On the 7th day of anti-government protests, a 17-minute walking tour of Taksim Square and the adjoining Gezi Park. Mostly continuous, with only a few edits. The video starts in Taksim Square and moves into the encampment in Gezi Park.

The protest started with violent police clashes about a week before, but by now the police have withdrawn and the area has taken on a festive atmosphere. (The protests began when activists tried to block demolition of the Gezi Park.) This video was taken in the afternoon of June 6, 2013. Four hours later that same evening, there were several times as many people here and it would have been impossible to move around so easily.

Also see my June 15 video from the final police crackdown the shut down the festival: [ Ссылка ]

Also see my photos from June 6 on Facebook: [ Ссылка ] (including many key scenes not shown on the video) For all my albums from the protests, see [ Ссылка ]

Glenn Campbell's Home Page: [ Ссылка ]

While a wide variety of opposition groups are represented in the park and square—some of them at odds with each other—they seem to agree on three demands: (1) stop demolition of the park, (2) stop demolition of the nearby cultural center, and (3) stop oppressive police violence. Liberal use of teargas by police in the early days of the protest was a key factor in helping the protest attain critical mass. At the time of filming, there was no police presence and no tear gas had been used in this immediate area for several days, but tear gas and aggressive police action was still being employed elsewhere in Istanbul and Turkey.

Some features to note on this video:
-- No uniformed police whatsoever
-- No public disorder
-- Heavy media presence
-- Food vendors have brought in their carts and food stands to serve the crowd
-- Cellphone companies including Vodophone have set up temporary cellphone transmitters to serve the crowd.
-- Many burned out cars, all of them covered with grafitti. A few have been turned into makeshift signs.
-- Municipal services are still picking up bagged trash in the square. (Not shown: The protesters have taken it upon themselves to pick up trash in the square.)
-- The cultural center that is subject of the protests is the building covered with banners in the outer square.
-- Gezi Park has turned into a campground with hundreds of tents. The aim is to prevent demolition of the park.

Video shot with Canon Vixia HFM300, stabilized by YouTube.

You can tweet this video by retweeting this: [ Ссылка ]

Parts of this video were used in a German documentary from dBate.de at [ Ссылка ]

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