Within a minute

This photo was taken almost a minute before the mass gas attack in Taksim Square, 1st of May 2007.

Unfortunetly everyone in that photo was subjected to over 300 gas canisters inside a single street.

1st of May protests were held in respect for the 36 killed exactly 30 years ago in 1977 when Armed Forces personel opened fire on a crowd of over hundreds of thousands of people. The resulting panic saw many seriously wounded or killed due to trampling. Others were run over by speeding armored vehicles attempting to herd people into a single narrow street.

I attended the protests out of respect for my father, who was there on the day of the massacre.

On the day, in 2007, the police tried to stop us reaching our target. They blocked the bridges connecting the two sides of Istanbul, they detained entire ferry loads of people (over 1000 detained), arrested many on the back streets (over 600 officially arrested), systematically beat literally thousands (all detained persons have reported police misconduct, ranging from slight to severe).

However when the back streets of Taksim proved too tricky to blockade, the police resorted to using an unprecented gas attack. There has never been a civil deployment of chemical weapons to this scale in any developed country. Over 6 different chemicals were deployed, the concentration so severe that a man died and many hundreds were literally incapacitated. Fainting and vomitting was common. Swelling of the eyes and suffocation was also common.

The protest wasn't violent. The police issued no warnings. Anyone caught in the fog was beaten. Live ammo casings were found in the debris. The police even threw a canister inside the lobby of the building we had used as a make shift safe house/first aid station.

But we got into that square, we placed our flowers and we won. Next year they wont be able to stop us.