Gezi Park protests began as a small environmentalist standoff over tree removal.

Evidence

On Twitter, he discovered that the city planned to bulldoze trees in Gezi Park on the night of May 27. In addition to destroying a bit of nature, the president wanted to build a large mosque, which would celebrate the Ottoman period. Furkan and a few dozen comrades went to the park. A group totaling perhaps eighty-five activists, fifteen journalists, and one member of parliament from the pro-Kurdish party managed to stop the bulldozers. But those big machines were going to come back. The protesters spread the word, and a thousand people came out the next night. Most were committed environmentalist types, with a smattering of different political viewpoints represented—but the one commonality was that nobody was pro-Erdoğan. On a whim, some of them dragged out tents so there would always be someone there to protect the park. — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 334

Categorization

• XREF: Connects to the ADDENDUM article on trees as infrastructure barely noticed until threatened — Gezi is a case of a threatened green space igniting mass politics. — connects to: A night-time police crackdown on tents viralized a small tree protest — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn: The Mass Protest Decade and…, 334; A worldwide wave of anti-establishment movements-from Tea Party to Gezi-Park broke out 2009-2013 — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics: Extreme Politicization…, 167
• ADDENDUM: The tree-destruction trigger resonates with ‘Grafting & Growth’ — a threat to trees as living infrastructure converts environmental grievance into political mass action.

Broader Connections

• A night-time police crackdown on tents viralized a small tree protest #expands (0.92) — Vincent Bevins, If We Burn, 334
• A worldwide wave of anti-establishment movements-from Tea Party to Gezi-Park broke out 2009-2013 #qualifies (0.74) — Anton Jäger, Hyperpolitics, 167