The unprecedented wave of protests sweeping Turkey has come along with an overdose of youthful creativity and humor, undoing overnight Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s domineering image that looked invincible only two weeks ago.

The protesters, led by urban middle-class youths rebelling against Erdogan’s increasingly authoritarian ways, have yet to extract any concessions from the premier, who has dismissed them with anger and disdain. Yet they have irreversibly cracked the wall of fear the government had built and reclaimed free speech — at least in the street and on social media.

The defiant chants at the protests, the outpour of lampoons on Twitter and the taunting graffiti in the streets have come as a stunning explosion in a country where many critical journalists have ended up in retirement or in jail, and public servants have come to think twice before posting Erdogan cartoons on Facebook.

The scenes of violent police clampdowns on protesters in barricaded streets engulfed in clouds of tear gas are not unfamiliar to Turkey, which was plagued by deadly political unrest in the 1970s, and then the Kurdish conflict.