For over a week now, Istanbul and increasingly city centers in many parts of Turkey have witnessed the rise of an unprecedented protest movement variously referred to as Occupy Gezi or Resistanbul. Western media has been quick to herald another Arab Spring-type revolutionary event in the Muslim world while the Turkish government and media have largely downplayed the significant of these events. In this podcast, we will try to take a closer look at the nature of these protests, which began as an occupation of a park slated for destruction and are now something much more, considering the historical and political contexts as well as providing a first-hand description of what protests both in and outside of Istanbul look like.

In part two of this podcast, we examine the anatomy of the Occupy Gezi movement and some aspects of its spread into different parts of Turkey and discuss possible implications of these protests within the wider context of Turkish politics as well as seemingly similar "leaderless revolutions" that coalesce around social media activity and the occupation of public space around the world. - See more at: http://www.ottomanhistorypodcast.com/2013/06/occupy-gezi-protests-taksim-istanbul-turkey.html#sthash.lochLITa.dpuf