| Publication |
2013.
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| Summary/Abstract |
On May 28th, around the same time Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan addressed the Justice and Development Party (AKP) delegation in Parliament, as he does most Tuesdays, police were ejecting protesters from Istanbul's Gezi Park. The previous day, environmentalists had begun gathering there to protest the cutting down of trees to make room for the reconstruction of the Halil Pasha Artillery Barracks, which stood on the same plot of land from the early 1800s until 1940. By the end of the week, the protests had grown in intensity, with over a hundred thousand demonstrators and police using tear gas and water cannons to control them. Clashes with police spread from the adjacent Taksim Square to other parts of the city, and later to eighty of Turkey's eighty-one provinces, with more than two million people participating in a movement that by the end of June left five dead and thousands injured. Istanbul alone suffered tens of millions of dollars worth of property damage.
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