As T24, the independent online newspaper, reported this morning, Turkish journalists took to İstiklal Caddesi yesterday with that most seditious of slogans: 'Penguins are beautiful in the arctic!' – a reference to the nature documentaries that replaced the news last month. They hoped to give their birds an airing in Gezi Park, but the police suggested that it would be much cooler in Galtasaray, where they chilled on the floor for an hour and a half. The iftar breakfasters, meanwhile, had taken themselves off to the district of Kocamustafapaşa in the Old City for the evening repast after a kerfuffle there the night before when the local forum – the crowded evening debates that continue to be held in quarters all over the city – was broken up by rather frightening blokes with curses, well-trimmed beards and clubs.
International coverage of Turkey, meanwhile, has gone reassuringly quiet. As a commentator from New York noted privately last night: 'Turkey is a strange country. Sometimes it is the recipient of news treatment which is unfounded or distorted. And sometimes, quite often in fact, major calamities go unreported. There are major clashes taking place in Antakya (Classical Antioch) after the killing (in a different city) of a 19-year-old student from there – and concealment of the evidence by destroying CCTV evidence. The event is all over twitter and the Turkish media but ignored internationally. The British papers all ignored the news that six tear gas canisters were lobbed into the garden of the British Consulate this week – even though the Consul-General publicised the fact. And they have ignored the fact that despite its slavish friendship and refusal to comment, the UK is now being openly and absurdly accused of stirring up these protests.'