“Maidan” is how the residents of the Ukrainian capital, Kyiv, usually abbreviate the name of their city’s main plaza, Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). In recent times this name has also come to connote a space of popular protests and people power in general. “Maidan” is a Turkic word for a square, and Ukrainians likely borrowed it from the Crimean Tatars or other Turkic-spe…