Tuesday - June 11, 2013

I Shall Not Submit

On the one side, the modern urban people of Turkey, a secular nation with close ties to Europe.

On the other side, Obama’s buddy, the pro-Islamic Prime Minister Erdogan, closely allied with the Muslim Brotherhood, who wants to make Turkey once again a bit of the caliphate and bring Sharia law to the nation. Secular laws have been eaten away, journalists have been jailed, and for 10 years he has pushed and pushed to take modern Turkey back to the 7th Century and turn it into some kind of mini-Saudi Arabia.

A day of clashes between protesters and riot police in Istanbul’s Taksim Square suddenly changed dramatically Tuesday when police blanketed the area with massive clouds of tear gas and shot water cannons.

Tens of thousands in the square fled, while some in Gezi Park, which was also hit by tear gas canisters, chanted and launched fireworks in defiance.

Soon the square, home to days of protests over what demonstrators call an increasingly authoritarian government, was filed with chaos. Hugely loud bangs echoed through the area—likely the result of stun grenades. Thousands packed back into Taksim Square, surrounding a large bonfire that they were fueling with whatever they could pick ups.

Prime Minister Recept Tayyip Erdogan’s government had said it would allow protesters to remain in Gezi Park as long as they were peaceful. But CNN’s Arwa Damon, inside the park, saw police shoot tear gas canisters in Tuesday.

“There’s a spirit of determination” and “solidarity” in the park, Damon said. Throughout the day, protesters had called on each other to try to keep things calm and to keep protests peaceful.

The assault on the area marked a return to the more heavy-handed tactics Turkish authorities used in the earlier days of the protests.

The protests at first had focused on the environment—opposition to a plan to build a mall at the park—but quickly grew into a battle against Erdogan’s democratically elected government.

Protesters had built a new barrier earlier Tuesday and lobbed Molotov cocktails at armored vehicles and burned one. Police responded by spraying water cannons.

In a game of cat-and-mouse, the demonstrators, using wooden boards as shields, would pull back—only to return, lobbing cocktails and firecrackers and flashing “victory” signs.

Live streaming video at Fox News.

Granted, idiotic talking head Schlep Smith on Fox can’t resist trying to call this a “Turkish Spring” and demanding that it’s the same as the protests the other year in Tahir Square in Egypt ... although that’s EXACTLY BACKWARDS from what this is. Egypt was people fighting for a religious government against an existing secular tyrannical one, Turkey is secular people fighting a faux-secular, faux-democratic semi-tyrannical one that WANTS to be islamic. Buy hey, brown people violently protesting the government, so it’s all the same, right?

ISTANBUL — Riot police officers moved into Taksim Square in central Istanbul on Tuesday, firing tear gas grenades and water cannons and enveloping the center of this city with smoke and the sounds of ambulance sirens. The square, which has become a sprawling and eclectic hub of grievance against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, was transformed into a tableau of urban chaos.

The operation took all day and was still in progress as the workday ended, when more protesters began reoccupying the square and police officers cleared it again with tear gas. The scene took on the air of a movie set: fireworks lit by protesters and nonlethal sound bombs set off by the police punctuated the chants of “Istanbul is ours! Taksim is ours!”

At intervals during the day, the police would advance into part of the square, then retreat again to rest, as officers mingled with onlookers, smoked cigarettes or bought snacks from street vendors. Short outbursts of clashes with protesters alternated with intervals of calm, allowing onlookers and tourists to gather in relatively safe spots and watch the action unfold, and then flee down side streets when the tear gas became too thick.

The police advance was far from decisive in quashing the protest movement that has risen to challenge the rule of Mr. Erdogan and his conservative Justice and Development Party, which has roots in political Islam: Gezi Park, whose preservation was the initial focus of the protests, was left alone to its occupiers, who have erected a tent city there and have vowed to stay.

Turkey is a NATO member, and has been since 1952. One of the earlier signs of Erdogan’s influence was Turkey’s denial of allowing the US to use them as an invasion path in the 2003 Gulf War.

Long a Christian nation, the area (also known as Asia Minor and Anatolia) was the second seat of the Roman Empire for 1000 years, an empire known as Byzantium. The end of the Middle Ages began in 1453 when the capital city of Constantinople fell to the forces of jihadi Ottomans, and the place has been called Istanbul ever since. With the entire eastern Med controlled by Islam, the Silk Road between Europe and China was closed, and soon thereafter Christopher Columbus took a few leaky boats and set off to find an alternate route.  The Ottoman Empire, aka The Caliphate, lasted until 1918, and modern Turkey came into being soon thereafter.

Wouldn’t it be funny if the new fight began where the old fight ended? Wouldn’t it just be apt.

Posted by Drew458     on 06/11/2013 at 02:34 PM   
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