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Erdogan and the Battle For the Memory of Gezi Park

Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan's depiction of Taksim Square protesters as looters and marauders is an attempt to spin the facts on the ground into an "official" history of Gezi Park uprising.
A protester holds a Turkish flag as riot police order them to evacuate Gezi Park in central Istanbul June 15, 2013. Thousands of people took to the streets of Istanbul overnight on Sunday, erecting barricades and starting bonfires, after riot police firing teargas and water cannon stormed a park at the centre of two weeks of anti-government unrest. Lines of police backed by armoured vehicles sealed off Taksim Square in the centre of the city as officers raided the adjoining Gezi Park late on Saturday, where

Those of us who have been in Istanbul’s Taksim Square over the past three weeks have seen both Turkey’s worst face and its best face on full display.

Amidst the chaos and the violence of the clashes between protesters and a ruthless police force, a young generation of citizens demanding peaceful coexistence, democratic dialogue and a new way of political engagement appears to have found its voice. But already that budding voice risks being stifled by the polarizing rhetoric of the political classes and the government’s sustained efforts to spin the facts on the ground and create an alternative story for the wider masses to consume.

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