JINHA

ISTANBUL – On the second anniversary of the Gezi Park resistance, the fire of resistance born in what started as a small vigil for a few trees continues to burn from Istanbul to Kobanê. Two years later, we take a look back at the day-by-day development of the popular uprising that changed Turkey.

The AKP government determined to turn Gezi Park into a mall that would be a poor imitation of an Ottoman landmark. On the afternoon of May 27, the first wall was knocked down. The platform "Stand Up For Taksim," which had long been struggling to maintain Gezi Park as a park, spread the word. Around 50 environmentalists and urban activists started a tent vigil. Police warned that demolition equipment would be back the next day.

As social media reports of the pending destruction of Gezi's treespoured in the next morning, police attempted to stop the growing resistance with a major attack. Images like that of "the woman in red" standing up against tear gas spread like wildfire on social media. BDP parliamentary representative Sırrı Sürreya Önder, an early supporter of the resistance, made his famous remark that "I'm a representative for these trees and birds, too."

On May 30, early in the morning, police attacked again. The tents in the park, set up for the night watch vigil, were lit on fire. The vigil, now turning into a popular resistance,held one of its first mass forums that afternoon. Police attacked throughout the next day. As the area became enrobed in a cloud of tear gas, local hospitals filled to capacity. The Turkish Chamber of Physicians had to set up an emergency first response center to treat the wounded.

At this point, the walls of fear were tumbling down and crowds were pouring into the area from across Istanbul. World media reported live on the 15-hour long police attack. Despite the near total media silence on Turkish TV channels, solidarity actions spread to provinces across Turkey.

By the early morning hours of June 1, all of Turkey was out in the squares. In Istanbul, tens of thousands of people on the Asian side of the city took the iconic Bosphorus Bridge in a mass march to the European side. Towards the afternoon of that day, police began a police of pepper spraying or arresting anyone in the streets—even a single person.

Tens of thousands headed for Taksim from every segment of Istanbul—Kurds, Turks, Alevis, Armenians, workers, unemployed—in defense of the resistance. By 5 p.m. that day, the people had written history: the police abandoned the square. The people began building barricades from abandoned police vehicles and metal barricades. The resistance held a huge celebration and concertthe following afternoon to celebrate the victory.

The youth took up the task of the self-defense of what had become a communal space now decorated with the posters of revolutionaries and creative slogans spray painted across overturned police vehicles. Self-organized communes supplied the food, improvised gas masks and medicine needed in the resistance.People lived a new kind of politics in the squares, taking part in forums ten thousand people strong. The AKM building, whose façade was taken over by the flags and posters of every imaginable political group, became a symbol of unity.'

On the 15th day of the resistance, with then-Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan vowing to do "everything necessary" to stop the protests, the police returned with a massive assault. On June 17, workers were out on strike in support of the popular refusal to abandon Taksim. The month of June became one of nonstop police battles. Hundreds were arrested in police operations against the resistance.

In 15 days, police deployed more than 150,000 tear gas canisters and several tons of pressurized water. Nearly 10,000 people were wounded by police gas bombs, often aimed directly at demonstrators' heads, in June. 91 people experienced brain trauma and 10 lost an eye to gas bombs. Starting with 19-year-old Ali İsmail Korkmaz, a youth in the resistance in the city of Eskişehir, on June 2, several became martyrs to the resistance: Mehmet Ayvalıtaş in Istanbul; Abdullah Cömert in Hatay;Ethem Sarısülük in Ankara; Medeni Yıldırım in Lice; Ahmet Atakan in Hatay and 14-year-old Berkin Elvan, who died after 269 days struggling for life in the hospital after police wounded him with a gas canister to the head.

Since then, the generation who first took to the streets that June have carried the spirit of Gezi with them to every struggle they join—from the fight for humanity in Kobanê and Shengal to the struggle to stop Erdoğan's quest for an authoritarian one-man system in Turkey. As the slogan born in Gezi Park had it: "this is just the beginning; on with the struggle."

(cm)