“Protests in Turkey Reveal a Larger Fight Over Identity” is an article run by the New York Times. The article examines the background of the recent protests in Istambul, which started over the plans to demolish a park in the center of the city.
“Anger and resentment boiled over onto the street over the past three days, as the police barraged demonstrators with tear gas and streams from water cannons — and as the protesters attacked bulldozers and construction trailers lined up next to the last park in the city’s center,” the article says.
“In full public view, a long struggle over urban spaces is erupting as a broader fight over Turkish identity, where difficult issues of religion, social class and politics intersect. And while most here acknowledge that every Turkish ruling class has sought to put its stamp on Istanbul, there is a growing sense that none has done so as insistently as the current government, led by Mr. Erdogan’s Islamist-rooted Justice and Development Party, despite growing resistance,” the article claims.
“We would not yield to a few looters coming to that square and provoking our people, our nation, based on their misinformation,” the newspapers quotes Mr. Erdogan’s speech that managed to feel provocative even as he called for a return to order, and as protesters returned to Taksim Square. Demonstrators also took to the streets of Ankara, the capital, and several other cities and were met with tear gas from the police.
“Mr. Erdogan’s decade-long rule has dramatically reshaped Turkey’s culture by establishing civilian control of the military. It has broken down rules of the old secular order that now permit the wide public expression of religion.. His rule has also nurtured a pious capitalist class, whose members have moved in large numbers from rural Anatolia to cities like Istanbul, deepening class divisions.
The old secular elite, who consider themselves the inheritors of the legacy of Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, modern Turkey’s secular founder, have chafed under these transformations. So, too, have liberals, who do not label themselves Kemalists and are tolerant of public displays of religion. But they object to Mr. Erdogan’s leadership style, which they describe as dictatorial, and are put off by many of the development projects on the grounds of bad taste, a view imbued with a sense of social elitism,” the article reads.
“This is the first battle Erdogan lost in recent memory,” the artcle quotes Soli Ozel, an academic and columnist here. “He overreached — his hubris, arrogance and authoritarian impulse hit a wall.”
“But on Sunday, Mr. Erdogan struck a defiant chord, and while he said no shopping mall would be built in Taksim, he vowed to build another mosque in the square,” the article concludes.
