Citizens or subjects?

Shock. Dismay. Horror. Disillusionment. This was the month when the loud sound of clattering to be heard across the land was that of scales falling from bewildered eyes. And I suspect I was not alone in finding myself at a complete loss to explain what has been going on.

To be fair, I wasn't in İstanbul, Ankara or İzmir or any of the other places where the big protests took place. All I caught were the polite and tourist-friendly marches (animated strolls, really) that occurred in Bodrum, Marmaris and Datça. On the other hand, I have plenty of friends who live in Cihangir, Talimhane and Tarlabaşı in İstanbul and they have been texting and phoning with vivid descriptions of their experiences: “Tear gas coming into the flat, Pat. I just got an offer for more than I paid for it. Maybe I should have taken it up.”

After we'd all witnessed the vicious assaults by tear gas and water cannon, the question of why what was happening was happening came to seem almost irrelevant, but still it has been niggling away at the back of my mind. What is this really all about? What is the bigger picture?

In the end, I think it comes down to the fact that people -- young people especially -- are finally demanding to be taken seriously as citizens with something to contribute to their own society.

I grew up in Great Britain, a country that has somehow managed to cling onto a monarchy right through into the 21st century. As a life-long republican, I always found this both irksome and inexplicable. How was it possible that I could still be described as a subject of Her Majesty the Queen, a descendant of some plutocratic family with roots trailing back to the Middle Ages?

Now I live in Turkey, which is a republic, which means that officially its people are citizens in the same tradition as the descendants of the French and American revolutionaries. Yet here's the paradox. While I was theoretically a subject in Britain, in practice I was treated for the most part as a citizen with rights that had to be respected, while here in Turkey, where people are theoretically citizens, it's quite obvious that most of officialdom actually treats them as subjects.

This shows itself in the impunity that allows civil servants to step away scot-free from their errors, no matter what the consequences for other people. It shows itself in the lack of proper planning procedures of the sort that would have allowed public input into the Gezi Park development scheme before it all went pear-shaped. And it shows itself in the lack of a jury system, which means that vital decisions on criminal matters are decided by a judge's edict rather than by the verdict of fellow citizens.

This, I think, is the nub of what is causing so many people to protest in so many different ways. But then again, I could be completely wrong. Why would I know anything about it, after all? I'm only a 21st-century cavewoman.

Pat Yale lives in a restored cave-house in Göreme in Cappadocia.