A2 · Elementary
8 min
authoritarianismlabor rightsprotest movementsturkish politics
The Square They Cannot See
La Plaza que No Pueden Ver
Turkish police arrested more than 57 people and used tear gas against protesters in Istanbul's Taksim Square on May Day. Fletcher and Octavio dig into the history of that square, what Erdoğan's government fears about it, and what it means when a state is afraid of its own citizens gathering in the street.
La policía turca detuvo a más de 57 personas y usó gas lacrimógeno contra manifestantes en la Plaza Taksim de Estambul el Día del Trabajo. Fletcher y Octavio exploran la historia de esa plaza, lo que el gobierno de Erdoğan teme de ella, y lo que significa cuando un Estado le tiene miedo a sus propios ciudadanos en las calles.
8 essential A2-level terms from this episode, with translations and example sentences in Spanish.
| Spanish | English | Example |
|---|---|---|
| manifestación | organized protest march | Hay una manifestación grande en la plaza. |
| policía | police | La policía está en la calle. |
| plaza | square, public square | La plaza está cerrada hoy. |
| símbolo | symbol | Taksim es un símbolo importante. |
| prohibido | forbidden, banned | Las marchas están prohibidas aquí. |
| miedo | fear | El gobierno tiene miedo del símbolo. |
| detener | to arrest, to stop | La policía detiene a muchas personas. |
| cambio | change | Los jóvenes quieren un cambio. |
Taksim Square has one of those histories that rewrites itself every generation, and yesterday it did it again.
Sí.
Yes.
La policía detiene a muchas personas.
The police arrest many people.
Hay gas en la calle.
There is gas in the street.
Fifty-seven arrested, tear gas deployed, and the square itself completely sealed off.
The Turkish government blocked access to Taksim to stop May Day marchers from reaching it.
Which, if you know anything about that square, tells you everything about why people wanted to be there.
Taksim es especial.
Taksim is special.
Es el centro de Estambul.
It is the center of Istanbul.
Muchas personas van allí.
Many people go there.
The center, yes.
But it's more than geography.
What does Taksim mean to Turkish people, historically?
En 1977, hay una gran manifestación allí.
In 1977, there is a big protest there.
Muchas personas mueren.
Many people die.
May Day 1977.
Somewhere between thirty-four and forty people killed when gunfire broke out in a crowd of half a million.
Nobody was ever definitively convicted for it.
The square became a symbol almost instantly, and the Turkish government's relationship with that symbol has been adversarial ever since.
Es verdad.
That's true.
El Primero de Mayo es muy importante en Turquía.
May Day is very important in Turkey.
It's important everywhere, but in Turkey it carries this specific weight, because of 1977.
Going to Taksim on May Day is an act of memory as much as it is a political act.
Erdoğan no quiere eso.
Erdoğan doesn't want that.
Él cierra la plaza.
He closes the square.
Siempre.
Every time.
Every single year.
The ban on May Day gatherings at Taksim has been in place for over a decade.
And every year, people try to get there anyway, and every year, the police are waiting for them.
Este año hay más problemas.
This year there are more problems.
Las protestas en Turquía son grandes ahora.
The protests in Turkey are big now.
Right, this isn't happening in isolation.
Turkey has been through a sustained period of protest going back through 2025.
What's driving that?
La economía es muy mala.
The economy is very bad.
La gente no tiene dinero.
People have no money.
Los precios son altos.
Prices are high.
Turkey had one of the worst inflation crises of any middle-income country in recent memory.
At its peak we were talking about eighty, eighty-five percent annual inflation.
People's savings evaporated.
The lira lost something like ninety percent of its value against the dollar over about five years.
Sí.
Yes.
Y Erdoğan tiene mucho poder.
And Erdoğan has a lot of power.
No hay mucha libertad.
There is not much freedom.
That's the core of it.
The economic pain is real, but people are protesting in the street partly because there aren't many other channels available to them.
The press is largely controlled.
Opposition politicians get prosecuted.
Mayors who win elections get removed from office.
El alcalde de Estambul está en prisión.
The mayor of Istanbul is in prison.
Es un problema muy grande.
It is a very big problem.
Ekrem İmamoğlu.
That's been one of the central accelerants for the protests in 2025 and into this year.
He won the Istanbul mayoralty, won it again when the result was annulled the first time, and then was arrested on corruption charges that his supporters say are entirely political.
The city with fifteen million people has its elected mayor in a cell.
Muchos jóvenes están en las calles.
Many young people are in the streets.
Ellos quieren un cambio.
They want a change.
The demographic shift is real.
A lot of the people in the streets are young, urban, educated.
And that matters because those are also the people Erdoğan used to do better with, before the economic collapse.
He's losing a generation.
Pero la policía es muy fuerte.
But the police are very strong.
Los jóvenes tienen miedo.
The young people are afraid.
Fear is part of the calculation, yes.
But fear and anger coexist in ways that can surprise even the governments that create them.
I covered the lead-up to the Arab Spring, and the pattern is familiar: the state's security apparatus becomes more visible precisely when the regime feels more exposed.
Turquía no es como los países árabes.
Turkey is not like the Arab countries.
Es diferente.
It is different.
Fair point, push back on me.
What makes Turkey different?
Turquía tiene elecciones.
Turkey has elections.
La gente puede votar.
People can vote.
Erdoğan gana las elecciones.
Erdoğan wins the elections.
He does win elections, and that's genuinely complicated, right?
Because you can run a country with real elections and still hollow out the institutions to the point where those elections aren't fully fair.
Independent courts, a free press, an opposition that isn't being prosecuted, a civil society that isn't being monitored.
Those are the conditions that make elections meaningful, and Turkey has been eroding them for years.
Sí.
Yes.
No es una democracia completa.
It is not a complete democracy.
Hay problemas.
There are problems.
Political scientists have a term for this, competitive authoritarianism.
The game is rigged, but the game still happens.
And Taksim Square is a perfect example of the rig: you have the right to protest in Turkey, in theory.
Just not there.
Not on that day.
Exacto.
Exactly.
La plaza es un símbolo.
The square is a symbol.
El gobierno tiene miedo del símbolo.
The government is afraid of the symbol.
Afraid of a symbol.
That's a remarkable sentence when you say it plainly.
A government with a massive security apparatus, one of the largest militaries in NATO, and it's afraid of what happens if half a million people stand together in a public square on May Day.
Los símbolos son muy poderosos.
Symbols are very powerful.
La historia lo dice.
History says so.
They are.
And there's something worth asking here about Turkey's place in the world right now.
Turkey is in NATO.
Turkey has been a candidate for EU membership since 1987.
What does this crackdown mean for those relationships?
Europa no está contenta.
Europe is not happy.
Pero Europa necesita a Turquía también.
But Europe also needs Turkey.
That's the uncomfortable truth at the heart of it.
Turkey controls the Bosphorus, it's a buffer between Europe and a very unstable region, and it hosts millions of Syrian refugees.
Europe criticizes Erdoğan's democracy record and then negotiates with him over migration deals.
That leverage is something Erdoğan has understood and used for years.
Es un juego difícil.
It is a difficult game.
Los dos lados saben las reglas.
Both sides know the rules.
Both sides know the rules and neither side likes to say them out loud.
Which is why what happened in Taksim yesterday matters beyond Turkey.
It's a reminder of what democratic backsliding actually looks like on the ground, not in an academic paper but in a square, with gas and handcuffs, on a holiday that's supposed to celebrate workers.
Y los trabajadores tienen muchos problemas en Turquía.
And workers have many problems in Turkey.
El dinero no alcanza.
The money is not enough.
The political and the economic are completely knotted together here.
You can't separate the inflation from the crackdown, because the crackdown is partly a response to the protests that the inflation caused.
It's a feedback loop, and right now it seems to be tightening.
Mira, en español decimos «manifestación».
Look, in Spanish we say 'manifestación.' It is the word for an official protest.
Es la palabra para protesta oficial.
Wait, you said «manifestación» and also «protesta» earlier in the conversation.
Are those the same thing, or is there a difference I'm missing?
Son diferentes.
They are different.
«Manifestación» es una marcha organizada.
'Manifestación' is an organized march.
«Protesta» es más general.
'Protesta' is more general.
So a «manifestación» has a route, a permit maybe, a beginning and an end.
And a «protesta» is more like, someone could be protesting alone outside a building.
A «manifestación» implies a crowd.
Exacto.
Exactly.
En Taksim, la gente quiere hacer una «manifestación».
In Taksim, the people want to have a 'manifestación.' The police say no.
La policía dice no.
And just like that, the grammar lesson explains the whole story.
They wanted a march with meaning, with memory, with fifty years of history behind it, and the government said the word for that is banned.
Language and politics, same thing in the end.