Editor's note.

• Author: Dagi, Ihsan
• Position: Protests in Turkey - Column

Again, momentous events are taking place in Turkey and its neighborhood.

A civil unrest hit Turkey for weeks in May and June over a government project aimed at rebuilding a replica of an old military barrack in Istanbul's Gezi Park.

It started as a protest to protect the park, but went far beyond the original purpose. The protestors attempted to draw a no-cross line for the government, which is increasingly perceived as intervening in individual choices and lifestyles. According to the government, the protests were specifically targeted at Prime Minister Tayyip Erdogan, and were part and parcel of a global conspiracy to topple their rule. The response of the government was not one of consolation but confrontation.

Thus, the encounte was aggressive. Protests continued for weeks. The police intervened violently, using water cannons and tear gas. Four demonstrators and one policeman died, while hundreds were seriously injured and many were detained. Above all, Turkish politics has become even more fragmented. While the protests in the streets pointed to the void in the formal institutions of the opposition, the heavy-handed reaction of the government underlined growing anxiety about authoritarian tendencies in Turkish politics. It seems that the Gezi protests have shifted the debate about Turkish politics from "who is to govern" to "how should they govern?"

The Gezi Park protests, and the way the government responded to them, foretell that the next two years during which three crucial elections take place--local, presidential, and parliamentary--will be tough, tense, and contentious. Normalcy has passed, and politics is impregnated with the unexpected as we approach a long and hot season of elections.

The politics of protest have taken a different form in Egypt. A military coup toppled Mohammed Morsi, the president of Egypt, on July 3, following days of anti-Morsi demonstrations. It was a moment that dashed our hopes for a democratic evolution of the post-Arab Spring regimes in the region.

The shocking experience of the coup in Egypt is likely to lead the Islamists who took part in electoral politics--and won presidential elections in Egypt--to think twice about taking part in elections. It may also lead them to think that revolutionary means are preferable to power-sharing modalities of a democratic competition. Moreover, the reluctance of the West to denounce the coup in the Middle East will resurface the debate about "Middle Eastern...