I learned a new word in French today: intrusion. Not to be confused with perfusion, although there’s a hospital involved.
Français | English
From which, dear French friends, I see you have a Minister of the Interior who could apply for a job with Erdoğan.
Hold on, I’ll tell you all about it.
First, we must go back to 2013. Five years ago already when what we simply called Gezi was in full swing, involving its opponents.
A brief summary for those who don’t know what this was about. On May 28 2013 in Istanbul, some fifty people began a sit-in in a park near Taksim, as a protest against the planned disappearance of the park and the beginning of the cutting down of the trees. Residents came at first, soon joined by a few ecology activists.
The urban renewal project planned for this area combined a shopping center and the reconstruction of barracks from the Ottoman period. A condensed and highly symbolical summary of the Erdoğan régime, Istanbul’s former mayor and soon-to-be President.
Of course the police forces in 2013 were not manned by lovey-dovey types and the whole business ended with beatings and expulsion of the demonstrators. This savage repression led to the movement spreading across Turkey, with demands against the regime falling like ripe fruit from tree branches. It was something of our ’68. And it went on, from one demonstration to another repression…
By June 6 2013, six people had died and more than 4 000 demonstrators, including 14 journalists, had been wounded. In France on the 8 o’clock news bulletin of June 6 2013, you heard about “unease and suicides among the policemen”…Oh? Yes, verbatim, I checked! The least I can say about this is that you were already so fixated on your red-white-and-blue navel that an uprising covering a large part of Turkey with over 640 000 participants didn’t hold much of the attention of your left-wingers. We’re still waiting for the tweet expressing support…
For those wishing more details, I refer you to the learned web.
Let’s get back to our simple tale of a hospital making fun of a mosque…
Under the wise guidance of the government, a good number of the media had banner headlines reading:“Intruders attacked a Mosque in the heart of Istanbul”. And the stories contained spicy details concerning this intrusion.
“A bunch of tchapouldjous (meaning marauders, drifters) entered the mosque in their shoes, where they drank and fornicated!” In fact, the imam of a mosque had opened the doors to demonstrators attacked by the police. Many wounded ones were treated there by volunteer doctors and nurses.
So you can well imagine that when I heard about the fake news being spread around by your “Interior chest thumper”, I was immediately reminded of this. And I told myself right away that, beside being inventive, your Minister was a plagiarist. Unless there exists an International of Lies when it comes to disparaging your oppositions. If you don’t believe me, look at this! (in French +video inside)
And once you know where such repressions led us, for the sake of some holding on to power, you know you can never be too cautious.
Ah, Gezi… A failed uprising, also a betrayed one. An intrusion of a promise of change in Turkey. It will soon be its fifth anniversary. Five years of tears and blood have flowed since then.