Steps and Stones

Ali Ismail Korkmaz is not unique. He was among 5 people who lost their lives during the Gezi Park protests. The fate of some others has yet to be determined, for example Berk Elvan – the 14-year-old who was hit in the head by a tear-gas canister while out buying bread on June 15, and has been in a coma ever since.

But the way Korkmaz was killed was uniquely horrifying. As the footage below this article shows – he was deliberately trapped by a number of individuals while running away from police and subsequently beaten. He was able to get up and go home in the aftermath of the attack, but when he woke up the next morning, he couldn’t speak. He later died of a brain haemorrhage, after a lengthy period in a coma.

As the same article discusses, about a week ago there was a coordinated and no doubt calculated outpouring of twitter-grief from key figures in Turkey’s ruling party, on the subject of Korkmaz’s death. This was rather astonishing, not least because Korkmaz died on July 10, and had entered a coma over a month earlier.

EU Minister Egemen Bağış, responsible for some of the most alarmingly loony statements during the protests, went in with the following: “I condemn the wild creatures who attacked 19-year-old Ali İsmail Korkmaz. It is impossible to understand or explain such cruel images.”

Is it really, though? Is it impossible to understand people behaving in this way when, as was later claimed by one of those arrested for the attack, the police allegedly asked unsympathetic bystanders to trap protesters so that they could beat them?

And even if this request was not explicitly made – is it so hard to fathom this taking place when the rhetoric against the protesters was so virulent – denouncing them as looters, trouble-makers & coup-plotters. And in a climate where violence was being incited and even condoned – as when a man attacking protesters with a machete was said to have been acting “within the framework of the law” by a senior government member.

Well, no. It's entirely logical.

But Bağış & the others' professions of shock and horror are not only offensive for their inconsistency and disingenuousness. The total & utter insincerity is made even starker by what has been happening since then – in terms of the witch hunts being carried out in schools & universities, where students have been told to denounce each other & their teachers, the crackdowns on all areas where protests are likely to take place such as football stadiums & universities, to pre-empt any further resistance & stifle any stirrings of organised dissent.

One night, around the same time as these statements were made, I walked through Gezi Park on my way home. I stopped at a patch of grass where some paving stones had been laid – five, to be precise – each one bearing the name of one of the victims who lost their lives during the protests (one of whom was a police officer).  

These symbolic headstones have been the object of a tug-of-war between the protesters and authorities, who appear to find them highly objectionable and a threat to the peace & order of the place – as they have removed & disposed of them each time they have appeared, and reappeared.

It's a battle of the symbols similar to that which is currently going on over the painting and repainting of steps – first in rainbow colours – then back to grey – and then back again to multi-colours. It strikes me as such a waste of time and energy, to attempt to police the symbolic in this way. So pointless to focus on something so innocuous as colours or memorials to the dead. So unedifying and unflattering in that it makes Turkey seem like far more of a security-mad police state than it actually is. And above all so futile – because the battle of symbols is one that can never be won. There will always be someone who shows up in the middle of the night to place the stones, or to paint the steps, even if they have to resort to using kerbstones because the larger paving stones are nowhere to be found, as was the case for two of the stones when I came across them that night. At least – I hope it cannot be won, and that someone will.  

I stood there for a while, and while I was standing some boys came over with some flowers they'd cut from the beds nearby – meticulously planted by municipality workers during the period when the park was shut down – and began to arrange them in various formations around the stones.

One of them asked me if I was Turkish. I said no and told him where I was from. When I directed the question at him he also said no, and told me he was Kurdish.

Then a man came over, perhaps the father of one, and we spoke briefly, him asking me the usual questions I so often get asked as a foreigner in this county. Among which - "Do you like living in Turkey," to which I answered, "yes, very much." An answer given mainly out of honesty, and partially out of diplomacy to please to asker. I needn't have bothered this time though, as he responded by saying, "I don't."

When I passed through Gezi Park again two nights ago, the stones were nowhere to be seen.