Mass Protests in Turkey: An Explainer
Why the country is yet again in crisis.
Journalism is too opaque and misunderstood. Chills gives a behind-the-scenes look at how dangerous investigative journalism gets made.
Just as in 2013, last night turned violent across Turkey. I was in Istanbul during the Gezi Park protests back then and remember the scores of armed, shielded officers heading into Istabul’s Taksim Square, and the sound of people banging on pots and pans with wooden spoons in windows above the streets, just before the water cannons, tear gas and pepper spray were unleashed upon the crowds. Now, as then, journalists have been rounded up by police in a (poor) effort to contain the dissemination of news about the unrest.
But over the last five nights, journalists have been just some of the more than 1,100 people detained in the largest protests the country has seen in more than a decade. Sparked by the Wednesday arrest of the mayor of Istanbul, Ekrem Imamoglu, who had been named the same day as a candidate for president in the next election, the demonstrations have been battling many of the same scourges as those protested in Gezi Park: an erosion of democracy, the rule of law, freedom of expression and secularization, as well as ongoing corruption.
To explain what is going on in Turkey and why its people continue to rise up en masse to fight for democracy, here is a condensed and edited version of a story I wrote for Ms. magazine in the fall about this very issue.
When you walk the streets of Istanbul, you come across absolutely gorgeous, enormous stray dogs. They are sweet and ask for little more than pets and a bite to eat. But as of mid-July, the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) — President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s party — sent a bill to parliament that would round up these sweet giants and put them in shelters, aka euthanize them.
In an op-ed for The New York Times, author and novelist Kaya Genc wrote that she “can’t shake the sense that for the government, this is not really about the dogs. Mr. Erdogan long ago mastered the art of scapegoating.”
Over the years, Erdogan has deflected public discontent with his economic and social policies by pointing fingers at journalists and human rights defenders, among others. This time, he’s pulling a smoke-and-mirrors trick with the street dogs to deflect from his poor showing in the March elections, which left Erdogan’s AKP in second place by a landslide — the worst outcome since he’s been in office since 2002.
The dogs are the least of Turkey’s problems. Not when, for more than two decades, Erdogan has brought down an iron fist on civil liberties — including political dissent and the rights of LGBTQ+ people, women, Kurds, refugees (particularly Syrians) and the press. Freedom House gives Turkey a measly score of 33/100 in what it calls “global freedom.”
Since a failed coup in 2016, the Turkish government has become “incrementally more repressive,” said Asli Aydintasbas, a visiting fellow at the Center on the United States and Europe at the nonprofit Brookings Institution. The 2024 election outcome “creates a bit of a breathing space in urban areas in terms of free speech issues, but there has not been an improvement on the Kurdish issue,” she said. Kurds make up about a fifth of the Turkish population, according to the Council on Foreign Relations, but face unequal government representation and are designated “terrorists” by Erdogan and his party.
Not only have police cracked down on protests overall since Istanbul’s massive Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013, where Turks stood up for the right for free expression, a free press and the governmental pullback from secularism only to be met by lines of armed police firing live rounds, water cannons and tear gas. Imams in Turkey are installed by the government, as are teachers, said Berna Akkizal, the director of the Civic Space Studies Association in Istanbul. The organization works to support students’ freedom of expression, which has become more and more regulated.
“I think things have gotten incrementally more repressive after the failed coup attempt,” said Aydintasbas.
Press freedom is a massive crunch point under the current government. Ninety percent of media outlets are either under direct control of the government or are owned by Erdogan’s cronies, thereby quashing any dissent and villainizing Syrians and other groups. Outlets are censored, fined and shut down. Turkey is one of the world’s biggest jailers of journalists, who also face assaults, fines, smear campaigns and arrest.
Women, in particular, have seen backsliding on their rights over the past few years — since 2021, when Turkey pulled out of what’s known as the Istanbul Convention, bowing to the demands of conservative Islamists. The convention “requires parties to develop laws, policies and support services to end violence against women and domestic violence.”
Amnesty International called the departure “shameful,” adding that by retreating from the convention, “Turkey turned its back on the gold standard for the safety of women and girls.”
“Since that happened, there are no more women’s marches,” said Akkizal. “There is no more room for anyone, to be honest,” she added. “It’s a bleak picture.”
For the last five or six years, Akkizal said, there have been rare marches for Pride or on March 8, International Women’s Day, which is unusual. Feminist and gay associations are constantly under “investigation” by the government. Amnesty reports that LGBTQ+ people face “widespread discrimination, police harassment, and violence. It’s all part of a conservative push to place value on traditional families and nothing else.
Still, when asked whether there is any hope for improvement for civil rights in the country, Akkizal described the students she works with as “full of hope, full of energy and motivation.”
“So I think that in five or 10 years,” she said, “a huge change will happen for Turkey, because a very, very intelligent and clever and brave generation of young people is coming.”
Maybe it’s wishful thinking, but if true, it would be an improvement over this last decade’s relentless cycle of protest and government-fueled violence.
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In Turkey the large dogs are called Kangal. In America they’re called Anatolian Shepherds.
Just called my ex in Izmir and he can’t talk about Turkey or Istanbul for fear of arrest
The optimism that you describe gives me some hope. But right now it certainly can’t be easy to be a Turk. Or a citizen anywhere.