Keyword: Turkey

How the Internet has Made Social Change Easy to Organize, Hard to Win

Picture: Ahmed/img.li Video Today the speed at which we spread information is so fast that a single email can launch a worldwide awareness campaign, as with the Occupy movement. Yet as techno-sociologist Zeynep Tufekci seeks to show, the ease of social media can actually hurt social change in the long run. From Gezi Park to the Arab Spring to Ukraine to Hong Kong, she shows how today's movements can miss out on the benefits of doing things the hard (and slow) way. Technology does empower in multiple ways, but easier...

Unity in Diversity? Time to Revitalize Inclusionary Activism

Picture: A woman holds up a sign that reads "One Brazil for all," in Sao Paulo, Brazil, where crowds gathered to celebrate the reversal of a fare hike on public transportation, courtesy Semilla Luz/Flickr. Glenn Ashton - Media coverage of the Obama-crew’s flash-mob blitz of South Africa showed the extent to which we have allowed ourselves to be policed by a force that continues to display apartheid era tactics. While Obama was touring Soweto legal demonstrators were treated to percussion grenades and teargas for protesting too vigorously. South Africans have a proud history of peaceful protest, from the women’s march on Pretoria in the 1950s, the pass protests into the cities across the nation...

The Roots of Social Rebellion? Social Movements.

Picture: Brazilian protest courtesy Hispanically Speaking News. Sreeram Chaulia - Historic change eventually comes via small and modest beginnings. The current revolts in Brazil and Turkey actually started in low-key fashion at least one decade ago. Had they been spotted earlier, there would be less befuddlement about explaining the genesis of the mass protests that have mushroomed to force the governments of Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff and Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan to rethink their policy paths. Brazil’s middle and working classes shot to...

Heavy Violence Rains Down on Turkish Protesters

Picture: This image of an injured Turkish protestor was exhibited at a protest against the Turkish administration at the Turkish Airlines check-in counter at Frankfurt Airport, Germany. It was photographed by SACSIS Sarah Lazare - The Turkish government launched violent raids, mass arrests, and torrents of tear gas and water cannon fire across the country Tuesday in an effort to quell the widespread uprisings against the ruling AKP party, now well into their third week. Police are shooting water cannons filled with damaging chemicals, say Turkish protesters on a Wikileaks Forum showing photographs of demonstrators with burns across their legs and backs. Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan announced Tuesday that...

Why the People of Turkey are Calling for Prime Minister Erdogan to Go

Picture: Michael Fleshman/Flickr Pepe Escobar - Is this the Turkish Spring? No, at least not yet. Is Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan the new Mubarak? No, at least not yet. History keeps warning us it takes just a spark to light a political bonfire. The recent spark in Istanbul was provided by a small group of very young environmentalists organizing a peaceful sit-in, Occupy-style, in Taksim Square to protest the planned destruction of one of the city center's few remaining public green spaces, Gezi park. Gezi park's...

New Power Brokers in the Middle East

Picture: Vanderlizer Saif Shahin - America's failure to talk peace is undercutting its influence in the Middle East. It has cleared the way for proactive nations like Turkey and Qatar, who want a quieter neighborhood to push their economic growth, to step in and broker deals such as the recent Iranian nuclear fuel swap and the Lebanese accord of 2008. Continued U.S. intransigence may lead them to try and sort out issues such as the Israeli-Palestinian conflict as well. The United States chooses to be unconvinced by the...