Not quite Chapuling pt. 2- To Taksim we go
After checking into our Hostel, Katie and I caught an hour of shut eye and decided that we wanted to see Taksim Square and Gezi park. The center of modern day Istanbul and the epicenter of the protests from earlier this summer. We heard that things had simmered way day there, however, this did not exactly turn out to be the case.
We emerged from the subway to find the entrance surrounded by police wearing body armor and carrying riot shields, butons, and guns. The area was filled with people but the massive police presence was unnerving. Perimeters of cops surrounded the Republic Monument which sits at the center of Taksim and around near by Gezi Park foreboding anyone to enter these areas with the unspoken threat of forceful retaliation. The tension was tangible in the air.
A massive crowd was seated in the area of the square that is adjacent to Gezi park. Given the time, just before sundown, it was obvious that this crowd was gathered for Iftar (the meal to break fast). Cops also surrounded this crowd which I found curious. While cops were keeping people out of two areas they formed protective barriers around another crowd. The area is testy if not dangerous, which makes we wonder why a religious dinner would be planned there. It seems to me that the current government continues to mishandle this situation. Such actions as these seem to be further provoking protesters, but maybe this is just my naive outsider perspective.
We heard some commotion coming from the crowd that stood just outside of Gezi park so we decided to look for a place to eat on the other side of the square. On the way we past a massive line of cops which I took a video of and have included in this post. Heavily armed and idle, the swarm of cops watched the square and the swirling crowd around it.
We found a lovely little kebap place in a narrow street. We sat at a table in the alley, enjoyed our food and discussed the scene we had just come from. A crowd steadily walked through the narrow street. Many of the people we saw carried surgical masks, had bandannas hanging from their neck, or had military grade gas masks resting on top of their head all prepared for the ever present threat of a tear gas assault.
As we had just received our tea after the meal, the crowd moving through the alley suddenly swelled and quickened, their tear gas-thwarting gear now dawned. Those without anything to protect themselves from the noxious gas pulled their shirts to their face. My eyes began to burn and itch. A scratch sensation quickly clawed its way into my throat. Sneezing and coughing echoed off the tall fronts of the buildings that lined the alley. Children that sat at a near by table began to whine and cry. It is incredible how potent tear gas is. We had not even seen it being deployed but we were got a strong dose of it. This of course alarmed us.
We quickly paid and joined the masses moving away from Taksim. However, as we reached the end of the alley where it met another alley perpendicularly we were surprised to discover a massive crowd to left chanting the familiar chants of the protests. We immediately turned around to retrace our steps. We heard the stamping of dozens of feet as the crowd had suddenly begun run toward our direction. We ducked inside of a near by bar as the crowd moved passed. I truly became frightened at this point, unsure how many cops were moving up the alley towards us and what sort of force they would not hesitate to use on anyone that seemed like a protester. However, we never saw any cops out the window of the bar in which we were seeking refuge.
Katie took out her lonely planet book to make it apparent that we were tourists, not involved in these demonstrations and we hustled to the metro station from which we came. We didn't run but we did walk with frantic urgency. Thankfully this walk out was unimpeded by neither protesters nor cops. I was struck by two things, 1) that things actually seemed calmer in Taksim than in our near by alley and 2) people remained calmly seated at cafes nonchalantly brushing tears from the irritating gas out the their eyes. They seem quite resigned the events that were taking place around them.
We stopped to neither watch nor take pictures. We raced down the stairs of the metro station and hopped on a train which took us to a much more docile rest of the evening.