Author: Mutlu Yetkin

Turkish riot police in clouds of tear gas in Istanbul during the move to clear Gezi Park on 15 June 2013 (photo: Reuters)

Culture in Turkey before and after Gezi

The end of Cool Istanbul

By bursting the bubble of mainstream discourse, there is no doubt that the Gezi protests transformed the horizon of grassroots political praxis in Turkey. Should we expect an equally drastic change in the domain of culture and the arts? After Gezi, is it still possible for the cultural industry to cling on to the easily marketable "self-Orientalising" currency that has been so fashionable over the past 10 years? By Mutlu YetkinMore

Youth and Protest in Turkey: "The Pieces of the Mosaic Are Shifting""Open Forums" in Turkey: New Forms of ParticipationProtests against Construction Projects in Istanbul: A Government Addicted to Superlatives

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Most Recent Photo Essay

It all began in Dresden on 20 October 2014. Organised by a hitherto unknown movement calling itself "Pegida" (Patriotic Europeans Against the Islamisation of the West), a small group of people took to the streets to demonstrate against what they saw as the Islamisation of the West. The banner reads "non violent and united against religious wars on German soil! PEGIDA". Although small, the march attracted a lot of attention in Germany and around the world.

Germans take to the streets: marching for and against Pegida

In the autumn of 1989, Dresden was one of the East German cities that became known worldwide for the peaceful "Monday demonstrations" against the government of the GDR that precipitated the fall of the Berlin Wall a few months later. One of the slogans chanted by the protesters at the time was "Wir sind das Volk" (We are the people). Twenty-five years on, a very different movement began organising weekly Monday demonstrations and chanting "Wir sind das Volk". In this photo gallery, we chart some of the reactions to Pegida and the developments relating to this anti-immigration and anti-Islam movement.