June 15, 2013 1:55PM # A Libertarian Moment in Turkey? By [David Boaz](https://www.cato.org/people/david-boaz) --- SHARE What are the protesters in Istanbul upset about? Well, I [noted](https://www.cato.org/blog/kids-are-all-right) last week that a survey by a Turkish newspaper gave us a partial picture. A [headline](http://www.hurriyetdailynews.com/protesters-are-young-libertarian-and-furious-at-turkish-pm-says-survey.aspx?pageID=238&nID=48248&NewsCatID=341) from the *Hurriyet Daily News* in Istanbul reported: > Protesters are young, libertarian and furious at Turkish PM, says survey An online survey of 3000 protesters conducted by two academics found, among other things: > A majority of the protesters who completed the survey, 81.2 percent, defined themselves as “libertarian.” A total of 64.5 percent of the respondents defined themselves as “secular.” And now the *Washington Post* [tells us](http://www.washingtonpost.com/world/middle_east/turkeys-erdogan-taksim-square-to-be-cleared-of-illegal-elements/2013/06/13/f084dba0-d423-11e2-8cbe-1bcbee06f8f8_story.html) that one young protester, Aysun Yerlikaya, objects to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan because he’s, well, too much like Michelle Obama and Michael Bloomberg: > Erdogan “pokes into everything — what you drink, what you eat,” she said, referring to advice he gave earlier this year to eat “genuine wheat bread” with a lot of bran in it. ##### Related Tags [Defense and Foreign Policy](https://www.cato.org/defense-foreign-policy) [![Creative Commons License](/build/cato_2020/images/creative-commons.svg)](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/) This work is licensed under a [Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/4.0/).