The Taksim protests in Turkey have become a physical manifestation of growing discontent of the masses toward recent urban mega-projects and some other policies of the Turkish government over the past few years.
When clashes between protesters and police erupted in Taksim Square over protests against the demolition of Gezi Park last week, an outpouring of commentary in national and international media jumped to the conclusion that another “Spring” was starting to take hold in the Middle East, but this time in the least expected place: Turkey.
However, the narrative of a “Turkish Spring” is nothing but a mirage, and comparing Taksim to Tahrir is beyond absurd. The causation-less argument mostly focuses on how the scale of protests reflects something new and unprecedented in the character of the Turkish political landscape over the past years.
It is true that the uprooting of trees not only unleashed a massive and vicious cycle of clashes between protesters and police in nationwide protests, but also revealed how a particular group is discontent with the way the government is policymaking and implementing large-scale public projects -- though the protests later were hijacked by ultra-nationalist and Kemalist groups, alienating others, including conservatives and even the ruling Justice and Development Party (AK Party) voters.
The Gezi Park protests, without a doubt, played a unifying role for the non-AK Party groups to display their discontent. The brutal police response to what were at first peaceful protests only fueled further tensions that later metastasized to nationwide, all-out street battles.
The intransigence and indifference of the government does not reflect well on the political savvy of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan's inner circle. With a simple move of appeasement, the crisis could already have been defused. Instead, Erdoğan vowed to further proceed with the development plans, which only led to further escalate clashes.
Thankfully, the retreat of police from Taksim on Saturday helped ease tension in the area to some degree.
The fashionable usage of the Tahrir analogy to explain what happened and is happening in Taksim misses the main point of the protest and leads to a myopic reading of how a mass, social protest could evolve into a genuine social revolution that ends in the transformation of an entire political system.
The variables and factors that led to a revolution in Tahrir are simply lacking in Taksim in every aspect.
While Egyptians in Tahrir gathered to demand their most basic right -- though long negated and suppressed -- to have a say and representation in the political system, people in Taksim live in a country where free multi-party elections have been held for more than seven decades, despite interruptions in the form of military coups.
Even if military intervention interrupts the normal course of politics in Turkey, the army would not remain in power forever. And after a certain period of time, it would relinquish its power to democratically elected political leaders.
The historical and normal patterns of democracy are somehow entrenched in the roots of political culture in this country, and in the first elections following the military coup in 1960 and 1980 -- the 1961 and 1983 elections are the best examples, given the fact that politicians who were not favored by the military were elected in outright and sweeping victories at the ballot box -- people punished the military for their intervention and brought civilian people to power in defiance of the demands of the army.
The people in Tahrir had been members of a long-brutalized society where there had been no, or very little, space for greater political participation to voice their long-ignored grievances.
Bread, freedom and social justice -- the three key slogans of Tahrir revolutionaries -- eloquently characterize the demands and expectations of Egyptian society in its bid to end the decades-old authoritarian regime.
The rightful cause of a protest against a government decision -- the demolition of the Gezi Park -- however, does not make a correlation to the gatherings in Tahrir appropriate.
Two entirely different socio-economic and political contexts make such an analogy impossible in analytical terms. Treating Erdoğan's government in the same vein as Mubarak's could only be a reflection of an inadequate reading of the political structures in Turkey and Egypt.
The AK Party government can be criticized from any angle if a person is discontent with its policies -- as protesters are. The ghoulish police response to the protests is certainly unjustifiable.
However, Turkey still lacks the necessary conditions and essential elements that could lead to a “Tahrir Revolution.” Though it is not perfect, a democracy still prevails in Turkey with free elections, the economic outlook and profile of the country has been blossoming over the past decade -- lifting millions of lower-class families from poverty to the level of middle class -- and military interventions seem far from likely given the consolidation of civilian control over the military.
While the Taksim protests in the beginning brought diverse groups together for a common cause -- to stop the uprooting of trees and demolition of the park -- regardless of their political orientation and identity, it soon turned into an event where government opponents displayed their ideological tendencies, ignoring the risk of alienating others like conservatives, who also had expressed their objection to the project.
Anarchists, the terrorist Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), the Labor Party (IP) and the main opposition Republican People's Party (CHP) successfully hijacked the protest, which could have been a bipartisan and non-ideological gathering to its last day. But it isn't anymore.
Apart from that, the recent Taksim protests clearly showed the people's deepening angst over the government's approach toward public sensitivity and development of mega-urbanization projects.
The Taksim protests should prompt a self-evaluation within the government. Sometimes, even though power legitimately comes from a democratic source, it can endanger a government's future if it used in such a defiant manner as we have witnessed in the Taksim case.
Democracy is not only about elections held every four years, but also about enhancing public consent with constant deliberation, dialogue and communication with the people over crucial public policies.
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