On this day in 2013, Turkish protesters began occupying Gezi Park to oppose its demolition, an act with led to widespread protests and strikes with approximately 3,500,000 participants, 22 deaths, and more than 8,000 injuries.
The wave of civil unrest across Turkey began after the park occupation was violently evicted by police, who used to tear gas, pepper spray, and water cannons to try and break up the protests, injuring more than one hundred people and hospitalizing a journalist.
The protest quickly grew in size - by May 31st, 10,000 gathered in Istiklal Avenue. In June, the protests became national in scope and transcended any particular demographic or political ideology. Among the wide range of concerns brought by protesters were issues of freedom of the press, expression, and assembly, as well as the alleged political Islamist government's erosion of Turkey's secularism.
Millions of Turkish football fans, normally divided by intense sports rivalry, marched in unity against the government. Protesters displayed symbols the environmentalist movement, rainbow banners, depictions of Che Guevara, different trade unions, and the PKK and its leader Abdullah Öcalan.
On June 4th, Taksim Dayanışması (Taksim Solidarity) issued a set of demands that included the preservation of Gezi Park, an end to police violence, the right to freedom of assembly, and an end to the privatization of public spaces. Deputy Prime Minister Bülent Arınç met the group on June 5th and rejected these demands.
Erdoğan blamed the protests on "internal traitors and external collaborators", demonizing his political opposition as the former. Despite the popular mobilization, Erdoğan remained in power and no major concessions were won from the government.
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Cw: beauty standards and shit.
spoiler
I reccomend /r/normalnudes to people as a reality check on what humans actually look like. Cw: non sexual naked people posting nudes of themselves. Folks look all kinds of ways, but you rarely see that in media and it gets distorted in every day life. Or like go look at celebrities in the morning without makeup. Margo robbie looking tired as shit, like gorgeous but tired as shit with zits and puffy red eyes and stuff can help as a reminder that the beautiful people work really hard to be the beautiful people, it's a lot of effort and artistry to achieve and maintain the hollywood or influencer pretty beauty standard.We so rarely actually see "normal" people naked or professionally pretty people when they're just sitting around at home. And things have definitely gotten worse in some ways over the last two decades. Like, i use hugh jackman playing wolverine as an example. In the early x-men movies he looks like a normal buff dude, but by the end of the series he's like hyper-vascularized, no body fat, constantly on the edge of collapsing from dehydration. Or like Jason Momoa talking about how much of a relief it is when the director says he doesn't have to take his shirt off, bc then he doesn't have to stop eating and drinking for several days to get the expected emphasis on his abs.
And like, even if you do your best to like, remember that hollywood pretty, instagram pretty, are literally done with computer wizardry bc so few people actually look like that, it's still our culture, we're still enmeshed in it, it still has a strong effect.