Informed Comment Homepage

Thoughts on the Middle East, History and Religion

Header Right

Donate

  • Facebook
  • Twitter
  • Google+
  • Email
  • RSS
  • Featured
  • US politics
  • Middle East
  • Environment
  • US Foreign Policy
  • Energy
  • Economy
  • Politics
  • About
  • Archives
  • Submissions

© 2023 Informed Comment

  • Skip to content
  • Skip to primary sidebar
Turkey

Woman in Red (Turkish Police Spray Tear Gas on Modern Young Protester)

Juan Cole 06/05/2013

Tweet
Share
Reddit
Email
0 Shares


(Courtesy Reuters)

This young woman being teargassed at the Taksim protests in Istanbul has become an internet icon.

Unveiled and bare-armed, she is clearly secular and modern. Many but not all of the supporters of Justice and Development Party Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan wear headscarves and dress modestly. But she is also just young, female, and vulnerable, under the blasting chemical attack of an well-equipped, aggressive police officer who is himself representative of a modern and authoritarian institution in Turkey. Having technically and tactically advanced police serving a conservative government is among the paradoxes against which the young protesters are mobilizing. So the photo fills in four blocs of a Greimas square, with regard to the secular values of most of the protesters, thusly:

Modern Dress (Liberty) Muslim Dress (Authority)
Modern Police Dress (Authority) Modern unveiled hair disheveled by gas attack (lack of liberty)

HTML Tables

Here is a photo gallery at the Telegraph of women protesters standing up to police

Filed Under: Turkey

About the Author

Juan Cole is the founder and chief editor of Informed Comment. He is Richard P. Mitchell Professor of History at the University of Michigan He is author of, among many other books, Muhammad: Prophet of Peace amid the Clash of Empires and The Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam. Follow him on Twitter at @jricole or the Informed Comment Facebook Page

Primary Sidebar

STAY INFORMED

Join our newsletter and have sharp analysis delivered to your inbox every day.

Twitter

Follow Juan Cole @jricole or Informed Comment @infcomment on Twitter

Facebook



Sign up for our newsletter

Informed Comment © 2023 All Rights Reserved

Posting....