This video shows us how Turkish people can protest in beautiful and humorous way. “Everyday I’m Çapuling!” reads the banners all over Gezi Parkl, having become the unofficial slogan of the uprising. Çapulcu is what Prime Minister Erdogan called the demonstrators, meaning ‘looters’, hooligans, slackers. Accepting the challenge, the people have embraced the word, adding it to signs, shirts, graffiti, barricades, masks, buses. Everyone tells us how funny the slogans are; one barricade is spray painted with “Look how beautiful this barricade is.” Erdogan recently suggested that all women should have at least three children to support the great Turkish nation. So one of the chants blasted during the rally responded with: Do you want three children like us? The humor catches everyone off guard, especially the government, who have amped up the repression in Ankara, Izmir and other poor parts of Istanbul. But the mocking, jokes, and satire doesn’t stop, creating a complex language of resistance mixed with self-reflection that elevates the critiques to a whole new level of vitriol.
Saturday was the day of the football hooligans, where one hundred thousand of Istanbul’s ultras united to take part in the mega-rally at Taksim, screaming anti-government chants at the top of their lungs mixed with each team’s call-and-response. “Drop your sticks, throw away the gas, come and get us!” everyone shouted at one point. “Blue” “Yellow” Blue” “Yellow” could be heard for miles as crowds bounced up and down waving team flags and pointing firecrackers in the sky. Every inch was packed and noone could move anywhere but together. The bitter enemies of Fenerbahce and Beşiktaş did the impossible and joined together to shoot off fireworks and drape banners over the towering AKM building surrounding the square, as another hundred thousand people looked on and celebrated their previously unthinkable peaceful co-existence. Not only the uniting of the football fans but the sheer heterogeneity of political groups sitting together has been the most shocking of all. Weeks ago it was unthinkable for nationalists and kurdish groups to share space in a rally, let alone the scores of leftist sects that hate each other, but now its already normal. Not everyone gets along, but everyone has a corner, and everyone has the freedom to give and take as they please.
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