(The author is a Seattle native who moved to Istanbul in January of 2006. This is his fifth posting; find all of his reports on his author page.)

Mid-day Wednesday, after Taksim was again inundated with gas Tuesday night, the remaining barricades which had made Gezi Park and Taksim Square briefly impenetrable by large vehicles were removed in the name of returning automobile traffic to the area.

The nature of the square has again changed. Gone are the political parties with their flags, as are the banners strung from the Atatürk Culture Center. Police TOMAs mounted with water cannons and Scorpions (a smaller, armored vehicle) are parked in all corners of the square. Perhaps 100 police in their white helmets are posted prominently in various locations.

The protesters have become more serious, too. While it has been common to see people with light construction masks around their necks, it is now just as common to see people sporting hard hats and gas masks. A number of local institutions, including at least one hotel, have given over space for the Gezi Park occupiers to store surplus supplies and have become a refuge for those injured in police attacks. When my wife and I helped carry some supplies into the depot and asked if any supplies were needed, they looked around and said, “Men’s boxer shorts,” which we supplied a few minutes later. Further lists of the day’s most needed items are available on Twitter and Facebook.

Despite the grim tone the police presence has created, members of the Occupy Gezi movement have not stopped finding ways to enjoy themselves. Wednesday and Thursday night, a pianist from Germany who transported his piano all the way to Istanbul set up in Taksim Square and played outdoor concerts two consecutive nights, with other people sitting down to play when he took breaks. When I attended the second concert on Thursday, the atmosphere was, for lack of a better word, moving. The Monument of the Republic loomed over the crowd, encircled by police in riot gear. The crowd who had assembled to listen all sat on the ground to allow everyone to see. The pianist had affixed decals of a Turkish flag and Atatürk’s signature to the top of his grand piano.

Not far away, a vigil was held for the protesters who have been killed in the past two-and-a-half weeks.

On Wednesday, in the park, a female lawyer (whose name, coincidentally, is the Turkish word for “protest”) called people to a meeting in which she explained their rights to them and what to do in the event that they are arrested. Friday afternoon, a series of half-a-dozen open forums were held in the park from which mediators would deliver written notes to a larger forum in the evening, all on the topic of “what to do next?” The forum I attended in a small grove of pine trees (photography was forbidden) gave two minutes to each person who wished to speak. The experience felt like the kind of direct democracy practiced in ancient Greece. The main subject that was debated was whether or not to accept the referendum on the use of the park proposed by the Prime Minister. The other hot topic was how far and for how long the occupation and protests should continue, to which one man in a Besiktas soccer t-shirt firmly stated, “Not until the resignation of Recep Tayyip Erdogan,” which earned him a tremendous round of applause.

The Occupy Gezi movement has already sent representatives to the capital in Ankara to present their five demands: 1) that Gezi Park will remain a park; 2) that the police chiefs and governors who ordered the violence must resign; 3) that teargas bombs be outlawed; 4) for all detained protesters to be released; 5) for free assembly to be allowed to take place in public areas.

Prime Minster Erdogan has continued to make threatening remarks, including a vague 24-hour warning to the Gezi Park Occupiers, asking all women and children to be removed from the park and promising the government would now “answer punches with punches.” This is one more prime example of Erdogan’s rhetoric in action, for which “punches” on the part of the protesters is he referring to? This is not to say that there has been no stone-throwing by protesters (illustrated by a newspaper cover on Wednesday featuring an older woman with a mask, and slingshot, with her blood type written on her arm), and there is the questionable incident of the molotov cocktail-throwers last Tuesday, which I covered in my previous post.

Friday, I saw a poster on the back of a bus in which the Prime Minister invited his supporters to a rally to show “respect for the will of the nation” this Sunday in the conservative Fatih district of Istanbul. There have been reports from government employees of all political persuasions that they are being forced to attend such rallies. Erdogan was quoted several days ago as telling his supporters, “You are the public,” clearly indicating that the protesters were not. In a similarly puzzling remark, he said the Gezi Park protesters needed to clear the park so that he could “return the park to the people.”

Finally, after reviewing comments on my previous posts, I realized there is still some confusion about what the Turkish protests are about: whether or not it is about Islam vs. secularism, and whether this is just about a park or whether there are deeper public grievances. The words to a recent song by Kardes Türküler spell it all out plain and simple: