© Ahmet Sik/Nar/ReduxMourners gather at the funeral of Berkin Elvan
On Tuesday, a fifteen-year-old Turkish Alevi named Berkin Elvan died, sparking the country's largest anti-government protests since last summer, when a sit-in to save Istanbul's Gezi Park grew into nationwide clashes. Nine months ago, at the height of the Gezi protests,
Elvan went out to buy a loaf of bread in his neighborhood, Okmeydani, and was struck on the head with a tear-gas canister. Like many neighborhoods in the city, Okmeydani had been the site of violent daytime clashes between police and protesters, even as families carried on with their normal lives.Elvan fell into a coma, and Okmeydani hospital, where he was treated, quickly turned into a site of vigil and protest. His wide smile and mop of black hair became a symbol of police brutality, while his depleting body weight, for the protesters, was like a ticking clock charting the government's inaction. Even the loaf of white bread he had been sent out to buy took on a totemic significance.
When Elvan died, after two hundred and sixty-nine days in a coma, weighing just over thirty pounds, protesters hoisted loaves above their heads like torches.Much has changed in Turkey since Gezi, which represented an unprecedented challenge to Prime Minister
Recep Tayyip Erdoğan and his Justice and Development Party (A.K. Party).
The brutality of the riot police - whose excessive use of tear gas, water cannons, and rubber bullets to disperse the crowds was applauded by Erdoğan - exposed a corroding democracy, while the protests themselves revealed the Turkish public's dwindling patience. Erdoğan stayed in power, but the development of Gezi Park, which had sparked the demonstrations, was halted. In December, a corruption investigation that targeted government officials and influential businessmen seemed to signal a bitter rivalry between Erdoğan and his former ally, the Islamic cleric Fethullah Gülen, whose followers within Turkey are said to have significant influence within the police and judiciary, and number some five million worldwide.
Comment: Press conferences with Obama are in stark contrast to those with Putin, where all questions are allowed to being asked. Obama only wishes those journalists present who are sure not to ask any challenging questions.
For a contrast see:
A true statesman: Vladimir Putin press conference, March 4, 2014 - video and transcript