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RETIRED MOD
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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2013_protests_in_Turkey
A decent read, people should go through it. The range of protests are too large, for an outsider to gauge what exactly is what the protesters want. A lot has been said about apologies and toning down and being more sensitive to the protests. While these seem to be superficial things to the outside observer, perhaps in Turkish culture they mean a lot.
I would strongly caution all those discussing this subject on PDF to approach the matter with a lot more tact than we've seen in the past couple of weeks. We don't seem to be getting anywhere other than mudslinging matches. Let's all try to calm down a bit, and help each other to calm down too.
In other words. Lets make it a rule - being nice to one another is mandatory.
Turkish security forces fire on protest in southeast, one dead | Reuters
Turkey protests: hundreds set up barricades in Ankara | World news | guardian.co.uk
Protests started in Turkey on 28 May 2013. The protests were sparked by outrage at a brutal eviction of a sit-in at Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park protesting the park's demolition. Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey protesting a wide range of concerns, at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, freedom of expression, freedom of assembly, and the government's encroachment on Turkey's secularism. With no centralised leadership beyond the small organisation organising the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared with the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement, the Revolutions of 1989 and May 1968. After Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan dismissed the protestors as "a few çapulcu" on 2 June, the protestors reappropriated the term çapulcu (looter) for themselves (and coined the derivative "chapulling", given the meaning of "fighting for your rights"). Humor has been the primary "weapon" for the protestors.[64]
A decent read, people should go through it. The range of protests are too large, for an outsider to gauge what exactly is what the protesters want. A lot has been said about apologies and toning down and being more sensitive to the protests. While these seem to be superficial things to the outside observer, perhaps in Turkish culture they mean a lot.
I would strongly caution all those discussing this subject on PDF to approach the matter with a lot more tact than we've seen in the past couple of weeks. We don't seem to be getting anywhere other than mudslinging matches. Let's all try to calm down a bit, and help each other to calm down too.
In other words. Lets make it a rule - being nice to one another is mandatory.
Turkish security forces fire on protest in southeast, one dead | Reuters
(Reuters) - Turkish security forces killed one person and wounded six on Friday when they fired on a group protesting against the construction of a new gendarmerie outpost in Kurdish-dominated southeastern Turkey, officials said.
The incident appeared to be the most violent in the region since a ceasefire declaration by Kurdish militant chief Abdullah Ocalan in March that led to a virtual standstill in the conflict between his Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) and the Turkish state.
Turkey's main pro-Kurdish party called earlier in the day for marches in three major cities this weekend to launch a summer of protests aimed at raising pressure on Ankara to carry out reforms under a peace process with the PKK.
The shooting, which occurred in the village of Kayacik in the Lice district of Diyarbakir province, was likely to stoke tension among the weekend marchers, although leaders stressed the rallies would be peaceful.
Diyarbakir Governor Cahit Kirac said around 200 protesters marched on Friday onto the construction site where the outpost was being built to replace an existing one, with some throwing petrol bombs and setting fire to workers' tents.
"At this point, the soldiers fired warning shots and a riot broke out. There were then reports of one person being killed and six people being wounded, two of them seriously. These reports are not confirmed, we are investigating," Kirac said.
Turkish security sources earlier told Reuters they had a confirmed report of one person killed and seven wounded, but later revised the number of wounded to six.
WEEKEND MARCHES
PKK militants began withdrawing from Turkish territory to bases in northern Iraq last month as part of a deal between the state and Ocalan, imprisoned on an island south of Istanbul since 1999, to end a conflict that has killed 40,000 people.
There has been little evidence of progress this month with public attention focused instead on weeks of unrelated, broader and often violent anti-government demonstrations in cities across Turkey.
But the Peace and Democracy Party (BDP) said the withdrawal was continuing successfully and the process had entered a second stage during which Ankara needed to boost the rights of Kurds, who make up some 20 percent of the 76 million population.
"The government must urgently take the necessary democratic steps, listen to the demands of the people and fulfill the requirements of the second stage," the BDP said in a statement declaring a summer of protest action.
It said it would start with marches on Sunday in Diyarbakir, Mersin and Adana, which were likely to attract thousands of demonstrators. Diyarbakir is the main city in the mainly Kurdish southeast. Mersin and Adana, in the eastern Mediterranean region, have large populations of Kurdish migrants.
Turkish authorities have already had to deal with three weeks of street unrest in cities including Ankara and Istanbul this month in which riot police fired tear gas and water cannon to disperse demonstrators night after night.
The BDP campaign will call for a halt to the construction of military outposts in southeast Turkey, the release of political prisoners, education in Kurdish, lowering of the threshold of 10 percent electoral support required to enter parliament, and the release of Ocalan.
The BDP said it has presented to the government a 25-article proposal on which action needed to be taken urgently.
Turkish media said Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan told a commission of "wise people" advising on the peace process this week that the peace process had still not entered the second stage as only 15 percent of PKK fighters had so far left Turkey.
BDP leader Selahattin Demirtas responded by saying that at least 80 percent of the militants had either left Turkey or were en route to their bases in northern Iraq.
The PKK, designated a terrorist group by Turkey, the United States and European Union, took up arms against the state in 1984 with the aim of carving out a Kurdish state, but subsequently moderated its goal to autonomy.
(Additional reporting by Daren Butler in Istanbul; Writing by Daren Butler and Jonathon Burch; Editing by Nick Tattersall and Mark Heinrich)
Turkey protests: hundreds set up barricades in Ankara | World news | guardian.co.uk
Hundreds of protesters have taken to the streets in a residential area of the Turkish capital, setting up barricades and lighting small bonfires.
Weeks of often violent anti-government protests have mostly died out in Istanbul and the centre of the capital, Ankara, but daily demonstrations have continued in its recently developed working-class Dikmen district.
The protesters, numbering no more than 1,000, blocked Dikmen's main road with makeshift barricades and started small fires late on Wednesday, some chanting anti-government slogans.
Riot police and water cannon trucks initially kept their distance but moved in to disperse the protesters in the early hours, footage from the anti-government channel Halk TV showed.
The images showed police firing at least two rounds of teargas and detaining at least one protester.
Several thousand people had marched through the neighbourhood the previous night in protest at the release pending trial of a policeman accused of shooting and killing a protester this month. Police fired teargas and water cannon to disperse them.
The weeks of protests have highlighted divisions in Turkish society, including between religious conservatives who form the bedrock of support for the prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and more liberal Turks.
Four people were killed in the broader unrest, including one policeman, and about 7,500 wounded with injuries ranging from lacerations to breathing difficulties from teargas inhalation, according to the Turkish Medical Association.
A report by the children's rights group Gündem Çocuk said at least 294 people under the age of 18 had been detained between 28 May and 25 June in relation to the unrest. It said some had been exposed to teargas, pressurised water and percussion bombs and had been beaten by police with batons.
Turkey has come under international criticism for its handling of the protests, which began in late May as peaceful resistance to plans to redevelop an Istanbul park.
The EU rebuked Turkey this week, postponing a new round of membership talks for at least four months.
Erdoğan has held a series of mass rallies across the country since the trouble started, dismissing the protesters as pawns of Turkey's enemies and calling on his supporters to back his party in municipal elections in March.
, I live in Ankara, mate if you go, I don't think that you'll have much problems related with protests. Well, it depents where you are planning to go.
