The other side of protests in Turkey

For the last couple of days, because of the protests that were triggered by redevelopment plans of a park in Istanbul's Taksim Square, I have been asked many times whether this could be the flame of a "Turkish Spring". Once again, things about Turkey are blown out of proportion and misrepresented with distorted information. To begin with, it is simply not fair to compare Turkey—a democratic and secular country—with the Arab countries where people fought for their democratic rights, equality and freedoms via protests to free themselves from tyrannical regimes. For one thing, the AK Party has been re-elected for the third time; each time, they have increased their share of the vote—a unique situation in the Turkish Republic's history, and arguably, a rare situation in the worldwide political arena. What is more, it was the Turkish public who asked PM Erdogan to modify the current term-limit regulations so that he can serve as PM for another term. As a matter of fact if there were elections today, PM Erdogan would very likely win the vote by 70%. So the inferences are inaccurate and disingenuous reflections. It is like trying to judge the whole of Turkey by just looking outside your window opening to a narrow street. It is important to remember that Turkey’s population is 76 million, and Turkey's dynamic and public opinion cannot be framed with some protests of provocative fractions. The system in Turkey is based on democracy, and everyone in Turkey has the right to express his/her views freely, as well as to hold a peaceful protest rally within the boundaries of laws. However no democratic system gives the power to those who resort to violence. Thus, if there is meaningful discontent with the current government, then the people can vote to change the government very soon. Every four years elections are duly held in Turkey and the Turkish nation makes its choice by exercising their democratic rights; consequently the government will not resign simply because some people say so or conduct undemocratic, unlawful, violent actions. The events in the Taksim Park area involved two groups; yes, there were people who were sincerely alarmed, assuming the greenspace would be harmed. For that reason, the public should have been better informed about the redevelopment plans. The municipality should have stressed that the uprooted trees would have been taken and planted elsewhere and that no harm would be done to them. In fact, the new project would have more trees than the current park. What is more, the AK party government has forested a 900,000 hectare area and there is continuous effort to increase the green area; just for Istanbul alone, one million square meters of new, active greenspaces are added every year. On the other hand, for some others it was used as another excuse to create clashes with the police, and cause a scene. As a matter of fact, within the last couple of days, because of the violent protestors 26 policemen were injured and one is in a coma. Can this be love for trees? If the protestors did this for the love of trees, what about love for their fellow man? They have thrown heavy stones, balls with nails driven into them at policemen; they have burned streets, buses, demolished stores, ripped up paving stones. People who love trees and make peaceful protests do not spill blood, spread terror and vandalize public or private property. What happened was some communist groups' vandalizing the streets and buildings and spreading false rumors in order to whip people up. It was definitely not about parks or greenspace, though the protest action started off in that way; it ended by being hijacked by chronic malcontents. Police reacted to stone-throwing protesters by firing tear gas and the use of water cannon and in some cases fiercely to be frank. The excessive force of the police should be—and will be—investigated as Turkish officials have already stated. However some on the far-left in Turkey love to create an uproar and clash with the police whenever they can. One can easily see the flags of communist and illegal factions being openly displayed in these events. Actually what they did was just to follow the teachings of Lenin. Communists are at most 50,000 out of the 76 million population of Turkey. Just like the majority cannot oppress the minority, the minority cannot oppress the majority either. However some on the political left are engaging in aggression that comes from the frustrating knowledge they can never come to power by democratic means. Sinem Tezyapar is a political analyst. https://twitter.com/SinemTezyapar The views expressed by the author do not necessarily represent or reflect the editorial policy of Arabstoday.