If you think the people of Turkey have given up – think again. As they emerge from weeks of violent clashes with the police they have adopted a new form of resistance.
They’re calling it The Taksim Square Book Club and it is a made up of the ‘standing man’ protesters, named after performance artist Erdem Gunduz who stood, silently, with his hands in his pockets, in Taksim Square for eight hours and the reading and educational activities that were active during the Occupy Gezi library days.
A man reads the Turkish book Resurrection Gallipoli 1915, written by Turgut Ozakman on the Battle of Gallipoli, while a woman beside him reads George Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four.
Gabriel Garcia Marquez’s Leaf Storm centres on a family in limbo following the death of a man passionately hated, yet tied to the family.
A man reads a Japanese novel, Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, by Haruki Murakami – while another woman enjoys Orwell’s Nineteen Eighty-Four
One woman reads The Speech, which is the text of of a speech delivered by Turkey’s first president, Mustafa Kemal Ataturk, at an assembly in 1927 – while another woman (right) reads a biography of Ataturk.
Photos by George Henton/Al Jazeera for the piece In Pictures: The Taksim Square Book Club
Previously on Book Patrol: Occupy-style Library Rises in Istanbul