Gezi Park protests and MAD hijack

The History Hour

BBC

History, Society & Culture, Personal Journals

4.4 • 879 Ratings

🗓️ 27 October 2023

⏱️ 52 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Max Pearson presents a collection of this week’s Witness History episodes from the BBC World Service.

We hear from activist and actor Memet Ali Alabora on how his social media post contributed to the civil unrest following the Gezi Park protests in Turkey in 2013.

Our guest, Selin Girit who covers Turkey for BBC World Service, talks to us about Turkey's important position between Europe and Asia. We also learn about the fighting in 1980 between the left and right-wing groups that led to Turkey’s military taking control of the country. Vice Admiral Isik Biren, who was an official in the defence ministry, and a former student activist, Murat Celikkan recount their different memories of the coup.

We hear more about Turkey’s geographic connection from Harvey Binnie who was involved with the design of the first Bosphorus suspension bridge in 1973. And from Zimbabwe, economist Professor Gift Mugano, on how the country’s annual inflation rate was 89.7 sextillion percent in 2008. And finally the story of how a Nigerian Airways flight from Lagos to Abuja was hijacked by four teenagers calling themselves the Movement for the Advancement of Democracy (MAD). Obed Taseobi was a passenger on that flight in 1993.

Contributors: Memet Ali Alabora – activist and actor Selin Girit – BBC World Service reporter Vice Admiral Isik Biren – former official in the Turkish defence ministry Murat Celikkan – former student activist Harvey Binnie – member of design team for the Bosphorus bridge Professor Gift Mugano – economist Obed Taseobi – Nigerian Airways passenger

(Photo: Protesters clash with Turkish police near Gezi Park in Istanbul, June 2013. Credit: Getty Images)

Transcript

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0:00.0	Love Janessa is the True Crime Podcast from the BBC World Service and
0:05.0	CBC Podcast investigating the murky world of online romance scams.
0:10.0	She was trying to get me to send her money.
0:12.6	Catch up with the whole series now.
0:14.7	Search for Love, Janessa, wherever you found this podcast.
0:18.3	You win their hearts, you win their wallets. wallet.
0:27.0	Hello and welcome to the History Hour podcast from the BBC World Service with me Max Pearson
0:31.5	the past brought to life by those who were there.
0:34.8	This week we have a bit of a focus on witnesses to the modern history of Turkey, including
0:40.0	the 1980 military coup which was followed by a severe crackdown on dissent.
0:45.0	What they did were so severe that people were very afraid to be involved in anything, not with the left but even the human rights movement.
0:56.7	We'll also look at Turkey's pivotal role as a bridge between West and East, Europe and Asia.
1:02.4	Elsewhere, Zimbabwe's hyper-inflation in the 1980s and terror of 35,000 feet,
1:08.8	the 1993 hijacking of a Nigerian Airways passenger jet.
1:12.8	The captain is not cooperating.
1:14.8	They are going to blow up the aircraft.
1:16.6	They are the fuel on board cannot take them to Frankfurt.
1:20.4	I was like, so this is it. But as as I say we're going to start in Turkey a country whose
1:26.6	geographical position in the world spanning two continents and on the fringes of
1:30.4	almost perpetual turbulence in the Middle East makes it today among the most important
1:34.8	countries in the world, and as ever its present is informed by its past.
1:40.3	First, we're going back to 2013, when what started as environmental protests in Istanbul's
	...

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