Gezi Park Protest

On Sunday, Mar.1st, we met with Muge Yorganci, a city planner who participated in the Gezi Park protest. The protest was against an Ottoman Style Shopping Mall project, proposed by the Prime Minister Erdogan of the AKP party. Erdogan tried to mark this project as a cultural facilitates to be a symbolic architecture for the new Turkey Republic. However, to the people, it was purely a symbol of the right for unlimited use of land of the central government.
The protest was large-scale and very influential. Most citizens including supporters for the CHP party, Kurtish people, LGBT group, and women participated. People criticized the project as it only revealed the commercial value and the political power while neglecting the cultural importance of the Taksim Square to the citizens.
As my project is on how different actors try to benefit from industries related to tourism, I focused on her discussion of international real estate corporations’ influence. As she implied, large portion of Istanbul economy is focused on construction sector. The construction of the shopping mall will give huge benefit to the real estate corporations behind the project and economic side of the government.