It has been ten long years, and yet I still vividly remember strolling through a carnival-like Gezi Park occupied by activists from all walks of life in Istanbul and then watching the TV with rage as it was violently recaptured by the police. Later I witnessed and shared their euphoria when scores of passionate people began to assemble for long forum meetings in neighbourhood parks. The whole experience was a roller coaster of collective emotions unleashed within just a few head-spinning weeks. At the end of that summer of discontent in 2013, I was more than ready to join the enthusiastic chorus to welcome the birth of a new Turkey. The book I set out to write was going to prove without a single doubt that what happened in Istanbul’s Gezi Park that summer was yet another blaze in the wildfires scorching the planet in search for a better one – in Zuccotti, Tahrir, Syntagma and others. Keeping company with protests ‘kicking off everywhere’ to declare daringly that ‘a different world is possible’ and on its way, the revolution had once again ‘winked at us’, this time in a small promenade at the heart of my beloved Istanbul.