Summary of Gezi Parkı Events

It started on May 28, 2013, to protest the construction works that started to reconstruct a military barracks (Artillery Barracks) in Gezi Park in Taksim, Istanbul. With the entry of construction equipment into Gezi Park, environmental activists started to keep watch on the park. However, the burning of the tents of the protesters caused the events to spread throughout Turkey and to gain an anti-government identity. Gezi Park is an important area for Taksim, and the protesters' attempts to stop the works in response to the goal of constructing a building instead, with the insistent statements of the then Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, the protests spread GeziPark Events to the big cities of Turkey such as Ankara and İzmir in a short time. According to the statements of the Ministry of Interior Affairs, a total of 2.5 million people participated in the demonstrations. The events first started with the members of an association making press statements. Afterwards, it was aimed to stop the construction by making signature campaigns. Although the events started with the aim of preventing the demolition of Gezi Park, it grew more with the reactions against the policies followed by the Erdogan Government. During the protests, vehicles belonging to media channels, police vehicles and some other materials were destroyed by the protesters.

During the events, nearly 603 actions were carried out in many parts of Turkey, and as a result, many places open to public use such as bus stops and traffic lights were damaged. During the protests, people who wanted to support from their homes turned their lights on and off repeatedly, banging pots and pans, and people in their cars were honking their horns. Apart from these, protests of the people standing near Gezi Park were carried out. People who acted by standing still were detained on the grounds of preventing the flow of traffic. During the GeziPark protests, the police used disproportionate force, which Recep Tayyip Erdoğan later admitted. Justice marches were held to protest the disproportionate violence used by the police. The marches, which started from Antalya in 2013, continued until Istanbul. The woman, who was a professor at Istanbul Technical University, became the symbol of the protests when the police sprayed pepper gas on a woman in a red dress from a very close distance during the protests. In addition, hashtags such as #OccupyGezi, especially on Facebook and Twitter, were opened on social media and the protests were supported by important people from all over the world.

Taksim is a very touristic area in Istanbul. However, in that year, many tourists cancelled their travel plans, and Istanbul's tourism suffered great destruction. In addition, the Istanbul Stock Exchange experienced a sharp decline with the effect of the events at that time. The fact that many world-famous stores could not open their Beyoğlu branches for days also affected the business world. During this period and afterwards, many Turkish and foreign singers dedicated songs to the Gezi Park protests. For example, the rock band The Ringo Jets released their composition Spring of War, which is about protests. Placebo music group supported the Gezi Protests with the song "Rob the Bank".

Under the pretext of the Gezi Park Events, Erdoğan found a basis on which to accelerate his future authoritarian plans. The Gezi Park trials are still ongoing, and the world-renowned philanthropist Osman Kavala has been imprisoned. However, the European Court of Human Rights has repeatedly annulled this decision.