Quote from: PrintMule on June 26, 2013, 10:24:39 AM

I call bullshit. Huge crowd of violent hoodlums is bound to cause damage. Shop window, passerby's head, car - equally good targets for a brick.

Right, but this wasn't a crowd of violent hoodlums. These are common folks who no longer fear the police violence. These are middle class people who are sick of the authoritarian erdogan government imposing every aspect of their lives.

As an example, I gave a tour of gezi park, when it was liberated (the park was under the control of the protesters between 1-15 june), to my 60+ years old american physics professor. His only complaint was that it was too crowded and hot.

Remember, the thing started with greenpeace activists reading books at the park. The police came and gassed those people and burned their tents. Afterwards everyone came to the park, hundres of thousands. Even famous turkish film stars, people from all proffessions. These were no hoodlums. The police gassed them nonetheless. They actually left the square so that people would think that they left and gather to the square and gassed them at once to deliver the gas most effectively (rather than using it to disperse the crowd).

Another example, on 22 june, when the police entered istiklal street a group of 50 or so police officers were trapped between tens of thousands of demonstrators chanting things like "killers" (they shot a guy called ethem sarisuluk in the head in ankara). I was right behind the police (there were demonstrators on both sides of the police). When the police were afraid and wanted to pull back to taksim square, the demonstrators organized them to pass unharmed. We tried to hold those of us who looked too angry. Once they passed, they started gassing us nonetheless.

I agree that the police are mostly just simple men. In fact they are much better than the turkish police I know from my youth (famous for making people disappear). It is what they are ordered to do, and the fact that they follow those unlawful orders that makes them enemy of the people.

I have seen them (with my own eyes) launching tear gas grenade inside a cafe, where there were only unprotected civilians who weren't even chanting slogans. I attempted to save those people but I couldn't (tear gas in a closed space is horrible). In the end they were saved by one of the protestors who had an army issued mask.

Please read other sources. Just avoid Turkish government propaganda, even NYT or BBC are reasonable in terms of reporting.

Don't judge this with your old prejudices, the gezi park incident is pretty unique. I think it was facilitated by a sort of collective consciousness that appeared due to the technological connections now possible between people and an exceptionally authoritarian state.

I have never seen anything like this in my lifetime, in none of the three countries that I have lived. I have never heard of anything like this either.