The Turkish Protests in June 2013

To understand why the protests are happening, you need to understand some of the history of Turkey as a nation, and the Ottoman Empire before it. To understand the Ottoman Empire, you need to understand the Islamic concept of a caliphate. So, here goes:

In the Islamic world, there has always been the concept of a "caliph," which in Arabic means "successor"– a successor to Muhammad. Sometimes, people think of a caliph like a "Muslim Pope," which isn't really accurate. The concept of a caliphate and a caliph isn't tied to any particular region. Instead, the idea is that the Caliph represents all Muslims, and has the authority to speak for them. In the most basic terms, it's a symbol of where power in the Islamic world rests at any given time.

Here's where the Ottoman Empire comes in. As one of the most powerful states in the world for a few centuries, it was natural that the Caliphate was based in Constantinople, the capital of the Ottoman Empire, for most of that time. It's for this reason that the Ottoman Empire is often considered the fourth (and last) caliphate.

Now comes Turkey. After World War I, the Ottoman Empire collapsed, and the war's victors were already circling like vultures, ready to pick apart Ottoman territory. However, there was a guy named Mustafa Kemal (or Ataturk, meaning father of all Turks)– he is basically the George Washington of Turkey, and it was with his leadership that Turkey managed to survive as a single state. Here's the catch: Ataturk also established a strong tradition of secularism in the Turkish state, and he abolished the caliphate.

Ataturk had seen how a reliance on Islamic thought had stifled the technological advancement of the once-great Ottoman Empire. He felt that to adequately "westernize" Turkey, he had to do away with the state religion. This choice upset a lot of people, and still does. The current reigning party in Turkey comes from strongly Islamic roots, which also rubs people the wrong way– it seems to fly in the face of Ataturk's memory. Much of Turkish political history since then can be viewed as the struggle between Western secularism and the Islamic thought of the Ottomans.

Given everything I've just told you, it should make a lot more sense why people got so mad about the bulldozing of a park to put up a replica Ottoman barracks– a symbol of Islamic military might. True, there was also a shopping mall, but ask any Turk, and they will tell you: the protests are about much more than a shopping mall. They are about the Turkish people's right to secularism, and about their right not to be swaddled in state-sponsored Islam.

tl;dr: The Ottoman Empire was Islamic, Ataturk made sure that Turkey was definitely not. The conflict is about bulldozing a public park to put up an Ottoman barracks, a symbol with strong Islamic connotations. Also, shopping malls.