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