The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops. You are always ultimately responsible for you own actions, and you're also responsible for being associated with bad actions if you stand by quietly when they are going on.
> It didn't start that way. It started peacefully.
OK. But as it did not end peacefully, not really relevant.
> The government escalated the situation when they tear-gassed peaceful protestors.
How is this relevant except to excuse the behaviour? The protesters didn't respond to the escalation by consolidating their resolve and standing their ground, they started destroying random people's property.
> Once the government starts attacking its people, all bets are off... emotion will trump reason and bad shit happens, often to innocent bystanders or property in the vicinity.
You indicate that the government bear the responsibility for this "bad shit" happening. They might trigger it, in the same way a big row triggers that someone hits someone else.
Edit: I'm pretty sure that what's going on isn't that random peaceful protesters turned violent, but rather that this protest, like most other protests bound to clash with the police, is "anarchist" catnip. These troublemakers will turn up under the guise of being part of a legitimate, peaceful protest, and at the first sliver of police yielding power, they'll let go and start their regular regiment of vandalism and violence. I'm no sure what the best response is for the legitimate peaceful protesters in this case, though.
Or the government sneaked in their people to delegitimize the protesters. This is a well known way police or covert agencies work.
Usually if protesters are well versed in such tactics the ring of strongest forms the ring around rest of the mass to protect them from interlopers that would give police a provocation they needed to attack the protesters or to delegimitize them.
I know it second hand from an acquaintance that studied Philosophy in Belgrade, Serbia. According to him it was spoken by Dragoljub Micunovic during the student protest in Belgrade during the 90-ties. This is something Milosevic was fond of doing to discredit the student protest.
I know this acquaintance had no reason to lie to me, it came up in regular conversation. I don't have any archive material to corroborate but I could try to find something.
Oh, I'm sure it's happened in many places. But that doesn't make it an any less extraordinary claim that that explains what happened in Gezi, given the spontaneous nature of the protests. Also, by all accounts, police moved in on peaceful (if illegally congregated) protesters. The point of instigating is that you can paint the protest as violent before you move in.
The police "attacking" is NOT a free pass to turn cars, throw stones or loot shops. You are always ultimately responsible for you own actions, and you're also responsible for being associated with bad actions if you stand by quietly when they are going on.