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Ten years after the Gezi movement in Turkey: "This power has been able to play on the divisions of society"

Ten years ago, the Gezi uprising shook the Turkish regime on its support. On the eve of a new mandate of Recep Tayyip Erdogan, RFI met two alumni of the movement.

On May 28, 2013, the Gezi uprising began in Istanbul, which would lead to weeks of demonstrations against Turkish rule and an unprecedented wave of protest (illustration image). AFP/File

Text by: Aurore Lartigue Follow

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From our special envoy in Istanbul,

It is certainly not a day of celebration for Ahmet Saymadi, but since the first round, on May 14, the Turkish opposition suspected that change would still have to wait. "I'm the kind of person who always has hope," he says with a slight smile, when asked about his morale the day after the second round. The day before, outgoing President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, in power for twenty years, was re-elected with 52.2% of the vote. This member of the HDP, the pro-Kurdish party, which supported the opposition candidate, Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, returned early not to attend the celebrations of the supporters of the government. He welcomes us to his restaurant in the basement of an alley near Istiklal Avenue, in the center of Istanbul.

On May 29, 2013, he was outside a few hundred meters away and taking part in what would lead to what has sometimes been called a "Turkish Spring". Initially, a few dozen residents of Gezi opposed a project to restructure the park. But their brutal expulsion by the police will set fire to the powder. The movement is spreading, as are the demands, to the point of demanding the departure of Erdogan, accused of authoritarian drift and wanting to "Islamize" Turkish society. "On the first day of the occupation, no one thought there would be such a level of resistance. But then everyone came, each with their reasons. And suddenly the resistance turned into a gigantic revolt that no one expected," recalls Ahmet Saymadi, now 47. For three weeks, some 2.5 million people demonstrated.

Ahmet Saymadi, member of the pro-Kurdish HDP. © RFI/Aurore Lartigue

A decade later, Gezi Park is still there, and so is the AKP government. "I was 23 when the Gezi protests started and I was a member of a youth organization. Now I am 33 years old and I have white hair because of the political context of this country. So says Feride Eralp. This feminist activist does not hide her disappointment. "But it's a feeling we've become accustomed to in this country," she says, referring in particular to attempts at "reconciliation" around the Kurdish question. Each time, we have seen a wave of nationalism emerge in society.

« Gezi showed us that different parts of society could fight side by side  » 

In Gezi, illusions were shattered against the wall of repression. Thousands of people were arrested in the wake of the protest movement and the demands were not heard. But Ahmet wants to believe that the movement has laid the foundations for a union of an entire section of Turkish society. "When you entered the park on the side of Taksim Square, you could believe that the resistance was initiated by the Ataturkists, but if you entered from the back, you could think that it was led by the Kurds, and if you came in from the middle, you would come across feminists and LGBT people, etc," he says, still amazed. So can consider that this movement is the starting point of this culture of reconciliation and the culture of struggle together, which has prepared the ground for today's political climate.

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Gezi showed us that different parts of society could be side by side, fight side by side and that there were other ways of doing society, Ferid believes. Through Gezi, we saw that by relying on solidarity, we could overcome our differences, avoid the pitfall of hatred.

But ten years later, it is clear that Turkish society has become polarized. The Turkish government's "divide and rule" strategy seems to be bearing fruit. "This power has been able to play on the divisions of society," says the feminist. He really knows how to manipulate a community. We also see how he was able to raise the 52% (who voted for him) against the 48%, by calling them "terrorists" in these speeches.

However, Ahmet Saymadi wants to believe that the coalition of six heterogeneous parties that the opposition candidate Kemal Kiliçdaroglu, embodies today the legacy of this convergence of struggles. "As a candidate and during the campaign, I worked quite a bit in different cities and I saw this convergence of different parts of society possible." He cites as an example those women dressed in chador distributing leaflets of the opposition opposition candidate. "This is something unprecedented in Turkey's political history," he said.

Shrinking freedoms

The last ten years have been difficult for both activists. Gezi acts the repressive turn of the regime. The process begun to try to settle the Kurdish question has failed. In the legislative elections of 7 June 2015, Erdogan's Islamic-conservative AKP party came out ahead, but was deprived of its absolute majority in Parliament for the first time. The Kurdish HDP party made its entrance. New elections are called. In 2016, the coup attempt failed in blood. Although attributed to the preacher Fethullah Gülen, it is the occasion for purges on an unprecedented scale that also affects the pro-Kurdish movement and the media. "We can consider that this was the worst period for the opposition," says Ahmet Saymadi. Many people have left the country. There has been a sharp narrowing of freedoms.

Even so, Ahmet sees the slow but gradual erosion of President Erdogan's power in the elections of the past decade as a kind of victory. "If we look from our point of view: we resisted forcefully, in 2015, we prevented him from coming to power with only one party, in 2019, we won the mayors of the big cities, and now, with this coalition, we have condemned him in the second round. This is the result of a ten-year struggle," he concludes.

Feminist activist Feride Eralp at a café in her Kurtuluç neighborhood of Istanbul. © RFI/Aurore Lartigue

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The feminist movement has resisted this polarization by defending the rights of women from different parts of society. It has thus managed to keep its legitimacy," says the activist who has been part of several women's rights organizations. But for the movement, the field of action has also shrunk. For four years, the demonstrations of March 8, Women's Day, and that of November 25, against violence, have been banned, she recalls. "We are arrested, we are prosecuted," denounces the activist. In his speech on the balcony yesterday [Sunday], he said he was against violence against women, but when we try to denounce them on these days, we ourselves suffer police violence.

Attacks on women's rights "repelled

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In July 2021, she recalls and despite protests, Turkey withdrew from the Council of Europe Convention on preventing and combating violence against women and domestic violence, known as the Istanbul Convention, which the country had been the first to ratify. It obliges governments to adopt legislation against such acts. The Turkish government accused the treaty of encouraging homosexuality and threatening the traditional family structure. "But what is immoral? protested the young woman. Is it to defend women's rights and ask that they do not suffer violence? Is it immoral to say that people should not be subjected to violence because of their sexual orientation and gender identity? If that's it, yes we are immoral people? What does it take not to be immoral? That we disappear? But we will not disappear.

Despite these regressions, Feride Eralp wants to believe in the mobilization of associations and civil society. "We managed to fend off some of their attacks on women's rights." A bill by AKP MPs to grant amnesty to rapists willing to marry their victims has been scrapped. The activist even congratulates herself on having succeeded in mobilizing pro-AKP MPs.

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But these same women, she regrets, have today remained silent against the extremist parties Hüda Par [the political showcase of Turkish Hezbollah, editor's note], or the Refah Party, which have entered Parliament since the parliamentary elections. The latter is at the origin of Turkey's withdrawal from the Istanbul Convention. He also called for the rewriting of Law 6284, in favor of women because it would not be sufficiently protective of the family.

Could a movement like Gezi's emerge today? Both believe that it would be "difficult". "Before Gezi, people had not experienced the state violence that unfolded in 2013 and beyond. Today, people know the repressive capabilities of the Turkish power. We saw people die in the streets during the failed coup in 2016," he said.

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The power structure has been strengthened, and so has its base. If a movement like this emerged, it would be more violent," said the feminist activist.

None wants to give in to resignation. Ahmet remains positive. Erdogan may have won, but his grip is receding, if the results are to be believed. When Feride Eralp is asked how she sees the upcoming five, the young woman smiles: "We're going to try not to make sure it doesn't last five years.

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