Claire Berlinski, Ed.: May Day in Istanbul: Workers of the World Wonder Where to Park

Today's May Day festivities in Istanbul will be marked with road closures: 

Halaskargazi Avenue (starting from Ortaklar in Mecidiyeköy), Cumhuriyet Avenue, Yedikuyular Street, Tarlabaşı Boulevard, Sıraselviler Street, Gümüşsuyu Avenue, Taşkışla Street, Taşkışla Tunnel, Rumeli Avenue and Abdülhak Hamit Street will all be closed to traffic.

Traffic coming from Yolcuzade İskender Street will also be diverted to Şişhane Square's Okçumusa Street and Bankalar Street. No traffic will be allowed on Abide-i Hürriyet Street, and the traffic will be diverted toward the Cevahir Hotel from the traffic lights in the Hürriyettepe area. Traffic coming from Darülaceze to the Hürriyettepe lights, along with traffic coming from Bomonti will be diverted back from the Cevahir Hotel.

For those of you unfamiliar with Istanbul's geography, this means don't even think about parking, proletariats. 

May Day in Istanbul has a terrible history, but in the past years it's been peaceful and as professionally-policed as such a thing can be, much to the disappointment of journalists hoping for a better story. I wrote about the 2009 celebrations here:

The cops did use pepper spray to disperse those demonstrators who were bent on mayhem, prompting a great deal of melodramatic coughing. But pepper spray, as opposed to the more noxious 2-chlorobenzalmalononitrile tear gas, is a nuisance, not a brutality. It smells and feels as if someone is cooking with chilies, because that's precisely what it's made of. Gas masks make for great photos—very World War I!—but the protesters and journalists who made a great display of wearing them didn't seem to need them when they paused for a cigarette. Considering the size of the crowds of trade unionists, communists, anarchists, and unwashed students—most of whom assembled peacefully, danced, made speeches, and then went home unharmed—the number of arrests was trivial. I've seen heavier-handed policing at Rolling Stones concerts.

So it was a good day for freedom of assembly in Turkey, and a good day for freedom of the press—and all the more so given the heat the AKP has deservedly taken in recent years for harassing the media. Where I was standing, the cop-to-journalist ratio was about three to one. The police were painfully aware that no matter what they did, journalists were determined to photograph and report it to make them look brutal. “Then we'll get in trouble,” a young police officer said to me, fretting nervously under his heavy riot gear and clearly envisioning a punitive reassignment to some dismal Eastern Anatolian village. Likewise, if the protesters broke a window and the police failed to prevent it, he said, “We'll get in trouble”—as they would, he went on, if the protesters managed to stampede and injure themselves. The police couldn't win. They nonetheless made no attempt to prevent journalists from getting right into the middle of the demonstrations or taking photographs. I very much doubt that French or German police would have been so indulgent and cooperative. “You see we're not bad,” another officer said to me plaintively. “We trained a lot for this day. But whatever we do, the Europeans will laugh at us.”

Now, obviously, this year is different. There is a certain mood in this region, as we all know. But I actually have confidence that the police are really thinking carefully about how to make sure the day is as safe as possible for all concerned. There's a lot riding on Turkey's ability to show that it can manage "freedom of expression" and "public order" simultaneously, so this is show time--they've got the cops who know what they're doing on the job. Seems to me they're doing and saying the right things: 

Deputy Police Chief Altınok said a total of 38,500 police officers would be on duty starting on April 30. He added that the governor's office had also set up a crisis desk, saying, “There are no restrictions on May Day. People can celebrate May 1 Labor Day as they wish, and the state will help them. We want this to be a joyous and festive occasion where people can exercise their democratic rights without resorting to violence. Anybody can enter the Taksim area, and we don't have any restrictions on the number of demonstrators.”

Last night I saw a life-sized ceramic blue hippopotamus being towed in the direction of Taksim Square. I'm not quite sure how the hippo fits in with it all, but when you think of ominous things that could be trucked into Taksim in advance of May Day, that doesn't rank high. 

I've also heard rumors that some of the famous rescued Chilean coal miners will be coming to speak to the crowds. I hope that's true. If ever there were a group of workers whose occupational safety needed charismatic advocates, it would be Turkish coal miners. It would be particularly good if those miners discussed the low-corruption environment in Chile and its comparative standing next to Turkey in Transparency International's Corruption Perception Index; Chilean tort and liability law; and the economic conditions that gave rise to the Center Rock drill bit, which played a key role in saving those miners, but I guess that's probably optimistic.  

It would also be excessively optimistic to expect anyone to point out that you could have an accident like Fukushima every month and still nuclear power would be exponentially safer than coal. 

But I'll consider the day a success if everyone has a good time, enjoys the hippo, gets the annual spasm of retrolution out of their systems and goes home safely, which they probably will.