Turkey’s anti-government protesters are weighing their options, amid calls by the main opposition leader for weekly rallies, a growing economic boycott and a groundswell of fired-up student demonstrators determined to stay on the streets.
The leader of the Republican People’s Party (CHP), Özgür Özel, expanded a call to boycott goods and services from companies perceived as close to the president, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, during a rally in support of the jailed Istanbul mayor, Ekrem İmamoğlu.
Speaking to the hundreds of thousands of opposition supporters who filled a park in Istanbul over the weekend, Özel took aim at the Doğuş Group, a major Turkish conglomerate that owns the pro-government NTV channel, and its ties to Erdoğan. “The Doğuş Group will be buried underground, as it fears this gathering,” Özel told the crowd.
The Doğuş Group oversees a vast portfolio of construction companies, pro-government media outlets, energy companies, real estate and Volkswagen distributors in Turkey. It also acts as the parent company for more than 200 restaurants and popular entertainment spots, including Soho House Istanbul.
The star of its restaurant portfolio is a chain owned by the Turkish chef and restaurateur Nusret Gökçe, better known as Salt Bae, who parlayed his status as an Internet meme about sprinkling salt on meat into a business charging up to £700 for a steak at its London outpost.
“We do not buy products of those who advertise on NTV. We do not watch NTV … We do not pass through Nusr-Et’s door,” said Özel, naming Gökçe’s eponymous brand of steakhouses.
The CHP leader also called on Turkish companies not to advertise on pro-government media channels that have broadcast limited news of the protests, often hewing closely to Erdoğan’s depiction of the demonstrations as “a movement of violence”.
The detention of İmamoğlu sparked Turkey’s largest anti-government protests in years, with people gathering nightly around Istanbul city hall and frequently clashing with police. But with the opposition calling for an end to the nightly demonstrations, the burgeoning protest movement is at a crossroads.
The CHP is attempting to shepherd a nationwide protest movement that quickly grew to include demands far beyond İmamoğlu’s freedom, with demonstrators calling for an end to the democratic backsliding that has occurred under Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s rule, as well as the liberation of the Kurdish former presidential candidate Selahattin Demirtaş.
Despite the CHP taking the lead by calling for the initial demonstrations, the protest movement includes other political parties, students and other groups with their own agenda and concerns. These include calls for a halt to a years-long cost of living crisis, increased judicial independence, and freedom for hundreds of student protest leaders detained in the past 10 days.
Small pockets of protest have continued across Istanbul after Özel called a halt to demonstrations at city hall, with crowds gathering primarily in opposition strongholds to protest against the government. Demonstrators also gathered outside the headquarters of Turkey’s broadcasting watchdog, RTÜK, in Ankara, furious at the live broadcast bans it had handed down to channels aligned to the opposition.
These protests were often swarmed by police, who detained more than 1,900 people in the 12 days since İmamoğlu was seized in a dawn raid, accused of corruption. The opposition have claimed that prisons in Istanbul are filled with demonstrators, with many now taken to facilities outside Turkey’s largest city.
Some organisers believe security forces targeted student leaders for arrest, in a bid to stifle street protests. Members of a teaching union and another for textile workers have been subject to house arrest, according to rights groups.
As the protests entered their second week and the CHP held rallies in Istanbul, the government declared an extended public holiday for the Muslim festival of Eid al-Fitr.
Talya Aydın, a 28-year-old protester, said the government had “miscalculated” in thinking the break would cool the protests that have surged across university campuses, hoping students in urban centres would leave for the holiday.
“They’re so disconnected from the public that they’re not grasping just how expensive they’ve made bus and train tickets to get back home for these students,” she said. “Plus the students do not want to leave, to yield these streets.”
The students, she pointed out, have never known a leader other than Erdoğan or his Justice and Development party, which has overseen a raft of recent changes that have caused the cost of living to rise.
“So of course, for them it’s about change, but it’s also about the austerity measures that they’ve been forced to accept,” she said.
The CHP, meanwhile, has directed its supporters’ ire towards a growing list of products and services to boycott, including Turkey’s most popular chocolate brand, the coffee chain Espressolab, a home appliances company and a chain of malls.
The boycott has drawn members of Turkey’s urban middle class into the anti-government movement, including many who said they were previously unable to attend the protests. Serkan, a Pilates teacher who declined to give his full name, said he was forgoing his regular trips to Espressolab with his son, despite his enthusiasm for their Americanos.
“I love it there, but it’s on the boycott list now, so I’m not going,” he said. “Usually the one I pass is full of students, but right now it’s empty.”
The result has been nothing short of a culture war, with supporters of the government photographing themselves lining up at branches of Espressolab, many clutching bags from a bookshop chain also on the boycott list. A website listing companies included in the boycott call was blocked by regulators soon after it launched.
Erdoğan has made his displeasure at the boycotts clear, accusing the protest movement of trying to weaken the Turkish economy. “We will not give credit to reckless politicians who seek to disrupt traders, bankrupt industrialists and sabotage entrepreneurs with irresponsible boycott calls,” he said.
Aydın, a member of the Workers’ Party of Turkey (TİP), said she views the boycott as the first step towards a general strike, amid growing participation from trade unions and the Turkish labour movement.
“The trade unions are in talks, developments are happening as we speak. So I think when people aren’t at work next week due to the extended holiday, things are going to snowball,” she said.
“I think the boycotts have worked,” she added. “We’ve seen these absurd scenes where riot police are protecting branches of Espressolab.”
The protester added that the growing wave of arrests has done little to quell people’s fear of demonstrating. “It is not a deterrent. There is no atmosphere of fear,” said Aydın. “Instead, people are saying: ‘We have already given 2,000 of our youth to these arrests … there is no turning back from this.’”
