In May 2013, a small group of environmental protesters occupied Gezi Park in Istanbul’s Taksim Square. They were angry at government plans to demolish one of the city’s last remaining green spaces and replace it with a shopping mall and replica Ottoman-era barracks. Before dawn on 31 May, police stormed the park to disperse the protesters. By the day’s end, hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country were out in the streets.
Months of mass protests followed, spreading to 80 of Turkey’s 81 provinces. It became the largest wave of civil unrest in the country’s modern history. What had begun as a local environmental dispute became something much larger. The protests were a direct challenge to Prime Minister Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian grip on power. They were also a flashpoint for years of accumulated anger over media censorship, restrictions on civil liberties and the erosion of democratic rights.
Dominic Brown filmed Başlangıç across four days in Istanbul at the height of the unrest. The film documents events from the ground as riot police responded to largely peaceful crowds with tear gas, water cannons and mass force. Eight people were killed and thousands injured as authorities suppressed the protests. Without commentary or narration, the film captures the atmosphere of a city transformed: the tension, the defiance and the violence.
The title means “The Beginning”. Whether that refers to the spark that lit the protests, or to what those protests set in motion in Turkish politics, is left for the viewer to decide.
