When I came to Istanbul, I really believed I was an educated person who had a general idea of what culture and life was going to be like here. After all, I’d taken several undergraduate courses on Middle Eastern, Ottoman and Turkish history. I was going to dress conservatively, so as not to offend anyone, and I was completely prepared to give up my university alcoholism. It was a Muslim country, right?
Wrong. So wrong. Imagine my confusion when I was severely underdressed for my first day of university in my typical attire of jeans, a t-shirt and Toms. And then the first night we went out for drinks? I was the loser for wanting to be home by 4:00 a.m. This country surprised me in so many ways within that first week. Even in my last week, I was still being shocked by the people of this city, but in a much bolder way.
When it occurred to me that I couldn’t even get the whole dressing and drinking thing right, I decided to probe a little bit more about culture and values in Turkey. My new friends must have hated me as I grilled them about things I perceived to be prominent issues in the country: Kurdish people, Ataturk, and the role of the military and the government.
Some of what I was told didn’t surprise me, some of it blew me out of the water. I started to get a sense of the suppression in Turkey. I was told how the government was becoming increasingly authoritarian, playing on the beliefs of the religious population — although my friends never believed the government was Islamist at heart. The people I had met were disgruntled with their government for one reason or another, but no one would ever directly stand up to them, even when we were just talking.
However, on May 31, hundreds, and then thousands of protesters stood up and refused to back down. What started as a protest to protect Gezi Park, near Taksim Square, soon became a protest for all of Turkey.
I had just finished dinner with my parents on their first night in Istanbul, and was heading out to meet some friends for a few ‘end of exchange’ drinks. My friends had been dodging through the side streets of Taksim, attempting to get a few visiting friends to their hostel. After realizing that they weren’t getting anywhere near it, they tried to catch a cab and head back to the university. It only worsened once I was able to join them, and after futile attempts to get a cab, we realized we were stranded.
We all decided we’d hunker down for a few hours, wait for things to settle, and then be on our way. They had already been up to the Taksim area, and said the southern part was fine, so we went to a chill little bar we knew and settled in for some drinks. We were relaxed, catching up with friends, one of whom had just come from Chile to surprise his girlfriend — the beginnings of a perfect night, or so we thought.
We hadn’t even finished our first round when one of the employees started talking to us about smoking and going up stairs. Confused, we told him we weren’t going to smoke, but wanted to stay at the street level. He persisted, so we hesitantly took our beers and moved upstairs.
By then, people started rushing in from the street, so we moved quickly, still very confused. I headed to the window to see what was going on. A few of us gathered, and watched the cloud of smoke move through the empty street.
At first, our group had one of those inevitable douchey exchange kid moments. We’re at a bar in Taksim, and there’s tear gas outside. THIS IS CRAZY! And then it started to set in. The tingling in our eyes and cheeks turned to burning. Our faces were leaking fluid out of every hole. The burning I felt in my throat made me struggle to breathe.
As I stood there, struggling with the effects of being tear gassed, a complete stranger, who had clearly been through much more than I had that night, insisted I take his surgical mask. I knew he was in rough shape, so I insisted he keep it to no avail. He almost put it on for me. That was my first impression of who the people of this protest really were.
We spent the next few hours talking the protesters. One guy told us how he had been hit in the abdomen with a tear gas canister, next to his friend who began to suffer from an asthma attack. Luckily, someone in the crowd shared their inhaler with him. Although the news had not confirmed anything, we heard that others hadn’t been so lucky.
Our new friend started to tell us about himself. He was studying culinary arts, and working in a high-class French restaurant. He was just like us: an educated, twentysomething who believed in the potential and power of peaceful protest.
These were the faces of Taksim Square: a man who handed me his mask without a question, people who were warning us of the dangers out there, and a man and his friend — battered by the police — who just wanted democracy.
The next day, after leaving my parents again, I was making my way home. I passed through Besiktas, an area which stayed peaceful in the previous night’s chaos. It was hectic, cars were constantly honking, and passersby clapped back to them, creating a metaphorical handshake of support. Hundreds of people were walking through the street, waving Turkish flags.
Two middle-aged women walked together with masks around their necks, just in case. Despite the number of the people, the group remained peaceful, even singing together. An hour later, when I finally reached my dorm, I came home to the news on our lobby television. That same neighborhood was now filled with tear gas. And there I was, in my room, drafting this article to the sound of cars honking, banging on pots, and people shouting in support of these demonstrations.
I’m now back in my quiet neighborhood of North Vancouver, relaxing in my apartment, thousands of kilometers away. Still, there is something wildly inspiring about witnessing the beginnings of this movement — to have seen not only how sudden, but also how strongly people’s passions can be ignited.
I witnessed a country was falling further and further backwards into authoritarianism, only to see its people stand up and fight for what they believe in. And best of all, I got a glimpse of who these people really are. They are kind-hearted and supportive people who will go out of their way to help one another, even me, the foreign-looking, blonde, white girl.
These protestors aren’t just hooligans who just want to stir shit up, they are people who are fighting in solidarity for the liberty and love of their country. And I think the faces and actions of all these protestors and supporters is something we can all be inspired by.
