Reflections on Two Years since Gezi Park

1. Neo-Ottoman mall that was planned to replace the park has still not been built.

2. It has basically become a style rule that you can’t write anything about current Turkish politics without bringing up the protests.

3. The protests marked the first time that the superiority/sincerity/humane nature of Erdogan and AKP’s political program was publicly questioned.

4. It took years for the objectives other famous anti-government protests to come to fruition (i.e. in the Eastern Bloc countries during the Cold War).

5. Polls show that Turks of all political affiliations don’t want a strengthened presidency and associate it with authoritarianism.

6. Erdogan is currently in the fight of his political life. As Michael Koplow put it, “there’s blood in the water.”