Just Because You’re a Tourist Doesn’t Mean Police Won’t Beat You
That time I got tear gassed in Taksim Square
‘Don’t go to Taksim Square today,’ Nazif, a carpet-seller warned, as I sipped tea cross-legged on a stack of carpets. ‘Everyone knows there will be trouble.’ After tea, Nazif poured out two glasses of raki, the hard Turkish liquor that tasted of aniseed and was knocked down in neat shots.
I wasn’t exactly planning to go to Taksim Square but I needed a visa for Syria, the safest country in the Middle East, whose people were busy celebrating the re-election of Bashar Al-Asaad. It was 1 May, 2007.
I got in a taxi to the Syrian Embassy behind Taksim Square. Along the side of the road, police vans pulled up and hundreds of policemen jumped out, armed with batons and shields. The traffic was being stopped and turned around.
‘Get out here,’ the driver signalled. He wasn’t allowed any further.
I got out and crossed the wide square on foot. Thirty years ago, a peaceful workers’ demonstration ended in bloodshed when tanks rolled into Taksim Square, trapping thousands of demonstrators. Snipers appeared on the roof and began firing as the crowd surged in panic, killing forty. The government declared the slaughter the fault of the agitators, rounding up and arresting the leaders of the Workers’ Movement. The May Day march was banned for thirty years. Until today.
Hundreds of people were gathered in the square to mark the occasion, some carrying posters or photos of the victims of the 1977 killings. The demonstrators were mostly young people: students, secularists and socialists. All of them were holding red roses and as they moved forward slowly, I heard them singing and saw them waving the flowers gently above their heads. A wreath was laid at the foot of the statue in the middle of the plaza.
An old lady hurried by, her veiled head cast downwards and her hands lugging the morning’s shopping in bags. Men in ragged clothing were carrying sticks with rings of bread for sale, and young boys scurried in and out of the demonstrators selling bottles of water. A group of Korean tourists was snapping photos. A beggar sat hunched on the pavement beside a pair of scales where for a coin donation you could check your weight. In Turkey, the beggars were entrepreneurs and the carpet-sellers were philosophers.
Then, the tanks rolled in.
I peered up at the tops of the buildings surrounding us to watch soldiers move into position on the roofs, armed with semi-automatic guns. Most of them were taking photos of the protest below on their mobile phones. Riot police came pouring through the gaps between the tanks, easily encircling and outnumbering the demonstrators.
But the people in the march only clutched their roses as though they were weapons, brandishing them above their head. They kept walking and singing.
Facing them in rows, the police advanced, step by step, pushing everybody in the square towards the demonstrators: the old lady with her shopping, the bread-sellers, the water-boys, the tourists, the beggars. And me. The singing turned to chanting. ‘Fascists! Fascists!’
The elections were coming up in a few weeks, the Islamist Party looked set to win and the battle that had raged for almost a century between the religious conservatives and the secularists flared up again. Fists were now raised in the air alongside the flowers. The students were joined by older people, women and teenagers.
One of the police officers, a pudgy sergeant, was strutting up and down before the front line of protesters, barking commands. This may just have been the greatest day of his life. The police hid their faces behind gas masks and the Sergeant was having a screaming argument with an inferior officer. He ended it by reaching for the junior policeman’s mask, pulling it forward and letting it snap back. The man clutched his face and howled in pain as the Sergeant turned on his heel with a satisfied smirk, hands clasped behind his back.
The demonstrators pulled scarves over their mouths and noses, but they didn’t budge.
When the tear gas started, I wasn’t expecting it so my face was still uncovered. People started running in all directions, scattered, hurtling down the street, throwing themselves into doors. The police without masks bolted as well. I ran blindly because I couldn’t see through the tears streaming down my face and anyway, I had to shut my eyes to stop them burning.
Police were waiting in the doorways of the nearest buildings, beating the crowd with batons, forcing them back into the gas-filled air. More police were marching forward through the smoke, swinging their batons into anything and everything before them. I crouched against a wall as the line of police moved towards me. To my right, an old woman fell when the baton hit her, and a policeman kicked her on the ground.
I was afraid and shouting as loudly as I could, ‘Where do you want us to go?’ as if that could somehow make a difference to what was happening in front of me. My voice was lost in the chaos and even I couldn’t hear it. A policeman stopped in front of me and something hard slammed into my side, knocking the breath right out of me so I couldn’t scream anymore. I turned around but there was only the wall behind me. I covered my head with my arms and leaned into the wall.
The baton struck my back again and again and, once it stopped, I stumbled to a doorway where, inside, police and protestors were recovering together in the stairwell. Water was handed out from the apartment above and passed between them. My eyes were still weeping and my skin still burned. I was coughing, and my back and stomach ached. I cursed my stupidity and arrogance in thinking that, because I wasn’t Turkish, I would somehow get a free pass from the police.
Ten minutes later, the demonstrators were back in Taksim Square with their banners and pumping fists and there were even more of them than before.
Not me, though. As much as I admired the Turkish passion, it wasn’t my fight. On my way back to the hostel, I stopped off for tea with Nazif, the carpet-seller. He tutted when I showed him the black bruises on my arms and back and asked if I managed to get my visa. I shook my head.
‘Well,’ he chuckled, ‘at least you have a souvenir of Turkey.’
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