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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  • mustGo [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
    22·
    1 month ago

    I started reading Settlers. The first chapter was an easy enjoyable read, making clear points, citing Marx multiple times, not using many and difficult or outdated words. Here is a well formatted epub. Sadly the archive.org scans are as always a mess in epub.

    The first chapter had a class analysis of early settler society and listed how all branches of it’s economy tied into slavery, supplying ships for the slave trade and contracting slave work from slave-owners.

    Here is a quote that I liked

    When we point out that Amerika was the most completely bourgeois nation in world history, we mean a four-fold reality:
    (1) Amerika had no feudal or communal past, but was constructed from the ground up according to the nightmare vision of the bourgeoisie.
    (2) Amerika began its national life as an oppressor nation, as a colonizer of oppressed peoples.
    (3) Amerika not only has a capitalist ruling class, but all classes and strata of Euro-Amerikans are bourgeoisified, with a preoccupation for petty privileges and property ownership the normal guiding star of the white masses.
    (4) Amerika is so decadent that it has no proletariat of its own, but must exist parasitically on the colonial proletariat of oppressed nations and national minorities. Truly, a Babylon “whose life was death.”

    Especially this

    Amerika […] was constructed from the ground up according to the nightmare vision of the bourgeoisie.

      • mustGo [any]@hexbear.netEnglish
        9·
        1 month ago

        So far it’s mostly in the context of the 16-18 hundreds. Most owned the means of production and had non-euro-americans work them. Or had realistic prospects to do so soon. Which is a strong differentiation from other countries.