VICE News

On March 11th Berkin Elvin, a 15-year-old Turkish boy died after spending 269 days in a coma. The teenager had been buying bread in his neighbourhood last June, when a tear gar canister struck his skull during a brutal police crackdown against citywide demonstrations. As news of the boy's death spread, Istanbul's streets filled with mourners and protestors shouting anti--governement slogans in a massive outpouring of grief and rage against police brutality and the increasingly authoritarian government of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan. The demonstrations, which led to violent clashes with police were the largest and angriest protests seen in Turkey since last summer.

Archival footage of our livestream from Istanbul, Turkey.

On March 12th more than 100,000 people gathered in Instanbul to march in a funeral procession for a teenage boy killed by a police tear gas canister. The burial itself was peaceful, but, as night fell, violent clashes between police and groups of protestors broke out across the city. The latest unrest has raised tensions in a deeply divided society ahead of local elections scheduled for later this month.

On 23rd March, after a week of turbulent anti-government protests, Turkey's Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, organised a massive pro-government rally on a new man-made island in Istanbul ahead of local elections this week. As many as a million of Erdogan's supporters, mostly conservative Turks, gathered on Sunday through appropriated city buses to show support for the Prime Minister, representing a country that is polarised between those wanting a secular western-looking European country and those craving a more Islamic Middle Eastern-looking one.

The death of Berkin Elvan, a 15 year old boy who was put into a coman after being hit by a tear gas canister in last year's anti-government rallies, prompted large-scale protests in Instanbul over the past two weeks.

After many turbulent weeks of campaigning amid protests, charges of corruption, and online censorship, election day finally arrived in Turkey. People in Istanbul had been talking about it like the season finale of some exhaustive, all-encompassing soap opera. VICE News correspondant Tim Pool went to Istanbul to check out polling stations and the city’s main election center. He found a largely analog election process, vulnerable to all kinds of voter fraud—citizen watchdog groups are the only line of defense against widespread election rigging. Tim caught up with one of these organizations, Vote & Beyond, as it monitored the elections.

Discontent spread across Turkey after the worst mining disaster in the country's history. On May 13, a fire tore through the Soma coal mine, killing more than 300 people and leaving scores injured. Grief in Turkey quickly turned to anger. Protesters hit the streets - furious at Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan and his administrations' alleged role in the tragedy. The Turkish government has been criticized for its close ties to big business and for putting profit ahead of safety standards in a country with the highest rate of worker deaths in Europe. Just weeks before the tragedy, the government rejected a proposal to investigate safety standards in the coal industry.

This week, demonstrators in Instanbul attempting to commemorate the one year anniversary of the deadly Gezi Park protests that rocked Turkey in May of 2013 were confronted by tens of thousands of police officers. Firing teargas and water cannons, officers dispersed the activists, who had hoped to read a statement in Istanbul's Taksim Square and lay wreaths of flowers in memory of those killed during last years' clashes. The 2013 protests were the biggest anti-government demonstrations in Turkey for decades, and the country is still living with the repercussions of the uprising and the ensuing government crackdown. VICE News was in Istanbul to follow Taksim Solidarity, a support organization for the protesters in Istanbul, during the one-year anniversary of the bloody clashes.

The mass protests surrounding Gezi Park, the corruption scandals, the Soma mining accident—none of these incidents will stop the majority of Turkish citizens from electing Recep Tayyip Erdogan as president. Among other things, this means that ambitious development projects and the AKP party’s controversial policies will likely multiply. Last year’s Gezi uprising was sparked by a government project to transform the park in central Istanbul into a gigantic mall. While a relentless police crackdown has led many of last year’s protesters to abandon hope, the problems at the heart of Erdogan’s vision for Turkey’s urban development have not gone away. People directly affected by the development of certain neighborhoods are often left with only two options: to abandon hope or to fight.