I just would not…

Leaving Turkey last week onboard a Genoa-bound plane I was quite convinced that in a day or two the government would engage in yet another futile attempt to “cleanse” the Taksim Square, particularly the Gezi Park area from those “çapulling” or staging a rather rare “resistance” to the “father state”. I was definitely sure that the know-all, most-able and indeed most capable extraordinarily self-democrat and one and only chief executive of the country would order his police force to wipe out all resistance and cleanse Taksim of everyone but his loyalists… I was sure as well that whatever the chief executive does, he was compelled to fail as the resistance and Gezi Park had long completed their fundamental aim and became a symbol, not only for Turks, but for all oppressed people, waging a struggle for wider democracy, enhanced rights and liberties.

While I was away, as I expected, Gezi Park was raided, resistance was brutally crushed. Was there anything new in that horrendous use of force by the police acting on government’s orders? In two weeks of the “crush resistance at any cost” campaign of the government, police demonstrated excellence in the overuse of force. Such excessive force was employed that five people lost their lives, some 820 people were injured, five people are still in a serious condition, while at varying degrees 18 people lost their sight in at least one of their eyes.
 
Would I believe it if anyone had told me street vendors on the narrow road leading to the Pisa tower were chanting and holding placards reading “Everywhere is Taksim; resistance everywhere”? Or, would I, even for a few seconds think I was awake if an Egyptian theology professor sharing scarce shade on a very hot day in the St. Peter Square in the Vatican tried in vain to explain what a great idol secular Turkey was for the “democrats” of the Muslim societies but under political Islam it was fast becoming a “typical eastern dictatorship”? I would not.

Would I ever hope to see, even in my wildest dreams, a group of Turkish tourists, rather than gambling at a casino or engaging in a shopping frenzy, flocking to Monte Carlo’s famous “Café Paris” and benefitting from free internet to try to log in to Turkish papers to learn what the situation of the “resistance” back at home was? I would not.

Would I believe it if someone had told me journalists, academics, just ordinary people meeting at a Barcelona hotel to greet a friend from Turkey instead of exchanging hypocritical niceties and expressions were expressing solidarity with the “resistance spirit” of “secular and modern Turkey”? I would not.

Would I believe it if anyone had told me that a small merchant in Tunis trying to make a living through fleecing naive tourists buying every Stone they see would warn me Turks must first see the end result of the “spring” in the neighborhood before hoping to see a “Turkish spring”? I would not.

But all the above were nothing more than trivial details compared with a very grave development going on in the country since the Gezi Park resistance was brutally crushed by police under strict “no mercy be shown” orders of the premier. Can anyone indeed explain with reason, common sense, wisdom, rational behavior, good governance the town by town tour of the prime minister to disseminate hatred and enmity against the opposition parties and his critics?

Would I ever think even in my wildest dreams that the prime minister of the country would start to use a “we and they” language, divide the nation as his supporters and opponents? Would I ever believe the prime minister of the country might become the most serious separatist force nourishing hate, enmity and vengeance against those sections of the society who dare not to worship him as if he was a living god?

No, I would not… Definitely would not!