The calm of early summer in Istanbul, aspirant Olympic city, has been disrupted in the last week, with violent demonstrations grabbing headlines around the world. What started as a minor protest against a proposed building project in central Istanbul escalated dramatically, resulting in thousands of arrests, widespread destruction in the Taksim and Besiktas neighbourhoods and anti-government protests breaking out in other major cities.
Initially a small band occupied Gezi Park protesting against plans that had been pushed through with minimal community consultation, to build a shopping mall in this, one of the last green spaces in Istanbul's Beyoglu district. Police raids on the camp using water cannons and tear gas provoked outrage and drew more demonstrators.
When a larger protest last Friday was met with a similarly heavy-handed police response, even larger crowds amassed, chanting that the government should resign, and venting their displeasure with Recep Tayyip Erdogan, the Turkish Prime Minister, who dismissed the original protest as inconsequential. Some observers, indeed some participants, rather overenthusiastically remarked that this was Turkey's Tahrir Square.
There is clearly a great deal of displeasure with the government, and Erdogan has been a particular target for scorn, yet drawing parallels to Tahrir Square and predicting the eventual fall of the government are ill-advised.
For one, the political circumstances of Turkey and Hosni Mubarak's Egypt are entirely different. Mubarak's oligarchic regime was unelected; the government that Erdogan heads is popularly elected, having won power in 2002 and successively increased its share of the vote across three elections.
Erdogan himself remains the most popular politician in the country, drawing widespread support from a conservative and generally Islamically inclined voter base.
Bearing in mind the lacklustre oppositional parties that compete with Erdogan's Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party) it is difficult to imagine, even after the outpouring of public resentment seen in the last week, that the Party will be toppled in the next elections, due in 2015. This is not to say that the political terrain in Turkey may not have been significantly altered.
Although Erdogan is an elected leader, he may be accused of displaying dictatorial tendencies.
True, his achievements are significant. He is often given credit for the great strides Turkey has made in the last decade. Its economy is strong, with GDP almost quadrupling since 2000. It is an increasingly confident performer on the world stage. He has maintained a steady focus on EU accession for Turkey (despite reluctance from France