Turkey

The New York Times reports: The Turkish authorities widened their crackdown on the antigovernment protest movement on Sunday, taking aim not just at the demonstrators themselves, but also at the medics who treat their injuries, the business owners who shelter them and the foreign news media flocking here to cover a growing political crisis threatening [...]

Sophia Jones writes: The names of the dead are taped to Sycamore trees in Istanbul’s Gezi Park: Fatma Erboz, age 3. Ahmet Uyar, 45. These trees — threatened by government redevelopment plans that have in turn inspired mass protests around Turkey — have been transformed into memorials for the more than 50 people who died [...]

Lale Kemal writes: A majority of Turks are now conscious of the fact that the mass protests that took place in this country in the past were masterminded by deep state elements so that they could hold on to their power at the expense of the elected governments. Between 1960 and 2007, Turks witnessed bloody [...]

Sule Kulu writes: “History shows that if nations cannot manage to win all together, they are destined to lose all together,” declared Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, on the first anniversary of his 2007 re-election. “We defend freedom, justice, democracy and welfare for everybody.” Back then, he promised that his Justice and Development Party, [...]

The Guardian reports: A crowd-funding campaign has raised over $55,000 in under 24 hours to help pay for a full-page ad in the New York Times calling for democratic action and new dialogue on Turkey. The Indiegogo campaign – “Full Page Ad for Turkish Democracy in Action: OccupyGezi for the World” – called on contributors [...]

Emre Caliskan and Simon A. Waldman write: The protests come as Turkey’s Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan is seeking to change the Turkish constitution to give more powers to the president, an office Erdogan is believed to be eyeing when his term as prime minister soon expires. Many Turks believe that this will give him [...]

Ziya Meral writes: Much has been and will be written about why and how a small and peaceful protest in Taksim Square’s Gezi Park evolved into a large social eruption. Relatively little has been said about what this might mean politically, socially, economically and diplomatically in the near future. No matter from which political angle [...]

Pablo Barberá and Megan Metzger write: Over the past several years the role of social media in promoting, organizing, and responding to protest and revolution has been a hot topic of conversation. From Occupy Wall Street to the Arab Spring Revolutions, social media has been at the center of many of the largest, most popular [...]

Yavus Selim writes: “What’s going on in Turkey?” is a common question on the lips of people as varied as Joseph Gordon-Levitt and some American Muslim scholars. People are finding it hard to wrap their head around the facts. The most stable, economically successful and popular democratically elected government in the Middle East has been [...]

Today’s Zaman reports: Global “hacktivist” group Anonymous has announced a campaign to disrupt communications channels of the Turkish government in response to its handling of the Gezi protests, with reports of two cyberattacks on Sunday. Turkish media reported on Monday that Anonymous had “managed to take down access” to the Official Gazette, the Turkish government’s [...]

Tulin Daloglu writes: Just like that iconic picture in 1989 known as the “Tank Man of Tiananmen,” Reuters’ top photo on Tuesday [May 28] showing a young woman wearing a short-sleeve burgundy dress, carrying a white tote bag over her shoulder while a police officer wearing a gas mask spraying pepper into her face will [...]