"When we come to power, we will allow you to build mosques"

In a matter of days, dissatisfaction with the government turned into an active struggle against the regime in Turkey. Secular, Europeanized townspeople rebelled against the Islamization that religious fundamentalists decided to force after they won the elections for the third time.

Turkish housewives express their disagreement with the regime by ringing pots with all their might. This soundtrack could be heard over the weekend not only in Taksim Square, in the Cihangir quarter and the Asian part of Istanbul, but also on the traditionally secular coastline from Izmir to Antalya. This can be considered one of the proofs that it is not the marginalized who go into confrontation with the authorities, as the Prime Minister calls them. On Saturday morning, after a brutal crackdown on the Gezi Park occupiers, police closed ferries and bridges from the Asian side - forty thousand people set off for Europe on foot, walking at least ten kilometers across the Bosphorus Bridge to Taksim Square. On Saturday evening, when the police left Taksim and the fighting moved to Besiktas, at least a million people danced and sang in Taksim.

Photo: Reuters

Not a sound can be heard from this noise in my apartment in the historical Sultanahmet district. Tourists walk just as peacefully from Hagia Sophia to the Blue Mosque, except that Gulhane Park is a little less crowded than usual. Yesterday, for the first time, the wind brought the smell of pepper gas, which is sprayed over Besiktas. Living here, and in most other areas of the city, you may not have heard about the events on the other side of the Galata Bridge. Moreover, the Turkish media showed rare unanimity in keeping silent about them - and when it became impossible to remain silent, reports appeared in the official news about looters and provocateurs organizing riots at the instigation of foreign intelligence services. In my building there live mainly Muslim families who react sharply to the word “Taksim” - in their opinion, the riots are being caused by thoughtless opponents of the Prime Minister, who only wants good for people. A devout Muslim friend of mine, a teacher of Ottoman history at Istanbul University, says approximately the same thing: for him, the authorities personify the power of progressive transformation, and the strikers are paid provocateurs.

So we are talking not only about protests, but about the actual split of the country. In Istanbul alone, the split runs almost along the Golden Horn. On one side there are street fights and dances (“Jump if you are not a fascist,” they shout at Istiklal, and everyone jumps together), police drag the hair of teenage girls who go for a walk with flags of the Turkish Republic, and pharmacies are out of stock medical masks. On the other hand, respectable aunties walk along Eminenu and worry that terrible provocateurs will rip their hijabs off their heads. Just yesterday this nation was united. And the longer the confrontation lasts, the less hope there is that the two Turkeys will be able to quickly unite.

Are we laughing at the “Georgian trace” on Bolotnaya? Just yesterday, Prime Minister Erdogan ordered an investigation into the foreign trace in the events in Taksim Square, and today the police counted 250 spies from America, Israel, Great Britain, Iran, Syria and Russia. The Fatih district police chief, with whom my husband plays backgammon in the evenings, seriously says that the protests sweeping Turkey were organized by America in retaliation for the fact that Erdogan denied them something during his last visit. Turks have a special love for conspiracy theories. My favorite story, which begs to be included in the film, is about villagers in the east of the country who, upon discovering a dead ringed bird, mistook it for an Israeli agent. Imaginary or real conspiracies allowed Prime Minister Erdogan to peacefully imprison the entire top of the army and the most unsympathetic oppositionists and journalists in ten years, to the almost applause of an enthusiastic public: the country is so tired of the military coups that happen approximately once a decade that it is only glad for the weakening army.

But in place of yesterday’s military state, a police state is growing. The old Turkish adage that all dissidents in a country are “either inside or outside” (in prison or abroad) still holds true. But even many protesters in Taksim today are ready to acknowledge the achievements of the ruling party. During their ten years in power, the fundamentalists stopped inflation, achieved economic growth, and just the other day they solemnly returned the last penny of the debt to the IMF. They carried out the same economic reforms that did not happen in Russia, they especially support small and medium-sized businesses, and today Turkey is the only country in the region with a healthy economy and, for now, a more or less healthy democracy. In addition - and for this Erdogan really deserves a monument - they more or less managed to resolve the most painful national issue: the Kurdish one.

During their first two terms in power, fundamentalists did not impose their beliefs on citizens - if you want to drink raki, if you want to go to the mosque. In June 2012, impeccably democratic elections were held, in which Prime Minister Erdogan and his Justice and Development Party won by an impressive margin. Although Islam has never been a factor that unites the nation (this is due to Ataturk), more than half of the population supports the ruling party. The entire center of the country is voting for Erdogan, only the traditionally secular west and the Kurdish east are voting against. Confident of the support of his electorate, in his third term Erdogan began to quite persistently impose Islamization.

This is manifested, for example, in the new law on education. Compulsory education in the country is extended to 12 years (4+4+4 system). The new system will allow parents to send their children to imam hatip religious schools, but this is not why it is criticized: after four years of school, the child can be taken away for “home education,” which is what parents of girls in the east of the country are most likely to do. One of the most catastrophic figures over the past ten years is the sharp increase in domestic violence and early marriage. But the Prime Minister, who took his Amine as his wife when she was 15 years old, is of little concern about this. But pianist Fazil Say received ten months in prison for writing on Twitter that a muezzin shouted the call to prayer in 22 seconds because he was in a hurry to return to his mistress and a glass of raki. A draft law has been written on the inadmissibility of public expression of love feelings (“no mother will be happy to see her daughter sitting on someone’s lap,” the Prime Minister believes), and a law has already almost been adopted to remove state funding from Turkish theaters, which in fact means their destruction .

Istanbul has turned into a big construction site: mosques are being erected on every hill, forests are being cut down, a third Bosphorus Bridge and a second Bosphorus Strait are being built, and instead of the current Galata Bridge - something ugly, but according to the design of the city mayor. And finally, last week a law was passed to restrict the sale of alcohol: alcohol cannot be shown on TV, sold or consumed during the day in shops and kiosks, on street tables and within a radius of one hundred meters from schools and mosques. Given the density of mosques in Turkey, this law leaves almost no opportunity for citizens of the country to wash down their anchovy with the obligatory glass of raki.

Photo: Reuters

The “Turkish Spring” that began on June 1 was only provoked by the events around Gezi Park, but it is not what they are defending here. And Turkey, or rather secular, completely Europeanized Turks from the west of the country, has the right to continue to remain secular Europeans: to walk in the parks, drink a glass of beer in the evening in Beyoglu and kiss on the Galata Bridge. “Muslims, stop supporting Erdogan,” reads one poster in Taksim. “When we come to power, we will allow you to build your mosques within a hundred meters of our bars.”

A familiar situation: the government relies on the masses and ignores the enlightened middle class - teachers, actors, students. A letter from advertising agency employees is being circulated online, describing their everyday life in combat: “Until today, we have held nothing in our hands except pens and keyboards.” The head of state refuses to hear his citizens, calling them on live television looters, criminals, foreign agents and alcoholics.

Yesterday, the independent channel Halk TV reported on the first death in Istanbul. We know for sure about him - he is a twenty-year-old guy who has a small son. There are real battles going on on the streets of Istanbul, Ankara, Izmir, and Antalya. Police spray gas from helicopters and throw gas bombs at the windows of houses. Ordinary families, small children and old people live in these houses. Thousands of people have been arrested, thousands more are in hospitals with injuries and poisoning. What at first seemed like an attempt by the Turks to defend their statehood and secularism turns into a civil war.

The Prime Minister meanwhile left for Morocco. “They say that I am a dictator,” official television broadcasts his speech at his own party congress on Sunday. “Do I really look like a dictator!?” Party members greet his words with wild applause. Immediately after the news broadcast on the channel, the third in a series of BBC programs about Hitler begins. Probably it was just in the program, it was inconvenient to cancel.