| | | TUĞBA AYDIN
tu.aydın@todayszaman.com | ![]() |
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| | | For a month and a half now Turkey has been feeling the effects of the Gezi Park protests which began as a sit-in at the park in Taksim Square to halt the government's Taksim rejuvenation project and later turned into frictions across the country due to provocateurs and the government's failure to handle the protests. | |
In a recent development, 15 people who were detained on Friday in the fourth wave of police operations connected to the Gezi Park protests were referred to a court in İzmir on Monday. There were detentions in simultaneous early morning home raids in İzmir, Balıkesir, Manisa and Bursa. In the previous three operations in İzmir, a total of 37 protesters were referred to court for arrest. Columnists analyzed the effect of the Gezi Park protests in our country.
According to Taraf columnist Murat Belge, the Gezi Park protests are among the three largest mass demonstrations in Turkey's recent history. The other two include the "One minute of darkness for permanent light" protest after the 1996 Susurluk incident, a car accident that exposed links between the Turkish state, the criminal underworld and security forces, and a march in İstanbul which was participated by tens of thousands of people after Armenian-Turkish journalist Hrant Dink was shot dead outside his newspaper's office in Şişli on Jan. 19, 2007. Belge finds the Gezi Park protests a successful and a righteous movement which was a result of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's determination to shape Turkish people according to his norms.
Bugün's Ahmet Taşgetiren says the Gezi Park protests, whose cause has now shifted away from environmental concerns, left many shopkeepers in Taksim economically disadvantaged due to the damage inflicted by protesters on their shops. Taşgetiren also thinks that some circles used Islam such as holding fast-breaking dinners and celebrating Lailat al-Miraj, also known as Miraç Kandili in Turkish, to legitimize their wrongful actions during the demonstrations and to convince others of the necessity of violent actions in their protests.
Radikal's Koray Çalışkan says the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party), which took a brave step to get rid of the military tutelage, saw the Gezi Park protests as a threat to Erdoğan and could not successfully manage the crisis after the protests. |
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