Ghosts of Gezi protests still haunt Erdogan
The timing of President Erdogan’s recent outbursts targeting the 2013 Gezi protests hints that the protests will play a central role in his campaigning ahead of the June 2023 elections.
Turkey’s President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s angry outbursts are nothing new, and his new favorite punching bag seems to have become the Gezi protests that took place nine years ago.
Addressing a group of Turkish businesspeople on June 13, Erdogan blamed “multipronged attacks that kicked off with the Gezi protests” for his country's failure to reach the national income of $1.5 trillion. “We will not give our last breath before we settle the score with them,” he pledged.
It wasn’t the president’s first strike at the 2013 Gezi protests. Earlier this month, Erdogan branded Gezi protestors as rotten and "sluts,” setting off a large public outcry. While officials from his ruling party tried to downplay the insults as “a slip of the tongue,” Erdogan has remained defiant. “I spoke the language of the people,” he said, standing behind his comments.
The Gezi protests that started as a small-scale environmental demonstration in Istanbul’s main Taksim Square morphed into a nationwide protest against Erdogan’s rule, with hundreds of thousands of people taking to the streets across the country and protesting the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) increasing authoritarianism. In another speech on June 5, Erdogan accused Gezi protestors of “burning mosques,” prompting opposition members to confront him, asking for proof.
