Pro-Kurdish Protest in Istanbul Ends with Tear Gas

There was a big protest near Taksim Square in Istanbul yesterday in the early afternoon.; I was wandering up up the main pedestrian throughfare - Istiklal Caddesi - with my friend Dan when it became clear that the path was blocked by double rows of police wearing riot gear.

We started to hear chanting from behind the row. We took a couple of pictures. Later I learned from this article in the Turkish press that there had been about 400 protestors.

The sound was enormous as they chanted. I wasn't able to understand what they were saying but it felt tense - partly from the mood of the crowd, partly from being there and not understanding the context or what people were saying. (I'm just here from Canada for an exhibition.)

The crowd and the police were in front of a really amazing building with a big gate and lots of gardens, that I'd heard from my curator was a high school. She said it was very secretive as a building and she had never managed to see the inside of it. She said they still teach in French at this school, which is a legacy from the 19th century when it was the common social language. Next to it is a super modern sculpture with "1923" written in a cartoony font - referring to the date that the Turkish republic was founded - this sculpture is very strange and has lots of spikes.

Anyway we turned down one of the streets to sort of step away from this long straightaway because we didn't know what was going to happen. Most of the streets leading up to the area had been barricaded by the police. There were probably 200 policemen there, all kinds of police vehicles, including a sort of a tank.

Once we were a block away or so from the centre of the action, you could hardly tell anything was happening. The streets were still crowded with regular people just going about their own business. No one looked all that worried on the side streets.

We wandered around there for about 20 minutes and by the time we looped back to approach the area again, coming from the same direction as we had originally, the wind was bringing clouds of tear gas with it and everyone was dabbing their eyes and coughing. Many held scarves or tissues over their noses. It was really unpleasant. Lots of people came from the direction of the tear gas.

Another 10 minutes and the whole thing was completely over. Later we saw the police march out again, cutting through the passageway of a modern building and onto one of the main throughfares. Some stayed there the rest of the day just hanging out near some motorcycles. The police are still in the same spot today, but only a few of them.

I asked a couple of people here about it and they weren't alarmed: they said that it is a tradition that people come there to protest, and the police go and break them up with tear gas no matter what the issues are. The person I spoke to though said it would be impossible that the demonstrators would be pro-PKK, but this article (cited above) says it was a group from a pro Kurdish party.