Interview: The Gezi Park days

di Francesca Pacini

Interview: The Gezi Park days

Doğa Kocagöz lives and works in Istanbul. His life is divided into english books translations and the work at Artist’s Kahvesi, a very nice bar in Taksim.  He took part in the protest that changed him forever. He tells us his experience….

di Francesca Pacini
We all know how the Gezi resistance started. But can you tell us some more?

Gezi resistance started for protecting the trees in Gezi park but then it turned into something anti government. Now it is an anti government movement.

Solidarity: the activists are very different one from the other…. Who is a "çapulcu"?

Çapulcu is a word that used by Erdoğan for everyone who attended to Gezi movement and everyone who does not support AKP.

Muslims and non muslims. many people think all this is also against the muslim religion, and not against Erdogan repression. Where is the truth?

AKP and Erdoğan tried to make people believe that it is anti religion movement but it is not we celebrated the kandil all together in Gezi and than people organized iftar meals in Gezi. That is the proof that it is not a anti religious movement. Maybe it is true that most of the attenders of Gezi are not religious people maybe they are atheist. But in Gezi, religion is not the main problem. Problem was the fascist government.

Çapulcular use a very ironic and romantic way to resist, from the standing man to pinguins up to the painted steps. This touched many people in many countries. it is really a fascinating revolution against the power and the police attacks. can you tell us more about it?

We use everything we can use  like penguins and the painting stairs. Because we believe that the city we are living belongs to us. By us i mean the public. Government should know that they are in the parliament for us. Without us they are nothing.

This brutal repression is impressing the whole world. But now there are so many conflicts spread all around  that we risk to miss some precious informations. what is going on right now? How can we help to share the news?

There are some twitter accounts which are trustable you can follow and support them spread them worldwide. This is the negative part of social media: everyone creates his own media and broadcast some videos or photos we know that not everything you can see or read on internet is true. Because it is impossible to control. But the general media is controllable and we realized that it is not something you rely on. It depends on who is controlling it. For example if it is like turkish media which is controlled by the fascist government. Definitely you cannot trust the tvs.

Your life before "Gezi" and your life "during and after". How this experience changed you?

Gezi experience definitely changed me. Now i know that AKP is afraid of people, they just pose like something who does not step back. And i also much more realized the government terror on minorities. I always was heard of that government terror on minorities but this time i was that part of minorities and i saw that government terror with my own eyes.


What will happen in Turkey? What is democracy in Turkey, since Atatürk and after?
I think no one knows what will happen next. There was no democracy in turkey. But as i mentioned before almost everyone who attended Gezi is aware of that.  There is no democracy. People realized that how government behave on minorities for years. Now people understand kurdish people.

How  this “revolution” might change the country?
I am not sure about that we can call that revolution. But revolution blinked to us . Now we understand other people who lived under government terror for years as minorities. We know that almost everything we saw on tvs was a lie. People who question authorities number is increasing and i believe that this is a good thing.