Despite what you may be seeing in the international media, which makes the protests in Turkey looks like a ground war, the reality is that the ground is only a small part of the greater uprising.There is much more going on above street level.
Istanbul is a city of low-rise apartment buildings, and in the suburbs of the city windows are hung with Turkish flags, and each night faces emerge to whistle and make noise.
The majority of the action takes place in the build up to 9:00 pm.
Each night, as 9:00 pm approaches, people open their windows and go out onto their balconies, banging pots and pans and whistling. Cars take to the streets with the Turkish flag streaming from the windows, horns blaring.
Night after night, at least half of the city makes its voice heard.
Yet to all appearances, this aspect of the protest is largely unknown outside the country itself.
The evening Call to Action leads to people gathering together in whatever area their neighbourhood centres on. In my case, Bağdat Caddesi, which runs from Kadıköy (the main downtown area and centre of protest on the Asian side of İstanbul) to Bostancı.
Erdoğan may wish to vilify the protestors in Taksim and Beşiktaş, and of course they have taken actions but this wider suburban uprising is the one that he should not ignore. This is the voice of the people. The clashes with police are clashes with some of the people, and some who are, of course, just in it for the fight itself.
This suburban voice is perhaps the most remarkable of the situation. The usual crowd of disenfranchised protestor is of course in the mix, and loudly, but it is the rise of the rapidly expanding affluent middle class that is perhaps most striking. In many respect, this greatest force behind the expansion of the middle class in Turkey is Erdoan's economics, taking the country from a fairly low and stagnant GDP to a consistent and rapid rise.
This class in any country is typically silent in any demonstration, complacent as they are to reap whatever rewards come their way. Things never look so bad when you're sitting on a comfy couch. Yet they, too, are feeling a disturbance in the rhetoric of Erdoğan, and are speaking up.
When the middle classes begins to rise, something serious is happening.
The questions remains as to how long the Turkish people will keep their voices raised. The President, Abdullah Gül, whose office is charged with defending the Republic, and the Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç have apologized to the original Gezi Park Protestors, and the police have held back in their aggressive stance toward the protestors in the past two days.
And, Erdoğan is away on a political tour in Africa, his rage-inducing commentary relatively absent for now.
The question also remains as to how long the Turkish people will keep their voice unified. In all likelihood, the protest will now begin to turn inward as it seeks a unifying message to keep the various agendas at play together. All of the parties want the chance to be heard, and if they rally around that message, whatever it is.
I for one, as a lowly observer with no personal political stake in the situation, think that the right to be heard is central to everyone's complaint. The government will likely seek to divide the protest by focussing on each groups surface issue. But perhaps more likely, they will simply ignore the problem and let the groups refocus onto their own surface issues themselves.
We'll see.
The evening Call to Action leads to people gathering together in whatever area their neighbourhood centres on. In my case, Bağdat Caddesi, which runs from Kadıköy (the main downtown area and centre of protest on the Asian side of İstanbul) to Bostancı.
Erdoğan may wish to vilify the protestors in Taksim and Beşiktaş, and of course they have taken actions but this wider suburban uprising is the one that he should not ignore. This is the voice of the people. The clashes with police are clashes with some of the people, and some who are, of course, just in it for the fight itself.
This suburban voice is perhaps the most remarkable of the situation. The usual crowd of disenfranchised protestor is of course in the mix, and loudly, but it is the rise of the rapidly expanding affluent middle class that is perhaps most striking. In many respect, this greatest force behind the expansion of the middle class in Turkey is Erdoan's economics, taking the country from a fairly low and stagnant GDP to a consistent and rapid rise.
This class in any country is typically silent in any demonstration, complacent as they are to reap whatever rewards come their way. Things never look so bad when you're sitting on a comfy couch. Yet they, too, are feeling a disturbance in the rhetoric of Erdoğan, and are speaking up.
When the middle classes begins to rise, something serious is happening.
The questions remains as to how long the Turkish people will keep their voices raised. The President, Abdullah Gül, whose office is charged with defending the Republic, and the Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç have apologized to the original Gezi Park Protestors, and the police have held back in their aggressive stance toward the protestors in the past two days.
And, Erdoğan is away on a political tour in Africa, his rage-inducing commentary relatively absent for now.
The question also remains as to how long the Turkish people will keep their voice unified. In all likelihood, the protest will now begin to turn inward as it seeks a unifying message to keep the various agendas at play together. All of the parties want the chance to be heard, and if they rally around that message, whatever it is.
I for one, as a lowly observer with no personal political stake in the situation, think that the right to be heard is central to everyone's complaint. The government will likely seek to divide the protest by focussing on each groups surface issue. But perhaps more likely, they will simply ignore the problem and let the groups refocus onto their own surface issues themselves.
We'll see.
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