It's certainly not another version of the ''Arab Spring''; Turkey is a fully democratic country.
It's not just a Middle Eastern variant of the Occupy movement, either, although the demands of the huge crowds who have occupied the centre of Istanbul and other Turkish big cities are equally diffuse and contradictory.
It's more like the student uprising in Paris in May 1968, although most of the demonstrators in Turkey are neither Marxists nor students.
Like the Paris demos, it began over local issues and has rapidly grown into a popular revolt against an elected Government that is deeply conservative, increasingly autocratic and deaf to all protests.
The original issue was Prime Minister Recep Tayyib Erdogan's plan to destroy Istanbul's Gezi Park in order to build a new shopping mall in a city that already has far too many.
The park is the only green space in the newer part of downtown, north of the Golden Horn, and covering it over with yet more shops was bound to meet with some resistance.
At the start of the protest, on May 27, only a few hundred people occupied the park. It might all have petered out if the police had not attacked them with clubs and tear gas, burning their tents after they fled.
The protesters came back in far larger numbers the next day, and the same thing happened again. By the third night, city centres were being occupied all over Turkey, and it wasn't just about Gezi Park any more.
Prime Minister Erdogan, leaving for a tour of several Arab countries last Monday, dismissed the protests as the work of ''a few looters'' and ''extremist elements'', and said he'd sort it out after he got back on Friday.
Unruffled, you might call him - just as you would have described French president Charles De Gaulle in the first days of the 1968 revolt in France.
It's been more than a week, and the protesters have not quit. Meanwhile, in Mr Erdogan's absence, his closest colleagues were conciliatory.
President Abdullah Gul said ''the messages sent in good faith have been received'', and Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc said: ''The use of excessive force against the people who initially started this protest ... was wrong.''
So where does this end up? Not with the overthrow of Turkey's elected Government, and probably not in a military coup either. Most likely there will be apologies, and some Government concessions, and the turbulence will subside.
Mr Erdogan will not even be removed as AK party leader right away, though some of his senior colleagues now clearly see him as a liability.
The protesters in Paris in May 1968 didn't get what they wanted right away either. Indeed, like the protesters in Gezi Park today, they weren't even sure exactly what they wanted.
But 11 months later Charles De Gaulle resigned, and France has never since had to cope with the problem of a Strong Man in power.
Gwynne Dyer is an independent London journalist.
