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Secularism, about the behavior of the prime minister, and about, well, it initially started over his plans to start a park, which was just a symbol of the way the prime minister has been behaving. but right now, i think the dynamic in the square, in these running gas battles, has created a dynamic on its own. the prime minister is going to have to back pedal some if he s going to get out of this. he can t continue to be as dismissive as he has of the demonstrators. the government, by the way, was very surprised by all of this. i don t think the prime minister understood that this would happen and never really saw this demonstration was ever a problem. he kept calling these people traitors and saboteurs and vandals and people who were just trying to bring down turkey and hurt its image. richard, you make a great point. this is not syria. this is not tunisia. this is not libya. ....
well, certainly in a moment like this, all the embassies, the consulates and missions are going to be on a higher state of alert. they re going to be insuring that they understand to the best of their knowledge about what s taking place around them. it s absolutely that s a great point. we don t want for this to turn into a protest where people start to vent some anger at the united states. that would not be unprecedented. that does happen, and it has happened in this region. so at this stage, they re going to be looking out for their security and really the embassies, they have the relationships on the ground. they re going to have to continue to work those to assess the situation and make sure that they re getting the word out about how the u.s. is not meddling and not engaging and directing one way or the other and is trying to report as best as it can at this stage. thank you, joel. stay with us. i want to go back to howard ....
Don t believe, based on this kind of protest. it will not, based on indications we have, look to intercede physically or militarily in any way. so what does the state department do? walk us through the kind of meetings or planning that goes on when you have diplomats rising all the way up to secretary of state looking at an unfolding event like this. what state will do is in the immediate, they will stand up an operation where they will have in their operation center experts from different bureaus who reallyw3 understand turkey from all the different dimensions, be it economic dimensions, the military affairs, the broader security issues, regional issues. they ll get them all together in a sort of internal pod that will be monitoring everything coming out of turkey from our embassy and from our missions there. they ll be working that and sharing that with contacts throughout the government, throughout the defense department, throughout the ....
Promenade with shops and really modern stores, kabob stands, ice cream stands. you see an incredible variety of people there normally. it s very peaceful. so this is a very shocking sight at the heart of this city. yeah, michael, and we know according to the reports thus far, this is different, as you said, in many ways from the arab spring. different in the type of country it s occurring in, different in the fact there is an elected government. yet, some of the tactics at a smaller scale do obviously seem reminiscent our viewers seeing some of these scenes in the square of istanbul may be reminded visually. given that cosmopolitan makeup of turkey, is there any way to know whether these protesters or political leaders are influenced by what they ve seen occurring in other countries in the region? i think probably they are. i mean, you remember the original protests in tunisia a couple years ago started spontaneously. very different set of ....
Some of them are very close by. right now the square is pretty much empty. it is just full of riot police and full of tear gas. richard, how does this situation compare to the reporting you ve done during uprising in the middle east, in egypt, in syria. reporter: i don t think it really compares. it could get to that level. i think everyone in this country and certainly in the u.s. administration hopes that it doesn t. syria is in a category all to itself. syria is an open war. this is just unfortunately a situation where there is a great deal of gas masks in the air. it is not seeing any kind of live ammunition. so far the death toll has been very low. the government could find a way out of it at this stage. when you had the protests in ....