People's Assemblies springing up across Turkey (Updated)

[Fire Walk With Me]

Last edited Wed Jun 19, 2013, 03:27 PM - Edit history (1)

15MBcn_int ‏@15MBcn_int

Protesters are starting to counter-pose their own direct democracy to the sham of a democracy proposed by Erdogan
http://roarmag.org/2013/06/assemblies-emerging-in-turkey-a-lesson-in-democracy/ …

Something quite amazing is happening in Istanbul. In addition to the silent “standing man” actions around the country, people’s assemblies are slowly starting to emerge in different neighborhoods across the city. As in Spain, Greece and the Occupy encampments before, the protesters in Turkey are starting to counter-pose their own form of direct democracy to the sham of a democracy proposed by Erdogan’s authoritarian neoliberal state. If there was ever any doubt, this shows how deeply intertwined the global struggles truly are.

As the state launches its merciless witch hunt on protesters, activists and Tweeters, thousands of people are starting to gather in dignity in various public spaces. As Oscar ten Houten reports from on the ground in Istanbul, the Beşiktaş Assembly in Abbasaga park, which has been going on for days, tripled its number of participants on Tuesday night, with a total of ten popular assemblies taking place in Istanbul alone and at least one more in Izmir. As Oscar writes on his great blog (which he started at the occupation of Puerta del Sol in Madrid in 2011):

These meetings have nothing to do with Taksim Solidarity any more. They are spontaneous initiatives by local people who are fed up with Erdogan’s disregard for the Turkish citizens, their rights and freedoms, their history, beliefs and traditions. … We arrive in Kadıköy, and truly, I couldn’t believe this was happening. Well over two thousand people were gathered on the green, to express their anger with the government’s eviction of Gezi, and to share their hope for a better Turkey. Like anywhere else, it was a cross section of the population, which included all races and creeds.

Interestingly, the members of the popular assemblies in Turkey use the same hand-signs as the indignados, indicating that some of the methods were directly inspired by the real democracy protests in Spain. This, in turn, seems to confirm the idea we raised very early on in the Turkish uprising, and a claim that many Turkish activists have been making from the very start: namely that this movement is not just a local or national protest, but part of a global struggle against the subverted nature of representative capitalist democracy and for real democracy and total liberation.

(More at the link.)



Occupy Utrecht ‏@OccupyUtrecht

#OccupyGezi NOW LIVESTREAM from Assemblies #Istanbul #Turkey
http://www.live...
http://dlvr.it/3XkTL3


Global Revolution ‏@GlobalRevLive

#DirectDemocracy Explosion! Now in Istanbul there are 35 #PeoplesAssemblies going on 9 in rest of #Turkey.
LIVE: http://bit.ly/18zK4KE #YAL