Death of teenager sparks more protests in Turkey
The current domestic upheaval is intensifying for Turkey's prime minister with the death of a 15-year-old boy, in a coma since being hit in the head with a pepper-gas projectile during the Gezi Park protests last year.
Turkey has been a truly vibrant country for some years now, with never a dull moment. But in my decades of highly politicized life I cannot recollect a period that has been so "vibrant" in the negative sense.
Many developments important enough to define any country's agenda for years to come are happening incessantly and simultaneously in Turkey. Nerves are taut with accumulating tension that is ready to explode at any moment.
For example, almost all the defendants in the historic Ergenekon and Sledgehammer cases, including Gen. Ilker Basbug, the former chief of general staff who had been incarcerated for two and a half years, have been released. These two cases have come to symbolize Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s 12 years in power. But along with these defendants, the murderers of Armenian journalist and intellectual Hrant Dink and the German Christian missionaries in Malatya have also been released.
The reasons for this are new legal arrangements and legislation that even the Turks have problems understanding, much less outsiders.
