What started as a protest against the tearing down of a park and quickly became a nationwide uprising of Turkish youth is now brutally being cleared by the police.

After a weekend with a festival atmosphere at Taksim Square, the big hangover comes on a Tuesday. Clearing Gezi is a three step operation: very early in the morning on the 11th of June, the police start removing the barricades the protesters have built line by line in every street leading to the square. Soon Taksim is crowded again. I am told not to leave the house in Cihangir all day in order to stay save. In the early evening I do anyway to get some food – and instead get my first load of teargas even though I'm one kilometre away from the main square. All night there are little explosions in the streets. Those who don't join the protests shut the windows to protect themselves from the gas and keep the curtains closed to avoid police spies. Anxiously, people follow Twitter posts, Facebook, and live cams of Taksim. At 1.30 am the noise grows louder: people flee down side streets, wait, rearrange their masks and goggles and run back. Until early morning you can anticipate the noise of the police attacks. After this night I flee to the suburbs.

Remember the "Agora" that took place about a month ago in Mannheim? Let us show you some of the fun, interesting and diverse topics which were covered during the event – from healthy eating habits to fighting xenophobia, from entrepreneurship and start-ups to nationalism in school books, the Agora covered a diverse range of subjects through workshops and actions. Have a look at some of them below.

Over the past weeks Turkey has seen a great number of street protests and demonstrations in its biggest cities, from Istanbul to Ankara, Izmir and Antalya. Starting from a small demonstration the protests have grown significantly in size and structure with passing days and have been violently repressed by the police force according to sources on the scene. E&M author Siri Warrlich interviews a young European who has experienced the incidents in Istanbul at first hand.

Two years ago Heidi Hart came as an Erasmus student to Istanbul. Today, she still lives there – and since last weekend, a mask and swimming goggles belong to her everyday attire.

"İstanbul'u dinliyorum, gözlerim kapalı. I listen to Istanbul with my eyes closed." That is the first line of a famous poem by Orhan Veli Kanik, Turkey's Shakespeare. Istanbul on Wednesday night, 5 June 2013, not with closed eyes, but via skype, sounds like this: Cars honking, singing, whistling… are those cooking pots the people are banging against each other? My friend Heidi Hart, 24, holds her computer through the open window. "Soon, I will join them," she says and shows me her mask and swimming goggles. A little more than two years ago, the two of us together started our Erasmus journey from Mannheim, Germany to Istanbul. Heidi stayed – and recently became part of the protests.

"Latvian culture and language are in the happy position of having a state which protects 'Latvianness' and helps it to survive" - said Ints Dālderis, Latvia’s former Minister of Culture in an interview with E&M. On 18th of February, 2012, 74.8% of Latvian voters rejected Russian as a second official language. Christian brought together four young Latvians to discuss the result.

Kristina, Beāte and Laura agree that there should only be one official language in a country. Kristina says to her personally speaking Russian or Latvian does not mean a difference, Beāte deems it important to preserve the independence Latvia has finally achieved, and Laura, who has lived in Germany for almost nine years, states that she is proud of the majority in the referendum.

Marija, Russian by nationality and a Latvian citizen, also says "no": she appreciates Russian language and culture as well as Latvian, but she thinks that the lack of integration of the Russian population cannot be simply reversed by making Russian the second official language. Instead, she proposes establishing Russian as an administrative language on the municipal level, and to embark on a long-overdue integration policy.