Taksim Square is not Tahrir Square
The main actors in Turkey's ongoing protests are motivated by reactionary ideology, not environmental concerns.
The unrest in Istanbul's Taksim Square and Gezi Park has been underway for almost two weeks now. Initially an environmentalist protest against the Istanbul municipality’s Taksim Project, which would have removed some trees from the corner of Gezi Park, the reaction has spread to various other cities around the country and turned into organised unrest against the AK Party's government, which has been in power since 2002.
A decisive factor in the spreading unrest was the police’s excessive use of pepper spray and tear gas to evacuate the Gezi Park protesters on May 31, behaviour that government officials have acknowledged
More:Taksim Square is not Tahrir Square - Opinion - Al Jazeera English
