Defiant Turkish Demonstrators 'Finding New Ways to Protest': Turkey Page Co-Editor Nazan Ustundag on Democracy Now!

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Jun 20, 2013 Turkey
[Nazan Üstündag. Image from screen shot of below interview.] [Nazan Üstündag. Image from screen shot of below interview.]

Defiant Turkish Demonstrators 'Finding New Ways to Protest': Turkey Page Co-Editor Nazan Ustundag on Democracy Now!

By : Jadaliyya Reports

This is an interview conducted with Turkey Page Co-Editor Nazan Üstündağ on the ongoing state repression of protests in Turkey. The interview addresses the Turkish government`s violent crackdown and how Turkish protesters have developed new strategies to express their dissent. 

The Turkish government is threatening to send armed troops into cities to quell the ongoing anti-government protests that have continued despite an increasingly violent state crackdown. On Tuesday, Turkish police arrested eighty-seven people in a series of raids targeting those suspected of participating in weeks of anti-government rallies. The latest demonstrations include acts of passive resistance inspired by performance artist Erdem Gündüz, aka "The Standing Man," who attracted international attention for standing quietly in Taksim Square for eight hours to protest the police crackdown. We go to Istanbul to speak with Nazan Üstündag, an activist and scholar who has been involved in the Taksim Square protests since they began late last month. "People are finding new ways to protest," Üstündag says. "We’re coming together discussing what we’re going to do next, how we’re going to organize and voice our democratic demands."

Below is a transcript of Nazan Üstündağ`s appearance on Democracy Now.

Nermeen Shaikh (NS): Anti-government protests are continuing in Turkey despite an increasingly violent state crackdown. On Tuesday, Turkish police arrested eighty-seven people in a series of raids targeting those suspected of participating in weeks of anti-government protests. Earlier today, police used water cannons to disperse hundreds of protesters in the Turkish capital of Ankara. The Turkish government is now threatening to send in armed troops into cities.

Meanwhile, a performance artist named Erdem Gündüz has become the new symbol of the protest movement. Nicknamed "The Standing Man," Gündüz attracted international attention for standing quietly in Taksim Square for eight hours on Monday to protest the police crackdown on protesters. Images and video of him standing silently in the square have gone viral and inspired similar passive resistance protests across Turkey.

Amy Goodman (AG): For the latest from Turkey, we go now to Istanbul, where we’re joined by Nazan Üstündağ. She’s an activist and scholar based in Istanbul who’s been involved in the Taksim Square protests since they began.

It’s great to have you back, Nazan. Can you talk about what’s happening at this point, the mass protests, then word there was an agreement between the prime minister and the protesters, and then word that that agreement broke down? Why are people still on the streets?

Nazan Üstündag (NÜ): Well, there is a misunderstanding about that. There hasn’t been actually an agreement with the prime minister. The prime minister said that we should immediately evacuate the park and that he will wait for the court decision, which is actually not a concession but a normal thing. I mean, he has to wait for the court decision; he cannot override the court. But there were five—four other demands that the protesters have done, and he didn’t take any of them seriously. And at some point in the meeting, he left the room, so there wasn’t really an agreement. But, on our side, we were thinking of leaving the park anyway and just leave a symbolic tent just to show our good intentions. But still, before we could make a final decision on that, there was the police attack. So, there was still a disagreement, and there wasn’t any kind of concession made by the prime minister, but we were planning, as the Taksim—Taksim solidarity platform was actually proposing to leave the park and to just leave a symbolic tent, and that’s when the police raids started.

NS: And, Nazan, can you say—you refer to four other demands that the protesters made, which the prime minister disregarded. Could you explain what those four demands were?

NÜ: Sure. To stop the police violence, and particularly the use of the gas, of the tear gas, and all those kinds of different kinds of chemical gases, because there are different versions of that. The other one was the release of those who have been taken under custody, but actually, after that, four hundred more people have been taken under custody, and a hundred of them were taken out of their homes with a morning raid, so it wasn’t even during the actions that they were taken into custody. So those were the two demands. Then the third demand was that the prime minister, the—sorry, not the prime minister, sorry about that—that the governor and police chief of Istanbul resign or be held accountable for what they have done. They have—actually, four people have died. And not only four people have died, eight thousand people have been wounded, and many of them are still in serious conditions. Over fifteen people have lost their eyes. So we wanted them to be held accountable. And the fourth demand was that the government takes back its proposal to destroy Gezi Park. And—

AG: Nazan, this is the Prime Minister Erdoğan speaking Tuesday. He described the protesters as invaders.

PRIME MINISTER TAYYIP ERDOĞAN: [translated] We did what we had to in a state of law. We have cleared out Taksim Square and Gezi Park from these invaders. You know, they’ve destroyed everything. We’re planting trees and flowers again.


AG: That was the Prime Minister Erdoğan. Nazan, your final comment on what the prime minister said and what is happening today?

NÜ: Well, what’s happening today is people are finding new ways to protest. As you have mentioned, we have the Standing Man, but that’s not the only thing. We have now started to go to other parks in Istanbul. Instead of in Gezi Park, now we are—we have distributed—our group has—I mean, like, there are thousands and thousands of people attending every day after their jobs, all the public parks. And we are coming together, discussing what we are going to do next, how we are going to organize, how we are going to voice our democratic demands, because what the prime minister says is, again, a lie. We have the democracy in Turkey. Our right to freely associate and to freely express ourselves is under—is constitutional. So he’s lying. What he does is actually unlawful. And we are trying to come together and make the world hear our voice, organize ourselves even stronger and continue our resistance to this.

AG: Nazan Üstündağ, we want to thank you for being with us, activist and scholar based in Istanbul, Turkey. She’s been involved in the Taksim Square protests since they began.
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Past is Present: Settler Colonialism Matters!

On 5-6 March 2011, the Palestine Society at the School of Oriental and African Studies (SOAS) in London will hold its seventh annual conference, "Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine." This year`s conference aims to understand Zionism as a settler colonial project which has, for more than a century, subjected Palestine and Palestinians to a structural and violent form of destruction, dispossession, land appropriation and erasure in the pursuit of a new Jewish Israeli society. By organizing this conference, we hope to reclaim and revive the settler colonial paradigm and to outline its potential to inform and guide political strategy and mobilization.

The Israeli-Palestinian conflict is often described as unique and exceptional with little resemblance to other historical or ongoing colonial conflicts. Yet, for Zionism, like other settler colonial projects such as the British colonization of Ireland or European settlement of North America, South Africa or Australia, the imperative is to control the land and its resources -- and to displace the original inhabitants. Indeed, as conference keynote speaker Patrick Wolfe, one of the foremost scholars on settler colonialism and professor at La Trobe University in Victoria, Australia, argues, "the logic of this project, a sustained institutional tendency to eliminate the Indigenous population, informs a range of historical practices that might otherwise appear distinct--invasion is a structure not an event."[i]

Therefore, the classification of the Zionist movement as a settler colonial project, and the Israeli state as its manifestation, is not merely intended as a statement on the historical origins of Israel, nor as a rhetorical or polemical device. Rather, the aim is to highlight Zionism`s structural continuities and the ideology which informs Israeli policies and practices in Palestine and toward Palestinians everywhere. Thus, the Nakba -- whether viewed as a spontaneous, violent episode in war, or the implementation of a preconceived master plan -- should be understood as both the precondition for the creation of Israel and the logical outcome of Zionist settlement in Palestine.

Moreover, it is this same logic that sustains the continuation of the Nakba today. As remarked by Benny Morris, “had he [David Ben Gurion] carried out full expulsion--rather than partial--he would have stabilised the State of Israel for generations.”[ii] Yet, plagued by an “instability”--defined by the very existence of the Palestinian nation--Israel continues its daily state practices in its quest to fulfill Zionism’s logic to maximize the amount of land under its control with the minimum number of Palestinians on it. These practices take a painful array of manifestations: aerial and maritime bombardment, massacre and invasion, house demolitions, land theft, identity card confiscation, racist laws and loyalty tests, the wall, the siege on Gaza, cultural appropriation, and the dependence on willing (or unwilling) native collaboration and security arrangements, all with the continued support and backing of imperial power. 

Despite these enduring practices however, the settler colonial paradigm has largely fallen into disuse. As a paradigm, it once served as a primary ideological and political framework for all Palestinian political factions and trends, and informed the intellectual work of committed academics and revolutionary scholars, both Palestinians and Jews.

The conference thus asks where and why the settler colonial paradigm was lost, both in scholarship on Palestine and in politics; how do current analyses and theoretical trends that have arisen in its place address present and historical realities? While acknowledging the creativity of these new interpretations, we must nonetheless ask: when exactly did Palestinian natives find themselves in a "post-colonial" condition? When did the ongoing struggle over land become a "post-conflict" situation? When did Israel become a "post-Zionist" society? And when did the fortification of Palestinian ghettos and reservations become "state-building"?

In outlining settler colonialism as a central paradigm from which to understand Palestine, this conference re-invigorates it as a tool by which to analyze the present situation. In doing so, it contests solutions which accommodate Zionism, and more significantly, builds settler colonialism as a political analysis that can embolden and inform a strategy of active, mutual, and principled Palestinian alignment with the Arab struggle for self-determination, and indigenous struggles in the US, Latin America, Oceania, and elsewhere.

Such an alignment would expand the tools available to Palestinians and their solidarity movement, and reconnect the struggle to its own history of anti-colonial internationalism. At its core, this internationalism asserts that the Palestinian struggle against Zionist settler colonialism can only be won when it is embedded within, and empowered by, the broader Arab movement for emancipation and the indigenous, anti-racist and anti-colonial movement--from Arizona to Auckland.

SOAS Palestine Society invites everyone to join us at what promises to be a significant intervention in Palestine activism and scholarship.

For over 30 years, SOAS Palestine Society has heightened awareness and understanding of the Palestinian people, their rights, culture, and struggle for self-determination, amongst students, faculty, staff, and the broader public. SOAS Palestine society aims to continuously push the frontiers of discourse in an effort to make provocative arguments and to stimulate debate and organizing for justice in Palestine through relevant conferences, and events ranging from the intellectual and political impact of Edward Said`s life and work (2004), international law and the Palestine question (2005), the economy of Palestine and its occupation (2006), the one state (2007), 60 Years of Nakba, 60 Years of Resistance (2009), and most recently, the Left in Palestine (2010).

For more information on the SOAS Palestine Society 7th annual conference, Past is Present: Settler Colonialism in Palestine: www.soaspalsoc.org

SOAS Palestine Society Organizing Collective is a group of committed students that has undertaken to organize annual academic conferences on Palestine since 2003.

 

[i] Patrick Wolfe, Settler Colonialism and the Transformation of Anthropology: The Politics and Poetics of an Ethnographic Event, Cassell, London, p. 163

[ii] Interview with Benny Morris, Survival of the Fittest, Haaretz, 9. January 2004, http://cosmos.ucc.ie/cs1064/jabowen/IPSC/php/art.php?aid=5412