On May 28 of last year, a sit-in began in Gezi Park at Istanbul’s Taksim Square as hundreds attempted to prevent the demolition of the park and the erection of a large shopping complex. The brutal eviction of the protesters resulted in massive demonstrations that broke out in all major Turkish cities, including Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir and Bursa.
Tornistan/Backward Run is a short animated film made by Ayce Kartal about police violence during the protest and the diminutive media coverage of the events.
“Between May and June 2013 we experienced tragic and sorrowful days,” said filmmaker Kartal in a recent interview with Occupy.com.
“This was a very special period, because that entire noisy quarrel started with the idea of protecting the Gezi Park and its trees in Taksim, Istanbul, from being cut.”
In her film, Kartal highlights the ongoing struggle of Turkish activists faced with police violence and the government's neglect of popular opinion.
“All the troubles started with this innocent touch. At the end, millions of people were shouting on the streets, and the picture has been changed." said Kartal. "Violence has been started! Everything became serious. At that moment the main media organs were in silence and showing classic daily programs on TV and the newspapers were writing [off] mark.”
While the demonstrations were largely peaceful, police used extensive means of violence to suppress the activists. Eleven dead and more than 8,000 people were injured as a result of tear gas, water cannons and general police violence meted out to protesters during those weeks.
“Thousands of people have been wounded, [have] become permanently disabled and some were killed but we couldn't get any news from the Turkish press. We watched all the live news from the webcasts of TV channels from Norway, Germany and France,” continued Kartal.
“Our elderly, who don't use the Internet, didn't get what was happening in their own country. 'Why are these people shouting? Why are all the streets in chili smoke and what is this fire?' they were wondering. It was very sorrowful," she said. "One day on the street an old guy stopped me and asked, 'What is this? Did we get the World Cup?'"
That was the moment when Kartal decided to make a film about the movement and the action taking place in her country.
Though the protest had started because of Gezi Park and continued as a result of the police brutality involved in clearing it, soon freedom of speech, the right to assembly, media and Internet censorship, and finally the resignation of Erdoğan's government came on to the protesters' agenda.
The protests had no centralized leadership beyond the small organization of activists who sparked the original environmental protest, which widely became known as Occupy Gezi because of its resemblance to the Occupy movement that swept America, and much of the world, the previous autumn.
“It really started because of the park. People really wanted to protect the trees and they were against another shopping center. But police suddenly reacted by using enormous power and means," recalled Kartal.
"That made people very angry. After all, people expected an apology from the government, but instead of an apology they got even more violence. Then everything changed. Against the government [people formed] a wall of flesh in 24 hours. There were millions of people who were fighting against the police unarmed and they were coming from other cities, other political views, other ethnicities.
"I think in the past few years, the government lost the balance and forgot about the people. These selfish behaviors and disrespect to people's ideas and lives were the underlying problem. So, the violence seen at the Gezi Park protests was the last straw that broke the camel's back.”
In Tornistan/Backward Run, one vividly sees the power of the media and how they were not covering the events in Gezi Park nor the protests happening all across Turkey. The question, then, became to what extent the government was blocking the coverage of the demonstrations in the media.
“I really don't know what was happening behind the scenes and as a common citizen I'll never know. But, we clearly saw the insincerity of the Turkish media. They hid the truth, they changed the truth,” said Kartal.
“There are still some millions [of people] not aware of those brutalities. The days in which people couldn't get any information through the media and the press, the Internet was the main information base – but because of an ‘unknown reason,’ all the street cameras stopped being broadcast on the Internet and people couldn't see the streets. A few hours later people clearly saw what was happening in Taksim live from a Norwegian channel, and then all the information network moved on to the Internet.
"Firstly, we were astounded [that] because of this media silence, without delay people established all their needs by the Internet. Doctors created their own free infirmaries and gave the addresses and their phone numbers. Unlawfully, pharmacies opened their shops for free, people opened their flats to wounded people,” recalled Kartal.
Only a few months after the start of the May demonstrations, Erdoğan's government has had new problems to face. Protests re-ignited on December 18 after Turkish ministers' sons and prominent businessmen were detained amid a corruption scandal that reportedly leads up as high as Erdoğan himself.
“The protests are big, but not as massive as in the summer. The police violence and the zero media coverage on it remains the same, though," added Kartal. "There are still people from the riot police shooting and hitting protesters on the streets. That hasn't changed."
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