reversed themselves. There were riot police on the streets of Nisantasi, and he got tear-gassed seven times.

There are an enormous number of excellent reporters covering the ins-and-outs of the situation in Turkey, with shaky cameras right in the heart of the conflict, trying to figure out what’s going to happen; what this means; what the Erdogan government is going to do. But this isn’t that. For that, check out Tim Pool’s extraordinary live stream right here on VICE or “Istanbul Rising” the VICE documentary hosted by Milene Larsson.

To learn about what it actually feels like to get tear-gassed however, read on.

VICE: So what the fuck happened?
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.

When did you become aware that they were using tear gas?
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.

The worst incidents, by far, were the two times I was gassed after (literally) stepping outside of my apartment. Though I had heard helicopters and clashes going on through the evening, and had been woken up twice by pepper spray wafting into my apartment, it seemed for a moment that things were dying down. I decided to walk downhill to Karakoy to see if the main tram line was running, since I had planned to pick my girlfriend up from the airport that afternoon.

I figured that whatever was still going on, was uphill at Taksim. I was wrong.

As soon as I heard the door close behind me, I was greeted by a huge, drawn-out battle between young, hip-looking students—many wearing surgical gas masks and live-tweeting on their iPhones—and riot police equipped with tear gas, pepper spray, and pressurized water cannons. Before I could make it down the hill, the police fired several tear gas rounds in our direction. Moments later, dizzy and covered in tears, I stumbled onto the cobblestones.

After a few moments, maybe in response to the spectacle of a lost, stumbling foreigner, a few protesters appeared. These guys produced a crumpled-up water bottle full of a water-and-Novocaine solution. Due to their kindness, I was able to fend off the worst of the gas’ effects.

I then bolted towards the nearest pharmacy, where I bought the kind of gas mask preferred by coroners, Palestinians, and people wielding dust-blowers. Though I would be gassed one more time before the day would end, the mask saved me from the worst of it.

What does it feel like to have this stuff in your lungs?
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.