On this day in 2013, Turkish protesters began occupying Gezi Park to oppose its demolition, an act with led to widespread protests and strikes with approximately 3,500,000 participants, 22 deaths, and more than 8,000 injuries.

The wave of civil unrest across Turkey began after the park occupation was violently evicted by police, who used to tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons to try and break up the protests, injuring more than one hundred people and hospitalizing a journalist.

The protest quickly grew in size - by May 31st, 10,000 gathered in Istiklal Avenue. In June, the protests became national in scope and transcended any particular demographic or political ideology. Among the wide range of concerns brought by protesters were issues of freedom of the press, expression, and assembly, as well as the alleged political Islamist government's erosion of Turkey's secularism.

Millions of Turkish football fans, normally divided by intense sports rivalry, marched in unity against the government. Protesters displayed symbols the environmentalist movement, rainbow banners, depictions of Che Guevara, different trade unions, and the PKK and its leader Abdullah Öcalan.

On June 4th, Taksim Dayanışması (Taksim Solidarity) issued a set of demands that included the preservation of Gezi Park, an end to police violence, the right to freedom of assembly, and an end to the privatization of public spaces. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç met the group on June 5th and rejected these demands.

Erdoğan blamed the protests on "internal traitors and external collaborators", demonizing his political opposition as the former. Despite the popular mobilization, Erdoğan remained in power and no major concessions were won from the government.

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  • SeventyTwoTrillion [he/him]
    ·
    6 months ago

    sometimes I love just refreshing the main page and looking at the taglines, especially the ones from people with Hexbear Derangement Syndrome

    "Please note that though hexbear.net claims to be “leftist,” their users’ primary focus is spreading right wing propaganda via strawman and red herring tactics, usually in swarms."

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    "Hexbear really are GOP advocates, I personally think they’re a small community that has been prodded along and mentored by Pro-CCP foreign agents, bots, and bad faith actors to create political divide and discord while also increasing support of the CCP and their immediate allies, but that’s all just armchair theorizing at this point."

    there's just something about liberal psychoanalysis that never fails to make me smile

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    us: "I think the guy putting trade restrictions on Chinese green technology and not doing anything to constrain American fossil fuel industries might not actually care very much about the environment"

    libs: "aha, so, my body language analysis of the Hexbear menace has revealed that they are an LLM psyop invented by a joint campaign by the GOP, Russia, China, and North Korea to spread propaganda on the lemmyverse"