For Turkey’s Don Quixote Cycling Collective, biking is not only a way of transportation but also a means of social activism. The embryo of this cycling group was formed in 2013 with Turkey’s Gezi Park events, which started initially when a small group contested the government’s urban development plans and then turned into a wide-scale protest movement to push for civil liberties and secularism. Some of the founding members have met under tear gas and pressurized water as police brutally tried to quell the protests.
“We define ourselves as activists who cycle,” Emre Tepe, one of the founders of the movement, told Al-Monitor.
