Timothy Garton Ash: "We see this iconography of peaceful protest, and we know at once where we stand."

Of course we know where we stand. As Americans, we're not standing, but sitting -- in the drive-through line at Chick fil-A.

Timothy Garton Ash's insightful writing probably first came to my attention through The Spectator during my tenure abstracting magazines at UMI Data Courier in the late 1980s.

Garton Ash's byline last appeared at NAC in 2009 on the 20th anniversary of the Berlin Wall's obliteration, and appropriately so, given that his coverage of the 1989 revolutions behind the Iron Curtain is seminal. Thanks to J for pointing me to this commentary about Taksim Square in The Guardian:

Europe must condemn Erdoğan, but without hubris or illusions; Europe should support those who stand up for our shared values, but don't expect miracles from Turkish democracy

Another year, another country, another square: after Wenceslas in Prague, Independence in Kiev, Azadi in Tehran, Red in Moscow and Tahrir in Cairo, there's now Taksim in Istanbul. Each square reaches the world through totemic photographic images. In Istanbul it is that young woman in a red dress – Ceyda Sungur, a young academic at the city's technical university – being sprayed with tear gas at close quarters by a riot policeman. The national symbols, flags and colours change – green in Iran, orange in Kiev, red in Istanbul – but the essence of the image is the same. A young, modern, urban, probably secular young woman faces the armed, helmeted, faceless man. He represents the forces of reaction, authoritarianism and domination, whether in the service of the ayatollahs, President Vladimir Putin, or this would-be sultan, the Turkish prime minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan.