Will there be a second Gezi?

There will not be a second Gezi because social incidents are not repeating themselves in the same way or on the same platform. However much it is forced, however much it is desired, such a thing will not and cannot happen. 

It won’t happen because a feeling is rapidly spreading among the opposition that the head of the state is himself trying to make a second Gezi happen to reinforce his power. So people should not give him what he wants. This feeling is actually the biggest obstacle to a second Gezi. 

It won’t happen because the spontaneous social rage of Gezi cannot be created through social engineering efforts. What’s more, anyone who attempts such engineering knows that they may provoke an outcome far from what they intended. 


Why did Erdoğan start talking about Gezi? 

If you think President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan started talking about Gezi again because he wants to change the agenda, I have some questions for you: What will happen if he changes the agenda? Isn’t he himself setting the agenda anyway? Why would he be trying to change his self-designed agenda with a more troublesome topic?

If you suggest in response that Erdoğan wants to draw attention to Gezi in order to distract from bad foreign policy failures, then I ask you whether it is a new matter that Turkey’s foreign policy is failing? Has this failure not been at its peak for a couple of months? Now, at a time when the government is working to make some changes in its policies on Russia, Syria, Egypt and Israel to overcome this failure, why would Erdoğan want another Gezi-type incident?

You may think that Erdoğan wants another Gezi in order to explain away the bad economic situation and the ongoing disaster in the tourism sector. But I would say that if Gezi-type incidents re-emerge, the economic situation would worsen further. Tourism would sink further. In a situation of absolute failure, would people not demand other answers? Can Erdoğan not calculate all of this? 

You may believe that he is trying to distract from his troubles on the diploma issue, as people are questioning whether he fulfills the constitutional requirement for a Turkish president to have a university diploma. But this is very naïve. Do you really think Erdoğan cares about the diploma allegations even a little bit? 

You may think he wants to provoke a civil war to reinforce his rule. But he is the man in power, the dominant figure in Turkey. When this is the case, why would he want to start a civil war? Is there the slightest bit of rationality in this?

So why has Erdoğan started talking about Gezi Park again? 

I can say only one thing on the matter: I don’t know. I really don’t know. 


Why? 

Why did our former Chief of General Staff Yaşar Büyükanıt recently describe Defense Minister Fikri Işık’s claim that some military operations have previously not been conducted in order to avoid the deaths of any soldiers as “an extremely worthless statement”? 

And why isn’t the defense minister now slamming the retired General Büyükanıt and telling him to “know his place,” as was said before? 

Why? 

What’s more, the coup administration in Egypt recently gave another life sentence to the toppled president Mohamed Morsi, based on nonsense accusations. So why have our government spokespeople and the pro-government media not shouted and made a fuss? Why?