As the bearer of an underlying democratization process in Turkey with all its paradoxes, AKP still goes unchallenged insofar as the different groups of opposition who became visible in Gezi Park still cannot put forth convincing arguments to win the “50 per cent”.
On top of those arrested in the 1980s and throughout the 1990s, in the last three years alone, an estimated 10,000 political and non-political activists have been arrested on alleged PKK links.
In order for us to reach out to Diyarbakir, we needed a counter-narrative. Gezi was that teaching experience. But what was learned at Gezi had to be put to the test.
Erdogan’s peace process is no longer the only one. The real reconciliation has already happened. It's in the streets of Turkey. It's among the people.
Soon after PM Erdogan`s comment on Twitter, detentions started for users who shared comments critical of the government or the police
The ongoing protests have only emphasised the gap between the Turkish government and the EU, and between Turkey and Arab leaders whose fear of revolt doesn’t necessarily translate into political solidarity with Ankara.
Ten years of majoritarian style AKP rule has turned Turkey into a polarized country, increasingly torn apart between contrasting worldviews and lifestyles.
These various analytical approaches to Gezi fail to see the space, time and actors as “in process”; that is, not as being but as becoming.
The latest developments translate as the end of justice and legality as we know it. What we are experiencing is a ‘state of exception’ par excellence, in Agamben’s terms, as the rhetoric of ‘necessity’ is creating a ‘space devoid of law’.
