A Wonderful Day in Istanbul (Turkey)

I love the unexpectedness of travel and have reaffirmed how much I want to try to make it as an international journalist, somehow. I wanted to get out of the touristy old city part of Istanbul, Turkey, so I headed across the bridge to Taksim Square, where the locals are supposed to hang. I may not be the most observant person in the world (when I was home for the summer half way through the visit my mom moved a big palm tree plant I used to have at my old house into the guest room where I was staying and it took me over a week to notice and I only did in the end because she said something) but there did seem to be an awful lot of police with riot gear around. As I got closer to the square, there were even more, it looked like they were prepared for a full-out war. It seemed the rest of Istanbul could be raided by the Chinese and nobody would notice because all the police were here.
I got to the square which was covered in Turkish flags, which all have the Muslim moon on them. There were police tanks (yes, tanks) and I counted 11 bus loads of police in full riot gear. There was a mound of press squirming around with their cameras, microphones and gas masks. Unable to find anyone who spoke English to tell me what was going on and hating myself because I make it a habit wherever I am to try to track down an English paper if possible so that I can see if anything interesting to me journalistically is going on but I hadn't been able to do that yet in Turkey.
I sat down close to the action. A nice man bought me coffee but the only info I got out of him was a, "boom!" sound and him splaying his hands. The only bomb that looked like it had gone off in the square was one full of Turkish flags and also the ones with the wolf, the radical ones. More caffeinated but not any more enlightened, I continued on my quest for information, loving the chaos. Finally I talked to a Reuters reporter who told me there was supposed to be a pro-Kurdish demonstration and the police weren't allowing it. I asked him where the best place to watch the action would be and he said he wasn't sure protesters would be able to get in with all the blockades outside of the square and I should get out of the square anyways if I don't have a gas mask because Turkish police tend to be a bit gas-bomb happy.
Not one to pass up a good old fashioned riot, I parked myself at a restaurant on an open-air deck with the best view of the square. (It was actually at a Burger King!)
I wasn't the only one with that idea and soon struck up a conversation with at Turkish photographer who spoke a decent amount of English. He cracked me up because he is from Turkey but hates Turkish people. I felt bad for him because he feels really isolated in Turkey not being religious, but he said there is actually a large underground movement of Atheists but they keep quiet.
He filled me in that it was the DTP (sort of like a less-extreme, legal PKK that is a political party the government recognizes) that was supposed to come that afternoon. I asked about the police blockades, "Oh, they will find a way in." He said.
He told me that the last time there was a protest there a sniper shot 36 people and showed me the window he did it from. I couldn't understand if it was that protest or the one before it that a suicide bomber came and killed several people in the square because the police had blockaded it and weren't letting people out.
I obviously don't want anyone to get hurt, but if there is going to be action, I want to be there for it, I do have a career I want to start but this made me nervous, especially since there had been two suicide bombers in Turkey in the last 3 days. My new friend said he thought it was likely there would be bombs today. asked if we were safe and he said, "Well of course, that's why I am up here. The bombs are hardly ever big enough to reach up here and I don't think a sniper would aim in this direction."
Feeling more alive than ever, adrenaline coursing through my body and energized in a really interesting conversation about politics, I decided to wait it out. Suddenly there was a lot of commotion. My friend snapped some photos then zoomed in to show me the two main leaders of the DTP had come, a man and a woman, and were talking to the press. He said the protesters wouldn't come because police would obtain the video footage and identify as many people as they could and go to their houses in the night and beat them. I may complain about my country, but I felt a rush of privilege to be from the U.S. after hearing that.
He looked through my photos and told me that in a crowd shot I had was a PKK leader who was meant to be hiding in the mountains but was actually there in the crowd and I had his picture! That was exciting. Then, the tension seemed to fizzle out. The police were still there on roofs, all around the square, and the police helicopter continued to do rounds overhead, but the thrill in the air had evaporated.
"They won't come. The police get their cues from the media. It's the media who is in contact with the protest leaders so when the media begins to leave we know they got a phone call and it's over," he said.
So the most action I saw was the press jostling each other to get a better view of the interviewees, but still got that rush and reminder of what I am striving for. Imagine being on the phone with a PKK leader! Another wonderful day in Istanbul.