Publication Date:
June 2013
The European
As the protests in Turkey continue many observers ask the same question: “who are the protestors and what do they want?”. There is no simple answer to this question, as this is not an organized civil protest movement. It is rather an accidental coalition of ordinary citizens from different opposition groups: secular nationalists, leftists, some ultra-nationalists, some Kurds, some Islamists, LGBTs, environmental activists, and some formerly apolitical citizens, who, in one way or another, feel angered and excluded by prime minister Erdogan’s increasingly dismissive and condescending discourse, reminiscent of an ‘angry father’ trying to align his children. Read more >>