Article Critique Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words - 10

Article Critique - Essay Example In the article, author mentions that the Taksim Park has seen many changes and social movements during different periods of the twentieth century. Once the area housed Armenian cemetery and St. Gregory church; however, the cemetery was demolished, and on its area, and surrounding properties now stands the Gezi Park, Istanbul Radio building and many luxurious hotels, including Hilton. According to the author Taksim , in its present form, designed by the urban planner Henri Post, presents a vibrant section of the city and symbolizes modern Istanbul. The author in her article states that the current Prime Minister wants to destroy the symbol of Istanbul, and build in its place a shopping mall in the fashion of 19th century artillery barracks of Ottoman Empire. People consider that in taking such a decision Prime Minister acted as an authoritarian ruler who wants to revive Muslim elite culture in a secular country. A peaceful sit-in protest against uprooting of trees from a park created turbulence in the political arena of a country spreading a wave of violent protests across the country; was the author able to describe the underpinning cause of this incident? From the title of the article, one would imply that the author is conveying a message that Taksim Park incident should be an example that, in the 21st century, a leader cannot use the state power to change country’s environment. In the modern century, people’s concerns over the balance of development and degradation of environment cannot be ignored any more. The author very precisely portrayed the sentiment of a large cross section of the Turkish society through the sentence â€Å"Erdogan's and other government officials' apparent contempt for and vilification of the protesters, and their seeming indifference to their concerns (Watenpaugh 1).† In the first paragraph, the author concludes that movement shows deep discontent of Turkish society against Erdogan’s authoritarian governme nt, but the author does not provide an analysis of this conclusion based on facts. Instead, the author provides links to different articles on the Internet, so the reader reads the articles to establish the validity of author’s conclusion. The author uses this method repetitively in all over the article. This is perhaps the weakest side of the article. However, the author successfully explains that re-creation of 19th century Ottoman military barracks, which once were destroyed, and naming a planned third bridge over Bosphorus after controversial 16th century Sultan Selim indeed portray the current government as neo-Ottoman Muslim elite. The article contains 10 paragraphs. In these paragraphs, the author failed to explain whether the article intends to present to the audience that the Taksim protest describes people’s concerns over urban development at the cost of environmental sacrifice, or it describes the protest against the authoritarian behavior of Erdogan’ s government. The motive in this case is the protest against the uprooting of trees, but the cause is political, rooted deep in the society. Though author implied it, but failed to explain it explicitly. Author’s commentary in the article, â€Å"through a series of highly contested lawsuits, the municipality managed to appropriate the cemetery from the Armenian