The many hundreds of thousands of demonstrators who took to the streets in Istanbul did not succeed in toppling their country's prime minister or in continuing to occupy Gezi Park on the city's Taksim Square. The protests against the government of Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, sparked in late May by plans to level Gezi Park, have subsided. Yet the uprising's effects may last well beyond this summer.
Members and supporters of Erdogan's conservative-Islamist Justice and Development Party (AKP) have long refrained from expressing any criticism. Now, though, AKP followers are turning against the prime minister, with Erdogan's competitors within the party using the post-Gezi unrest as an opportunity to distance themselves from him.
In the English-language edition of the pro-government daily newspaper Zaman, columnist Yavuz Baydar recently compared Turkey under Erdogan to the United States during the McCarthy era. The conservative-Islamist Journalists and Writers Foundation (GYV) likewise warns that these current developments in Turkey overshadow any attempts at further democratization. » | Hasnain Kazim and Maximilian Popp | Wednesday, August 21, 2013
