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Taksim Square appears at first a wide, featureless and unlovely place It is a ganglion of roads and bus routes, a destination and a waypoint, at once central and marginal Many of the people and neighbourhoods surrounding it are also simultaneously at the centre and the fringes The square lies in Istanbul’s nightlife district of Beyoğlu – vibrant yet seedy – a must-go spot for visitors who want to see more than just mosques and the Hagia Sofia Amid the bustle of commuters and tourists, poor Kurdish kids from nearby Tarlabaşı cook up trouble near the metro exit; in the flowerbeds a discrete society of stray dogs lounge and flirt; and tinerciler – glue sniffers, once ubiquitous, now less so – wander with bloodshot eyes Each day at around 7 am, in the Starbucks, a homeless man who is a paid dog-whisperer has his morning coffee before he sets about training and entertaining the pets of the better off His workplace is often Gezi Park, across on the north of the square, a dingy oblong of planes, once a well-known gay cruising spot, now a hangout for those with nowhere else to sleep It’s heavy in summertime with the shade of the thickly planted trees and overshadowed at the back by encroaching high-rise hotels; but it’s green nonetheless, and free, and open to all – something that is becoming a rarity in Istanbul The blockish hulk of the Atatürk Kültür Merkezi (the AKM) that lies on the square’s eastern side is a case of the central-turned-marginal It is a seat of memories for many Turks who went there in years past to see operas and the latest plays It was a purveyor of Western high culture, an emblem of Turkey’s Europeanness Today it is shuttered and dusty and slated for demolition   Taksim is fraught with this kind of historical and cultural symbolism One old trauma has been very much in the mind of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan In 1909, the Halil Paşa Artillery Barracks was the scene of a rebellion