Women on the Front Lines of Turkey Protests

Reblogged from : World

By Pelin TurgutJune 08, 2013

ARIS MESSINIS / AFP / Getty Images

Demonstrators wave Turkish flags and shout slogans during a protest at Gazi park next to Taksim Square in Istanbul on June 5, 2013.

ISTANBUL – Two ladies, one in red, the other in blue – that two iconic early images of Turkey’s uprising flashed around the world were of women now seems no coincidence. Of the tens of thousands of anti-government protestors who daily throng Istanbul’s ‘Occupied’ central square—now on Day 12—about half are female. Women have been at the forefront of a movement against what demonstrators say is Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan‘s increasing attempts to shape personal freedoms.
(MORE: As Turkey Protests Continue, Attention Falls on Failures of Turkish Media)
Dressed in a red cotton dress, academic Ceyda Sungur went to Istanbul’s Gezi Park in her lunch hour last week to support sit-in demonstrators protesting a government-backed redevelopment scheme that would destroy the trees. Bag slung over one arm, she was captured on film as a masked policeman doused her with pepper spray. The other image, dubbed ‘The Lady in Blue’, was of an unidentified young woman, arms outstretched, as she absorbed the full impact of a water cannon during street fighting that raged last weekend.
Protests began last week over the violent police intervention in the park and soon turned into an outpouring of public frustration with Erdogan’s goverment. Fighting riot police, demonstrators in Istanbul last weekend seized the city’s central square, including the Park, and have set up a colorful ‘free zone’ that resembles the Paris Commune in spirit. Demonstrations have spread to 60 other cities.
Women say they are concerned that the conservative policies of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s government threatens their lifestyle. ”The reason there are so many women out here is that this government is anti-women,” says Sevi, a 28-year-old sociology student camping out in Gezi Park. “They don’t want to see women in public spaces. They want to see them in the home. And women have had enough.”

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