There have also been a lot worse.
Which is why what was initially a protest about saving trees and turning a public park into a shopping mall soon escalated into widespread civil unrest now spreading across Turkey's main cities.
Memo to Prime Minister Erdogan: This might now all just be about you.
In case you've missed it, Turkey is going through its own political and social transformation – some of it is organic and some of it encouraged by government.
But that transformation is being pulled in different directions by competing interests all overseen by a government with an Islamist agenda at the same time asserting itself on the international stage while (still) trying to get a foot in the door of the European Union.
There is uneasiness among secular Turks (and Turkey was built on the concept of secularism) about the direction Erdogan's recent policies are taking the country.
In varying degrees of importance this includes alcohol bans, media suppression, and restraints on personal freedom. There's also great irony in that recent events are taking part against a government that was democratically elected now using an increasingly ruthless police force to suppress dissent.
While people protested on the streets of Istanbul, Ankara and Izmir, Erdogan took a familiar step in apportioning responsibility for the unrest and blamed the social media service Twitter for fanning the fires of protest.
“There is now a menace which is called Twitter,” he said. “The best examples of lies can be found there. To me, social media is the worst menace to society.”
Erdogan might want to broaden his social media experience. It's tumblr that is all the rage now, anyway.
Social media, though, is performing a role traditional media isn't. Last weekend, state-controlled Turkish TV broadcast cooking programs rather than any news of the huge protests taking place in one of Istanbul's busiest downtown districts.
Then, on Monday, Turkey's President weighed into the situation with what was surely carefully chosen words. Abdullah Gul said Turkey's citizen's had a right to protest, adding a dramatic twist to the official narrative.
“Democracy does not mean elections alone,” Gul said on Monday as Erdogan prepared to leave Turkey for an official visit to Morocco, Algeria, and Tunisia.
“There can be nothing more natural for the expression of various views, various situations and objections through a variety of ways, besides elections.”
It gets weirder. The Syrian Arab News Agency reported that country's Information Minister, Omran al-Zoubi, called for the release of Turkey's “prisoners of conscience” and urged Erdogan to “respect the will of his people” and flee Turkey for a safe haven in Doha, Qatar.
This was a not-at-all veiled reference to Erdogan's earlier stance on the situation in Syria, perhaps proving that oppressive governments and those in the middle of a civil war like a joke as much as the rest of us.
Not sure if anyone's laughing at any of this, however.
