Defiance in Germany: Can Mass Protests Stop the Far Right? | To The Point

Feb 1, 2024 | Hundreds of thousands of people have taken to the streets in Germany. It’s the largest social movement in the country in decades. In cities and towns large and small, protestors have been demonstrating against the far right, to advocate for an open society and to protect their democracy. And yet, supporters of Germany’s biggest far-right party seem undaunted, with more people than ever joining the organization. How dangerous is the AfD? What is causing such anger within mainstream society? And how resilient is Germany’s democracy? On To the Point we ask: Defiance in Germany: Can mass protests stop the far right?

ri Lanka Is "Grinding to a Halt" Amid Fuel Shortage, Inflation & Austerity, Prompting Mass Protests

Jul 7, 2022 Fuel shortages in Sri Lanka have triggered a wave of protests calling for the resignation of President Gotabaya Rajapaksa. This comes as Sri Lanka's government has forced the closure of all schools and announced plans to cut electricity by up to three hours a day, as well as stop printing currency to quell inflation. Meanwhile, Sri Lanka is also facing a dire shortage of food and medicine, and doctors say the country's entire health system could collapse. "There is no discussion on the part of the government on how we as Sri Lankans are going to come out of this crisis," says Ahilan Kadirgamar, political economist and senior lecturer at the University of Jaffna, who explains how the government's doubling down on austerity measures has devastated the working class.

'Read Constitution, Not My Email': Anti-snooping Protests Sweep US

The protests "1984 Day," have taken place across the US, most notably in New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, and Washington DC. The rallies have been organized by a number of social media initiatives by a grassroots organization called Restore the Fourth that demands an end to "unconstitutional surveillance of digital communications."

Egypt Morsi: Mass Political Protests Grip Cities
BBC: Huge protests calling for the resignation of Egypt's President Mohammed Morsi and early presidential elections are taking place in the capital, Cairo, and other cities.

Tens of thousands of opponents have massed in Tahrir Square and outside the main presidential palace.

Protesters accuse Mr Morsi of failing to tackle economic and security problems since taking power a year ago.

A presidential spokesman urged them to respect the democratic process.

Morsi supporters massed in the Cairo suburb of Nasr City with banners denouncing the opposition.

The president's critics say the country's first Islamist president has put the agenda of the Muslim Brotherhood party ahead of the country's wider interests.

In Cairo, they have been chanting: "Irhal! Irhal!" ("Leave! Leave!"), reports the BBC's Aleem Maqbool.

Demonstrations are being reported across the country (+ video) » | Sunday, June 30, 2013

Egypt Braces for Massive Protests after Bitter Year of Morsi
It's been exactly one year since Egypt's President Mohhamed Morsi took office and the country's now bracing for its biggest anti-government protests in months. The unrest has been building up over the past week, and has brought deadly chaos to Egypt's biggest cities. RT's Bel Trew reports.

Turkish Police Water-cannon on RT Reporter in Ankara
While covering a peaceful protest in Ankara, RT's correspondent was sprayed by a water canon law enforcement vehicle in front of the cameramen and the crew

Turkey Unrest: Unions Call Strike Over Crackdown

BBC: Turkish unions have called a strike to protest against the police crackdown on demonstrators.

Turkey's Prime Minister has angrily defended the eviction of protesters from Gezi Park on Saturday night.

Recep Tayyip Erdogan told hundreds of thousands of supporters at a rally in Istanbul on Sunday that the protesters were manipulated by "terrorists".

On Sunday there were continued sporadic clashes between protesters and police in Istanbul and the capital Ankara.

The Confederation of Public Workers' Unions (KESK) and Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions (DISK), along with three professional organisations, have announced what they call a one-day work stoppage to demand an end to "police violence".

The unions have called for a march and a rally in Istanbul on Monday afternoon.

Lawyers from the Turkish bar association say that close to 500 people have been detained as part of the police operation against the demonstrators. (+ videos) » | Monday, June 17, 2013

'Heavy Crackdown & Witch-hunt Loom as Turkey PM's 24-hr Notice Runs Down'
A man who had been on life support for days after reportedly being hit in the head by a police gas canister, has become the fifth fatality of the crackdown on public protests in Turkey. On Wednesday the country's Prime Minister set a 24 hour deadline for an end to demonstrations in Istanbul and the capital. That runs out in the coming hours. RT discusses this further with Safak Pavey, a Turkish diplomat and a member of the Republican People's Party.

Turkey Protests: Dangerous Waters with No Sign of Compromise
BBC: It began just after dawn on Tuesday: the thud of tear gas fired across Taksim Square in the biggest police operation here for over a week.

Arcs of water cannon were spewed towards protesters, some of whom responded with petrol bombs and bricks.

For 12 days, the central square in Turkey's biggest city had been under the authority of a growing protest movement. This was the moment that the government decided to retake it.

All through the day, the game of cat and mouse continued.

Once the police retreated, the protesters regrouped. They took refuge in the adjoining Gezi Park, where the unrest was first sparked in response to government plans to redevelop it.

I watched as telecoms trucks were set ablaze, black smoke fusing with the white plumes of tear gas into an acrid mix.

Not listening

What began as a demonstration by environmentalists has mushroomed into something far bigger: a fight by disparate groups for greater freedom in Turkey and a preservation of the country's secular order.

They see a government with an authoritarian, neo-Islamist agenda: the highest number of journalists in the world in prison, restrictions on alcohol sales, massive construction projects prioritised over human rights.

"This is not an Arab spring", one protester, Melis Behlil, told me.

"We have free elections here. But the problem is that the person elected doesn't listen to us." » | Mark Lowen | BBC News, Istanbul | Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Erdoğan's Reaction to Turkey Protests Reveals Ominous Putin Parallels
THE GUARDIAN: Leader is used to having things his own way but, civil society movement can no longer be suppressed, says Luke Harding

The assault was as brutal as it was predictable. On Friday and Saturday Erdoğan had hosted a European Union meeting in Istanbul. Rumour had it that Turkey's prime minister would send in riot police to clear away the demonstrators from Taksim Square – which they had peacefully occupied for 12 days — once his European guests had flown home.

And so it proved, with police encircling the square at 6am on Tuesday, firing rubber bullets and teargas, and ripping down banners calling for Erdoğan's resignation. By happy coincidence, Turkey's state media, which for days had blithely ignored the country's massive anti-government demonstrations, was on hand to record the event.

Turkish TV viewers witnessed this: a small group of four or five "demonstrators" throwing molotov cocktails at police. At one point they advance on police lines in a comic Roman-style phalanx while holding the flag of a fringe Marxist party. The "protesters" were in fact middle-aged undercover police officers, staging a not very plausible "attack" on their own for the benefit of the cameras.

But the violence meted out against the genuine protesters camped out under the plane trees of nearby Gezi Park was real enough. Dozens were left choking or injured as teargas billowed across central Istanbul. Meanwhile, some 50 lawyers acting for detained activists were themselves dragged away by police and roughed up at Istanbul's Çağlayan court.

Faced with a choice between engaging with this new, vibrant civil society movement, or crushing it, Erdoğan has picked the latter course. Indeed, his reaction to the nationwide citizens' revolt reveals ominous parallels with another autocratic leader who has recently found himself in a tight spot: Vladimir Putin.

None of this bodes well for Turkey's already tortuous EU accession prospects, for relations between secular and religious Turks, or for the country's democratic future. » | Luke Harding | Tuesday, June 11, 2013

'Istanbul Like War Zone': Turkey Clashes Raging with Gas, Bullets & Cannons
Hundreds of police in riot gear are clearing barricades from Istanbul's Taksim square. They've used teargas and rubber bullets to force protesters out, many of who fled to Gezi park, where the unrest started. A crew from RT's Arabic sister Channel has been caught-up in the crackdown when police teargassed demonstrators

Turkey: Riot Police Breach Barricades in Taksim Square
Hundreds of riot police have moved into Istanbul's central Taksim square, firing tear gas and water cannon to disperse anti-government protestors who have been camped out in the square for almost two weeks.

Read the article here | AFP | Tuesday, June 11, 2013

Resisting by Raising a Glass

THE NEW YORK TIMES: ISPARTA, Turkey — After retaking Taksim Square in Istanbul after hours of ugly street battles with police officers firing tear gas this month, many of the haggard protesters cracked bottles of Efes beer and raised them in a mock toast to their prime minister, who had recently pushed through a law to curb drinking.

And even in Isparta, a religiously conservative region that is a wellspring of support for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a small group of residents, drinks in hand, gathered outside the office of the local governor who is an ally of the embattled prime minister and chanted, “Cheers, Tayyip!”

Drinking is far from the only issue held up in the intense antigovernment protests that have convulsed Turkey for more than a week. But it has become closely intertwined with the broader complaints of demonstrators fighting what they see as the rising authoritarianism of the Turkish government.

It also cuts to the heart of Turkish identity, as both sides have cast it as a clash of Islamic and secular values. While protesters have held up new limits on drinking as an affront to the secular values of modern Turkey, Mr. Erdogan has said that “religion demands” curbs on drinking. He has gone so far as to implicitly refer to Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, the founder of Turkey and a notoriously heavy drinker, as a “drunkard,” and in one of a series of speeches he delivered Sunday to cheering supporters, accused protesters of taking beer into mosques. » | Tim Arango | Sunday, June 09, 2013

Recep Tayyip Erdoğan Dismisses Turkey Protesters as Vandals

THE GUARDIAN: Turkish prime minister challenges anti-government protesters to beat his party at the ballot box as demonstrations enter 10th day

Turkey's prime minister has climbed on top of a bus to give a fiery speech to thousands of his supporters, challenging increasingly angry anti-government protesters to beat his party at the ballot box after they flooded the streets for a 10th day of demonstrations. On Sunday Recep Tayyip Erdoğan visited two cities where unrest has occurred and again condemned his detractors as a handful of looters and vandals.

In the southern city of Adana, where pro- and anti-government protesters clashed on Saturday night, Erdoğan greeted supporters before lashing out at his opponents in the polarised country.

"We won't do what a handful of looters have done. They burn and destroy …They destroy the shops of civilians. They destroy the cars of civilians," Erdoğan told supporters who had greeted him at the local airport. "They are low enough to insult the prime minister of this country."

He urged his supporters to avoid violence and predicted that his Islamic-rooted party would defeat his opponents during local elections in March. "I want you to give them the first lesson through democratic means in the ballot box," he said. Read on and comment » | Associated Press in Ankara | Sunday, June 09, 2013

Erdogan's Mishandling of Protests Has Exposed the Myth of a Stable Turkey
THE INDEPENDENT: World View: The PM's inability to counter unrest within and enemies without make any talk of a 'new Ottoman empire' absurd

There is something almost comic in the way the missteps of the Turkish government turned a small demonstration aimed at preserving sycamore trees in Taksim Square from the developers' bulldozers into the biggest and most widespread popular protest ever seen in Turkey. The Turkish security forces made the classic mistake of being pictured on television and social media publicly assaulting peaceable protesters with water cannon and pepper spray. Just enough violence was used to enrage and provoke while wholly failing to intimidate.

There was a time when brutality by the security forces was easier to keep off TV screens by censorship or frightening journalists and media-owners. But these mechanisms no longer work when people have a multitude of TV channels inside and outside the country to choose from. Running documentaries on penguins, as CNN Turkey notoriously did, simply creates a vacuum of information which is rapidly filled by protesters. The government's version of what is happening becomes self-marginalised and is ignored.

It is astonishing that skilled politicians such as the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, and those around him should make so many mistakes in such a short time. It is easy to why Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt should have miscalculated popular reaction to repression at the start of the Arab uprisings in 2011, because as rulers of police states their approach to public opinion was to ignore it. Read on and comment » | Patrick Cockburn | Sunday, June 09, 2013

Turkey's Protesters Proclaimed as True Heirs of Nation's Founding Father

THE OBSERVER: Ataturk, the secular reformer, has become the symbol for young Turks defying what they see as Erdogan's reactionary reversion to the Ottoman past

Among the tents, snoozing youth and pleasant shady trees of Istanbul's Gezi Park there are portraits of one man in a European suit. Wherever you look Mustafa Kemal Ataturk – founder of the Turkish Republic – gazes sternly at you. Photos of the first president hang from branches, have been affixed to tea stalls, and even encircle a giant banner showing Turkey's prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, dressed as Hitler.

"We really love Ataturk. He changed our state. He made it into a modern republic," explained Murat Bakirdoven, a 24-year-old biology student who has been camping in the park for a week. Someone had stuck another photo of Ataturk – this time in a lounge suit, sitting on a leather chair, cigarette in hand – on a nearby tree. Bakirdoven added: "Erdogan wants us to forget him. Instead we are trying to create an Ataturk renaissance."

For the protesters who have taken part in Turkey's anti-government demonstrations, Ataturk is a hero. Dead for 75 years, he has become the reborn symbol of this student-driven anti-Erdogan movement. (The other motif is a penguin – a reference to the state media, which failed to report on the uprising for several days; one channel, CNN Turk, instead screened a nature documentary on Antarctica).

The symbolism goes to the heart of what this unprecedented uprising is about: Turkey's modern identity. At issue is whether Turkey should be the progressive, secular European nation-state that Ataturk originally envisaged and shaped from the ruins of the Ottoman empire, or a more explicitly religious country, a sort of Muslim version of Christian democracy. The protesters want the former; Erdogan, and his ruling Islamist-rooted Justice and Development party (AKP), it appears, the latter. » | Luke Harding Istanbul | Saturday, June 08, 2013

Lady in the Red Dress and Her Dream of a Turkish Rebirth

THE SUNDAY TELEGRAPH: The reluctant heroine who symbolises the Istanbul protests tells Ruth Sherlock she believes people power will prevail in Turkey.

With her red cotton dress, white shoulder bag and flowing black hair, she has become the colour-coded emblem of Turkey's new people-power movement.

Caught on camera as she was sprayed head to toe in tear gas, Ceyda Sungur's treatment at the hands of Istanbul's riot police seemed the epitome of using a "sledgehammer to crack a nut" and encapsulated the government's heavy-handed response to a civilised protest.

Pictures of the "Lady in the Red Dress" quickly spread around the world via the internet. Those who shared the pictures online joined protesters in demanding to know why a woman who looked attired for a summer picnic had been treated like a masked, brick-throwing anarchist.

Last week, Ms Sungur said she was a reluctant heroine, describing herself as just part of a wider grass-roots movement, and pointing out in brief remarks to a Turkish newspaper that hundreds of others had been gassed in similar fashion.

Now, though, having declined requests for interviews from all over the world, Ms Sungur, an academic, has spoken briefly but vividly to The Sunday Telegraph about her involvement in what happened, and how she is now working in a makeshift clinic to help others hurt in demonstrations. » | Ruth Sherlock, Istanbul | Saturday, June 08, 2013

'Erdogan's Creeping Islamisation Deepens Divide Among Turks'

Turkey Protests: Erdogan Rejects EU Criticism

BBC: Turkey must investigate the excessive use of force by police against anti-government protesters, a senior EU official has said in Istanbul.

EU Enlargement Commissioner Stefan Fuele was speaking ahead of talks on Turkey's ambition to join the EU.

In response, Turkish PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan said similar protests in Europe would be dealt with more harshly.

Turkey has seen a week of civil unrest sparked by a police crackdown on a local protest over an Istanbul park.

Mr Fuele and Mr Erdogan were both speaking at a conference in Istanbul on Turkey's relations with the EU.

The EU enlargement commissioner said the EU had no intention of giving up on Turkey's accession, but Turkey had to maintain values of freedom and fundamental rights.

He urged a "swift and transparent" investigation and those responsible should be held to account.

"Peaceful demonstrations constitute a legitimate way for groups to express their views in a democratic society," he said.

"Excessive use of force by police against these demonstrations has no place in such a democracy". » | Friday, June 07, 2013

Turkish PM Erdogan Remains Defiant
Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan has arrived home and urged people to distance themselves from what he calls lawless protests. Al Jazeera's Hashem Ahelbarra reports from Istanbul.