WORLDVIEW: Twittering outside the Panama bubble

PANAMA has recently seen some of the blow back from the growing power of the “social media” for good or evil.

A reader from Vilnius, Latvia has contributed the following article dealing with current events in Turkey and the role that Tweets and Facebook have played but, with the age of government intrusion into phone and internet services across the world, it could be  that those who live by the Tweet, die by the Tweet.

By M. Monkevicius
IN 2011, the faceless protester was selected as TIME Magazine’s Person of the Year. Below the protester’s masked face, the issue’s cover read – “From the Arab Spring to Athens, from Occupy Wall Street to Moscow.” The events of the last few days might warrant such a cover once again – From the Taksim Revolution to…
Over the last few days, Taksim Square, which the Turks call the heart of Turkey, became a point of controversy for the entire nation. What started as a common protest against plans to replace the park with a shopping mall is now a national protest demanding that the prime minister resign.
The label “common protest” is not unfounded. The story begins with a few trees at Gezi park, which is near Taksim Square. When the trees were bulldozed, protests were organized against plans to make the park into a shopping mall. Later, the protest’s organizers began planting new trees in place of the ones that had been torn down. Eventually, riot police intervened, dispersing the protesters with tear gas.
“Nobody has the right to use a couple of trees as an excuse to escalate tension in Turkey,” – said Turkey’s prime minister.
A protest of several hundred people in one square became a protest of several thousand. In Istanbul, a city split between two continents, people organized a march from the Asian part of the city to the European one to demonstrate their opposition to the government’s actions. And now, after the protests have spread throughout all of Turkey, the demand is no longer just the protection of a single park, but the resignation of the prime minister.
The world saw the events in Turkey on their TV screens only several days after everything began, once international news agencies turned their attention to the protests. Up until then, information about the protests had traveled almost exclusively by social network. It was through Facebook and Twitter that the world found out about the events in Istanbul. In Turkey, a piece of graffiti appeared that read, “The revolution will not be televised, it will be tweeted.”
This also raises the question of whether the term “free press” has the same meaning in Turkey as it dies in other European nations. There is an excellent quote from Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdo?an on the subject: “There is now a menace which is called Twitter. The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
Some of the videos circulating through Youtube.com and other comparable channels are truly shocking. In one, a riot police officer simply starts beating a young man simply walking through the area, and another one grabs a woman resting near the water by her hair. Videos like these raise the question of whether or not Turkish riot police are engaging in unwarranted brutality.
How the chaos in Turkey will end will be determined by the public’s activity, but it doesn’t look as though things will quiet down very soon. The Turkish prime minister’s decision to leave the country without listening to the concerns and demands of protesters in the streets will hurt Turkey’s image as a democratic nation. Because Turkey is trying to become a member of the European Union, the EU’s member states will be paying attention to and evaluating the events as they unfold.
Historically, Taksim square was the central hub for Istanbul’s water system – from there, water flowed to the rest of the city. Now, a new generation’s revolution has spread from this square in Istanbul to the rest of the nation. It’s a new generation’s revolution because the revolution has nothing to do with religious dogmas, ethnic intolerance, generational differences, political parties, or even with the nation’s prime minister (polls indicate that if an election were to take place today, the prime minister would most probably maintain his position). It’s about the Turkish government’s refusal to listen or react to the people’s voice. The police force’s actions and the suppression of the free press are just some of the tools being used to persecute the people for expressing their opinions.
The Turkish people are tired of staying quite. It’s time for the Turkish government to listen to its people.