Erdogan, Taksim Square
And the Kurdish Peace
The peace process with the Kurds will either be a fatality of the Taksim-Gezi events, or a lifeline for Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan.
It has been two weeks since Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan "recaptured" Istanbul’s Taksim Square.
It has been 10 days since police evicted the protesters from the Gezi Park adjacent to the square with an unprecedented pepper gas attack, but Turkey is still living with the trauma of the first three weeks of June.
Erdogan seems to be on a national tour. He orates at least once a day but, as if playing the same tape, he is repeating the same sentences. More than 80% of his speeches are about what the Gezi Park protests triggered from the center of Istanbul and that spread to 79 out of 81 provinces of the country. Last weekend he spoke at Kayseri in the center of Anatolia, Samsun on the Black Sea and Erzurum in the east.
While addressing the graduating cadets at Ankara Police Academy on Monday, June 24, he praised the police — who have been much criticized for disproportionate use of force — and described the events as an "epic of police heroism." One day before, at Erzurum, Erdogan said he had personally ordered the police to clear Gezi Park from "forces of occupation."
