Environmentalists began protesting a week ago against the Turkish government's decision to replace Gezi Park, a significant but not major park inside Istanbul, with a shopping mall. It was one in a series of moves which the ruling Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) has taken in an effort to grow the Turkish economy. Besides a few environmentalist no one in Turkey really cared.
However, the Turkish government ordered a fierce police crackdown against the protesters. In response the AKP's diverse enemies (secularists, environmentalists, alcohol drinkers, Communists, socialists nationalists, Kurdish groups, and college students left of center politically) began protesting in mass against the capitalistic, somewhat moderate Islamist government (think of the AKP as a Calvinist political party from 1880).
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| Map of Protests throughout Turkey. Click to enlarge. From Visual.ly |
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| Protest barricades in red, police barricades in blue. From Twitter. |
This is not the "Turkish Spring", not yet at least. The AKP is not the Muslim Brotherhood. It is very popular inside Turkey. It also has been very successful in growing the economy and its political-religious leanings reflect a changing Turkish demographic where the religious interior is growing much faster from the more urban and secular elite which has adopted European style "growth" rates.
Finally, AKP supporters will point out the most visible parts of the protest are just urban elite thugs much like what the rest of the Occupy movement devolved into.
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| Click to enlarge. From Twitter |
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