(The author is a Seattle native who moved to Istanbul in January of 2006. Find his first report here and his second report here.)

Although the area around Taksim Square has had no police presence for a week and an air of carnival reigns at the epicenter of the pro-park, anti-government movement, the protests have spread to dozens of cities all over Turkey, where the protesters (who number far fewer than they do in Istanbul) are meeting fierce resistance from the police.

One of the most disturbing aspects of the past week has been the dismissal of the events by the media. News channels have done everything from ignoring the protests completely (CNN Turk was broadcasting a documentary about penguins when the protests first ignited) to distorting the facts to convince the public either that the protests are significantly smaller than they are or even running old footage from demonstrations in the past which suggest that the current protests are of a more violent and vitriolic nature. In fact, only one station, Halk TV (the equivalent of PBS), has shown anything approaching reliable news.

Radio has suffered a similar fate; however, one public broadcasting station has continued to broadcast coverage of the past week’s events uninterrupted. An employee who wished to remain anonymous shared some insight as to why. “I got word last Saturday they were going to shut [the station] down because it was broadcasting 24/7 from [Taksim] Square.” He added that the station had moved to a new studio in the past three months. “They sent about 15 cops to shut the station down, but they sent them to the old building, not the new one. Essentially, they arrived at an empty building. They called the station and asked where they were located, and a person at the station said, ‘I don’t know.’”

The center of action of the Istanbul protests has been focused around Dolmabahce in Besiktas, near the Prime Minister’s Istanbul office. Three stories in particular capture the tenor of what has been happening there. The incident of a mosque near Dolmabahce Palace which was briefly being used as a hospital to treat wounded protesters and then gas-bombed by the riot squad was especially puzzling, as it put the pro-Islamic government’s priorities to the test.

One of the most inspiring stories of the protests transpired nearby. One night early last week, a group of protesters around Dolmabahce, began removing the paving stones from the sidewalk and passing them one to the next, fire brigade style. By the next morning the paving stones had been exhausted and two large barricades had been built, one in Gümüssuyu, below Taksim, and the other near the rear entrance to Gezi Park, which have continued to keep the police away for nearly a week. This epitomized the spirit of ingenuity and cooperation which has made the protests as successful as they have been.

In another weird event on the same street, demonstrators hijacked a bulldozer left by a construction crew and used it to smash through a police barricade:

So a portion of the city has become inaccessible and looks like the remains of a failed state on the periphery of the joyous commune in the park I described in my previous posting. The city has quickly reset itself to the new rhythms, though, things having already fallen into routine in some ways. Each night the sound of pots and pans being beaten from every window in the neighborhood reminds me that it is exactly 9:00, and every morning when I pack my bag for work, I include my breathing mask, bandana and goggles.

The tenseness in the city is palpable. The other night, around midnight I awoke to the sound of the man who runs a restaurant on the bottom floor of our building arguing with someone outside. He was standing outside of a stopped taxi whose driver, from what my wife and I were able to gather, had drawn a knife on a pair of protesters who were simply trying to get home. The service bus which ordinarily takes me to work can no longer enter Taksim Square, which means taking the metro from the square (which was also gas-bombed and out of service for a couple of days) to a later stop and catching the bus there, or taking a taxi, which changes routes day-to-day based on where road closures have taken place.

I will end with the one local connection to the Turkish protests. Since the beginning, the unofficial anthem has been a new song, “Eyvallah,” written specifically for the Gezi Park protesters by Turkish rockers Duman, whose lead man was a Seattle University student in the ‘90s, during the early days of his music career.

The chorus roughly translates to:

To your pepper spray,
To your billy club,
To your best kick,
It’s all right! It’s all right!