page_title: Gezi Park protests
section_title: Gezi Park
hierarchical_section_title: Gezi Park protests / Background / Gezi Park
caption_attribution_description: Español: Vista del parque Taksim Gezi, Estambul, Turquía.
context_page_description: A wave of demonstrations and civil unrest in Turkey began on 28 May 2013, initially to contest the urban development plan for Istanbul's Taksim Gezi Park. The protests were sparked by outrage at the violent eviction of a sit-in at the park protesting the plan. Subsequently, supporting protests and strikes took place across Turkey, protesting a wide range of concerns at the core of which were issues of freedom of the press, expression, and assembly, as well as the Islamist government's erosion of Turkey's secularism. With no centralised leadership beyond the small assembly that organized the original environmental protest, the protests have been compared to the Occupy movement and the May 1968 events. Social media played a key part in the protests, not least because much of the Turkish media downplayed the protests, particularly in the early stages. Three and a half million people are estimated to have taken an active part in almost 5,000 demonstrations across Turkey connected with the original Gezi Park protest. Twenty-two people were killed and more than 8,000 were injured, many critically.
context_section_description: The initial cause of the protests was the plan to remove Gezi Park, one of the few remaining green spaces in the center of the European side of Istanbul. The plan involved pedestrianising Taksim Square and rebuilding the Ottoman-era Taksim Military Barracks, which had been demolished in 1940. Development projects in Turkey involve "cultural preservation boards" which are supposed to be independent of the government, and in January such a board rejected the project as not serving the public interest. However a higher board overturned this on 1 May, in a move park activists said was influenced by the government.
  The ground floor of the rebuilt barracks was expected to house a shopping mall, and the upper floors luxury flats, although in response to the protests the likelihood of a shopping mall was downplayed, and the possibility of a museum raised. The main contractor for the project is the Kalyon Group, described in 2013 by the BBC as "a company which has close ties with the governing AKP."
  The Gezi Park protests began in April, having started with a petition in December 2012. The protests were renewed on 27 May, culminating in the creation of an encampment occupying the park. A raid on this encampment on 29 May prompted outrage and wider protests. Although Turkey has a history of police brutality, the attack on a peaceful sit-in by environmentalists was different enough to spur wider outrage than such previous incidents, developing into the largest protests in Turkey in decades.
  The large number of trees that were cut in the forests of northern Istanbul for the construction of the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge (Third Bosphorus Bridge) and the new Istanbul International Airport (the world's largest airport, with a capacity for 150 million passengers per year) were also influential in the public sensitivity for protecting Gezi Park. According to official Turkish government data, a total of 2,330,012 trees have been cut for constructing the Istanbul International Airport and its road connections; and a total of 381,096 trees have been cut for constructing the highway connections of the Yavuz Sultan Selim Bridge; reaching an overall total of 2,711,108 trees which were cut for the two projects.
caption: Gezi Park as seen from the Marmara Hotel on Taksim Square.
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