Turkey’s Erdogan wants to restart Gezi Park destruction

This video is about the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey (2013).

Erdogan restarts controversial Gezi Park development

18 June 2016

The Turkish president has vowed to push ahead with a controversial development in Istanbul’s Gezi Park.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan said Saturday he was restarting development of a controversial Istanbul park project that sparked massive anti-government protests in 2013.

“A project that we need to address in a courageous manner is (that of) Gezi Park in Taksim. We will build this historic structure,” Erdogan said in a speech in Istanbul.

Erdogan was speaking of the contested plan to redevelop an Ottoman-era barracks on the land occupied by Gezi Park, located next to Taksim Square in Istanbul.

Erdogan reminds me of another autocratic politician (and hater of refugees), Orban in Hungary; especially of Orban’s scheme to destroy Hungary’s natural history museum to make it a military building.

Secular Turks have opposed plans for redevelopment of the site. …

Several people were killed and thousands more injured in mass protests in Taksim Square, which were brutally suppressed by police. Demonstrations in the square – a traditional rallying point for Istanbul residents – are now banned. …

Critics have said the project would turn the park area into a shopping district and destroy one of the few green areas of Istanbul, Turkey‘s largest city.

Turkey’s top administrative court blocked the redevelopment in the wake of the 2013 protests, but last year it reversed its decision, following an appeal by the municipality of Istanbul.

On June 8 Turkey’s President Recep Erdoğan approved a new law that will help destroy the last vestiges of parliamentary democracy in his country. His Justice and Development Party (AKP) brought in the law to end immunity from prosecution of members of parliament, and this might appear reasonable — because, after all, why should such people have immunity that is denied to the citizens who elected them? But, as in all emerging dictatorships, the devil lies in the detail and the consequences: here.