Istanbulistan: Turkey’s Future Turns 6
Fade to Hope — A brief pause for commemoration.
Six years ago this month, I was on a two-month work assignment in Turkey, taking U.S. middle and high-school teachers on two consecutive, three-week, some three-thousand kilometer study tours across the country.
Aside from being one of the most fulfilling projects I oversaw in my life, it also afforded me the opportunity to be in Turkey during Gezi Park protests in 2013. Our Istanbul office then was located right across the street from the famed park. Having joined protests in support of the Gezi youth in Washington, D.C., I was now in the middle of all the action; tear gas, high-water pressure crowd-dissipating vehicles and all. I was convinced there and then that Dickens was a time-traveller and had been to Gezi before he wrote:
It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope, it was the winter of despair.
Because, t’was.
Six years ago today, a fourteen-year-old boy who was out to buy bread, was too mesmerized to turn away from all the action as despair clashed ruthlessly with hope. He watched the protests unfold from a street corner until tear gas canisters struck him in the head. Just as life, death too was unfair to the boy. It left him withering away in a 269-day coma. Countless vigils and endless prayers failed to work, as they rarely do, and he died weighing just 16kg (35 pounds).
His name was Berkin Elvan.
When I was Berkin’s age, family vacations during lazy summer months entailed a road trip to our native Ayvalık — an Aegean town just a stone’s throw away from the Greek island of Lesbos. Ayvalık has always been an anomaly, having been afforded a sovereign status under the Ottoman Empire and on the receiving end of Greek Muslims who were sent to Turkey per a population exchange, or mübadele agreement, signed with Greece, just as Mustafa Kemal Atatürk founded the nascent republic.
The car ride from Ankara’s dry, landlocked steppes would usually start off with the alluring smell of steaming hot coffee my parents drank out of our old, yet faithful thermos. (I still vividly recall its thick, drake-green and pomegranate-red stripes.) About twenty kilometers away from the city center, we’d stop at a trusted gas station to fill up the tank. Commencing countdown, engines on; our ‘are we there yet’ questions would kick off with ‘how much time till köfte — meatballs’. Bursa’s İnegöl district — a town famous for its meatballs — was roughly the midpoint of the eight-hour car ride. We would order delicious yogurt as a side, though my dad wouldn’t be allowed to drink the yogurt-based ayran, because too much yogurt can make even the best of drivers sleepy, my mom would warn.
Halfway to Ayvalık, our ‘are we there yet’ questions would evolve from ‘how much time till köfte’ to ‘how much time till we see the sea’. About six hours into the trip, we would see Anatolian towns transition from yellow wheat fields dotted with lonely oak trees to patches of green that finally bled into lush forests covering rolling hills. On top of a hill in Havran, we would catch at last the first glimpse of the deep blue, glittering in the mid-afternoon sun. My dad would be the first to spot it. “Deniz göründü — the sea is visible,” he would exclaim. At that moment, pure jubilation would set in. Meandering roads would lead us to the sea and there our vacation — with all its promises — would begin.
I was asked once what Gezi felt like. Gezi was and always will be the top of that hill in Havran.
Many people, including family members, dismiss Gezi as a romantic outburst that quickly turned sour. And it got extremely sour. Berkin was neither the first, nor the last victim of darkness. Gezi naysayers often argue that as protests evolved, legitimate calls for saving a tiny park in the otherwise concrete-laden city center got contaminated with impure interests, dead young bodies and unfulfilled promises. The government, meanwhile, continues to paint Gezi as a treacherous act, a civilian coup of sorts.
So it goes.
Gezi was an act of belonging for thousands of lost souls who thought a better and a more tolerant way was possible, but didn’t know how. Gezi afforded us a glimpse of the glittering sea, a future of empathy and mutual respect.
Gezi was the reason I decided to relocate to Turkey. It is how I found my dog (who came into my life through a person I friended during the protests).
Gezi was a turning point for Turkey. Though so much heartache since — with countless dead bodies and a crackdown so vicious — has faded our spirits, Gezi accomplished more than just saving a tiny park with its 558 trees. Gezi taught us to demand accountability, humanity, humility and co-existence. Gezi served as an inspiration for the nation’s brightest leaders and movements since, who continue to illuminate the otherwise dim political landscape in Turkey.
Gezi was hope, an act of desperate defiance.
Gezi was entropy.
As I write this, thousands are protesting in Sudan and Hong Kong. I wish them an outcome bathed in light.
For “darkness cannot drive out darkness: only light can do that. Hate cannot drive out hate: only love can do that.”
Like Dickens, Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. too was at Gezi. I think I saw him.
