The Gezi Park Protests' First Birthday Party Was a Gas

Anti-government protesters use sling shots in the Okmeydani district of Istanbul.

This weekend, Turks celebrated the one year anniversary of the Gezi Park protests with some more protests, and yet again the streets of Istanbul were turned into a battle ground between the police and the people. Tear gas, water cannon, batons and pellets were used on crowds as police moved through the streets of central Istanbul as well as the capital Ankara and Adana in the south of the country. According to Turkish NGO Human Right Association, at least 83 people were detained and 14 people were injured in Istanbul alone.

Protesters had been warned in advance about going to Taksim Square by Prime Minister Erdogan who said, "If you go there, our security forces are under strict orders, they will do whatever is necessary from A to Z." Early in the day, at around 2:30PM, plain-clothes policemen detained CNN's Ivan Watson live on air, which wasn't the best PR move ever.

Plain clothed policemen wandered the streets all day and night, although their ability to disguise themselves was in marked contrast to their ability to quarantine the hub of Europe's biggest city. Most undercover policeman carried the same fake Nike/Adidas bags that weren't big enough to enclose a three foot truncheon, the handles of which rather conspicuously poked out of the zipper. People reported that they had asked people whether they undercover policemen, with some answering "yes".

Despite the warnings, the 25,000 police who had been deployed and the cutting off of transport to the city centre, by 6PM people were piling up at Istiklal Caddesi (Independence Avenue) – the entertainment and commercial centre of the city and main artery to Taksim Square. The chants, "Thieves, murderers, AKP" and "Everywhere is Taksim, everywhere is resistance" echoed throughout the side streets.

Protest groups had planned to start marching at 7PM with the intention of laying flowers at Gezi Park and reading a statement. At precisely 7PM the police moved on the gathering. In my position at the top of Istiklal Caddesi, water cannons and policemen moved from their position, down the street harrying citizens before unleashing the tear gas canisters while people stampeded away from the square.

Cihangir, an upmarket, fashionable area near Taksim saw a non-stop barrage of gas. After hours of dispersals, a group of protesters – 16 of whom were later believed to have been detained – created a barricade of burning bins. I was standing behind the water cannon as it sprayed a group of demonstrators. Then the police turned on me and some other people that had congregated by a cafe. The police rushed us, so we hurried inside to what we hoped would be safety, but the cops were happy to fire tear gas and pellets into the crowded cafe, which happened to be attached to a mosque – just one of a number of individual incidents that played out across the city.

I asked a protester why he was on the streets. "Last year was a spontaneous uprising like Brazil," he said. "This is just the anniversary, it's not like last year. The government have been responsible for many deaths in the last year, people wanted to come out but in the first five minutes they [police] started attacking us… The government are putting a lot of pressure on us… No one has been brought to justice. It just keeps piling up and piling up."

Over the last year since Gezi, Erdogan has been systematically decreasing checks and balances, increasing executive power and extending government surveillance, granting government agents judicial immunity. Twitter and Youtube were banned following a corruption scandal, although that was overturned as unconstitutional. Basically, the reasons to hate Erdogan have multiplied while expressing that hatred has been made more difficult.

Erdogan's paranoia has led to a witch hunt of Fethulah Gulen, a former ally and cleric based in America, who Erdogan believes is running a parallel state in Turkey – infiltrating government institutions looking to bring the system down from within.

“If reassigning individuals who betray this country is called a witch hunt, then yes, we will carry out a witch hunt,” he stated.
Erdogan also has a habit of claiming protesters are under Gulen's spell, which tends not got down well with the protesters. It does go down well with his voters though.

Erdogan is unlikely to stop antagonising protesters until it gives his position at the ballot box a knock. This is bad news for those who are not fans of coughing tear gas up from their lungs. Ozer Sencar of MertoPOLL Strategic and Social Research Centre claims that the way the AK Party managed the Gezi protests last year – making people believe that they were a foreign backed coup attempt and dealing with it harshly – won them eight percent more votes in March's local elections. While one side of the political divide were on the streets battling with riot cops, the AK Party's supporters ran a hashtag of "the anniversary of the betrayal".

For his detractors, time is of the essence. Presidential elections begin in August where Erdogan is expected to run and win. With no worthwhile opposition in sight and recent elections giving Erdogan more than 45 percent of the vote, the PM will likely to ascend to an office where he can further extend his reach.

Despite his ruthless image amongst some sections of Turkish society and abroad, Erdogan is still a hugely popular man. A self-styled "Black Turk", many love his Islamism and his tough leadership. Then there are the genuine, bread and butter improvements he has made to the country – Turkey's GDP has trebled in his 12 year tenure, while quality of life has improved if you don't include things like having a free press or not getting constantly water-cannoned.

A year on, while anger is greater than ever, there is a sense that Turkey's anti-government protesters – many of whom are middle class and from the country's large urban areas – are becoming warn down by consistent police brutality.

"We are under so much pressure", a protester who wanted to remain anonymous told me. "The people have felt the pressure and it has made them weak and that is why there isn't as much [protesting] as last year.”

@kennylaurie

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