Remember the Occupy protests that were so dramatically shut down by the use of excessive force and other police tactics that bordered more on a military response to non-violent activism than a public safety one? Well, its nice to know that one of our allies in the Middle East, and one of the few democracies (no not Israel, Turkey) is following our lead in dealing with their own citizen activism. Or were we following theirs? It’s so hard to tell.
Clashes broke out in Istanbul on Saturday after protesters marched on Taksim Square despite a government ban on gatherings in force there.
Riot police, water cannon and armoured vehicles were deployed to block access to the square and nearby Gezi Park. A number of demonstrators were reportedly arrested. […]
Protesters have clashed with police in recent months, with two men killed during angry demonstrations over a mining disaster that killed 301 people.
Anger also flared in March with the news of the death of a 15-year-old boy who had been in a coma since last June after being hit by a tear-gas canister during a protest.
The Guardian reports that over 80 protestors were arrested and 13 injured as a result of the police action. Well, at least our friendly neighborhood governments didn’t shut down Facebook, You Tube and Twitter nationwide during the Occupy protests. Then again, with the NSA listening in to everything, why bother?
I doubt very much Turkey needs to take any inspiration, lessons, or license from us, any more than the PRC did 25 years ago.
We are not the locus of all evil in the world — except in blog comment sections.
I never said we were the locus of all evil in the world, though perhaps the people who have died in America’s wars over the last half-century would beg to differ. My comment was intended to show, however, that unfortunately, there isn’t much to differentiate us from many other governments with regard to how we deal with protests movements (well, unless they are conservative protest movements). And, unfortunately, we are worse than many regimes in one big respect: the number of people we imprison is the highest per capita in the world, and one of the highest in total numbers, as well.
Alright, we’re no angels… but if you’re comparing the official response in the USA’s Occupy movement to non-violent protest in Syria you can say that our police aren’t killing large swathes of protesters or forcing vengeance upon their families.
Same for Iran, same for so many more places which Turkey more resembles than the US. We have started wars that have been responsible for hundreds of thousands of deaths, but millions more have died in regional, local and international scuffles that we had no involvement in.
Steven’s critique is noting that though we claim to be better we are actually acting and reacting in a similar manner as those we would call barbaric or worse, much like the Catholic Church wagging a judgmental finger at “sexual deviants” all the while parish priests are buggering alter boys.
Steve’s critique is based on the fact that people taken in the aggregate – however lovely taken one by one – are shits, and there is no more aggregated way to take people than a state. At that point it dissolves into a truism.
States are monopolies on the licit use of violence. All of them.
I don’t claim that we are any better. The people who are claiming ‘we claim to be better’ aren’t speaking on my behalf.
Multiply the number of OWS peaceful protesters by a factor of ten or twenty, throw in a handful not-so-peaceful protesters that may or may not be authentic protesters, and what do you think the response from SWAT and Homeland Security teams would look like?
The difference you seem to see probably says more about the commitment and number of protesters than the government response.
“We are not the locus of all evil in the world — except in blog comment sections.”
LOL!
Have I told you that I love you lately, Davis?
NO!
Not in THAT way – NTTAWWT!
Personally, I lay blame at the feet of Lord Castlereagh and the Peterloo Massacre of 1819.
Don’t underestimate our “only democratic” ally Israel in Middle East.
Joined NSA in spying and stealing technology
Taught US military the Jenin urban warfare which was employed in Fallujah
Taught the US how to treat Muslims in prison, see Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib
Of course delivered gas canisters and water cannon equipment to Turkey and a number of African countries to subdue protests and opposition movements.
You do well to mention Israel. Israel invented these tactics before exporting them to the Untied States, and now Turkey, and today Israel actively trains US and other fascist police in these tactics.
Israel is a Terrorist State. The Mother of All Terrorist States. It is an utterly foreign occupier perpetrating an American Taxpayer conceived, financed and morally sanctioned genocide on the indigenous descendants of the “biblical hebrew”. It has no “right” to exist and this world will never know Peace until it does not.
No fear.