What is Happening in Istanbul?

Another sponsored revolution.

This is disgusting, the "right" to profit/property is the least important thing, it should never trump people's well-being or the environment.

> Two young people were run over by the tanks and were killed.

That is extremely serious. My condolences with those who lost their lives, and best wishes for your friend to recover from her injury.

While we all discuss and throw ourselves around when a dying industry (read Hollywood) misbehaves and tries to screw with our Internet freedoms, free speech etc. I wonder what would when happen when the same fate, and it is coming, falls on the Governments of the world.

A dying model of Governance could take things to a rather unprecedented level of nastiness and cruelty.

Yet a democratically-elected government made a decision in the name of the people to replace this park with a shopping mall. People protesting against that by blocking the construction process (i.e. stand in front of bulldozers etc.) are effectively overturning democracy in order to protect their personal interests.

This is a general problem I have with such active counter-protests, be they to stop a station from being built (Stuttgart 21, [0]) or to block a legitimate demonstration of right-wing idiots. The rights to free speech, to assemble and to demonstrate are important, but in my opinion the right to demonstrate/protest in a specific location does not trump the right of the majority to implement a democratically made decision or the right of a minority to voice their opinion.

That said, there are obviously cases were a small minority has the right to (even violently) protest a decision made by the majority[1], but building a shopping mall in a park is not one of them.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuttgart_21

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Right_of_revolution , e.g. Art. 20.4 of the German Basic Law – does the Turkish constitution have a similar provision?

Loath as I am to cite Buzzfeed, but: the images of the people on the bridge are not from these protests. They are from the 2012 Istanbul Marathon. http://www.buzzfeed.com/hunterschwarz/one-of-the-most-popula...