Surviving Istanbul
Even though I hail from Pakistan's city by the sea, Karachi where major civil unrest is a regular occurrence and often comes without warning, never did I expect to find myself caught up in all this thousands of miles away from home on the cross roads of the two continents. Istanbul, the largest city of the Turkish republic and the only major city that falls between the two continents of Asia and Europe. Media coverage has been very minimal in Pakistan, some are however courtesy of foreign media outlets familiar with the events that unfolded in Turkey's largest city Istanbul over the past few weeks. It all began a few weeks ago with demonstrators mainly the youth gathering at Gezi Park which is located next to the iconic Taksim in Central Istanbul to protest against a development project that involved the planned demolition of the park in favor of a mega shopping plaza along with luxury apartments. The arguments of the protesters in the early days were that it was on...