IT is ten years since the annals of nonviolent civil disobedience were enlivened by the ‘kissing protest’ in Turkey. In May 2013, scores of couples locked lips at a subway station in Ankara to protest against the authorities chastizing a couple for kissing in public.
This action quite flummoxed the authorities. What the police are trained to handle is protesters aggressively shouting slogans, waving banners and pushing against police barricades. But what could the police do with hundreds of people just kissing assiduously? Absolutely nothing.
As nonviolence trainer Srdja Popovic wrote about the defiant kissers in Turkey: &ldquo. . .