Twitter takes a vital role during protests in Turkey

Last week my wife took me to Istanbul for a long-awaited vacation. I was impressed by how advanced the country is and had intended to write a column about tech in Turkey. Soon enough, however, I was caught up in the dramatic events at Taksim Square.

Being in the middle of it was exciting and a little scary. The hospitality was first class, but the protest preoccupied everyone. A perfectly reasonable European city was coming apart. Some guests left. I watched what happened and here’s what I found:

In the 10 years Tayyip Erdogan has been prime minister, Turkey’s economy has boomed. But his ruling AK Party is rooted in Islam, and many feel he is repressing Western lifestyle and turning Turkey from a secular into a religious state.

Erdogan has been pushing multibillion-dollar projects and tolerating little dissent from army officers, academics, journalists and politicians, many of whom have been in jail for years.

That considered, most people have expected renewed protests on these issues, but no one expected the intensity of the protests last week.

It began as a peaceful demonstration May 27, protesting Erdogan’s plan to demolish Gezi Park at Taksim Square and build a mall there.

In a dawn raid the police burned demonstrator tents and attacked them. Protesters and ordinary bystanders tried to escape, but many were blocked, hosed, beaten and subjected to pepper spray and tear gas.

In turn, the protesters grew by thousands and became increasingly defiant. They took street bricks to throw at police and built barricades and bonfires straight out of "Les Misérables."

Erdogan called them "extremists" and assured them his projects would go ahead. This did little to soothe the tension. The genie was out of the bottle, and the crowd was not to be trifled with.

It got so wild that Erdogan had to withdraw the police. But he had lost control; the protesters took the withdrawal as a victory. Jubilant, they sang, danced and redoubled their protest.

Sympathetic protests broke out all over Turkey. The opposition party, the labor unions, Amnesty International, the U.S., the U.N. and many local commentators all spoke out against Erdogan.

The contention continued Sunday night; noisy, destructive and right outside our hotel. We could smell the tear gas. Monday morning the Turkish stock market dropped 10 percent, and the labor unions called for a general strike.

In the space of one week, hundreds of ordinary citizens were injured and outraged, and many are still detained. The damage will take months to repair. Repairing the social damage will take longer.

It was a political disaster, but still Erdogan did not back down. Instead, he left town for a trip to Tunisia. That didn’t do him any good, either. In public or privately, many call for his resignation.

Social media has ruled the day. It played a huge role in coordinating the protest, reporting these events in real time and soliciting support. It was like a call to prayer, in Istanbul and elsewhere.

The top "hashtags" were "Occupy Gezi," "Resist Gezi Park" and "Stand up Taksim." Celebrities tweeted and the people re-tweeted. The online conversation went viral and then global.

People also shared shocking photos and videos. These will help us appreciate what happened. The police, of course, have their own photos.

There was an obvious lack of coverage in the local media. Erdogan, who called Twitter a "menace," used it himself and threatened to bring in a million conservative Muslims to fight the protesters, raising the prospect of civil war.

One chilling graffito read, "Revolution will not be televised, it will be tweeted." Indeed, these days no government official can ignore social media.

Erdogan’s cruel polarization of the country, and his refusal to have a dialogue on critical issues, are likely to cost him the presidency, which he plans to seek next year.

Regrettably, these events also work against Erdogan’s hope that Turkey can be a role model in the Arab Spring, a member of the EU or, for that matter, host of the 2020 Olympics.

As in Egypt’s Tahrir Square, protests enabled by social media do not necessarily lead to a season of rational resolution of the issues at hand; they can just as easily lead to long-term instability.

With social media the Turkish people have had their day. It’s hard to say what will follow, but clearly those who tweeted at Taksim will tweet again. Chalk one up for them, at least for now.

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Jay Fidell, a longtime business lawyer, founded ThinkTech Hawaii, a digital media company that reports on the tech and energy sectors of Hawaii’s economy. Reach him at fidell@lava.net.