A few days, ago, I gave my view on the causes of the street demonstrations and riots in Turkey.

Since then, commentators have struggled to find analogies — is this a Turkish version of the Arab Spring?  Or something else?

I believe the closest analogies are Paris and Chicago in 1968.   These are police riots — peaceful demonstrations that erupted into violence to defend protestors against riot police tactics.  They are also aimed at demanding that democratically-elected rulers who got carried away with themselves, and started acting like their electoral victory allows them to do anything they please, recall that they need popular acceptance for their policies.

The AKP leadership should eventually convince Erdogan to make some symbolic concessions for the sake of peace; at that point democracy will have taken a big step forward in Turkey, but the government and leadership will remain in place.  And I expect that they will try to pursue the same policies as before, but with more public discussion and input.