Members of resistance movements from Egypt, Turkey and Tunisia come together on Gezi Radyo to compare experiences, discuss ways to cooperate and debate how to build a better future.
These are democratic protest movements in societies experiencing rapid change where the public’s demand for better services and more democracy at local as well as national levels grow at a faster pace than their governments’ ability to provide.
One of the greatest accomplishments of the protests, for these three individuals, was the chance to meet and experience unity with people from different religions, classes and ethnicities.
With the Ergenekon verdict, Turkey was to put behind it a history of coup d’états, and to open a new page by convicting generals (whose raison d’etre for the past 30 years was to fight terrorism) for participating in what is now officially a ‘terrorist organization’.
Whenever democratic space has opened up, people have been eager to choose those who not only provide a better solution for their economic and social problems, but who can also offer them a recognition of the authenticity of their cultures.
Paradoxically, Gezi Park presented Erdoğan with a golden opportunity, one that could also have helped Turkish democracy part company from the tendency of powerful political parties to drift into populism-fuelled authoritarianism.
Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan belongs to a strong leadership tradition. Contextual and personal factors, from a lack of intra-party democracy to an insufficient system of checks and balances have historically empowered Turkish leaders.
The nationwide demonstrations were spontaneous, universal and beyond distinct class characteristics. What we have witnessed can be described as the self-protection of society against a particular form of “governance” which neutered politics and silenced voices of dissent by appealing to the requir
The Gezi Protests have shown us that the Turkish government must urgently adopt concrete mechanisms to ensure citizen participation in decision-making processes. Can the EU help?
There was once a time when the Turkish Prime Minister was hailed for constructing a model country for the Middle East. Today, the picture is very different.
