If you want a good footing on the biggest anti-capitalist story since Occupy, read this essay: “The Right to the City Movement and the Turkish Summer.” Here is its heart:
But this protest is the latest manifestation of a movement that has been stirring for some time now. The shopping mall is only one component of a plan to entirely redesign Taksim Square into a more car-friendly, tourist-accommodating, and sanitized urban center. Mass protests have also taken place recently to stop the closure of the landmark Emek Cinema, located on İstiklal Avenue off Taksim Square, which is also being converted into (no surprise) a shopping mall.
Taksim Square is the heart and soul of Istanbul. It is common sense to Istanbulites that if a revolution is to come to Turkey, it would begin in Taksim. Protests are regularly held in the square, and issues run the full gamut of concerns of Turkish citizens: LGBT equality, recognition of the Armenian Genocide, an end to the Kurdish conflict, an end to military conscription, economic justice, and more. In 2011, there was a massive one-day protest in support of a free and open internet that drew upwards of thirty thousand people.
It really is a struggle between the capital and democracy. Even the most quiescent, tranquil, sleepy city park is packed with more political energy than the nosiest, busiest, loudest mall imaginable.
- Cal Anderson Park/Seattle/June 2, 2013
