A Ball State administrator’s vacation two weeks ago took a short detour when she briefly joined a protest in Turkey.
Yasemin Tunc, assistant vice president for academic technology solutions, was visiting her family in her home country when part of the nationwide protest came through their neighborhood. The protest was part of the Turks’ ongoing demonstrationsagainst the government for being too invasive in their private lives.
“We heard people banging pots and pans and people honking their car horns, so we went over there,” she said. “There were just a whole bunch of people, hundreds of people, walking, singing the national anthem and some very popular marches.”
Tunc said part of her excitement comes from this being one of her first political experiences..
“I came here when I was 21, so I didn’t get a chance to vote there, and I’m not a U.S. citizen, so I never voted here, so I’ve never voted in my entire life,” she said. “This is the first time that I’m getting a chance to be politically active, so it’s really exciting to me.”
The protest Tunc took part in was in Yesilyurt, a neighborhood in Istanbul, the city where the bulk of the protests are taking place.
“I think it’s very exciting,” Tunc said. “It’s unfortunate that it had to come to this, but I think this government had gone a little too far in terms of restricting people’s freedoms.”
Tunc said the Turkish government, led by the prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, has made laws that restrict certain behaviors that Islam denounces, including kissing in public and buying alcohol near schools and mosques.
“I think the government had forgotten that there was a whole range of people living in the country and started focusing on their own base and really started to ignore and maybe even impose their own values on everyone,” Tunc said. “I was hoping this would be a wake-up call for the government.”
The bigger protests have encountered some clashes with police, but many are practicing nonviolent methods, including the “Standing Man,” a protester who stood silently in Istanbul’s Taksim Square, a popular commercial area and a hub for protests. Tunc thinks the method of protest is “ingenious.”
“They are looking to people like Gandhi in terms of protest,” she said. “They’re looking for any kind of non-violent way to tell the government, ‘Hey don’t forget about us.’ I think the standing was a great way to protest.”
Many of the qualities of the protests are similar to those of the Arab Spring protests, such as the use of social media and the heavy youth involvement. Tunc agrees that the methods are similar, but the reasoning behind the two protest movements are different.
“Turkey’s a secular country, and they’re protesting the creeping of Islam into everyday life, whereas in Egypt, they brought in Islam as their government, or the party that is the Muslim Brotherhood,” she said. “It’s really the reverse of it.”
Hannah Beson, a senior nursing major, said protesting can be a good way to make one’s voice be heard.
“If it’s something that they believe in and want to fight for, then I don’t see a problem with it,” Beson said.
Sam Hardin, a junior criminal justice major, said while he hasn’t found anything important enough to him to protest about, protests are important for people to act on what they believe is right.
“It’s like free speech, but not exactly like it. It’s like the act how you want to act on an issue that you believe is true, but others might not,” he said.
Tunc said the protest is a good way to see how much people will do for something they believe in and the importance of getting involved.
“I think it’s a good case study for how important democracy is,” she said. “People are willing to really take so much risk, risk their lives for it, so Ball State students should really be thankful that they live in a country where democracy is so valued.”
