Some people find it deeply unsettling that someone could hold different political views sincerely. They cope with it by assuming the others are compensated in some form for their abnormal behavior.
When I protested in my homeland I heard accusations of being paid to do this, even the price was specified ($20). Twenty bucks to go into a harsh cold night to be assaulted by police and possibly imprisoned on terrorism charges, what a deal :)
Strange kneejerk reaction since the commenter is from Pakistan. If he has some actual reason to believe this I'd like to hear it for discussion's sake.
Clearly from my comments you would see that I am interested in learning facts so don't act so wounded. However, so far all you have presented is the idea that if the US sponsors some protests against an Islamic government, all protests against Islamic governments are created by US sponsorship. It's not very convincing without evidence.
Evidence. So far many things world believed didn't have any evidence, for instance WMD.
Coming to your main Question, If you look how Egypt Spring started, it was all to getrid of Mobarak, US, the former ally of Mobarak left em all alone as did it in past.
I understand you're from a part of the world where a lot of people are not fond of America (for both valid and invalid reasons, in my opinion). The same thing these people in Turkey are fighting against is going on all over the world, INCLUDING the US.
I hope you understand that like pretty much everywhere, there are "good and decent" people and some "bad" people. Unfortunately, the "bad" people always seem to be the sorts who want to force other people to live their way, while the "good" people mostly want to live their lives the way they want and not force other people. It's as true of America as it is of Pakistan.
It's a protest against a govt that is seen to be strongly pro-islam and authoritarian.
The automatic reaction from some muslims will be that it is US-sponsored. Given the US's long track record of sponsoring coups and pro-western/secular movements, you can't really blame them.
I'm not sure if I can understand the reasoning behind this comment, but if I were to follow up, there have been (not sure how factual), in the case of the so-called Arab Spring (or Arab Winter, as I call it, given what happened afterwards), accusations that some of these revolutions had a "push" from outside.
downvoting shows the ability to reject someone w/o knowing the reason but it does not make any difference.
The so called Egypt Revolution was also backed by US initially to kick Mobarak out. Later things got out of control when Ikhwan got dominated.
The so called protest is nothing but an attempt to sabotage Erdogan govt after his recent Islamic moves. Nobody is seeing the fact Erdogan helped Turkey to getrid of IMF and put turkey on right direction.
Thousands of people are protesting in Bangladesh against cruel government who has killed thousands of Muslims so far. Since the govt is secular hence their evil doings are not being promoted anywhere including so called unbaised social media.
No, everybody was told about it. It's an official feature. Because Quora power users keep bitching up a storm about the registration wall.
It is still a weird thing, though. The Quora management swears that forcing people to log up makes things better somehow, although they've never been particularly clear on how that works.
Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
This is a general problem I have with such active counter-protests, be they to stop a station from being built (Stuttgart 21, [0]) or to block a legitimate demonstration of right-wing idiots. The rights to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate are important, but in my opinion the right to demonstrate/protest in a specific location does not trump the right of the majority to implement a democratically made decision or the right of a minority to voice their opinion.
That said, there are obviously cases were a small minority has the right to (even violently) protest a decision made by the majority[1], but building a shopping mall in a park is not one of them.
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
I think this is getting at the heart of civil disobedience: the violation of laws or decrees considered unjust.
I know nothing about the Turkish protests, but another example of civil disobedience is Martin Luther King, Jr. He committed crimes, technically, as he protested. But I don't think that it makes sense to say that MLK's protesting == overturning democracy in America. By analogy, it's hard to imagine civil disobedience in Turkey to be overthrowing democracy there.
First let me clarify that instead of ‘overturn’, ‘ignore’, ‘overrule’ or ‘disregard’ might have been better, as I wanted to say that such protests overrule one particular democratic decision and not necessarily the whole form of government.
Then, as I said, the matter is difficult – essentially you have to weigh the predictable functioning of the democratic process against the damage that can be done to people if this process ‘goes wrong’. Unfortunately, this has a whole bunch of problems:
- we do not have a universal definition of when a democratic decision is so wrong it is acceptable for someone to stand up against it
- that someone has to judge objectively whether his rights were violated in such a way that he is justified to stand up against the democratic will
- in many cases, we do not know what the majority ‘really’ wants
- even if a given system/constitution has securities that allow people to stand up against democratically made decisions, these might be seen as either too lax or too restrictive.
For example, the German constitution would allow the people to overthrow a democratic government that wants to cut back on social security in such a way as to violate article 20 of the Basic Law[0] – in the US, on the other hand, people apparently sometimes feel obliged to oppose a government that wants to introduce such social security. If even two relatively similar western societies cannot agree on when it is acceptable to overrule a democratic decision, how can we expect to find universal rules for that on a global scale?
In essence, it is a philosophical discussion on how much you respect democratic decisions as compared to the rights of individuals, and whether or not you only accept positive law or also include some ‘natural’ law in your decision-making.
I tend to like both democracy and positive law, but YMMV, of course. :)
[0] It defines Germany as a ‘social federal state’, does not allow to change that definition, and allows everyone to take up arms against those trying to change it, provided that all other means have been exhausted.
I don't really see cause for surprise that the US and Germany are politically different. Without commenting on the merits of either, you described Germany as a social federal state, while the US is not that (and is known for staunch proponents of individuality). In that framework I don't find it surprising that people protest on opposite sides of an issue in the two countries. (This is meant to be something of a logical statement, not a political one.)
I don't think that the nature of civil disobedience is disregarding laws. To the contrary, I think it can be found in regarding laws very carefully and choosing when and how to break such laws for maximum impact; then, by freely suffering the consequences for even greater impact. (This is a general point; I do not mean to imply that the Turkish protests are civil disobedience; I don't know enough yet to judge.)
While I understand your point, and can agree in part I don't think it applies here. Reading what I've read today its not about single incidents, its about continuous incidents by a government that doesn't resonate with the people. And infact what is considered a growing fascist dictatorship in guise of a government that is routinely commented on for its human rights abuses.
I'd bet that the reason this has grown so quickly doesn't have much to do with individual gripes but that lack of trust and a feeling of disenfranchisement from that government. Compounded with rumours that government they don't have faith in could very well be going to war against a country with stock piles of nerve gas capable of hitting major settlements. Offering the crowds some security within themselves that the government is no longer emanating.
Ask yourself in that scenario, with the risk of sarin gas hitting your home, families home, government cold and distant,would you also go protest? I know I would.
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
how so? democracy is not limited to counting votes and stfu until the next election. it's not like authorities haven't been removed from office before and decisions haven't been changed due to public disapproval. getting into office is not a free pass for half a decade. acta protests were anti-democratic too?
I have absolutely no problems with people protesting, I have a problem with ‘protesters’ forcing their opinion on the rest by use of passive (standing in front of a bulldozer) or active (undermining a railroad track carrying nuclear waste containers) violence.
And yes, if ACTA protests had cut other people’s telecom lines to the US or some such thing, I would have called them anti-democratic, too.
To me, a decent society is based on (among others) the state’s monopoly on the use of force, with the legally acceptable force limited to implement decisions made by the legislative (and judiciary). Random guy simply has no right to ‘protest’ against something by force.
(Also your shift key is a little broken, it appears, making it somewhat difficult to read your post.)
my bet of the little i worked on politics is that someone have campaign money, got the park land in return. I highly doubt there was much calls for discussion on the mater.
This happened in Germany some time ago. The plebiscity for demolishing the park was voted against twice, then they came up with a third voting in the middle of a holiday, with 8h of warning or something similar. When the bulldozers came to the park people were still believing they were there illegally because the permit was not voted for.
Could someone explain why my comment about the likely falsehood of the claim that a third plebiscite was introduced less than 8 hours ahead on a holiday in Germany gets downvoted? o.O
(Also note that practically all votes/plebiscites take place on Sundays in Germany so that as many people as possible can vote.)
Plebiscites in Germany are rather rare, and the only recent one I can think of is Stuttgart 21, where a train station was/is to be re-built. There was also only one plebiscite specifically about it, it was announced well in advance and it was won by those wanting to build the new station (which didn’t make the Green party that originally pressed for it particularly happy).
you are correct. again, i said "moved the date or something" i don't quite remember the details, but remember that the oposition was complaining about something sneak that the majority party did. it may be that they used the fact that the oposition was wasting all their money with a "say no to stuttgart 21" and on the day of the referendum they worded it as "cancel the ongoing effort?"... i'd have to watch the documentary again to remember details :)
but the idea is the same. even if you vote for your representatives for one reason or another, in the end, the party that ensure majority, gets to decide on the details.
you are correct. again, i said "moved the date or something" i don't quite remember the details, but remember that the oposition was complaining about something sneak that the majority party did. it may be that they used the fact that the oposition was wasting all their money with a "say no to stuttgart 21" and on the day of the referendum they worded it as "cancel the ongoing effort?"... i'd have to watch the documentary again to remember details :)
but the idea is the same. even if you vote for your representatives for one reason or another, in the end, the party that ensure majority, gets to decide on the details.
No problem with people protesting so long as they do so where you never have to bother with them, eh?
You seem to labor under the false belief that simply because something is voted upon, it is infallibly a correct decision.
Not every law, resolution and ordinance passed is actually good for all the persons it effects. Laws can be extremely adverse for sections of the public, but pass anyways due to disregard or active dislike by larger groups. Expecting people to knuckle under without further resistance simply because they've been outvoted is ridiculous.
Protesting via passive resistance is an excellent way to peacefully make known that something is extremely adverse to your section of the public, without damage to property or persons.
Your "decent society" is a society of insects, bowing to authority unconditionally rather than with individual consideration, without the will to resist evils where they encounter them.
Your equation of the "passive violence" of standing in front of a bulldozer with the active violence of spreading nuclear waste in an area seems purposely made to incite an outraged response. The lack of consideration for the difference in proportion between delaying construction and permanently poisoning an area with nuclear waste shows a damning extremism of thought. It is such equivocations that allows the justification of atrocity when other methods would better do.
Your choice to end your comment with a snide remark on zalew's lack of capitalization makes me wonder whether you believe a word of it, or are simply crafting your response to be purposefully invective for your amusement.
I personally find thousands of people trying to defend a public park much more democratic than business lobby groups with unlimited resources influencing the policy makers.
It's hard to call this a democratic government given that they control the press and the corruption. Do you really think the people wanted the park to be turned into a shopping mall, or is perhaps a better explanation that a handful of rich people with political connections wanted that?
> Do you really think the people wanted the park to be turned into a shopping mall, or is perhaps a better explanation that a handful of rich people with political connections wanted that?
I really don’t know. One of the confusing (to me) things here is that Erdogan, i.e. the prime minister of the whole of Turkey, appears to control both whether the mall is being built and the local police force, or, in other words, apparently the whole country (as opposed to a local district) can decide on whether to build a mall in some place or not.
And then I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the rural and likely conservative population of Turkey actually wants to move into what they think is the 21st century.
He doesn't officially control that, but through party connections he controls a lot of things, and that's not how it should be, but it is. The more important issue is that he controls the press, which generally isn't great feature to have as part of a democracy. No doubt he really is popular, and not just with the rural population, but that doesn't mean that he or others in the AKP makes decisions such as whether or not to build a shopping center for the benefit of the people. It's a favor to the contractor who is going to build the shopping mall, or the guy who is going to own it, or something like that. That's just how it works: favors in return for favors, i.e. corruption. He was democratically elected (at least as far as that's possible while you control the press and corruption runs through the party structure), but that doesn't mean that these kind of decisions are made in the name of the general population.
> Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall.
No, it appears rampant corruption in the construction industry (with the perception it is privately benefiting the Turkish PM and his political party) led to a decision not 'in the name of the people'. [1]
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
If we assume the reporting so far is reasonably accurate, they are protesting against the erosion of democracy by an increasingly authoritarian PM and corrupted political party which he leads.
It is darkly ironic that you'd attempt to portray their efforts as anti-democratic.
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process
I think this is serious misunderstanding of what is now going on in Turkey. The 'mall in park' thing was just a trigger. I understand that you are somehow comparing this to Stuttgart protests but from what I read about it I think this is totally different situation.
Example: I was born in a country occupied by Russians. And there were some protests (even violent) triggered by things like our hockey team beating Russian team at the Olympics. Of course that this had nothing to do with ice hockey and everything to do with the tension and unhappiness that builds up for years.
> Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall.
So what? If yours "democratically-elected government" orders you("in the name of the people", of course) to kill jews, will you comply?
> are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
So what? When majority votes, does it protect personal interests of someone else?
> e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
You have so much subordination to government-made law, so even if you would really want to overthrow tyrannic government, you would stop because there is no law allowing you to revolt?
I feel I'm missing something from your comment. Are you suggesting anybody democratically elected get their personal views ("in the name of the people") backed by that democracy? I don't think getting elected means that the people deem you infallible for your term in your typical democracy?
The protest to protect the park is nothing more than a trigger. In fact there are even reports that suggest that there is some misinformation and there is no currently approved project to build a shopping center. Still not clear what the facts are since media is not doing its job.
Initial protest was quite small and not many people paid attention to it until the police used ridiculous level of force to disperse the protesters. That's the action that triggered mass protests all over the country.
Except democracy is often false, and essentially a duopoly. Take here in the UK for example - there are two main parties, Labour and Conservative, which are varying degrees of right wing neoliberal. I don't doubt either of them would have supported this project because councils are full of careerists who owe favours. We can try to elect a "better" party (we tried with Lib Dems) but that goes tits-up, and we could start a much better left wing party (Green Party), but it's insanely hard to get any real power due to a variety of factors such as the media, ingrained ideas, gerrymandering, etc.
So true democracy is a bunch of people who stand up for their community, or at least that is far less flawed or corrupt than the system as it stands.
As for the right wing idiot thing - I disagree. I love the place I live in, if some arseholes come along and threaten, intimidate people here, then of course I think it just to counter-protest, vastly outnumber them, and make it clear that they are not welcome.
> Two young people were run over by the tanks and were killed.
That is extremely serious. My condolences with those who lost their lives, and best wishes for your friend to recover from her injury.
While we all discuss and throw ourselves around when a dying industry (read Hollywood) misbehaves and tries to screw with our Internet freedoms, free speech etc. I wonder what would when happen when the same fate, and it is coming, falls on the Governments of the world.
A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
true, but the mainstream press (guardian, nytimes etc) has not confirmed the fatalities, and it's been a while. they might just be rumors that get distorted, that kind of thing is pretty easy to happen. i too rereported them, but now i am beginning to wonder if it has really happened.
According to Russia Today: "At least two people were killed in the demonstrations in Turkey, Amnesty International said on Sunday. Over 1,000 protestors were injured. Most of them were hurt near Taksim Square in Istanbul, the focal point of the recent protest."
I agree RT is not the most credible source, that's why I went to the AI blog. Still, it's one of the few international tv channels broadcasting from Taksim Square, if not the only.
Can't say I understand your comment. RT published an article saying AI said something so I went to AI to verify if they really said it and they didn't. What's your point?
If the idea is talking about reliable sources then we will have a hard time finding one when even the NYT was able to justify a war with false data... Sure, noone's 100% reliable and that's why you check several sources. That's actually what I did on this thread, check my other comments with more sources.
"We" don't really do anything consistently. When it's Hollywood or SOPA or NSLs or wiretaps "we" are passionately anti-government, when it's AirBnB or Uber flaunting local restrictions, "we" are very skeptical and when it's Google not paying enough tax, "we" are government cheerleaders.
That said:
> A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
You haven't paid much attention these last 250 years?
Any half-competent political hack can spin anything so it's "pro citizen". A staggering proportion of citizens are in favour for the privacy/security trade off, it's just that We Know Better(tm). Of course Google and Apple should pay their fair share, I just can't get excited about it, I don't see how adding more money to the same semi-corrupt deeply immoral special interests buffet that brought you SOPA, and simultaneously distracting from the ongoing scandals of the political system, benefits anyone but the politicians.
Well, Medicare is underfunded to the tune of $38T. If all of Google and Apple was liquified at current market cap and put towards funding that liability, it would be underfunded by at little more than $37T. Retroactively cancelling the Iraq and Afghanistan wars would give you cash to knock the number down to $36T.
Of course people benefiting from Medicare benefits from Medicare, but "championing" Medicare benefits only politicians, because they know better than anyone else that it's going to go away, soon, but they'll happily lie about it in order to get reelected while they wait for it to happen.
Very less covered in India too - I see only firstpost having a story on this.
Even the largest paper - TOI has not even mentioned turky on their homepage.
In comparison, Die Zeit[0] (liberal) has a number of articles currently in slot three of the homepage (slot one is describing floods), Die Süddeutsche[1] (liberal/left) in slot four (they’re based in Munich, so the most important bit is apparently football) and FAZ[2] (conservative) around slot three, too, where slot one is about education. No idea what their printed edition looked like (SZ and FAZ are daily newspapers, Die Zeit is a weekly one). The German word for Turkey is Türkei.
No, it is a major highway. Pedestrian traffic is are not allowed. Getting on the bridge as a group of people is very rare and requires significant critical mass to pull off.
The go-to location for major protests is the Taksim Square, which is four miles from the bridge by foot. The protests need to be really widespread and populous to spread to the bridge. I don't remember that happening in my recent memory (except for a local soccer thing).
Picture album from Reddit, shows more pictures from the bridge of people who definitely don't appear to be running a marathon. http://imgur.com/a/wOrZR#11
One image that has been associated with the protests is actually of the marathon. If you see a photo with only one lane of traffic blocked and the other flowing, it is not from the marathon.
What puzzle me the most, is the voluntary cooperation of the media with the government. Even if the media does not support this event, how they not cover it at all? sad, I always thought of Turkey as the most successful example of a Muslim democratic state.
There are very, very few religious democracies, and if you only consider those both officially and effectively religious, I won’t be able to name a single one.
Turkey was famously founded as a secular state (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/La%C3%AFcit%C3%A9#Turkey). Things may have changed, but still ... "Muslim" probably just refers to the fact that most people living there are muslim.
Deism has a negligible force as a religion. It is only used as a buzzword label to use when attacking enemies like USSR. It has no practical force on its own. If the phrase were "in USA we trust" it would have the same affect. In fact, the word "Unamerican" was used interchangeably with "godless" when it was at its height, and atheism wasn't even close to requisite for being labelled such.
I think this description was more akin to describing the USA or Germany as “Christian democratic states” as a majority in both of those are Christians. It doesn’t mean that Christianity is the state religion or something.
Turkey has been a successful majority Muslim but very secular and democratic state for a very long time. Maybe that’s changing …
(Ah, decisions, decisions. Sometimes I think the EU should have accelerated making a move on letting Turkey join. There are substantial risks associated with that, sure, but I also think that the EU would have had a significant chance of changing the trajectory Turkey is on.)
> Turkey has been a successful majority Muslim but very secular and democratic state for a very long time. Maybe that’s changing …
Uhm. Military coups in: 1960, 1971, 1980, as well as substantial intervention in the succession of power in 1997 that many considers a coup.
The secular nature of the Turkish state has largely remained as secular as it is because the Turkish military has a tendency to conduct coups whenever they deem someone is trying to introduce religiously motivated laws, coupled with a legal system that is frequently used to shut down political parties that mix politics and religion.
Turkey does not exactly have a very solid democratic tradition yet.
We have yet to see if the "Memorandum" issued in 1997 and allowing the current government is a sign the military has softened it's stance, but it's very clear that so far at least, the elected Turkish governments serve at the mercy of the military.
The Turkish military is much weaker than it used to be with the government having thrown many of its top leaders into prison accusing them of planning yet another coup and replacing with people that are sided with Erdogan. Still, it has a long history of stepping in if secularism is threatened so it will be interesting to see what happens in the future if Erdogan is able to stay in power and keep on implementing more and more religious policies.
The current Turkish government has been jailing journalists for years.
Whilst the constitution makes the country ostensibly secular, the AKP has been slowly turning it into an Islamist state. I assumed that's what was fundamentally behind the protests, but maybe it's just another anti-corporate thing.
You assume correct, this protests are no longer really about a shopping mall or a park. There was a small protest to that and the reaction to it has set in motion a new protest that has been bubbling under the service for a long time now.
The initial action was a picnic of 50 people to protest removal of trees from Gezi Parkı which was subjected to intense police reaction.
If you recall the London riots (during which I was in Wales), rude attitude of police and political scandals were among the suggested reasons, which are also among the facts that inducted things happened here in Turkey.
I wouldn't compare these events. London riots started after a person died while being followed by the police. At night, a group of people went close to the police station and, without any intervention by the police, started burning some of the nearby buildings. Then it just went from there without any police intervention at all. If there's one thing to say about the London riots is how polite police was with the whole events.
It is not that surprising considering how many journalist have been jailed for speaking out against the current government. Turkey has been increasingly becoming more extreme as its secular government is being dismantled piece by piece and and resistance to this is thrown in jail.
Turkey actually is a successful example of a democratic state where Islam is the religion of the vast majority, albeit it is not a Muslim state, as the constitution is religion-agnostic; nowhere in it exists a phrase which even implies that the state has an official religion. Current government follows a conservative policy and has been elected with roughly 49% of votes. This eventually gave them power and resources to work in an autocratical manner. They have also been able to enforce censorship and direct the media companies in the way they want. Turkish parliament has a total count of 550 members and 327 of these are members of AKP, which let's them legislate proposals even in situations where there is no support from the opposition (although they can't in some cases where the required fraction of parliamentarian votes are more that 50%, which is usually demanded by the constitution for some fundamental stuff, like editing the constitution text itself). Added the fact that the president is also descendant from this party, they apparently have a humongous authority, originating from a, so to speak bug in election system: A party with less than 10% vote rate can not have it's members in the parliament, which eventually let them occupy more that 50% of the 550 quota of the number of parliamentarians.
The next elections will be held on 2015, at which I expect that the votes are going to be distributed even among the three major parties, where two of these are CHP and MHP, which are defined to be social-democrat-left and nationalist-concervative-right (with no apparent tendency towards theocratic ideals) respectively. AKP will probably be in the parliament, albeit lack the dominion present today.
> A party with less than 10% vote rate can not have it's members in the parliament, which eventually let them occupy more that 50% of the 550 quota of the number of parliamentarians.
Actually it's not a bug, if they would allow smaller parties they would have 10,20,50 parties in there, some with only one person. It would be a mess - hard to make any decision.
One of the most challenging aspects of learning about important, under-reported events is correcting for the biases of individuals who are reporting on it
For example, while there are no doubt many shopping malls in Istanbul, I doubt there is "at least one in every neighborhood!" (unless that word is better translated as something more like a suburb)
This makes it harder to trust all of the details of the more serious accounts of police aggression, or the simplifed context of things like "The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government". As another commenter has pointed out, even photos can end up being from unrelated events.
This is not to say that this person's perspective is not extremely important, or that the Turkish state is not committing indefensible acts of aggression. It's just harder for outsiders to piece together a full and accurate picture of what is happening. Fortunately, multiple individual perspectives can help corroborate and enhance the picture to quite a degree.
Edit: Certainly media has biases too, although there are at least in theory standards for verifying reported facts, and the bias is (often) more about what they choose not report or what context is not given.
Edit: good points by buro as well. This account and others may well be very reliable, I'm more speaking from experience with past events that were reported in similar ways where key important facts turned out to be wrong or missing. (I know, that happens sometimes in traditional media too)
> One of the most challenging aspects of learning about important, under-reported events is correcting for the biases of individuals who are reporting on it.
This is true for well-reported or over-reported events too. It's always an individual who reporting things, and thus the process of reporting itself involuntarily bakes in the opinion or ideology of the agent reporting the issue. It's up to us to take whatever we'd want to as credible.
Also in the context of Internet it is more likely to be the absolute truth, after Streisand effect and everything else is done with.
My assumptions in situations like this: No smoke without fire.
Just did a small search on Youtube and found out that reports of civilians been crushed under Panzers is TRUE [1]. And now the discussion on testing credibility and stripping out emotions from reporting standards sounds bullshit.
The great thing about the internet is that it is possible to get a sense of whether a claim is true or not very swiftly.
On the one fact you doubt and then use as an example to undermine the rest of the argument, a quick search verifies that claim. (Should you revisit the doubt you extended to the rest of the argument in light of some evidence to the claims that you used to undermine it?)
Of course there is emotion in there too (the government selling the nation to corporations), but we're mostly rational and will spot that surely.
The fundamental question is whether or not the reports in general speak of a true event, and overwhelmingly they do appear so. The level of consistency in the very many reports and sources is too much to be attributable and dismissed as any individual being emotional... of course they are emotional; some of their friends, family and fellow citizens are dead, others are in hospital or jail.
Well, I've been to both cities for two weeks and I didn't find any mall in NYC (I'm sure there must be some, I just didn't find them) while in Istanbul they are really everywhere, you cannot ignore them if not only because they are usually guarded by security people with riffles. Here's a list: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_shopping_malls_in_Istan...
They are usually huge. I was very surprise because in my home country, Portugal, we used to believe we had a lot of malls (we do) but Istanbul is just unbelievable.
Back to Istanbul, in Levent (near the financial district) you can have three right next to each other. On one of my stays there my hotel was actually around the corner from one of this malls.
I don't have any trouble believing there are many malls in Istanbul. I do have some trouble believing you can reasonably answer whether they are too many by just checking on the internet. In fact, as you point out, it's possible to visit NYC and not notice how many there are.
I also have some difficulty with the idea that people are heading out to the streets, risking life and limb, in multiple cities across Turkey just because of a mall in Istanbul.
The notion that we can figure this out just by hitting google maps seems obviously wrong.
Well, this exact crisis has been on Reddit for a couple of days and I even saw it on BBC News's online front page last night. I can't tell you exactly why people are doing it but it certainly sounds like a demonstration against a shopping mall was the spark.
Oh that part seems plausible. The bit that seems like over-reaching is that we can easily and quickly gain some insight into the situation by hitting google maps. Mohamed Bouazizi's suicide sparked popular protests in Tunisia and subsequently, across the middle east. Is there a lot we can learn about the Arab Spring by googling 'street vendors, Ben Arous'? Probably not.
I recently returned from Istanbul. While there isn't a shopping mall on every corner, it sure seems like. I'm sure every city has a "x on every corner" that isn't literally true, but x is more numerous that one might imagine. I was amazed not at the number of malls in Istanbul, but the sheer size of them. Each one seemed bigger than the last, and the first seemed like the largest mall I've ever seen. Now Istanbul is a large metropolis, home to almost 20 million people. And there was way more shopping that I would have expected. Is this person exaggerating? Of course, but not as much as you might think.
It's heartbreaking when I see a comment like this voted up to the top. Are you saying anything new here? Is there anything in your remarks that is insightful? No.
This kind of comment appears in practically Every. Single. news discussion. Can't we just make a blanket statement like this as a sticky, and put it at the top of each story? A kind of brief disclaimer or IANAL?
Your doubt is noted. It might be that your definition of either neighborhood or shopping mall differs somewhat from the local one, but since you don't actually explain why you doubt it I can't know.
"Shopping centers can be considered as a very young concept in Turkey, since the history goes back only to the late 80s. However, once the malls appeared on the shopping scene, the Turks embraced them. Almost every neighborhood has at least one."
http://www.wittistanbul.com/magazine/top-9-shopping-centers-...
That said, it's not a literal statement. It's about rapid gentrification. It's happening all over Europe if not the world. It can get especially nasty when mixed with corruption, since there is great incentive to support large businesses over local ones.
Similar thing happened in Yerevan, Armenia last year, but in a smaller scale. Group of people protected a park from construction of boutiques. It took around 2 months and the government finally gave up. There is a wikipedia article covering the story:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mashtots_Park_Movement
What's confusing is: in the USA, the term "occupy" has been taken as a practical trademark for a series of organized political protests. Look up "Occupy Wall Street" as the first and primary instance.
Still, AFAIR it started as an Internet thing, not entirely unrelated to 4chan. It was a meme at its birth, it has spreaded this way through the US, and now - like all internet memes - it is evolving.
'scuze me for not keeping up on the happenings in each of ~200 countries, and assuming not everyone everywhere is keeping up on the latest in my sphere of awareness.
Yes, Occupy was global. I don't know who from where knows how much about it. I was answering a question about why someone might be confused by usage of the term "occupy" when it was unclear whether it was an "Occupy"-brand event vs "hey let's go occupy this space to save it". I referenced the Wall St. thing precisely because that's where Occupy started.
Actually, I was surprised that some movements decided to use that word to describe themselves. I believe that 'occupy' is very unfortunate word, especially in Europe. For example I live in a country that was occupied by the Nazis in 1939 and by Russians in 1968 (that occupation lasted 20 years). The meaning of the word occupier basically equals to 'the one who takes freedom of others by force' here. If you use that word to describe yourself or your movement you can be sure that most people will automatically be against you from the beginning. Not the best PR move.
Many local shops are looted by the protestors. Cars turned, stones thrown etc...
So much for peaceful a protest.
Mayoral election is less than a year away. Protest with your votes, not your fists.
It didn't start that way. It started peacefully. The government escalated the situation when they tear-gassed peaceful protestors.
Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops. You are always ultimately responsible for you own actions, and you're also responsible for being associated with bad actions if you stand by quietly when they are going on.
> It didn't start that way. It started peacefully.
OK. But as it did not end peacefully, not really relevant.
> The government escalated the situation when they tear-gassed peaceful protestors.
How is this relevant except to excuse the behaviour? The protesters didn't respond to the escalation by consolidating their resolve and standing their ground, they started destroying random people's property.
> Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
You indicate that the government bear the responsibility for this "bad shit" happening. They might trigger it, in the same way a big row triggers that someone hits someone else.
Edit: I'm pretty sure that what's going on isn't that random peaceful protesters turned violent, but rather that this protest, like most other protests bound to clash with the police, is "anarchist" catnip. These troublemakers will turn up under the guise of being part of a legitimate, peaceful protest, and at the first sliver of police yielding power, they'll let go and start their regular regiment of vandalism and violence. I'm no sure what the best response is for the legitimate peaceful protesters in this case, though.
Or the government sneaked in their people to delegitimize the protesters. This is a well known way police or covert agencies work.
Usually if protesters are well versed in such tactics the ring of strongest forms the ring around rest of the mass to protect them from interlopers that would give police a provocation they needed to attack the protesters or to delegimitize them.
I know it second hand from an acquaintance that studied Philosophy in Belgrade, Serbia. According to him it was spoken by Dragoljub Micunovic during the student protest in Belgrade during the 90-ties. This is something Milosevic was fond of doing to discredit the student protest.
I know this acquaintance had no reason to lie to me, it came up in regular conversation. I don't have any archive material to corroborate but I could try to find something.
Oh, I'm sure it's happened in many places. But that doesn't make it an any less extraordinary claim that that explains what happened in Gezi, given the spontaneous nature of the protests. Also, by all accounts, police moved in on peaceful (if illegally congregated) protesters. The point of instigating is that you can paint the protest as violent before you move in.
I am a strong proponent of gun control, but I often hear opponents say that the lawful possession of guns to a certain extent ensures freedom of government oppression. Probably it would be a lot messier if citizens in a situation like this would draw guns against their government, but at moments like these I do see the value of such a argument.
Even in Canadian protests the police have been caught sneaking in trouble-makers with rocks and black ski-masks. If they didn't create the panic they wouldn't get paid for solving it.
Considering that the Turkish government is trying to make the protestors look bad so they have justification for going overboard in their earlier treatment of them, it's more likely that plain-clothes police officers looted those stores and overturned the cars.
When something violent and destructive happens, look at who did the last such thing.
Aljezera has had this story in their line-up for a couple f days now, not sure what they said about it because I wasn't overly concerned. Nothing on BBC though. So atleast one international news organisation is getting the word out.
The tearing down of trees for commercial and residential areas is happening here too. It's called urban sprawl. Land developers wipe out natural habitats like forests and leave sterile, artificial suburbs and plazas in its stead.
Most citizens never hear about it until it's too late because it's not easy to find out about the latest zonings. Trying to have a say in the process? Well, that's a whole new level of obfuscation.
The process is confusing for a reason: to keep concerned citizens like you and me out.
What is happening in Istanbul is happening here too.
This isn't urban sprawl, this isn't the tearing down of forests. This is removing a park in the middle of the city. Imaging if they came in and bulldozed Central Park.
You actually raise an interesting parallel: poor communities and planning organizations had railed against the bulldozers of Robert Moses for decades, but in the media he could do no wrong. That was before he tried to build in Central Park. When his policies finally threatened a beloved playground to build private parking, a group well-to-do mothers on the Upper West Side stood up and it triggered the beginning of his downfall.
while trying to build a parking lot in central park is part of moses' downfall, the picture painted here is not really accurate to my knowledge. for one, a lot of stuff was built in central park during moses' reign as parks commissioner, particularly early on: something like 20 playgrounds, including the demolition of the casino restaurant for rumsey playground; a ton of ball fields; tavern on the green; major changes to the central park zoo. more to the point, characterizing residents of the UWS in the 60s as well-to-do is particularly odd. Like the residents of greenwich village more commonly associated with Moses' downfall, I would think that middle class is the far more accurate description.
Yes, Moses built many things in the park. But more to the point, the many famous and well-heeled mothers and residents of west 67th street involved in the protest listed at the beginning of chapter 42 of "The Power Broker" makes your comment particularly odd.
Except it is more of a small, desolate city square, which was central to drug and sex traffic for years. The protests are most certainly not about saving the square.
You know how long the typical suburb takes to build? About three weeks. Three weeks of seasonal employment. You know how long that natural habitat is gone for? Forever.
Out of all the ways to fight sterile sprawl, why choose a method that promotes sterile density? Smart Growth suffers from a very severe and unfortunate unintended consequence: Drastically increased barriers to entry.
It is sad to see how many higher density proposals are squelched because they don't fit the vision of Smart Growth planners, or because the developers don't have multiple years worth of cash flow behind them to support the permitting process, public approval process, and zoning approvals process. Oh, and if you happen to want to have small scale low impact manufacturing (such as clothes manufacturing) instead of Mid-Scale retail or B-Class Office space...good luck waiting another few years for the Smart Growth planners to determine if your appeal is "smart" enough for them. These barriers to entry are how Smart Growth developers (like Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate) end up owning entire neighborhoods (like Seattle's South Lake Union).
Manhattan was almost completely built out, with an extremely diverse and interesting landscape, long before the planners took over. There is no need for them and their vision.
Forests are not gone "forever". They reclaim land as soon as foot traffic dies. I am from Mogadisho, Somalia, and none of my old neighborhood is recognizable today: it's all jungles. Trees swallowed a quarter of the old city, and another quarter is lost to encroaching desert sand. In our case, "forever" was exactly 10 years.
main cause: block the destruction of a historical park
Thousands of people of all ages gathered without any formal notice, just by friend to friend, neighbour to neighbour;
didn't allow provocation;
resisted days of assault;
assured the security of the park;
almost all of the other big cities supported by protesting;
protesters cleaned up their own mass, junks collected;
I guess this is a simple description without political adds.
Hürriyet, a left-leaning English-language daily, is covering the protests (and Erdoğan's response, the resulting politicking, and so on):
http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/
I should note that Hürriyet is historically quite unfriendly to Erdoğan; in particular (IIRC) it raised quite a bit of noise when Doğan Holdings, which owns Hürriyet, underwent tax fraud investigations that may have been politically motivated.
Can someone perhaps comment on the alleged use of agent orange? [1] From my limited knowledge of chemical weapons ( in lack of a better word), it is an deforestation chemical, and has no direct use for riot control. So currently my take is, that this is a rumor, since its use would better fit into the narrative than into a plausible police strategy.
I don't think it is aimed at at the protestors, but it is a chemical usable to attack trees and they are in a park.
It might very well be sort of 'we are going to kill this park one way or the other' type of situation. Once all the trees are dead, they could properly develop the park with relatively few protests.
It is insane, of course, but it seems that some governments are prepared to do absolutely anything to their citizens so long as they think they can get away with it and while they usually can get away with it they also have no understanding that getting away with these kinds of things are like a cliff-drop: you can go closer and closer to the edge and then you go one step too far and the entire thing unravels.
Usually at this point the governments try to oppress them a little more, rather than back away, and that is when the real explosion happens.
I'm not sure if you're serious, but what you're saying here is obviously grossly out of whack with reality. The police violence is crazy but Turkey is not that crazy. You may as well have claimed that Erdogan is planning to nuke the protesters.
I was also confused by the alleged use of agent orange. It seemed to make so sense to me.
A chemical weapons expert interviewed by a Swedish newspaper said that it is unlikely that Turkey actually used agent orange. They do refer to it Orange Gas but I don't know if that is actually different from Agent Orange?
I'd find Agent Orange hard to believe, given that it did a bit more than deforestation in Vietnam. The Redditor describes it as "a derivative of the Vietnam era deforestation chemical Agent Orange. It is incredibly toxic and forbidden by the UN after the horrific effects it had on both the Vietnamese and Americans exposed to it.", but derived from could mean anything really.
I'd find it hard to believe that anything closely resembling it is used by any sane police force, that seems like it would be classified as chemical warfare?
my memory is a bit hazy but wasn't the most dangerous part of agent orange the fact that it was contaminated with very toxic dioxins rather than the toxic properties of 'clean' agent orange?
Why would Turkey resort to chemical warfare when they don't have to, why risk the wrath of the international community when you can 'just' use tear gas and such?
Thanks for the explanation, I wasn't aware of that. When they say it's a derivative, they probably mean closer to that herbicide then?
I still haven't heard anything about it actually being used there, but would that seem at all reasonable to you? A police force that uses tear gas and don't want to kill people, would they plausibly use such a derivative for the same purpose?
"When they say it's a derivative, they probably mean closer to that herbicide then?"
When they say it's a derivative, they most probably mean that they saw something orange, and that is why they call it Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the average person seeing teargas is fairly ignorant about chemistry and biology. It makes no sense to spread a herbicide in a demonstration. It is harmful in the long term but has no impact on people in the short term, thus is just no use in that situation.
Agent Orange was called AO because the containers it came in had an orange strip. The substance itself is colourless, just like the same herbicides today. And is not particularly toxic to humans, the problem in Vietnam was trace amounts of dioxin in manufacturing the 2,4,5-T component.
518 comments
[ 2.7 ms ] story [ 312 ms ] threadWhen I protested in my homeland I heard accusations of being paid to do this, even the price was specified ($20). Twenty bucks to go into a harsh cold night to be assaulted by police and possibly imprisoned on terrorism charges, what a deal :)
Coming to your main Question, If you look how Egypt Spring started, it was all to getrid of Mobarak, US, the former ally of Mobarak left em all alone as did it in past.
I could share articles like this(http://www.deathandtaxesmag.com/50553/wikileaks-u-s-governme...) one but I left you upto you to figure out.
Point is, every _revolution_ got started turned against US; be it Tunisia, Egypt and now Turkey.
Those who are protesting will be crying out loud if some stern Islamic leader comes all of sudden and rule upon them.
I hope you understand that like pretty much everywhere, there are "good and decent" people and some "bad" people. Unfortunately, the "bad" people always seem to be the sorts who want to force other people to live their way, while the "good" people mostly want to live their lives the way they want and not force other people. It's as true of America as it is of Pakistan.
The automatic reaction from some muslims will be that it is US-sponsored. Given the US's long track record of sponsoring coups and pro-western/secular movements, you can't really blame them.
The so called Egypt Revolution was also backed by US initially to kick Mobarak out. Later things got out of control when Ikhwan got dominated.
The so called protest is nothing but an attempt to sabotage Erdogan govt after his recent Islamic moves. Nobody is seeing the fact Erdogan helped Turkey to getrid of IMF and put turkey on right direction.
Thousands of people are protesting in Bangladesh against cruel government who has killed thousands of Muslims so far. Since the govt is secular hence their evil doings are not being promoted anywhere including so called unbaised social media.
http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...
Append "?share=1", and the dumbass registration wall goes away.
I imagine it's something friends, VCs, and the tech press were told about, but the rest of us aren't supposed to use.
It is still a weird thing, though. The Quora management swears that forcing people to log up makes things better somehow, although they've never been particularly clear on how that works.
This is a general problem I have with such active counter-protests, be they to stop a station from being built (Stuttgart 21, [0]) or to block a legitimate demonstration of right-wing idiots. The rights to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate are important, but in my opinion the right to demonstrate/protest in a specific location does not trump the right of the majority to implement a democratically made decision or the right of a minority to voice their opinion.
That said, there are obviously cases were a small minority has the right to (even violently) protest a decision made by the majority[1], but building a shopping mall in a park is not one of them.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution , e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
I think this is getting at the heart of civil disobedience: the violation of laws or decrees considered unjust.
I know nothing about the Turkish protests, but another example of civil disobedience is Martin Luther King, Jr. He committed crimes, technically, as he protested. But I don't think that it makes sense to say that MLK's protesting == overturning democracy in America. By analogy, it's hard to imagine civil disobedience in Turkey to be overthrowing democracy there.
Then, as I said, the matter is difficult – essentially you have to weigh the predictable functioning of the democratic process against the damage that can be done to people if this process ‘goes wrong’. Unfortunately, this has a whole bunch of problems:
- we do not have a universal definition of when a democratic decision is so wrong it is acceptable for someone to stand up against it
- that someone has to judge objectively whether his rights were violated in such a way that he is justified to stand up against the democratic will
- in many cases, we do not know what the majority ‘really’ wants
- even if a given system/constitution has securities that allow people to stand up against democratically made decisions, these might be seen as either too lax or too restrictive.
For example, the German constitution would allow the people to overthrow a democratic government that wants to cut back on social security in such a way as to violate article 20 of the Basic Law[0] – in the US, on the other hand, people apparently sometimes feel obliged to oppose a government that wants to introduce such social security. If even two relatively similar western societies cannot agree on when it is acceptable to overrule a democratic decision, how can we expect to find universal rules for that on a global scale?
In essence, it is a philosophical discussion on how much you respect democratic decisions as compared to the rights of individuals, and whether or not you only accept positive law or also include some ‘natural’ law in your decision-making.
I tend to like both democracy and positive law, but YMMV, of course. :)
[0] It defines Germany as a ‘social federal state’, does not allow to change that definition, and allows everyone to take up arms against those trying to change it, provided that all other means have been exhausted.
I don't think that the nature of civil disobedience is disregarding laws. To the contrary, I think it can be found in regarding laws very carefully and choosing when and how to break such laws for maximum impact; then, by freely suffering the consequences for even greater impact. (This is a general point; I do not mean to imply that the Turkish protests are civil disobedience; I don't know enough yet to judge.)
I'd bet that the reason this has grown so quickly doesn't have much to do with individual gripes but that lack of trust and a feeling of disenfranchisement from that government. Compounded with rumours that government they don't have faith in could very well be going to war against a country with stock piles of nerve gas capable of hitting major settlements. Offering the crowds some security within themselves that the government is no longer emanating.
Ask yourself in that scenario, with the risk of sarin gas hitting your home, families home, government cold and distant,would you also go protest? I know I would.
how so? democracy is not limited to counting votes and stfu until the next election. it's not like authorities haven't been removed from office before and decisions haven't been changed due to public disapproval. getting into office is not a free pass for half a decade. acta protests were anti-democratic too?
And yes, if ACTA protests had cut other people’s telecom lines to the US or some such thing, I would have called them anti-democratic, too.
To me, a decent society is based on (among others) the state’s monopoly on the use of force, with the legally acceptable force limited to implement decisions made by the legislative (and judiciary). Random guy simply has no right to ‘protest’ against something by force.
(Also your shift key is a little broken, it appears, making it somewhat difficult to read your post.)
my bet of the little i worked on politics is that someone have campaign money, got the park land in return. I highly doubt there was much calls for discussion on the mater.
This happened in Germany some time ago. The plebiscity for demolishing the park was voted against twice, then they came up with a third voting in the middle of a holiday, with 8h of warning or something similar. When the bulldozers came to the park people were still believing they were there illegally because the permit was not voted for.
I don’t know to which event exactly you’re referring, but I can assure you that
> 8h of warning or something similar.
this is most certainly false. Could you elaborate a bit?
(Also note that practically all votes/plebiscites take place on Sundays in Germany so that as many people as possible can vote.)
But there is a documentary about it... fairly recent one, I just can't find it knowing only that it was a park in Germany.
but the idea is the same. even if you vote for your representatives for one reason or another, in the end, the party that ensure majority, gets to decide on the details.
but the idea is the same. even if you vote for your representatives for one reason or another, in the end, the party that ensure majority, gets to decide on the details.
You seem to labor under the false belief that simply because something is voted upon, it is infallibly a correct decision.
Not every law, resolution and ordinance passed is actually good for all the persons it effects. Laws can be extremely adverse for sections of the public, but pass anyways due to disregard or active dislike by larger groups. Expecting people to knuckle under without further resistance simply because they've been outvoted is ridiculous.
Protesting via passive resistance is an excellent way to peacefully make known that something is extremely adverse to your section of the public, without damage to property or persons.
Your "decent society" is a society of insects, bowing to authority unconditionally rather than with individual consideration, without the will to resist evils where they encounter them.
Your equation of the "passive violence" of standing in front of a bulldozer with the active violence of spreading nuclear waste in an area seems purposely made to incite an outraged response. The lack of consideration for the difference in proportion between delaying construction and permanently poisoning an area with nuclear waste shows a damning extremism of thought. It is such equivocations that allows the justification of atrocity when other methods would better do.
Your choice to end your comment with a snide remark on zalew's lack of capitalization makes me wonder whether you believe a word of it, or are simply crafting your response to be purposefully invective for your amusement.
And you seem to labor under the false belief that simply because someone protested something, it is infallibly a correct decision.
I really don’t know. One of the confusing (to me) things here is that Erdogan, i.e. the prime minister of the whole of Turkey, appears to control both whether the mall is being built and the local police force, or, in other words, apparently the whole country (as opposed to a local district) can decide on whether to build a mall in some place or not.
And then I wouldn’t be surprised if a majority of the rural and likely conservative population of Turkey actually wants to move into what they think is the 21st century.
No, it appears rampant corruption in the construction industry (with the perception it is privately benefiting the Turkish PM and his political party) led to a decision not 'in the name of the people'. [1]
> People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
If we assume the reporting so far is reasonably accurate, they are protesting against the erosion of democracy by an increasingly authoritarian PM and corrupted political party which he leads.
It is darkly ironic that you'd attempt to portray their efforts as anti-democratic.
[1] http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/jun/01/erdogan-grip-tur...
I think this is serious misunderstanding of what is now going on in Turkey. The 'mall in park' thing was just a trigger. I understand that you are somehow comparing this to Stuttgart protests but from what I read about it I think this is totally different situation.
Example: I was born in a country occupied by Russians. And there were some protests (even violent) triggered by things like our hockey team beating Russian team at the Olympics. Of course that this had nothing to do with ice hockey and everything to do with the tension and unhappiness that builds up for years.
> This is disgusting, the "right" to profit/property is the least important thing, it should never trump people's well-being or the environment.
which I interpreted as just that.
[0] Whether that ‘more’ is better is, given the levels of violence, rather subjective.
So what? If yours "democratically-elected government" orders you("in the name of the people", of course) to kill jews, will you comply?
> are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.
So what? When majority votes, does it protect personal interests of someone else?
> e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?
You have so much subordination to government-made law, so even if you would really want to overthrow tyrannic government, you would stop because there is no law allowing you to revolt?
Initial protest was quite small and not many people paid attention to it until the police used ridiculous level of force to disperse the protesters. That's the action that triggered mass protests all over the country.
So true democracy is a bunch of people who stand up for their community, or at least that is far less flawed or corrupt than the system as it stands.
As for the right wing idiot thing - I disagree. I love the place I live in, if some arseholes come along and threaten, intimidate people here, then of course I think it just to counter-protest, vastly outnumber them, and make it clear that they are not welcome.
That is extremely serious. My condolences with those who lost their lives, and best wishes for your friend to recover from her injury.
While we all discuss and throw ourselves around when a dying industry (read Hollywood) misbehaves and tries to screw with our Internet freedoms, free speech etc. I wonder what would when happen when the same fate, and it is coming, falls on the Governments of the world.
A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
On the Amnesty International blog they wrote this (but it does not talk about any deaths): http://www.amnesty.org.uk/news_details.asp?NewsID=20803
If the idea is talking about reliable sources then we will have a hard time finding one when even the NYT was able to justify a war with false data... Sure, noone's 100% reliable and that's why you check several sources. That's actually what I did on this thread, check my other comments with more sources.
But, I misunderstood the parent's point. So I stand corrected.
That said:
> A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.
You haven't paid much attention these last 250 years?
Of course people benefiting from Medicare benefits from Medicare, but "championing" Medicare benefits only politicians, because they know better than anyone else that it's going to go away, soon, but they'll happily lie about it in order to get reelected while they wait for it to happen.
http://www.firstpost.com/world/protesters-defiant-as-turkey-...
[0] http://www.zeit.de/index
[1] http://www.sueddeutsche.de/
[2] http://www.faz.net/
Perhaps it is a popular crossing that gets filled up whenever major events are happening?
The bridge pictures here appear to be legit. http://www.rightnow.io/breaking-news/turkey_bn_1369752659185...
What puzzle me the most, is the voluntary cooperation of the media with the government. Even if the media does not support this event, how they not cover it at all? sad, I always thought of Turkey as the most successful example of a Muslim democratic state.
There are very, very few religious democracies, and if you only consider those both officially and effectively religious, I won’t be able to name a single one.
UK?
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pancasila_(politics)
In Indonesia, you are not allowed to be atheist. You must declare yourself as a follower of one of the 6 state sanctioned religions.
Turkey has been a successful majority Muslim but very secular and democratic state for a very long time. Maybe that’s changing …
(Ah, decisions, decisions. Sometimes I think the EU should have accelerated making a move on letting Turkey join. There are substantial risks associated with that, sure, but I also think that the EU would have had a significant chance of changing the trajectory Turkey is on.)
Uhm. Military coups in: 1960, 1971, 1980, as well as substantial intervention in the succession of power in 1997 that many considers a coup.
The secular nature of the Turkish state has largely remained as secular as it is because the Turkish military has a tendency to conduct coups whenever they deem someone is trying to introduce religiously motivated laws, coupled with a legal system that is frequently used to shut down political parties that mix politics and religion.
Turkey does not exactly have a very solid democratic tradition yet.
We have yet to see if the "Memorandum" issued in 1997 and allowing the current government is a sign the military has softened it's stance, but it's very clear that so far at least, the elected Turkish governments serve at the mercy of the military.
Whilst the constitution makes the country ostensibly secular, the AKP has been slowly turning it into an Islamist state. I assumed that's what was fundamentally behind the protests, but maybe it's just another anti-corporate thing.
If you recall the London riots (during which I was in Wales), rude attitude of police and political scandals were among the suggested reasons, which are also among the facts that inducted things happened here in Turkey.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taksim_Gezi_Park
The next elections will be held on 2015, at which I expect that the votes are going to be distributed even among the three major parties, where two of these are CHP and MHP, which are defined to be social-democrat-left and nationalist-concervative-right (with no apparent tendency towards theocratic ideals) respectively. AKP will probably be in the parliament, albeit lack the dominion present today.
Actually it's not a bug, if they would allow smaller parties they would have 10,20,50 parties in there, some with only one person. It would be a mess - hard to make any decision.
For example, while there are no doubt many shopping malls in Istanbul, I doubt there is "at least one in every neighborhood!" (unless that word is better translated as something more like a suburb)
This makes it harder to trust all of the details of the more serious accounts of police aggression, or the simplifed context of things like "The whole country is being sold to corporations by the government". As another commenter has pointed out, even photos can end up being from unrelated events.
This is not to say that this person's perspective is not extremely important, or that the Turkish state is not committing indefensible acts of aggression. It's just harder for outsiders to piece together a full and accurate picture of what is happening. Fortunately, multiple individual perspectives can help corroborate and enhance the picture to quite a degree.
Edit: Certainly media has biases too, although there are at least in theory standards for verifying reported facts, and the bias is (often) more about what they choose not report or what context is not given.
Edit: good points by buro as well. This account and others may well be very reliable, I'm more speaking from experience with past events that were reported in similar ways where key important facts turned out to be wrong or missing. (I know, that happens sometimes in traditional media too)
This is true for well-reported or over-reported events too. It's always an individual who reporting things, and thus the process of reporting itself involuntarily bakes in the opinion or ideology of the agent reporting the issue. It's up to us to take whatever we'd want to as credible.
Also in the context of Internet it is more likely to be the absolute truth, after Streisand effect and everything else is done with.
My assumptions in situations like this: No smoke without fire.
Just did a small search on Youtube and found out that reports of civilians been crushed under Panzers is TRUE [1]. And now the discussion on testing credibility and stripping out emotions from reporting standards sounds bullshit.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=H...
[Edits: Added a link to a video of individual being crushed under a anti-riot Panzer vehicle. Not very graphic, but serious.]
And yup, there are a phenomenal number of shopping malls, some only a couple of hundred meters from another.
I did spot check quite a few, looked at a few of the websites, and they are all multi-level, large shopping malls.
In fact this one is a mere 300m from Gezi Park: http://www.demirorenistiklal.com/
The great thing about the internet is that it is possible to get a sense of whether a claim is true or not very swiftly.
On the one fact you doubt and then use as an example to undermine the rest of the argument, a quick search verifies that claim. (Should you revisit the doubt you extended to the rest of the argument in light of some evidence to the claims that you used to undermine it?)
Of course there is emotion in there too (the government selling the nation to corporations), but we're mostly rational and will spot that surely.
The fundamental question is whether or not the reports in general speak of a true event, and overwhelmingly they do appear so. The level of consistency in the very many reports and sources is too much to be attributable and dismissed as any individual being emotional... of course they are emotional; some of their friends, family and fellow citizens are dead, others are in hospital or jail.
https://maps.google.com/maps?q=shopping+mall&hl=en&l...
These results seem pretty lousy and not particularly different from those from Istanbul.
That's a really bad set of results for NYC though.
They are usually huge. I was very surprise because in my home country, Portugal, we used to believe we had a lot of malls (we do) but Istanbul is just unbelievable.
Back to Istanbul, in Levent (near the financial district) you can have three right next to each other. On one of my stays there my hotel was actually around the corner from one of this malls.
I also have some difficulty with the idea that people are heading out to the streets, risking life and limb, in multiple cities across Turkey just because of a mall in Istanbul.
The notion that we can figure this out just by hitting google maps seems obviously wrong.
* The original claim on the blog
* Some research a poster here helpfully did using Google maps and web searches to verify
* Stories from multiple people who have visited Istanbul in person and can compare to other european cities
... you are still banging the drum of "You can't answer a question just by checking the internet!"
I wonder: what kind of evidence would get you to the point where you might believe such a claim?
This kind of comment appears in practically Every. Single. news discussion. Can't we just make a blanket statement like this as a sticky, and put it at the top of each story? A kind of brief disclaimer or IANAL?
http://www.xkcd.com/1215/
"Shopping centers can be considered as a very young concept in Turkey, since the history goes back only to the late 80s. However, once the malls appeared on the shopping scene, the Turks embraced them. Almost every neighborhood has at least one." http://www.wittistanbul.com/magazine/top-9-shopping-centers-...
That said, it's not a literal statement. It's about rapid gentrification. It's happening all over Europe if not the world. It can get especially nasty when mixed with corruption, since there is great incentive to support large businesses over local ones.
http://www.nytimes.com/2012/07/05/world/middleeast/05iht-m05... http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/ad.1011/abstract
Eliot is an interesting example of one a single well-connected individual can accomplish in the digital age: http://www.indiegogo.com/projects/the-brown-moses-blog/x/255....
His feed is a bit of a firehose feed, so I recommend you only follow him, whenever you need to immerse yourself in an ongoing story.
The things going on in Turkey are so insane, they have to be seen to be believed.
EDIT: His YouTube playlist with videos of the clashes: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zvUktDH-OBM&list=PLPC0Ude....
Or at least that's how it started.
The Occupy Movement was a global one, with protests in over 80 countries. It started there, but it wasn't just a Wall St. thing.
Yes, Occupy was global. I don't know who from where knows how much about it. I was answering a question about why someone might be confused by usage of the term "occupy" when it was unclear whether it was an "Occupy"-brand event vs "hey let's go occupy this space to save it". I referenced the Wall St. thing precisely because that's where Occupy started.
Besides, http://xkcd.com/1053/
Well, it never has been anything else.
It's not a meme. As long as the people are protesting there, the idiots in the government can't claim they have no problem.
Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops. You are always ultimately responsible for you own actions, and you're also responsible for being associated with bad actions if you stand by quietly when they are going on.
What are you disagreeing with? I didn't state a position on the matter, or at least didn't intend to.
> The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops.
Yes of course; I never stated that it was.
That behavior however, is a predictable occurrence when there is enough anger in a mob and herd mentality kicks in.
OK. But as it did not end peacefully, not really relevant.
> The government escalated the situation when they tear-gassed peaceful protestors.
How is this relevant except to excuse the behaviour? The protesters didn't respond to the escalation by consolidating their resolve and standing their ground, they started destroying random people's property.
> Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
You indicate that the government bear the responsibility for this "bad shit" happening. They might trigger it, in the same way a big row triggers that someone hits someone else.
Edit: I'm pretty sure that what's going on isn't that random peaceful protesters turned violent, but rather that this protest, like most other protests bound to clash with the police, is "anarchist" catnip. These troublemakers will turn up under the guise of being part of a legitimate, peaceful protest, and at the first sliver of police yielding power, they'll let go and start their regular regiment of vandalism and violence. I'm no sure what the best response is for the legitimate peaceful protesters in this case, though.
Usually if protesters are well versed in such tactics the ring of strongest forms the ring around rest of the mass to protect them from interlopers that would give police a provocation they needed to attack the protesters or to delegimitize them.
Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence.
I know this acquaintance had no reason to lie to me, it came up in regular conversation. I don't have any archive material to corroborate but I could try to find something.
Considering that the Turkish government is trying to make the protestors look bad so they have justification for going overboard in their earlier treatment of them, it's more likely that plain-clothes police officers looted those stores and overturned the cars.
When something violent and destructive happens, look at who did the last such thing.
It's nice to see that the fight against heroin prohibition is being fought in Turkey too!
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22744728 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22744895 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740506 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-20028295 http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22740038
Why would you say something so absolute with out even checking? Are you one of those weirdo instant BBC haters?
Most citizens never hear about it until it's too late because it's not easy to find out about the latest zonings. Trying to have a say in the process? Well, that's a whole new level of obfuscation.
The process is confusing for a reason: to keep concerned citizens like you and me out.
What is happening in Istanbul is happening here too.
The horror!
Educate yourself on urban sprawl and "smart growth": http://www.smartgrowth.org
It is sad to see how many higher density proposals are squelched because they don't fit the vision of Smart Growth planners, or because the developers don't have multiple years worth of cash flow behind them to support the permitting process, public approval process, and zoning approvals process. Oh, and if you happen to want to have small scale low impact manufacturing (such as clothes manufacturing) instead of Mid-Scale retail or B-Class Office space...good luck waiting another few years for the Smart Growth planners to determine if your appeal is "smart" enough for them. These barriers to entry are how Smart Growth developers (like Paul Allen's Vulcan Real Estate) end up owning entire neighborhoods (like Seattle's South Lake Union).
Manhattan was almost completely built out, with an extremely diverse and interesting landscape, long before the planners took over. There is no need for them and their vision.
Thousands of people of all ages gathered without any formal notice, just by friend to friend, neighbour to neighbour; didn't allow provocation; resisted days of assault; assured the security of the park; almost all of the other big cities supported by protesting; protesters cleaned up their own mass, junks collected;
I guess this is a simple description without political adds.
I should note that Hürriyet is historically quite unfriendly to Erdoğan; in particular (IIRC) it raised quite a bit of noise when Doğan Holdings, which owns Hürriyet, underwent tax fraud investigations that may have been politically motivated.
[1] for example: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/1fi07t/im_so_conf...
(from saurik's comment)
It might very well be sort of 'we are going to kill this park one way or the other' type of situation. Once all the trees are dead, they could properly develop the park with relatively few protests.
It is insane, of course, but it seems that some governments are prepared to do absolutely anything to their citizens so long as they think they can get away with it and while they usually can get away with it they also have no understanding that getting away with these kinds of things are like a cliff-drop: you can go closer and closer to the edge and then you go one step too far and the entire thing unravels.
Usually at this point the governments try to oppress them a little more, rather than back away, and that is when the real explosion happens.
A chemical weapons expert interviewed by a Swedish newspaper said that it is unlikely that Turkey actually used agent orange. They do refer to it Orange Gas but I don't know if that is actually different from Agent Orange?
http://www.dn.se/nyheter/varlden/polisen-anvander-kemiska-st... Unfortunately only available in Swedish, but Google translate should make it at least somewhat readable.
I'd find it hard to believe that anything closely resembling it is used by any sane police force, that seems like it would be classified as chemical warfare?
Why would Turkey resort to chemical warfare when they don't have to, why risk the wrath of the international community when you can 'just' use tear gas and such?
> > It is incredibly toxic and forbidden by the UN after the horrific effects it had on both the Vietnamese and Americans exposed to it.
It's not forbidden by the UN, the active ingredient is 2,4-D and is the 3rd most used herbicide in america.
The other ingredient 2,4,5-T is non toxic, but making it commonly contaminates it with the very toxic 2,3,7,8.
I still haven't heard anything about it actually being used there, but would that seem at all reasonable to you? A police force that uses tear gas and don't want to kill people, would they plausibly use such a derivative for the same purpose?
When they say it's a derivative, they most probably mean that they saw something orange, and that is why they call it Agent Orange. Unfortunately, the average person seeing teargas is fairly ignorant about chemistry and biology. It makes no sense to spread a herbicide in a demonstration. It is harmful in the long term but has no impact on people in the short term, thus is just no use in that situation.
Agent Orange was called AO because the containers it came in had an orange strip. The substance itself is colourless, just like the same herbicides today. And is not particularly toxic to humans, the problem in Vietnam was trace amounts of dioxin in manufacturing the 2,4,5-T component.