The real picture, if not quite Tahrir or Deraa, is certainly worse than Zuccotti. "Occupy Gezi transformed from what felt like a festival, with yoga, barbecues, and concerts, into what feels like a war - with barricades, plastic bullets, and gas attacks," wrote Elif Batuman in The New Yorker. So far, three people are dead across the country, one of them in Hatay province; which, given its already precarious role as the triage center of the Syrian revolution, cannot really afford further bloodshed or social boat-rocking. Over 1,000 people have been detained by the so-called "Robocops" of the Turkish gendarmerie. According to the Turkish Medical Association (as of Tuesday), close to 3,200 have been injured, and two dozen are in serious or critical condition. At least half a dozen have been blinded by rubber bullets. Tear and pepper gas have enveloped much of Istanbul, and canisters have even been shot into emergency rooms of hospitals treating patients for respiratory ailments, due to prior exposure to these chemicals. Water cannons have been unleashed against the elderly, including some women whom AKP officialdom have deemed in their conservative wisdom "decent" in appearance (for my lira, the best dispatch from Istanbul is Claire Berlinski's in City Journal.)
As is always the case in popular revolts, all of the old scandals and animosities have percolated quickly to the surface, even if accidentally. One journalist who had previously been imprisoned for reporting on the Gulenist infiltration of the police force, was hit in the head with a gas canister - reminding international onlookers of Turkey's status as the worst jailer of independent journalists. Also, one of the documented fatalities from the last few days was 20 year-old Mehmet Ayvalitas, who was run over by a taxi. Ayvalitas was apparently a member of the leftist cyber-group RedHack, which recently published classified state documents about the twin car bombings last month in Reyhanli, Hatay province, a terrorist attack undoubtedly linked to Syria, which killed 51 people. Only 28 percent of Turks believe that Erdogan's handling of the nightmare on his southern border has been sensible.
While justice is severely in question, no one denies the development aspect of AKP's remit. Gezi Park has become a synecdoche for the crony capitalist construction that has helped triple Turkey's GDP. As mayor of Istanbul, Erdogan was trailed by allegations that he made a personal fortune from kickbacks and douceurs from party-affiliated businessmen. "AKP enrich their own," Aliza Marcus, a Turkey scholar, told me. She noted that when it comes to construction permits, things tend to happen in about two weeks whereas weightier matters of state, such as Turkish constitutional reform, can miss multiple deadlines.
No doubt a subconscious memory of the former mayor's Tammany-style dealmaking, has attended Istanbul's reaction to the barracks renovation (now cancelled), as well as a host of other controversial efforts to refashion a fun-loving cosmopolis into a pious, neo-Ottoman Olympic village. Tarlabasi, a working-class district home to many Kurds who relocated there after being driven out of the Turkish southeast by the state's now-rescinding war with the PKK, was subject to an urban renewal scheme founded on a wobbly interpretation of eminent domain that forced homeowners to sell at below-market rates to a development company headed by Erdogan's son-in-law. Renters mainly had to move again, this time to apartments 20 miles away from the city center.
For Erdogan, good things in Istanbul apparently come in threes, such as airports and bridges. He once thought another piece of infrastructure over the Bosphorus would mean "massacring the remaining green areas" in the city; now he not only favors the bridge but intends to name it for a 16th-century sultan who massacred Turkey's remaining Alevi population. "He insulted 15 million right there," my friend Ilhan Tanir, Vatan's Washington correspondent, said.
David Gardner of the Financial Times was clearly right when he observed: "Another way of looking at the AKP is as a party of building contractors, who have never seen anything they did not want to build, and have grown accustomed to bulldozing anything in their path."
Except that parks, trees, and low-income housing aren't the only things that got razed. Turkey is now vibrantly alive to the fact, while the Tribune of Anatolia scorns the plight and aspirations of the common citizen.
