With respect and love and rage for Ethem Sarısülük, who was shot dead by police in the resistance act of Kızılay, Ankara, June, 1, 2013 Th...
With respect and love and rage for Ethem Sarısülük, who was shot dead by police in the resistance act of Kızılay, Ankara, June, 1, 2013
They are still calling it “a matter over a few trees,” and they are still bullying people.
Demolishing Gezi Park was not enough, he, Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan is now saying he shall demolish the mall that he decided to be built there; and instead, there will be both an opera building and a mosque. “I have my permit, my voters voted me for this,” he shouts… And he adds: “I won’t beg permission for this from a bunch of pillagers…”
So, he is still not comprehending or still not willing to comprehend that what caused the rise of hundreds of thousands people is not “a few trees,” but his self-opinionated attitude.
Or, perhaps, comprehending what caused this does not serve his purpose.
Tayyip Erdoğan is not just a politician who, using solely his position of power, attempts to appropriate his Islamic references to whole society, and therefore to shape and order the lives of people according to conservative-and-sacrosanct values.
He is that, but also he is a man of capital who worships the free market economy and neo-liberal capitalism, sworn to integrate the whole 776 thousand square kilometer square land that is Turkey into the global market.
In his greedy mind, the mosques and the shopping malls, the religious community and finance, and the religious service and the profit are intertwined.
Therefore, with a ruler in one hand, he measures our lives according to what he deems to be holy, and with his other hand, he leaves the door of our living space open to the plunder of capital.
Quoting the famous Sufi Poet Yunus Emre, “I love the created because of the Creator”, he puts in force a regime of vicious sub-contractors that causes the impoverishment and insecurity of “the created,” causing them to work until death for less than little with no future, hanging by the thread on the whims of an employer.
Quoting the will of the Prophet, “To be proud of the numbers of Ummah [the religious,]” he orders the women to “give birth to at least three children,” and transforms their children into cheap labor force for the ambitious Anatolian capital.
Saying “Green is a boon,” he turns parks and gardens and forests into benefits available to companies, later to adorn cities with imported trees.
In a fire sale, Erdogan lets go of the water of the land, and pipes it into the “partisan” energy companies of various size that he himself let flourish.
Perhaps taking inspiration from the saying of Prophet Mohammed, “Allah loves subjects tired of working for halal bread,” Erdogan, with all his might, is working round the clock to increase the shares of Islamic capital from the neo-liberal plunder.
And all the while, Erdogan expects the impoverished, the plundered, and those with constantly lowered life standards to be in standing ovation for the bones thrown at their feet, or instead, at least watch him with drowsy eyes and shrug off.
This time, he went wrong…
Was it the onslaught of the riot police, covered in steel from head to toe, against the kids on night watch for the trees, or the attack of the machines scooping off the trees while the police gassed down the kids and unearthed their tents?
In other words, was it the lust of the greedy capital to swallow the last park, the last haven of the Istanbul plebs, where the students hid skipping school, where naïve lovers meet, where the retired meet to play a few games of backgammon, where the homeless sleep in summer, and where the vagrant have fun drinking their cheap wine in hiding? Was it this that caused people to rise up?
Or was it the awareness of this last place in the heart of Istanbul without concrete was about to be ripped off from them forever (be it for Barracks, or for a mall, or for a museum,) and they were about to be exiled from their last land?
Or was it the viciousness of the way the young women and men whose only crime was to play guitar and sing songs to protect their space were smitten down with water cannons, gas and batons?
Or perhaps it was the distribution of stolen living spaces to international capital, or it was the sub-contractors, the unemployment, the interventions towards different lifestyles, or the PM imitating a self-opinionated Sultan, or the police regime practiced under a hypocritically called advanced democracy, the corruption, or the whimsical arrests on the wee small hours of the day to be kept behind bars for years without ever seeing the courtroom, or the recklessness in which the country was step by step dragged into the swamp of the Middle-East…
Were these the cause of this unexpected collective explosion of anger that trickled into a pool?
Probably, a mixture of all of the above. And yet, an Anotolian ¡Ya basta!...
The most important quality of this reaction, publicized among citizens through social media, via SMS, talks in haste, and beating pots and pans, is its spontaneity.
And also another important quality is that it is multi-faceted. And so, a coalition of discontent, from all walks of life, and all of a sudden sprang into action: the hopeless young urban poor running to city centers from the suburbs; the workers imprisoned to subcontracted and disorganized labor and killed one by one in work murders; the football fanatics whose only joy in life is a cup of cheap beer at the corner pubs; the women whose bodies are considered debits to the state by Erdogan’s creepy claim that “Every abortion is Roboskî;” the students whose arms and legs were broken by riot police and gassed down on every occasion; the artists whose creative activities are pinned down with the zealous control of the market and the bureaucracy of religious community; the seculars and atheists who fear that their life styles are under threat; the environmentalists who helplessly fight against the pillaging of the urban and the environment; Alevis who are cast off as others at every occasion, whose believes are belittled, and living an anxious existence under the threat of Turkey’s possible military intervention to the Middle East.
If there are those take a glance at this spontaneously organized attempt and wish for a thing like the coup d’etat of May 27, 1960 happening again, they are waiting in vain. Those who take it to streets; those who capture the squares inch by inch, clashing with the police for hours and days, despite the tons of gas that rain on them; those who barricade the roads; those who bandage each other’s wounds; or those who support them by leaning down from the windows almost to a fall and clamoring with hitting pots and pans; those shopkeepers who open the doors of their establishments to those affected by gas, wounded and give away sandwiches, bagels, water and lemonades; and students of medicine who rush to the aid of those hit by gas bombs under makeshift infirmaries; and the lawyers who wait before the Police HQs to retrieve the arrested…
These are no one’s soldiers. In fact, for most of them, the word “soldier” invokes the eerie memories of the bloody and dark days of recent history.
They are ordinary people reacting towards the possession of their living spaces little by little by giant capital, who yearn for a life to which neither state nor the religion interferes on behalf of any holy value, who yearn for a life that becomes an honorable human person, and for a life that is free, brotherly and equal.
How do I know this? I know this since they possess the ability to transform this monumental reaction into a festive scene of liberty. I know this since they, excitedly, rush their wounded friends to cafes-turned-into-infirmaries. I know this since they become friends, free and easy, with comrades who were former strangers. I know this since there are young women among them in plenty, and I know this since they are determined not to retreat a step back. I know this since there is this puckish smile on their faces while throwing a stone at a police or running away from a cloud of gas. I know this since even when causing havoc, they consciously select the targets of their rage: CCTVs, kiosks of municipality, and ATMs… But, for example, not bookstores, groceries, cafes, and restaurants.
No, they are not soldiers of anyone.
This explosion is due the anger of those ordinary people who just want to live humanely: This anger is historical and strong. Its spontaneity and sincerity is both its strength and weakness. With its insistence, its boldness, and its persistence, astonishing even to the protestors, this movement is strong. Yet, its unorganized body, aware to the forces it faces, but unable to formulate what it wants, is its weakness.
There is now a historical mission for revolutionaries and socialists, in order not to get yet another disappointing result, to reveal the liberal, egalitarian and fraternal potential of this solid anger. We all owe this to Ethem Sarısülük shot dead by police bullet at the resistance of June 1.
This historical mission is upon their shoulders, to quote the poet Orhan Veli, in order not to “Stare at the wake of a departing ship,” or in other words, in order not to miss a big opportunity, once again.
June 2, 2013
Ankara
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