The buzz break in the news nowadays, a respite from a daily dose of Syrian orgy of violence, but no less heartwarming, is the protests rocking Istanbul. Youths from a largely secular side of the Turkish nation protested a few days ago against a plan by Turkish Prime Minister Erdogan's AKP party to build a mall, actually an Ottoman military barracks that doubles as a mall, on a park.
FP.com has a smorgasbord of articles written about the issues wringing Turkey at this time, and how Erdogan is slowly undemocratizing Turkey over the years using of course the pretext that since he was elected with a strong majority, then he can do practically whatever the hell he thinks he wants.
Over the last decade, Erdogan without a doubt transformed Turkey into a shining, economically dynamic majority Muslim nation in a sea of autocratic Arab neighborhood. However, Erdogan also effectively stifled and emasculated Turkey's media, ensuring that the press only reports on the things he wants. In addition, he has used the state machinery to harass everyone and anyone who does not agree with him, ensuring a moribund opposition. Clearly electoral success has blinded Erdogan to the essence of democracy. He has slowly become a leader who only represents the religious Islamist side of Turkey.
Unless the Istanbul protests, which has spread to thirty other Turkish cities, somehow induces a much needed bout of self-reflection and analysis in Erdogan, Turkey will sink in into further protests and further chances of violent outbursts, which will in turn incite the government to apply even more harsher methods, which will then embolden the Turkish opposition as represented by the secular youths of Taksim, to mass around Taksim and the potential for a cycle of violence looms ever more clearly.
I am in solidarity with the secular protesters of Taksim Square. Only a secular environment can ensure that all ideologies gets to play in the democratic chessboard - a fundamental quality of any democratic nation.
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