Tag: gezi

Istanbul United: Istanbul Review

Farid Eslam and Olli Waldhauer document how fanatical soccer fans supporting rival Istanbul teams cast their loyalties aside to fight the Turkish government’s controversial urban redevelopment plans.

Purportedly inspirational films about sports bringing erstwhile antagonistic groups together have been omnipresent on screen for decades: get the ball rolling, as this subgenre goes, and warring soldiers (as in the French first-world-war drama Merry Christmas) or people with contrasting socio-political attitudes (The Blind Side,Invictus) could easily be reconciled. But first-time filmmakersFarid Eslam and Olli Waldhauer have offered a slight twist to the norm, with the documentary actually noting how diehard fans of Istanbul’s three leading soccer teams cast their bitter rivalries aside to join up in protesting against the Turkish government’s urban redevelopment plans.

With its vibrant interviewees, powerful images and an incredible narrative, Istanbul United is a spectacle to behold and a radiant record of the Turkish city’s cultural and social make-up of the present day; making its world premiere at – where else? – the Istanbul International Film Festival, the film is ecstatically received by an audience ever ready to laugh (at the over-the-top fanaticism on show) and jeer (at footage of Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan) during the screening. A crowd-funded crowd-pleaser which manages to set blood boiling and hearts stirring, but non-Istanbullus would find its upbeat united-we-stand message ironically undermined by incomprehensibility, incoherence and in some cases unintended contradictions.

Timed for release just as sports fans ready themselves for the onslaught of the World Cup soccer tournament in Brazil in June, Istanbul United is about soccer and politics. The emphasis is certainly on the former, with the city’s intense club rivalries meticulously delineated – lifelong hardcore supporters of Galatasaray, Fenerbahce and Besiktas are shown hyped up to their eyeballs on the stands, while talking heads of three fan-group leaders’ explanations about their near-fundamentalist attachment to their teams are followed by archive news footage of acts of extreme hooliganism inside and outside stadiums.

It’s not like the three leading interviewees are hooligans, mind, as their recollections about their unyielding commitment to their clubs are laced with remarks about how problems in sports and society converge: Galatasaray fan Kerem Gurbuz muses on how the fans’ communalism could be transformed into a force of good, Fenerbahce ultra Cahat Binici complains about soccer being turned into an industrial, capitalistic machine, and the grey-haired Besiktas’ Ayhan Gunerdescribing his mission of running the Carsi fan faction as “anarchism and rebellion” in action.

These are thoughts left dangling like misplaced passes, enticing opportunities falling on players without a gameplan. Without broadening the discussion by noting how the fans’ fury correlates with social problems, the film abruptly jumps (from a sequence of fans singing foul-mouthed songs on the stands against the opposition team) to last summer’s protests at Gezi Park, in reaction to the government’s plan to replace the whole place with lavish commercial and residential projects. As police brutality against the demonstrators escalates, the soccer fans are seen mobilizing and finally ending up with sworn enemies marching alongside each other in a united front against the establishment.

It’s certainly one of the most extraordinary moments the city has ever witnessed; but Istanbul Unitednever really accounts properly this rare occasion. Rarefied, more like: there was neither build-up to this climactic moment, nor enough explanation about what happened then and what that means for the future. Activists and journalists are heard praising the soccer fans’ efforts as a powerful show of strength against the authorities’ increasing authoritarian tendencies – which in the past few weeks are manifested in Erdogan’s attempts to block Twitter and YouTube in Turkey – but the legacy is not exactly sufficiently explained to those living outside Istanbul.

Eslam and Waldhauer would have delivered closure by ending with the three ultras‘ accounts of their altered perspectives about soccer and society. The film’s denoument, however, is akin to snatching defeat from the jaws of a historic victory by scoring multiple own goals at stoppage time: barely has Binici finished telling a boy to “fight those who sow hate among us” that a group of fellow Fenerbahce fans nearby begin yet another round of expletive-laden songs against their rivals, while patriotism/nationalism rears its head as the national anthem is played out at a Besiktas match, an image risking a signal of everyone returning to old-school reverence towards the state machine. (The absence in the film of the city’s “fourth club”, the Erdogan-worshipping Kasimpasa, should also be noted.)

It’s as if the visceral excitement has come to nowt as a sentimentalized, vague notion takes its place: the early promise of revolutionary change – heightened by fluid camerawork and editing – slowly dissipates. With Erdogan having just attained a handsome triumph in the country’s municipal elections despite constant protests on Istanbul’s high street – along which the festival’s main venues, where Istanbul United made its bow – the same old seems to have taken hold; without properly structuring its decidedly explosive interviews and images – many of which could well be employed as mirroring components, metaphors and so on – Eslam and Waldhauer’s debut is a clarion call but not enough to be a harbinger of a markedly changeable future.

Venue: Istanbul International Film Festival (Documentary Time with NTV section), Apr. 12, 2014

Production Companies: Nippes Yard, Port-au-Prince, ‘D Riot, Taskovski, Vox Pictures

Directors: Farid Eslam, Olli Waldhauer

Producers: Olli Waldhauer, Tina Schoepkewitz, Farid Eslam, Jan Krueger

Director of Photography: Paul Roissant

Editors: Fridolin Koerner, Joerg Offer

International Sales: Nippes Yard, Port-au-Prince

In English and Turkish

88 minutes

April 15, 2014
Turkey’s culture of dissent

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is like a mousetrap salesman; the moment he plugs one hole, the mouse peeks out of the other.

His latest move to block dissent in Turkey is to ban Twitter, but millions of Turkish tweeters have, with characteristic ingenuity, found ways to circumvent this ban.

On the 200th anniversary of Darwin’s birth in 2009, a former Turkish judge at the European Court of Human Rights (ECtHR), Rıza Türmen, noted about the Justice and Development Party (AKP) government, “What they are attempting to achieve today [after coming to power in 2002] is social engineering, a radical transformation of society.”

This includes a reform of the education system, which makes it possible for pupils to attend religious schools (imam-hatip schools) after only four years of primary education, the easing of restrictions on Quran courses and an abolition of the coefficient system to enable students from imam-hatip schools to enter universities on equal terms with graduates from other high schools.

This is in keeping with Prime Minister Erdoğan’s declared goal to raise a “religious generation,” and also involves other forms of social engineering such as a ban on the sale of alcohol in municipal and public restaurants in most of Turkey’s provinces. This culminated last May with a new law that imposes severe restrictions on the consumption and sale of alcohol.

Although both the preamble and Article 24 of the Turkish Constitution stipulate that no one shall be allowed to exploit or abuse religion or religious feelings for the purpose of personal or political influence, this is precisely what Prime Minister Erdoğan and his AKP government have done. Or as the Turkish imam, Fethullah Gülen, now Erdoğan’s arch-enemy, put it in the Financial Times, “The reductionist view of seeking political power in the name of a religion contradicts the spirit of Islam.”

Gezi Park

Four days after the alcohol legislation was passed, a boiling point was reached and the occupation of GeziPark in İstanbul began. What started as an environmental protest developed into nationwide protests against Erdoğan’s tyranny, which now proves to have far-reaching consequences for Turkey. As Alev Yaman, author of the English PEN’s report on the GeziPark protests, concludes, “A culture of protest and dissent has been established among a previously politically disenfranchised younger generation.”

Social media played a significant role during the Arab Spring, and in Egypt it contributed to the downfall of President Hosni Mubarak. After the demonstrations in Tahrir Square, Erdoğan advised Mubarak: “Listen to the shouting of the people, the extremely humane demands. Without hesitation, satisfy the people’s desire for change.” However, during the GeziPark uprising, he failed to take his own advice but instead supported the police crackdown on demonstrators.

Research by Eira Martens from DW Akademie on the role of social media during the revolt in Egypt showed that Twitter and Facebook mobilized protesters and helped develop a collective identity, or more precisely, a form of solidarity. Consequently, images of police brutality, also on YouTube and Flickr, made people not only angrier but also lowered their threshold of fear.

The same applied to the GeziPark protests, but whereas in Egypt the most popular hashtag was used in less than one million tweets, an analysis by New YorkUniversity estimates that out of more than 22 million tweets related to the protests in Turkey, the two main hashtags were mentioned about 6 million times. In Turkey’s case, around 90 percent of all the tweets came from within Turkey, whereas in Egypt only 30 percent were from inside the country.

In Turkey, it is estimated that the AKP government has the final word over 90 percent of the media, that is, newspapers and television. This was evidenced in an interview on CNN Türk with Fatih Altaylı, the editor-in-chief of the Turkish daily Habertürk, who complained that instructions were “pouring down” every day from somewhere.

Leaked wiretaps, one of which Erdoğan has confirmed is genuine, reveal constant pressure from the prime minister’s office and Erdoğan himself on media owners and executives. In one recording, Erdoğan’s son, Bilal, allegedly informs his father that the next day’s headlines have been agreed upon with the pro-government media.

Consequently, Turkish media coverage of the GeziPark protests was nothing short of scandalous; CNN Türk broadcast a documentary on penguins and seven pro-government newspapers ran identical headlines with the same quote from the prime minister. Four television channels that covered the events were fined for “harming the physical, moral and mental development of children and young people” and 845 journalists lost their jobs

In its report on the role of social media in the Turkish protests, New YorkUniversity said that part of the reason for the extraordinary number of tweets was a response to the lack of media coverage; furthermore, it said that Turkish protesters are replacing traditional reporting with crowd-sourced accounts expressed through social media such as Facebook, Twitter and Tumblr. The report concludes that this is an impressive utilization of social media in overcoming the barriers created by semi-authoritarian regimes.

There is also the fact that, according to another study, Turkey has the top Twitter penetration rate, with 31 percent of an Internet population of 36.5 million being Twitter users.

No wonder Prime Minister Erdoğan calls Twitter “a menace” and finds social media to be “the worst menace to society.”

Dec. 17

The anti-corruption operation that went public in İstanbul on Dec. 17, and the subsequent scandal, constitutes a major challenge to Prime Minister Erdoğan’s government. The response has been a massive cover-up, with the removal of thousands of police officers and hundreds of prosecutors and judges who could continue the investigation and therefore threaten the government’s legitimacy.

The AKP has made use of its parliamentary majority to block the reading of indictments that involve four former government ministers, and it has also blocked the formation of an investigative commission. As Fethullah Gülen noted in the Financial Times, “A small group within the government’s executive branch is holding to ransom the entire country’s progress.” And one of the founders of the AKP, Abdüllatif Şener, has even said that Erdoğan is prepared to drag Turkey into a civil war to retain his hold on power.

The immediate threat to the AKP government is the outcome of the local elections on Sunday, which will act as a barometer for the party’s popularity. Some 35 percent are reckoned to be the AKP’s core voters and, according to a Sonar survey, 80 percent of them don’t use the Internet. Added to this is the fact that Turkey has a relatively low newspaper circulation (96 papers bought daily per 1,000 people), which increases the importance the government attaches to the control of both public and private TV networks.

Nevertheless, since February, almost daily tweets from Haramzadeler (Sons of Thieves), joined by Başçalan (Prime Thief) and Hırsıza Oy Yok (No Votes for Thieves), have contained links to wiretaps on YouTube and other social media allegedly involving Prime Minister Erdoğan, his family and ministers in bribery, tender rigging, media manipulation and interference with the judiciary

Despite widespread international criticism, President Abdullah Gül, “Mr. Nice Guy,” has approved new legislation giving the government control over the Supreme Board of Judges and Prosecutors (HSYK) and the powers to block important websites. Prime Minister Erdoğan has now (ab)used these powers by imposing a blanket ban on Twitter through the Telecommunications Directorate (TİB), which has also blocked access to Google’s domain name server (DNS). Furthermore, Erdoğan has threatened to block access to YouTube and Facebook.

In the first few hours of the ban, there was a massive increase in the number of tweets sent in Turkey, and Turkish users have found ways to circumvent the ban by using virtual private networks (VPN) or Tor. Nevertheless, there has since been a marked decrease in the number of Turkish tweets. Following several complaints, a Turkish administrative court has also ordered a stay of execution, which Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç said the government will implement

Erdoğan has, in turn, elevated the conflict to a “new war of independence,” with a TV commercial showing Turks from all walks of life rallying round the flag. However, as Turkish economist Emre Deliveli remarked on his blog, “There are several million people in Turkey who would believe the world was flat if Gazbogan [Erdoğan] told them so.”

Robert Ellis is a regular commentator on Turkish affairs in the Danish and international press.

March 28, 2014
I’ve been shot while going to buy bread. Berkin’s killer is the goverment

Getty Images

A man left a piece of bread and a placard reading: ‘I’ve been shot while going to buy bread. Berkin’s killer is the goverment’ while people wait for the coffin ofr Berkin Elvan outside a morgue on March 11, 2014, in Istanbul. The death of Berkin Elvan,the death of Berkin Elvan, on March 11, 2014 in Ankara. Elvan’s story — a teenage boy wounded in mass anti-government demonstrations last year who spent 269 days in a coma — gripped the nation and became a symbol of the heavy-handed tactics used by police to reign in the biggest demonstrations against Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan since he came to power in 2003. AFP PHOTO/OZAN KOSE (Photo credit should read OZAN KOSE/AFP/Getty Images)

March 11, 2014
Turkey faces a ‘war’ within its borders as Prime Minister Erdogan cracks down on opponents

Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan is firing judges, sacking policemen and raising concerns about the fragility of the country’s democracy according to diplomats and academics
Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addresses his supporters at the parliament in Ankara, Turkey Photo: AP

By Ruth Sherlock, Istanbul

Posters of the candidates plaster the walls of Istanbul’s Qassim Pasha district, urging residents to vote in local and national elections later this year.

For the past decade the electoral decision within the ramshackle apartment blocks and tea houses of this neighbourhood – one of the poorest in the city – was a foregone conclusion. Recep Tayyip Erdogan,Turkey’s prime minister, grew up here and its residents are proud supporters of their man.

Now, however, a different mood is quietly infiltrating the air.

“Erdogan was a perfect leader but now we need someone new,” said Zulfu Yaroman, 65, a resident supporter of the ruling AKP Justice and Development party. “Erdogan can stay in the party but I don’t want him to head it any longer.”

So how is it that Mr Erdogan, the ultimate populist who was once awarded the People’s choice for Time 2011 Person Of The Year, who has enjoyed 11-years of unhindered rule has so mortally offended even his most loyal support base?

The answer lies in corruption scandals that have seen Mr Erdogan’s closest ministers, their families, and even his own son becoming embroiled. And it also lies in a furious response by the government, ordering sweeping arrests of police officers, the prosecution and the judiciary.

The scandal is rocking Turkish politics, even, on Thursday, prompting fist-fights among politicians in parliament.

Tezcan, a member of parliament from the main opposition Republican People’s Party, scuffles with ruling Justice and Development Party’s parliamentarian Saral (REUTERS)

The response to the scandals – a mixture of accusations of bribery and passing business contracts to family members – has left Mr Erdogan open to criticism of appearing increasingly autocratic and paranoid about holding on to power, at whatever cost. So serious is this charge that international observers question whether the country’s democracy is at threat.

“In Turkey you get the disappointing sense that there is insecurity at work,” a diplomat from one EU country told the Telegraph. “We are a champion of Turkey’s accession to the EU, but this threatens the momentum we’ve had in making that happen.”

This week saw the biggest overhaul of the judiciary in the country’s history when Mr Erdogan fired or reassigned 96 judges. Among these men were several who had spearheaded the corruption probe.

In all Mr Erdogan has purged more 2000 police officers from their post, replacing them with his own appointees. He is trying to push a bill through parliament that would give to his loyalists the vital role of appointments in the judiciary.

However, many agree, it is Mr Erdogan’s choleric temperament when faced with these challenges that is now most damaging his reputation as a strong progressive leader.

When under stress, both during the popular protests at Gezi park last year and during this corruption probe, Turkey’s premier has “lashed out”.

“There isn’t a politician in government that hasn’t felt the full weight of the prime minister,” said one source with contacts in the prime ministry.

Mr Erdogan’s AKP party members appeared to show their temper on Thursday, beating in parliament Bülent Tezcan, the main opposition party’s deputy chairman until he had to be admitted to hospital, after he raised the sensitive topic Bilal Erdogan, the prime minister’s son, being implicated in the corruption probe.

In public speeches Mr Erdogan has unhelpfully associated himself with autocrats, employing the fallback position used by strongmen – past and present – of the Middle East, of dismissing his problem, the corruption probe as a “dirty foreign plot”.

Based on little more than a rumour circulating in the Turkish press that Francis J. Ricciardone, the American envoy was “meddling” in domestic affairs during the corruption probe Mr Erdogan attacked foreign diplomats in Turkey. He said ambassadors should “mind their own business”, and that “we have no obligation to keep you in our country”.

(AFP)

With a hint of exasperation, an EU diplomat told the Telegraph said: “When there has been an internal problem in Turkey, to deflect attention from the government, a foreign threat is invoked.”

But the real reason behind Turkey’s political turmoil is much more complicated.

It is rooted in a bitter struggle between Mr Erdogan and Fethulleh Gulen, a spiritual leader who now lives in self-imposed exile in a Pennsylvania redoubt but whose movement, Hizmet, remains powerful in Turkey.

The war between Mr Erdogan and Mr Gulen comes after a decade of friendship, in which the two men worked together to advance the other’s interests. Mr Erdogan gave opportunities to Hizmet’s members, staffing his offices with its followers. And in turn Mr Gulen used his sizeable connections in the business community and with foreign diplomats to promote Mr Erdogan’s tenure at home and abroad.

They worked together to defang the Turkish military, whose generals were notorious for plotting coup attempts against the country’s political rulers. But once the threat of the military was gone, the Gulen-Erdogan alliance broke down as they began to vie for power among themselves.

“Mr Erdogan allowed Gulen to staff his offices with Hizmet’s followers. But now the alliance is broken, he fears that they are more loyal to Gulen than to him; that the people who helped him [against the military] are plotting to destroy him. He feels threatened,” one source inside the government said.

Government officials say the decision by the judiciary to publicly announce the corruption charges in an election year is evidence that the probe is political, and they claim that behind the judges lies the influence of Mr Gulen who is using the probe as a tool to destroy the prime minister.

Whatever the truth it is incontrovertible that the recent turmoil has exposed as cosmetic many of the reforms that have built Mr Erdogan reputation as a moderniser for Turkey.

Despite sweeping constitutional reforms, which had made Turkey’s ruling system more compatible with the democratic requirements for entry to the EU and had improved the confidence of foreign investors to come to the country, the scandal has exposed a judiciary and police still riven with political alliances.

“What is happening in this process is the erosion of Turkey as a state. It is a meltdown. We see institutions are no longer dealing with one another as is written in the constitution,” said Soly Ozel, a political scientist at Kadir Has university.

The political turmoil has been deeply damaging to Turkey’s economy. The Turkish Lira has plunged almost 10% per cent since mid-December, as investors worry about the country’s future.

That is perhaps the most serious concern for Mr Erdogan, who faces elections this year, either for prime minister or president depending on what he decides to stand for.

Mr Ozel said: “I don’t believe he will lose his election. He remains the most powerful politician in the country and he constantly goes for broke.

So far he has won but at the end of this fight it will be like the World War One; even the winners will not be winners.”

telegraph.co.uk, 23 Jan 2014

January 24, 2014
Istanbul’s ‘Woman In Red’ Breaks Her Silence – All News Is Global

Ceyda Sungur became the symbol of the Gezi Park protests that shook Turkey because of photograph of a police officer spraying her with gas. That officer now has an unlikely defender.

Ceyda Sungur (2014-01-20) SHARE :

The now iconic picture by Reuters photographer Osman Orsal

Ceyda Sungur became known in Turkey, and beyond, as the “Woman in Red,” the symbol of the Gezi park protests last year in Istanbul after she was photographed while being teargassed by a police officer. Sungur has avoided publicity and press to this day, having stated that her situation is not unique and she does not want to be in the spotlight. However, Sungur penned an article for the daily Radikal when the case made the news after the police officer who gassed her in that famous picture faces trial and possible banning from his profession.

ISTANBUL — I did not want to talk until now, in order to not to give shape to the “woman in red,” change its symbolic value in people’s minds or create an agenda in which individuals come before the struggle itself. But I felt obliged to write the following words; obliged most of all to the families of those who lost their lives at Gezi. The recent news of the charges against the police officer disturbed me greatly.

Let nobody speak of justice until the murderers of those we have lost at the Gezi resistance and the actual responsible parties are punished! Sending to trial a lone, 23-year-old cop who was acting under the orders of his superiors does not whitewash the oppression of the ruling administration that still claims the police carried out “legendary heroism.”

The sentence to be given to the officer on trial for spraying gas into my face makes no sense in terms of justice, seeing that none of the complaints of those injured by police violence resulted in court cases in the seven months that have passed since Gezi.

It is obvious that leaving the court process at this level is nothing more than an attempt to manipulate the effect a symbolic picture that just a red dress left on the world. Trying only the junior police officers, whose working conditions and job security are at the hands of their superiors, will not ease the pain of everybody who died, suffered cerebral hemorrhage, lost their eyes, had legs and arms broken or were hurt in any other way at Gezi — and it will certainly not ease the pain of the families who lost loved ones, nor those of us who were left alive by chance, too.

Remember their names

Unfortunately, when Ethem Sarisuluk was shot in the head by a police bullet, when Abdullah Comert was hit in the head by a gas pellet, when Mehmet Ayvalitas was crushed while attending the demonstrations, when Irfan Tuna was gassed while working, when Medeni Yildirim was protesting the construction of a military post at Lice, when Selim Onder was visiting his daughter, when Zeynep Eryasar joined a protest march in solidarity with her children at the Gezi Park, when Ahmet Atakan demanded the killers to be brought to justice, when Ali Ismail Korkmaz was beaten to death and when Serdar Kadakal was sitting at the street across from his workplace; none of them were wearing a red dress. Berkin Elvan, our now 15-year-old brother with his beautiful eyes, committed no greater crime than going to the grocery store to buy bread. (He was hit in the head by a gas cannister shot by police, and remains in a coma.)

The fact that these people were not photographed by chance cannot be an excuse for the parties responsible for what happened to them not to be tried and punished.

Of course, today, we cannot speak of justice within a system that arrests journalists who defend rights and freedoms, political prisoners, the CHD lawyers who defend the victims of injustice, the academics who defend free science; just like Hrant Dink’s, the activist journalist, whose assassination’s seventh anniversary was this past week. Despite all of what happened to these people, nothing that was experienced will be forgotten — no one will ever get used to it.

Justice will be served only by the struggle for human rights, and I believe Berkin will wake up from his coma to help see it happen.

via Istanbul’s ‘Woman In Red’ Breaks Her Silence – All News Is Global.

January 23, 2014
Turkish riot police officer who gassed ‘lady in red’ faces prosecution and possible jail term

Turkish riot police officer who gassed ‘lady in red’ faces prosecution and possible jail term

Incident came amid riots last summer which saw at least seven people killed

A Turkish police officer who sprayed tear gas in the face of a woman wearing a red dress at an anti-government protest faces prosecution and a possible jail term, a legal source has said.

Images of the incident with “the lady in the red dress” became symbolic of the ongoing unrest throughout last summer, quickly spreading on social media and printed on stickers and posters at protest camps.

They appeared to show police officer Fatih Zengin crouching down and blasting tear gas from less than a metre away at Ceyda Sungur.

An academic at Istanbul Technical University, Ceyda Sungur had reportedly only just arrived at the protest wearing a summer dress with a white bag over her shoulder, and had not been involved in any provocative acts.

An indictment has now accused Mr Zengin of using excessive force, and prosecutors are demanding he be dismissed from the force and sent to prison for up to three years on the grounds that no warning was issued prior to the incident, Turkish news agencies reported.

The protests last June started off as a peaceful demonstration against government plans to redevelop Istanbul’s Gezi park, one of the last remaining green spaces in the city.

It escalated into an unprecedented show of defiance against Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan’s government after police used tear gas and water cannon to try to clear the site.

At least seven people, including a police officer, were killed in unrest which spread to cities around the country, while Mr Erdogan blamed the unrest on a foreign-backed conspiracy.

via Turkish riot police officer who gassed ‘lady in red’ faces prosecution and possible jail term – Europe – World – The Independent.

January 18, 2014