Occupy Gezi Park
The occupation just began. Gezi Park seems to get the nucleus for the disagreements on the new symbolism of the Inner city. Taksim square was planned in the spirit of the modernism of the 1930ths with it’s emphasize of public places for recreation in the cities. The demolition of the last trees in the district Beyoğlu is not only a spit in the faces of the slowly growing ecological movement, but more then that a territorial fight of ideological views and interest groups. The government wants to have monuments reminding the Ottoman past, the capital wants shopping-spaces and accommodation facilities.
After the demolition of some trees at one side of Gezi Park people occupied the park on May 28th. Beside pitching their tents activists developed different kinds of interventional techniques. Some are planting trees to underline the conversion of the destruction, others appropriated verbicides as a witty form of political sloganeering.
- Shopping malls shall get demolished. Let them bury Tayyip (Edoğan) under them
- Activists are planting trees
- No more cement, we want a park
- Capitalism is cutting off the trees shadowing it's profit
- since 28th of May Gezi park is occupied
- Ecological resistance
- Ahmet Demircan the grantor of License (the mayor of Beyoğlu)
- The municipiality is planning a shopping mall in the shape of a casern, that has been there in Ottoman times
The Protest against the Gentrification of huge parts of Istanbul are emerging a wide range of visuals. Beside theatre plays and exhibitions in the houses on Tarlabaşı sentenced to demolition icons and slogans fulfill the function of culture jamming. In Ayvansaray the muncipiality and the protesters are competing around their visions in the language of iconography.
Tags: cultural icons, gentricifaction, Gezi Park, occupy, taksim
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