Donnerstag, 7. November 2013

Tear Gas & Twitter in Taksim - An anarchist eyewitness analysis from Gezi Park, Istanbul

Tear gas is a very good place to start trying to understand what is happening in Turkey. The main purpose of tear gas is to terrorise and thus break up large crowds of people. In Istanbul over the last weeks huge quantities have been used over and over to prevent large anti-government demonstrations developing.

This wasn't about 'riot control' - generally there was no riot to control. In this piece I'm going to put the Gezi park revolt in the context of the cycle of struggles that began in 2010 and of the specific economic, politcal and historical situation of the Turkish republic to try and draw out the lessons for all of us fighting global capitalism.

The first time I was gassed I was taking a photo of four American tourists in Taksim square, they in turn were snapping a self portrait using an iPad 2. A tranquil scene with the other people in view chatting and holding hands. From where I was standing near the Ataturk monument you couldn't see a single cop. Yet without warning tear gas canisters suddenly came raining down on every part of the huge square, a use designed to create a panicked stampede. On Mayday 1977 42 people had died in Taksim square and hundreds were injured after snipers created a panicked stampede by firing into that year’s Mayday demonstration. Perhaps because of that history - which would be as familiar as Bloody Sunday in Ireland or Kent State in the USA - the reaction of the crowd to that massive tear gas attack was very disciplined, people retreated slowly.