On Friday, May 31, Turkish riot police fired tear gas and pepper spray into a peaceful protest held to save Gezi Park, one of the last green areas in central Istanbul. This set off the biggest civil uprising in the history of the Turkish Republic, calling for Prime Minister Erdogan’s resignation. The unrest has spread like wildfire to more than 60 cities where protests are still ongoing. Vice landed in Istanbul the day it all kicked off.
Chaos, violence and anti-government anger continue on the streets of Turkey as protesters to defy the prime minister’s demand to pack up and go home. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan warned protesters that he will ‘not show any more tolerance’ for them while the streets of Istanbul continue to look more like scenes from a civil war.
Members of Turkey’s State Opera and Ballet hold a dance protest in Ankara in solidarity with demonstrators occupying Gezi Park in Istanbul. One protestor explained that dancing on stage was the only way they could express themselves, saying: “The ground is our stage, and it is the only place that we can express ourselves.”
Music also factors heavily in “Everyday I’m Capuling,” a video produced by the protesters to express their cause. “Capuling” is a Turkish term meaning to pillage or plunder. Protesters adopted the term after Turkish Prime Minister Recip Tayyip Erdogan referred to them as “looters.”
The Turkish government apparently wants to appease protesters so they go home but at the moment, there seems no reason why they should. Lindsey Hilsum, International Editor for Great Britain’s Channel 4, reports on the protests in Istanbul.
Tulin Daloglu, columnist at Al-Monitor’s Turkey Pulse, sizes up the anti-government protests that have spread from Taksim Square in Istanbul to more than 60 provinces. Daloglu offers a personal, eyewitness perspective, speaking not only as a journalist but also a former candidate who ran for a seat in the Turkish parliament in 2002 as a member of the New Turkey Party.
Police in Paris, France, have charged a 30-year old, Turkish-born Kurdish man with the murders of three activists from the Turkish Kurdistan Worker’s Party — or PKK – who were shot dead earlier this month. The motivations for the execution-style shootings are still unclear.
The pointblank murder of Kurdish activist Sakine Cansiz in Paris last week has called into question whether it’s the PKK or Turkish hit squads who deserve to be brandished as terrorist organizations. Cansiz was killed along with two other female activists at a Kurdish information center in Paris on Thursday, in an attack the French authorities called an execution. The news of the deaths has outraged Kurds, who claim the killings were political assassinations.
A hockey match turns into a no-holds-barred melee in Erzurum, Turkey. Alongside these young Turks, the NHL players are just pussycats. H/T Blazing Cat Fur
Ruchir Sharma, head of the Emerging Markets Equity team at Morgan Stanley Investment Management, says China, Brazil, Russia and South Africa might have reached a plateau in growth, and that India has no more than a 50 percent chance of sustaining its good performance. So which countries will become breakout nations, maintaining high growth or exceeding expectations in the coming years?
Sharma identifies four prospects — Turkey and Indonesia, two Muslim democracies, have strong credentials to become the next breakout nations. And in Europe, he sees the top two candidates as being Poland and the Czech Republic. He projects a mixed outlook for the United States, saying innovation and entrepreneurship could help the nation to beat expectations, but we have pressing current problems that demand attention. H/T CATO Institute
Bulgarian filmmaker Mimi Chakarova has spent a decade and traveled to nine countries researching and shooting her documentary The Price of Sex, following the trails of destitute Eastern European women duped into serving as prostitutes in the Middle East and Europe. Here are two excerpts, featuring interviews with women held hostage at brothels in Turkey and the United Arab Emirates.
