As any milk-of-the-mother-drunk Iranian knows, the arabic 'tahrir' means both 'to write' and 'to free'. The self-absorbed writer in me would like to equate the two. But, they are not the same. And, they are not even proximate: To write is the urge; to free, the sacrosanct. As we witnessed in the Tahrir Square in Cairo, the gathering of young writers – I know, twitters - who had seen that fuzzy mirage of democracy in their dreams – aka, cyberspace - and were intent on drafting their own history, only generated unwitting martyrs, burnt buildings, graffiti and trash, to be visited later on by foreign dignitaries who came to celebrate their own impunity.
The arabic 'taqsim' also has a dual meaning, 'to divide' and 'to distribute', with similar applications in both Persian and Turkish. The name 'Taqsim Square' in Istanbul connotes the place as where water was divided and distributed among different parts of the city. In the antiquity, these two meanings were synonymous: Jesus divided the bread and gave it to his disciples, who gave it to the people (Matthew 14:19). In modern English, however these two are not easily reconciled: a more popular synonym for 'to divide' is 'to conquer', which for all practical purposes is the antonym of 'to distribute'.
Now, what's going on these days in the Taqsim Square? The Turkish government plans to replace a popular park (syn. nature & environment) with a shopping mall (syn. consumerism & capitalism). The local merchants (Have you ever been in the Istanbul Grand Bazaar?) see their livelihood threatened – sounds familiar? So they protest the gentrification. All of a sudden, the genie is out of the bottle: Secular Turks unhappy with the purported islamization of their country, find a cause célèbre; Islamophobes and their neocon bedfellows look into their crystal balls and foretell the fall of yet another Islamist dictator; Impotent day-dreamers and wishful-thinkers of a neighboring country's diaspora beg for the spillover.
Back to the original question: Is Taqsim the next Tahrir? No. Instead of Sean Penn, expect Kardashian sisters to appear in the new mall in Istanbul.
Image: Sean Penn in Egypt's Tahrir Square
(....)
The news that Turkey’s Public Workers Unions Confederation (KESK),representing coalition of 11 trade unions with 250,000 members has now announced a two-day general strike in sympathy with the protesters signals the entry of an element of class conflict into the movement. The unions in Turkey are weak, having been destroyed by the secular right wing military dictatorship of the 1980s, which had the side effect of also destroying the Turkish Left as a viable political bloc. The ruling center-right Justice and Development Party probably benefited in implementing its pro-market policies from the weakness of unions. The unions and the remains of the Left may see an opportunity for revival.
Erdogan has blamed everyone but himself for the public discontent, decrying the ‘lies’ spread on Twitter, hinting darkly that the opposition party, the secular Republican People’s Party [CHP] had conspired to provoke the...
http://www.juancole.com/2013/06/defiant-turkish-economy.html#comments
Firedup,
Thanks for the link to Juan Cole's piece. I hope he is right. I regard the revival of labor unions as a prerequisite for democracy anywhere – and, not just in Turkey. However, regrettably his is not the only voice. Here is the opposite view of the recent events in Turkey, by a neocon:
Although a member of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, Turkey engaged in 2010 in a joint air exercise with China. Although an applicant to the European Union, it plays footsie with the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, founded in 1996 by Russian and Chinese leaders as an anti-NATO grouping. Although supposedly an American ally, Turkey has humiliated Israel, calling Zionism a "crime against humanity" and acclaiming the terror-listed Hamas organization.
Thanks to the demonstrations, we can be newly hopeful that Turkey may avoid the path it had been on, that of despotism, Islamification and increasingly rogue foreign relations. Perhaps its secular, democratic and pro-Western heritage can be revived.
http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-pipes-turkey-erdogan-protests-20130604,0,7720463.story
Naazer: The truth is always somewhere in the middle. Did you read the comments on that thread?? Some of the comments are very interesting.
http://www.voanews.com/content/us-sanctions-iran-currency/1674510.html