I was walking through Istanbul again. The sun was shining, the birds were chirping and the police were beating up opposition members. Wait, wait! What was that? Beating opposition members? Really? So I was walking around Istanbul on a beautiful sunny day. Normal neighbourhood, lots of people on the street. There was an unusual amount of police on the scene, but that is often the case. Turkey is a police state that likes to show what it has and that is many, many policemen with machine guns (e.g. Ak-47), weapons with rubber bullets and tear gas grenade launchers. I was walking along happily when suddenly, about 200 metres in front of me, flags of the Turkish opposition party "Türkiye İşçi Partisi" appeared out of nowhere. The 40 or so demonstrators chanted loudly for the kindly President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to kindly resign after the disastrous revelations about corruption and poor services in the earthquake zones.

This did not please the president, who was once described by Böhmermann as "He likes to fuck goats and suppress minorities [...]".^[:] And so he did exactly what Böhmermann described. So the second thing. The one about suppressing minorities. And as it happens in a dictatorship, the opposition is by definition a minority that definitely wants to be suppressed not only with defensive discourse, but rather with brute state force.

It did not take long before groups of eight to ten men came rushing in from every direction, and after a few minutes there were easily 50-60 men, armed as described above and clearing the way with large plastic shields. Part of the group, armed with the shields and rubber truncheons, formed a wall around the group of demonstrators and shielded them from people's view. In the meantime, several buses full of more police were already driving up. The rest of the police stormed into the middle of the peacefully expressing their opinion. What happened there can only be guessed at. Cries of pain and loud protests could be heard for a few minutes. Then silence followed. People were dragged into the buses. When the buses left, the space in the middle of the policemen was practically empty.

I had stayed at a sufficient distance. Had tried to follow everything. Then I moved on. However, an indescribably terrible feeling remained for many hours. This was not the only such incident that day. Two more small demonstrations without flags followed. Same theme. These were also beaten down in a few minutes. In Germany, weirdos whine about living in a dictatorship because someone says racism is really uncool and here.... Here you get beaten up for having a legitimate opinion and then dragged off. The difference may only be noticeable to beings of at least average intellect, but it's there. I have never felt so much what dictatorship means. But I will soon be back in Germany. But for the people here, the oppression continues.