About an hour prior to the violent clearing of Gezi Park in Istanbul on the evening of Saturday June 15th, just as musicians finished playing to an enthusiastic crowd on what was the park’s central and professionally-constructed stage, as people of all ages milled through the warren of the park, past the Kemalist-Leninist stand, past the simit-sellers – one in a tracksuit top which added the motivational marketing slogan “To dare is to do” to the mixture of political banners – just as a group of Turkish youth sat in a circle with a well-known actress conducting a forum about possible futures for this ‘movement for change’ and as the sun streamed suddenly through the trees and glared down at the expanse of Taksim Square as though in anticipation, one man, on the eastern edge of the park, on the border of Taksim Square, took a roll of parcel tape and started to wind it methodically, deliberately, absurdly around bollards in an optimistic attempt to create a buffer zone between the world within the park and the ranks of riot police massing outside the condemned structure of the Atatürk Cultural Centre. With the benefit of hindsight, it’s easy to say this method of defence was never going to be effective.
