Istanbul, day 5: #thestandingman

The Taksim demonstations have taken a new turn; yesterday a man walked up to Taksim square and took a stand and remained in this position. More people followed his expression of non violence. Nevertheless, the police arrested all but one of these protesters- for what? Standing still? As the Prime Minister is threatening to bring armed forces to end the demonstrations - and ignoring the international criticism concerning the abuse of police power against the protestors, how far is he willing to go is the question that remains to answered.

Today, as we were walking up Istiklal Street towards Taksim square we passed several of these Standing Men (and Women), standing still, reading a book:

Day 3 in Istanbul riots, photos from our day outside demonstration

We were having a drink in a cafe, when the tear gas shells started blasting - and we were rushed inside and placed behind a glass window - watching clouds of tear gas pass.

Later we sat down for shisha in Tophane - demonstrators were running towards us, the sound of gas shells being fired and clouds of tear gas pass.

From our shisha place, while clouds of tear gas hovered past us, awnings (markiser) rolled out and sprayed water to keep the gas from coming into the restaurant.

An improvised barricade in lower Istiklal street - hundreds of metres away from Taksim square. The street was filled with debris, broken tiles and cobble stones.

Day 8: Riots and Teargas. Istanbul, Taksim.

Fascism. The only word I can make out from the demonstraters ralleys. Maybe it was a bad idea going Istiklal street - the street that ends in Taksim square, or maybe it was a terribly bad idea to do it. All I wanted was to have dinner, and before we knew it we were floating in a stream of people walking upwards towards Taksim square. I am not going to write about the political situation or what they are demonstrating against. I can only tell what we saw, so here follows my accounts of what is called the biggest and most violent demonstration against the Turkish prime minister.

People around us are furious, shouting paroles and waving fists, wearing helmets, gas masks, face masks. Most of the people are walking upwards towards the square, some of that come walking againt us, have running eyes and covering their eyes and noses. Someone is handing out face maks to strangers. There is an air of solidarity and anger and the noise in the street echos the frustration of thousands of people standing up for what they believe in.


The demonstrators starts booing. The smell of teargas and an itching sensation awakes in my throat; the familar smell. The crowd is applausing while a passed out demonstrator is carried on the shoulders of his comrades down the street. A hero to the present. An enemy of the state. There are two things that fascinates me about this demonstration: 1) the anarchistic organisation; flocks of people in helmets and gas masks move upwards, only to come back again few moments later, choked, in tears, some manic and with froth around their mouths. Some throw up. New batallions move up, and this almost organic dynamic of this spontanious group, stands as a manifest of solidarity and mass mobilistation. 2) Looking around at the demonstrators, people of all ages are representate; old men in face masks, women in head scarves, young ones in dread locks.

Nevertheless; Since our initial plan for this evening excursion was .. supper, we leave the demonstation for a while and go into a nearby side way and sit at what turned out to be a pro-Fascist restaurant run by som Kurdish people. At first we sit outside on the pavement, but as more and more rioters come running past us, they shuffle us in and hastly move all the furniture in as well. One of the men working there tries to explain the background for the demonstrations in very broken English. The only sensible thing I can make out of it is that he seems to have a problem against 15 year old girls being drunk outside the streets at five o-clock in the morning. He looked back at us for moral support, but we said we used to be one of those and he looks confused and goes away for a while. The volume of the music inside the restaurant is gradually turned up as the shouting outside gets louder. People who have been exposed to tear gas pass us, tears running, coughing. The Kurdish bloke complains about the nuisance.

We haste through a crap salad and köfte (and a 0,7l Efes beer - my mistaken order of a small glass). We go back down towards the main street, but before we reach it, a tear gas cannister flies ahead of us, only metres away, and someone is either trying to exstinguish it or kick it back towards the riot police. At first we contemplate going back, but the stinging eyes and coughing becomes unberable and we rush in the general direction to catch a breath. My friend is trying to wash the tear gas out of her eyes, and people are beginning to make haste down this parallel street to Istiklal. Between the buildings in the side street, I spot riot police - with helmets, sheilds and batons marching in a line, pushing the demonstrators back down. I sort of panic and we run somewhere where the crowd is running. Lost in the maze of winding streets and stairs of Galata, we once again end up back at Istikal, where the riot police is beginning to line up again a little further down the street. And we begin to run again, down a steep street. All the doors are locked, there are no cafees, no where to hide, should they come after us. We hurry down, to the bottom of the hill.

I am spent. A week in Kabul and now only metres away from the barricades in Gezim park. I buy a chocolate ice cream. Clouds of tear gas is still howering about the city. We have a sit down and a post-riot smoke at the square under Galata tower, demonstrators in helmets, gas masks are sitting all over the place. All the restaurants and cafees have taken their furniture inside. As we walk homewards, fully spent and exhausted, a small metall hammering is building up, sympathisers are banging pots and pans. Further down the street, more hammering is being added onto that, as just as we reach home, a local boy stops us, we ask him what the sounds are for. It's a Jungle telegraph- the Police squads are moving further down Istiklal.

Kabul day 6: Exploding bodies - fragments of flesh

The vision of exploding bodies has stayed with me for some days now, and the morbid affixiation on the state of mind that enables anyone to inflict so much pain on himself and others, lures in the back of my conscience. Someone in the office was less than 50metres away from the car bomb when it detonated; the blast sprayed the perimeter with blood and fragmented human body pieces. He was there with his children who all got covered in this sanguine horror. Some people around the detonation area started collecting whatever parts of bodies they were able to collect - into plastic bags and tried to bury them in the ground there. Other people reacted to this reaction - refusing to let their neighbourhood become a cemetary. He tells me prior to the attack on the Supreme Court, several warnings had been ushered from Taliban that they would revenge the death sentence of a holy warrior. Neighbouring to the court are living areas with high rise house complex' - and worried residents had asked for the local authorities to close off the road. This was rejected - and citizens were left worried, threatened and unprotected. And surely, not long after, covered in disintegrated human bodies.