Collective Action in Turkey: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go Next?

Abstract

Even though Turkey has faced several demonstrations and protests in recent years, there is no single review that brings studies that have been published on collective action in the context of Turkey. This chapter aims to review the existing work on collective action from a social-psychological perspective. First, we provide a brief historical background of Turkey in terms of collective movements, especially focusing on the last decade. Second, we discuss how other disciplines in the social sciences have approached collective action much earlier than social psychology. Third, we provide an up-to-date review of how collective action has been studied in social psychology in Turkey by specifically focusing on the a) antecedents and dynamics of and b) outcomes of collective action. Finally, we discuss future directions and highlight future directions for research in Turkey, in particular, and in authoritarian contexts in general. We discuss the importance of context when research is conducted in a non-WEIRD environment, in a country where the typical antecedents and outcomes of collective action may not be in place. Thus, we aim to add to the existing global literature by discussing areas where the research based in Turkey is similar to yet diverges from the existing literature. As we aim to show where the WEIRD literature falls short of fully explaining the phenomenon and the gaps that may be filled by exploring non-WEIRD contexts such as Turkey, we hope that this chapter will be of interest not only for scholars who are working on collective action in Turkey but also in other contexts and regiones elsewhere in the world.