Question: Why protest are so serious and widespread? Is that true that in fact people are protesting against islamisation of Turkey, not destroying of Gezi park?
Answer: The Gezi Park protest have brought together a huge range of civil society groups from “Muslim against Capitalism” to the “Women’s Collective” to much more sober organizations like the Architects’ Association and Kurdish groups. While people were originally protesting to protect Gezi Park from destruction to rebuild Ottoman era barracks, the hundreds of thousands who have come into the streets are doing it for many more reasons including to show their rejection of the use of excessive force by police, the increasingly authoritarian style of Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, a rash of new laws that are seen as intervening in people’s lifestyles, and real concerns about massive urbanization plans.
Many of the people in the Istanbul protests are young upper middle class graduates who often are committed to seeing Turkey remain a secular state. But I wouldn’t say that this is a clash between religious pious and secularists. Plenty of religiously minded people in Turkey believe that the state should not be influenced by religion. And in the protests you also see covered women, as well as posters defending the rights of Alevis who represent a strong minority.
I think that one of the main reasons that the protests have become so widespread is that people are feeling frustrated that they have little ability to affect how their local communities are run. This started as a protest over a park which the Prime Minister felt he needed to take the final decision about. Is the renovation of Taksim square really a Prime Ministerial competence? In Turkey however power is highly centralized and mayors, with a few exceptions, are generally quite weak.
Question: How strong is the social base of protestors-opposition? Does opposition like CHP and other parties try to move protests to the political field - to the Parliament, etc ?
Answer: So far the CHP and MHP have been completely unable to capture the public’s imagination. Even some of their previous supporters see them as old-fashioned, male-dominated, lacking any vision on how to sustain the country’s economic growth and unable to project a confident role for Turkey in an increasingly volatile region. The two parties have kept a low profile during the Taksim protests in an effort to stem any accusations that they were trying to manipulate them for electoral gains, but also because they must have realized that they would be unwelcome by many of the protestors. It is highly unlikely that the CHP and MHP will be able to translate the dissatisfaction being expressed in the street into political gain.
The protestors have not yet moved their focus to the political field though local elections are expected in March 2014, presidential in August and parliamentary ones in 2015. But as Abdullah Bozkurt argues in Today’s Zaman on 11 June, the three elections may all be held together in summer 2014 to increase the governing party’s advantage. In any case, on the electoral playing field political alternatives are much weaker than in Taksim Square.
Question: What is the role of civil society and social media in these disorders?
Answer: Civil society and social media is playing a huge role in these protests. They have filled the gap left by weak political parties and where trust in the traditional media has plummeted. Initially Taksim events were not even covered by the main TV channels. While CNN Turk was showing stories on dolphins and penguins CNN International was live at the square. After Prime Minister Erdogan landed in Istanbul, six newspapers ran a similar headline in his support. Even before this media failure, Turkey was estimated to have some 50 journalists in jail, there were frequent defamation claims by politicians against journalists and growing self-censorship. The owners’ of the main media outlets tend to protect first their business and economic interests, and only secondly focus on impartiality and accuracy in reporting
Question: How strong is the social base of Erdogans party? Do ordinary people support him?
Answer: Yes Erdogan’s base remains very strong – he probably still has at least half the country supporting him.
Question: Is it possible that army can interfere to the situation? How strong is influence of AKPA in the Army? Can we tell that Erdogan could arrest all generals who could move troops against him or make a pressure by means of political statements?
Answer: No, developments today clearly show that PM Erdogan and his party have succeeded in guaranteeing civilian control of the military. It’s a big success for democracy in Turkey. -2В-
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