That happened largely because Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan responded to that protest with armed police, tear gas and water cannons.
The uprising lasted for weeks and spread to more than 60 cities – including Izmir – a place where I spent an evening dining with a Turkish family in their home.
Between enjoying the stuffed grape leaves, the cheese rolls and the pistachio-sprinkled baklava at that dinner, I found myself marveling at the fact that the husband and his headscarf-wearing wife were co-owners of a gift shop.
It amazed me to see her sister and daughter clad in jeans and shorts while she was covered from head to toe and the experience gave me the chance to counter stereotypes about the oppression and submissiveness of Islamic women.
Earlier, I had also admired the tranquility of Istanbul, where it wasn't uncommon to see men taking midday naps beneath the trees in its many parks - apparently without fear of being accosted.
But if I had a clue that unrest over Erdogan’s rule was bubbling beneath the surface of that all that seeming stability and modernity, then I would have had an entirely different dinner conversation with them.
So why didn’t I know? And, more importantly, why didn’t the U.S. media know?
I believe there are two reasons for that.
One major reason lies with the failure of the Turkish media to report that discontent. During my time in Turkey the newspaper, The Daily Kaman, carried few, if any, stories about people who expressed dismay or even mild
disagreement with the prime minister. The two main news channels – which have struggled to operate under threats of journalists being imprisoned and other forms of intimidation – also were devoid of any, criticism of Erdogan’s government.
Since many journalists learn about issues from reading foreign newspapers and coverage, it would be difficult for one to ask Turkish citizens questions, or rather
properly directed questions, about dissatisfaction with Erdogan’s regime if the news outlets there offer no hint that such discontent exists.
But the other reason lies with the fact that for the most part, when it comes to covering countries such as Turkey, U.S. journalists tend to filter much of their coverage through the prism of U.S. interests.
On a broad level, that makes sense.
U.S. media outlets obviously have to show their viewers and readers – most of who don’t own a passport
"Yet the problem with a predominance of U.S. interests coverage,
and the lack of temperature-taking coverage, is that it can leave journalists vulnerable to being blindsided by events such as the Taksim Square uprising."
and have never traveled outside of the country – why a place like Turkey ought to matter to them. Usually, that means focusing on strategic interests such as militarism and economics; issues that could contribute to plunging the U.S. into a war or a recession.
Time magazine’s April 8, 2013 issue, for example, featured a story titled “Power Player: Turkey’s increasing influence in a changing Middle East.” The piece lauded a U.S. brokered apology from Israel Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu to Erdogan for
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My dinner hosts in Izmir and me. We discussed topics such as Islamic women and their attire choices, but discontent over Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan never came up.
A Turkish man takes a midday nap in one of Istanbul's parks. Such sights, at least before the uprising in Taksim Square, were not uncommon.