bakshow1 YouTube Channel video: Overview of Gezi Park protests in Istanbul and government's clumsy and heavy-handed response, as seen via Al Jazeera News' English-language service. Uploaded May 31, 2013. http://youtu.be/-MZpzPeeKOk
Taksim Istanbul
by Its me, your Dani June 1st, 2013 15:57
Well, as so often seems to be the case, Swedish model and blogger Dani Karlsson, of "It's me, your Danni" fame, recently in Miami, has found herself in the middle of everything yet again.
I mean really in the right place at the right time.
This week, in the middle of the mass protests by Turkish citizens, chiefly in Istanbul, who don't want the government to chop down some much-needed shade trees and level parts of Gezi Park, a spot of green amongst acres and acres of concrete, merely to indulge their edifice complex instincts and do some redevelopment in a place where it's both inappropriate and unpopular, though there's no accounting for taste among visiting tourists.
Tens of thousands of regular citizens participated there and eslewhere in Turkey.
And in the case of the former, received complimentary tear gas and water cannons for their troubles.
Dani, who appears on the popular Metromode blogging platform, has lots of photos of her
protest experience at http://dani.metromode.se/2013/06/01/occupy-taksim/
The BBC's take on the government's heavy-handed reaction and the police over-reaction, is interesting:
Correspondents say that what was initially a local issue has spiralled into widespread anti-government unrest and anger over the perceived "Islamisation" of Turkey.
One woman told Agence France-Presse: "They want to turn this country into an Islamist state, they want to impose their vision all the while pretending to respect democracy."http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-europe-22741644
Meanwhile, Channel 4 News has their own take here.
Channel 4 News video: Turkey protests: police fire tear gas on demonstrators
Turkish police fire tear gas and pressurised water at demonstrators on a second day of anti-government action, which was sparked by a protest to protect a park from redevelopment.
SATURDAY 01 JUNE 2013
http://www.channel4.com/news/turkey-protest-police-tear-gas-taksim-square-istanbul-ankara They're chanting, among other things, "shoulder to shoulder against fascism"
In their dispatch from there today, Reuters deals a lot more with the increasingly-seen authoritarian side of the current Turkish Prime Minister and the grave concerns among secular Turks that he is increasingly willing-accomplice in undoing what modern Turkey had become -a small-case democracy with a majority Muslim population within NATO.
If Erdogan keeps it up, he will be initiating the brain drain that's long been feared.
Once that happens, that country will quickly lose its dynamism and become the land of misfits as companies bolt. leaving the dummies behind.
Reuters
Turkish PM Erdogan calls for end to protests as clashes flare
By Nick Tattersall and Humeyra Pamuk
ISTANBUL/ANKARA | Sat Jun 1, 2013 4:23pm EDT
http://www.reuters.com/article/2013/06/01/us-turkey-protests-idUSBRE94U0J920130601
American Thinker
Are the Turkish people finally waking up to 'creeping Islamization'?
By Rick Moran
June 1, 2013
Read more: http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2013/06/are_the_turkish_people_finally_waking_up_to_creeping_islamization.html
