Editor’s Note: This is part of an ongoing series examining the political and social unrest in Turkey. Each post is written by UC Berkeley students spending the summer in Turkey.
ANKARA, TURKEY — It was on May 31 when I first smelled the bitter scent of tear gas on the streets. My friends and I had boarded a bus for a night out in the city. I wasn’t aware of the crowd that had gathered at Kugulu Park, and I wasn’t aware that the police started intervening with the protests, which recently spread from Istanbul to Ankara, because it was not broadcasted on the news channels. But as we got off the bus, I could not move any farther, because the crowd had backed up traffic. Though I wasn’t there to protest, tear gas does not have a specific target — it burns anyone in its path.
For me, getting teargassed was not an upsetting experience as much as it was a wake-up call. Finally, I felt something had changed, and people were trying to have their voices heard against a government they had despised for a while. Many of them were students like myself, who wanted a brighter future for the country. Others protesting were mothers, fathers, grandparents and even young children.
The next morning, my Twitter feed was filled with tweets about the protests and from protesters calling for others to join them. I felt something that I had not felt for a very long time — patriotism. I believe this was how most people felt, too. In a time when people had almost lost hope in the future of Turkey, this came as a surprise to me. There was finally an attempt to go against Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and to show him the despite the nearly 50 percent of votes his party received during the 2011 general elections, there are still another 50 percent that do not approve of some of his actions. That day was the first day I attended the protests.
My mother asked me not to go, telling me that I could get hurt. I tried to explain to her that it was us — the youth of Turkey — who could actually make a difference. I told her that not going to protest would mean that I learned nothing from any of my teachers who taught me about protecting democracy and the Republic of Turkey at all costs. If I didn’t go to the protests, that would mean, for me, that a substantial part of my education had gone to waste.
So my mother cut a single lemon and handed it to me — a remedy to alleviate the pain and burn of tear gas. I thought I was ready, but I could not have been more wrong. With tear gas flying everywhere and water cannons making their rounds to spray people with water, the streets I once walked through without any care now resembled a war zone.
Those who could get their hands on the tear gas canisters tried to get them away from the people. Others walked around with milk, lemon and vinegar in their hands to help people get rid of the pain that the tear gas caused. Yet amid all this chaos, I did not feel fear. For the first time in my life, maybe, I felt hope for the future of my country. I felt that we could actually change something, and there was not enough tear gas in the world that could stop us. It was the first time I felt proud of my generation and the open-minded people of Turkey.
The video below is a song written by Duman, a Turkish rock band who has vocally been in support of the protests.
Ali Kucokgocmen is a student at UC Berkeley. Contact the Opinion desk at [email protected]