faggylord

We can answer this in two parts. Our ideological reasoning and what we hope to achieve.

Our ideological reasoning is that the Turkish political leadership currently lacks a fundamental understanding of the tenets of democracy: Freedom of speech, freedom of press and the right to free assembly are virtually non-existent.

What we hope to achieve with these protests is to build the necessary national and international pressure on the government, so that they may acknowledge these tenets and allow for more contribution of the people, and their opinions in policy-making, as well as achieve a baseline of respect for personal liberty.

There are Turkish citizens and residents of many origins present here. Kurds are definitely here in large numbers. Greek Turkish residents are probably less in numbers -because fewer actually reside in Turkey than Kurds-, but we are sure there are some.

The protests are about protecting our democratic rights to free speech and personal liberty in the face of an increasingly dictatorial government and paternalistic Prime Minister.

Actually, there is a large amount of atheists and secularists here, us included.

Ambiguous question. Re: How much of the protests is an outcry to islamic tendencies of the government? This is a tough one to answer. The protesters are a very heterogeneous crowd. The beauty of it is that most of the groups present, have put aside their major differences in order to protest. While some groups are definitely motivated by secular arguments, or alternative takes on islam, we would say that the most prevalent sentiment is that the government is anti-democratic, and actively against free speech. Most protestors we hear on the ground chant "shoulder to shoulder against fascism".

Re: Are there islamic viewpoints among the protesters? Yes. There are two main groups. They are called "the revolutionist muslims" and "the anti-capitalist muslims". These groups probably make up around 5-10% of the protestors combined.