Since we have fêted the notion of the road less travelled, what is tourism without surprises? Linda and I were teargassed today. The reason? For the past six days there have been six hundred or so protestors camped in a park not all that far from our apartment. The government is planning to clear the site of trees in order to build army barracks and, in the words of a local, ‘another’ shopping centre.  A ‘Save the Park’ group had been camped at the location to stop the trees being uprooted, but on Friday the police moved in. The camp was burnt down, the trees were bulldozed, and, in the process, some people lost eyes, one is in a coma and dozens were injured.

It’s Saturday here, and we had enjoyed an innocent touristic stroll across the Galata Bridge and through the Spice Markets to the Grand Bazaar. Despite noticing a proliferation of young people wearing surgical masks – the pollution was nonexistent and surgical masks have always seemed like a Japanese tourist or doctor thing, we headed home via the fernicular rail expecting a slow stroll down the hill to Sedal Ekerin Caddesi – our street. The only cause for concern was a chance conversation with a passenger on the fernicular who gave us a little background to the protests, then, with his limited English his parting words were: “Be careful’. We thought he was being a little melodramatic, perhaps. Yet, when we got off at our stop, the station doors were locked, the place was filled with teargas to stop protestors from reaching Taksim square – site of activity, and people were attempting to get back on the train.  Fairly quickly – though it felt like a long time,  some Young Turks (sorry Scotty) broke open a roller door allowing everyone to exit.

We walked home against the tide. There were thousands and thousands of young people heading to Taksim Square. They were wearing a combination of surgical masks, or gas masks, or helmets, or bearing Turkish flags and they all were walking with intensity. One particularly erudite young man having a tea outside our apartment gave us some background.  A relative had been the Foreign Minister in a previous government and strongly opposed to the any military involvement in government because of Turkey’s long history of dictatorships and coups.  Now young people particularly see the military as the only guarantee of a secular Turkey, the only guarantors of free speech and the right to protest peacefully.

Another salient lesson regarding the things we take for granted in Australia and the costs that have been incurred in obtaining those freedoms; things like freedom of speech and peaceful assembly, and train travel without the teargas.