June 7, 2013 8:07 pm
Turkey: A change of tempo
....
Listen to Recep Tayyip Erdogan and it becomes clear that Istanbul’s Taksim Square has been overrun by looters and vandals, extremists with foreign terrorist links, alcoholics and losers.
But after a week as a self-policing commune – more Paris 1968 than Tahrir Square 2011 – Taksim has become something far more dangerous: an urban oasis of festive mockery puncturing the pretensions of a man who seems to want to mould modern Turkey in his own pious image...
...
Nearly every form of Istanbul life cohabits there. There are the secular Kemalists who still revere Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, father of the republic, alongside their Kurdish nationalist foes; leftists grouplets and Turkish nationalists who fought violent 1970s battles that ended in the 1980 army coup; blue collar trade unions alongside associations of doctors or academics; metropolitan liberals and Alevis, an under-recognised Shia minority; anarchists and gays alongside Sufi Muslims and yogis; and even a veiled old lady in a Guy Fawkes mask. The fans of the city’s three football clubs – Besiktas, Galatasaray, and Fenerbahce – have buried their deadly rivalries to link arms in “Istanbul United”.
Impromptu skits lampooning the prime minister are performed by the Alcoholics Unity League (“Tayyip, you’re unbearable when you’re sober”) and the Looters Solidarity Front. Taksim, says Hakan Altinay, chairman of the Open Society Foundation in Istanbul, “is an extralegal, liberated space, it’s our carnival; we never had a carnival before”. This has dissolved Mr Erdogan’s aura. “He can longer say ‘l’etat c’est moi’” he adds: “this irreverence has dented him all over”.
No comments:
Post a Comment