We once got up, we have seen our power, they have seen our power, our people will not stop this struggle, which has mobilized the existing cracks in the government block, before making the AKP step back, by building up barriers with public resistance to the public inimical policy of this governance and removing it

Despite all the public opposition and legal verdict, Erdoğan claimed that Topçu Kışlası would be built in Gezi Park and it will be a shopping center by saying ‘I decided, I am saying’. So, dozers entered Gezi Park on May 27, at night, and began to cut trees. (1) At that moment, those who stood against dozers to defend the nature and the life lit the fire of the big June Resistance which was actually an outburst of the accumulated anger towards AKP for years. This resistance turned out to be rebellion of the people against the Islamic obscurantism mixed with neoliberal policy and fascist oppression.

The people responded with an unprecedented resistance to the contempt of Erdoğan who has said ‘Whatever they do is pots and pan, it is showing-off! We gave our decision.’

From anger to rebellion, from resolute resistance to public revolt

Accumulated experience of years of progressive oppositional organizations coming from persistent resistances, the tents of TEKEL struggle, the rebellious egg movements of university students, the YGS (high school entrance examination) rebel of high school students, struggle of women against misogyny of AKP, the struggle for rights, the pervasive public resistance against the 4+4+4 system, the growing militant struggles by the streams, in the valleys for the nature and life, and, of course, May-One Resistances of socialists who won the Taksim Square, transformed into a country-wide public movement.

The Resistance expands to neighbourhoods and other cities in waves. The people does not only protest the Gezi Park attack of AKP, but also its obscurantist, rentier, and capitalistic fascist policy that disregards the nature, the human, the city, the labour, and rights and freedom. The people put a stop to the governance who finds in himself the right to decide about how many children people would have, what to believe in, what to wear, and his obscurantist way of living.

At work in the day, in the resistance at night

The young and the old from seven to seventy, women and men, workers, university students, high schoolers, white-collar workers and the poor, all the people give a message to Erdoğan, who ignores their will-power and contempts them by saying ‘We are here! We can take decision about our own lives!’, by obstructing roads, fighting, barricading, and seizing arenas. The one who goes to work at day-time turns out to be a militant in the resistance area at night, women go out of their houses or workplace and take part on the front line in the movement. This is an honoured resistance of the public against the rulers.

We are conquering the city center from where once we were exiled

From football team fans to artists, from socialists to social democratics, from those university students who had never attended a protest action to plaza workers, all of those who have a problem with AKP has become a militant subject in the resistance. The government force has got surprised when he met this subject. ‘Shoulder-to-shoulder against fascism, Government demission!’ voices arising from Dersim to Antalya, from Antakya to Trabzon, from İzmir to Diyarbakır has beeen the voice of brotherhood arising from inside the resistance.

This resistance is the movement of re-seizuring of city centers by the oppressed people and labourers who were once banished with various methods changing from the urban transformation projects to masculine threat of abuse, from obscurantist moral norms to fascist oppression, and, it has been accomplished. All the streets and squares of the cities are people’s from now on. This resistance showed the creative revolutionary power of the people with its wisdom, its persistence, its militancy, and its humour to friends and enemies.

Bridges have been passed, life has changed, government will also change

While the government seemed to take into consideration the demands of the revolt as they could not impede it with police terror, censorship and ideological anti-propaganda, their failure to take a concrete step triggered growth of the revolt. The man in the street is aware of that the fight depends on a conflict that has got more strict and more uncompromizable between the public and the AKP. The public opposition is bearing down on the AKP with all of its legitimacy, militancy and mass. Like every government that anticipates its end, the AKP tries to get rid of despair, violence and internal crisis. Almost all of the liberals have fallen into despair with AKP. Tayyip, who once was useful for a time-period, is now being manifestly discussed as the inappropriate personality in the coming period. A similar situation is also valid on the AKP side. The claim among AKP ranks as ‘He is doing wrong.’ is taking its power from Fathullah for now. However, it is certain that this claim will be coming from the AKP voter very soon. What Tayyip Erdoğan is doing now is that every dictator does not to give up power: to firm ranks with community of interest and common fate, to lead people by the nose whom he is in a patronage relationship. Those who are rampageous during this processes, like Yalçın Akdoğan, the adviser of Tayyip, will be nothing when Tayyip Erdogan is gone.

The people know that nothing will be as before while Erdoğan is tying to defend his governance rigidly without tolerance to even the smallest movement. This process has become a school, an academy of politics for every one, from the individual who has gone out to show his reaction to the one who participates in protests at every turn. Beyond learning, a political awareness has arisen. Nothing will be as before for these people. The period of three elections will be lived with this differentiation in political awareness.

We once got up, we have seen our power, they have seen our power, our people will not stop this struggle, which has mobilized the existing cracks in the government block, before making the AKP step back, by building up barriers with public resistance to the public inimical policy of this governance and removing it.

Note

1) In deed the reality has been understood later: The part of an area of 800 square meters in Gezi Park which they try to demolish was forgotten to plan in the original Project. That is, it has been forgotten and Kadir Topbaş was responsible for it and he had forgotten to build a pedestrian pathway in the construction whose name was ‘pedestrianization.’ Afterwards, with fait accompli they tried to construct a pedestrian pathway by stealing some part from Gezi Park.