The entirety of Turkey has suddenly turned into an arena in which the people’s resistance, rising against the ruling JDP’s fascism, has been sweeping the country from end to end.  This comes at the heels of the brutal attack the Turkish police staged on the morning of May 31st in a popular park at the heart of Istanbul, Gezi Park.  Currently, demonstrations have spread to over 50 cities across the country.

The masses on the street are not under an organized force.  Instead,  the uniting force has become the “Taksim” area at the heart of Istanbul, around which Gezi Park is situated, and has indisputably developed into the symbol of the people’s opposition.

As in other social movements, this opposition started spontaneously and as a reaction, yet has developed as it began expressing what it stood against. The demonstrations targeted the Turkish Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan and his offices, and the buildings of the ruling Justice and Development Party (JDP). Their demands included the resignation of Erdogan and the JDP government.  In response, the demonstrators faced unlimited – yet futile – violence from the government.

The resilience of the resistance in the face of this violence put the government in disarray. Despite Erdogan’s earlier promise that “the police will be there today and in the future,” the cops, determined not to let the people in, had to disappear while the people forced their way into the central plazas of three major cities.

The people’s reaction, which began when the government announced its plan to remove the trees in the popular park in order to build a shopping mall, had scared the government and caused government speakers such as the President Abdullah Gul, Bulent Arinc, and Huseyin Celik, to appear one after the other and attempt to subdue the people.

Going against his own government’s announcements, Celik had to concede that he too was against the shopping mall in the park.  Arinc, on the other hand, admitted that a court order had put a stop to the construction.  He also touched upon another scandal, the building of a third bridge over the Bosphorus, the Istanbul strait. The building of the bridge has been criticized as an environmental disaster, a boondongle, and involves a tremendous amount of corruption and land grabbing on the part of huge corporations and the rich, friendly to Erdogan’s government.  To top it off, the Sunni Turkish government will name the bridge after Sultan Selim, a 16th century Ottoman king who is well known for his massacre of more than 40,000 Alevites whom he thought were not part of the proper religion.  Today, more than 25 million Alevite citizens of Turkey, as an oppressed minority, remember the infamous king and his atrocities, especially as the staunch Sunni government of Erdogan acts increasingly hostile against them.  Arinc suggested it was possible to reconsider the name, seemingly as a compromise to abate the growing militant opposition on the streets.

Even the pro-government Islamic press couldn’t defend the violence of their government.  The fundamentalist, pro-US, secret organization, The Parish (Cemaat), organized by ex-fugitive Fethullah Gulen, took a more self-critical path.  Fethullah Gulen, a CIA asset living in the US under the protection of the CIA and the US government, is a billionaire making his fortune mainly from his fundamentalist schools in the US and across the world.  These schools are used to organize terrorist activities and to recruit CIA assets and jihadists alike.  Contributing to the growing split in recent years between Erdogan and his mentor Gulen, The Parish press attacked Erdogan who seems to be oblivious to the events around him, living in his own little imaginary world, devoid of the court decision to stop the construction of the shopping mall, and anybody else who criticize them.

Erdogan, on the other hand, panicked his government allies by not compromising on his provocative stance. He called the millions on the streets “a handful of bums.”  He even went further to say that not only was the park to be destroyed, he would also demolish the nearby Cultural Center as well.  He expressed that he would build a mosque instead of the present theater, opera and art center, as well as the park.

As this article goes into publication (June 2, 2013, 3:00PM Istanbul) hundreds of thousands are gathered in Istanbul Taksim and Ankara Kizilay plazas. Their screams in unison reflect what the people do not want.  The current slogan being heard all over the country is, “Erdogan Resign! Government Resign!”

Who are these people on the streets? 

They are the environmentalists preventing the looting of their city and their park.

They are those who have had enough of the JDP’s oppression.  They are artists, who are, in reality, heavy laborers due to dangerous working conditions, and who are under the attack of the Turkish government due to its religious and backward cultural policies.

They are the laborers who are being driven out of the city, out of politics, and out of the wealth they themselves have created.

They are the ones whose lifestyles are banned, whose strikes have been banned, whose demonstrations have been banned, whose street, science, culture or thoughts have been banned.

They are Alevites suffering from sectarianism and against whom the new bridge is named.

They are Kurds who have been denied their rights, who are forced to become subservient to the JDP government and who, despite all the rhetoric of “resolution,” are still being targeted as “terrorist elements” by the Turkish government.

As a matter of fact, facing a population that does not want them, Erdogan and his government are wavering on their own ability to command the moment.

Therefore, a concrete analysis of this important “moment” that came about after the resistance on May 31st in necessary.

The May 31st uprising is only a continuation of the special period of struggle between the JDP government and the people fighting against fascism, which started with May Day 2013.

The streets have not been abandoned by the people since May Day.  Against the JDP’s aspirations of an absolute power grab – toward fascism, if we are to give it a name – the people have already been on the streets. On May 6th it was the students, on May 11th   it was the anti-war activists, on May 15th the striking laborers of the airlines, on May 18th  revolutionaries commemorating the legendary fighter, brave Ibrahim Kaypakkaya, who had been tortured and murdered by the Turkish government.  In addition to the university members, workers, artists, and environmentalists, the Saturday Mothers have been demonstrating  for years for their family members who have “disappeared” at the hands of the fascist government secret services. Women who have had enough with religious oppression and “honor killings” have been on the streets for a long time.  In short, all elements of the progressives opposing the JDP were on the streets and in the plazas.

The increasingly effective and widening resistance brought about by the Gezi Park struggle showed that all these legitimate, militant, and massive resistance movements, together with the collective experience by the social movements, have not been in vain.

And this will continue.  A few days later, on June 5th, KESK, the Confederation of Government Workers Unions, is going on strike.  DISK, the Progressive Labor Unions Confederation is  preparing for a huge rally on June 15-16 to commemorate the massive uprising of the workers in 1970 by the same confederation that literally took over the heart of the country, the industrial area, and the largest metropolis of the country, Istanbul.

It is clear now that the May 31st movement is no longer a struggle to keep the park in the hands of the people.  That struggle is now a fight against Erdogan and the JDP; it is a struggle that has transformed the hatred against him and his party into an insurrection and a massive resistance.

The May 31st movement is an uprising against Erdogan and his government’s authoritarian, oppressive, backward and fascistic attacks against peoples’ lives and lifestyles.

This resistance that started on May 31st is not another ruling class faction that has taken center stage.  Rather, it is a common resistance of the entire people’s opposition.

This resistance is one instance which exemplifies the people’s tendency to oppose the 11 years of JDP tyranny.  The struggles for the rights of the urban areas, for the environment, for science against superstition, for the culture and arts, the struggles against the exclusionary policies of the JDP which ignores or treats as an enemy any and all who are not one of them, against the banning of strikes, and the limitations on the labor unions which push the workers to poverty, all came together with the struggles of the urban poor, the laborers, the unemployed, and their anger, at the street junctions and plazas.

Albeit missing a unifying political leadership, “Taksim,” the plaza used by the people around Gezi Park, has become the symbol that unifies the tendency of the people to resist.

May 31st is the subservience of the JDP cadres (the governors, municipality chiefs, the head of security), their ineptitude, and lack of any democratic capacity on their part.  This is a crisis of an ultimate leader, a single charismatic person and regime.  This is also the crisis of the ascension of the tensions within the government block.  However, this is mainly the intervention of the people to the crisis, a struggle against fascism.

It becomes more obvious that in the face of those who do not want to be ruled by the JDP, the ruling party is unable to rule.  This fact sends chills down the spine of the allies of his government.  The reactions from the USA, the EU, from Fethullah Gulen’s media, from Erdogan’s own media, from the Islamic press, and even from within his own party, all show a state of panic stemming from Erdogan’s provocations which encourage more confrontations that could pose a risk to his power.

Looking at Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s attitude of trying to escalate the running tensions, the deep core of the government seems to take the recent events as a final confrontation.  It appears that Erdogan thinks either he has to stamp out the people or his power will start a downfall.

The social opposition will not refuse this open invitation. For this reason, it has the task of unifying the peoples’ demands into a platform of a common struggle, and to establish a center of unifying leadership.

May 31st is not an end.  It is a guide whose effects will continue until the presidential elections.  A guide for the workers, the poor, the youth, women, Alevites, Kurds , the intellectuals…  that is, to all those whose interests clash with the interest of the rulers and their shameless representative, the JDP.  That is a guide for the entire people.

03.00 pm, June 2nd, 2013