faggylord

We can answer this in two parts. Our ideological reasoning and what we hope to achieve.

Our ideological reasoning is that the Turkish political leadership currently lacks a fundamental understanding of the tenets of democracy: Freedom of speech, freedom of press and the right to free assembly are virtually non-existent.

What we hope to achieve with these protests is to build the necessary national and international pressure on the government, so that they may acknowledge these tenets and allow for more contribution of the people, and their opinions in policy-making, as well as achieve a baseline of respect for personal liberty.

There are Turkish citizens and residents of many origins present here. Kurds are definitely here in large numbers. Greek Turkish residents are probably less in numbers -because fewer actually reside in Turkey than Kurds-, but we are sure there are some.

The protests are about protecting our democratic rights to free speech and personal liberty in the face of an increasingly dictatorial government and paternalistic Prime Minister.

• This is quite different from the arab spring in both context and form. First, in terms of context, while Erdogan's behavior very much resembles a dictator, he is in fact a democratically elected leader. 50% of the country voted for the ruling party in fair elections. Therefore, the grievances of the people is not an argument on illegitimacy, but style of governance and policy-making. Second, in form, the Turkish riots resembles OWS much more than the Arab spring movements. The Arab spring involved much more violent armed conflict aimed at removing dictatorial regimes. The Gezi resistance, is a peaceful demonstration aimed at sending a message to the government and raising global awareness to the fact that the democratic system is not working like it should.

• Well the ambiance in Taksim is festive. Lots of dancing and singing. However, we wouldn't call this one over just yet...

• Depends. Will it last until either the government resigns or violently suppresses the movement? No. We believe most protestors would be satisfied with concessions less than a total overthrow. Is it at a point that it won't eventually die out? Yes. Until Erdogan either concedes certain points, or resorts to violence, it seems that Occupy Gezi will be there. We have no proof of this, but every day the crowd is larger, more tents are set up and a library has been built :)

Ambiguous question. Re: How much of the protests is an outcry to islamic tendencies of the government? This is a tough one to answer. The protesters are a very heterogeneous crowd. The beauty of it is that most of the groups present, have put aside their major differences in order to protest. While some groups are definitely motivated by secular arguments, or alternative takes on islam, we would say that the most prevalent sentiment is that the government is anti-democratic, and actively against free speech. Most protestors we hear on the ground chant "shoulder to shoulder against fascism".

Re: Are there islamic viewpoints among the protesters? Yes. There are two main groups. They are called "the revolutionist muslims" and "the anti-capitalist muslims". These groups probably make up around 5-10% of the protestors combined.