Gezi Park Research Articles

Mobilising youth for elections: electoral inclusion of youth in Turkey under competitive authoritarianism

Scholars have paid scant attention to how state–society relations are shaped in contexts where democratic and authoritarian institutions co-exist under new forms of authoritarianism. Furthermore, the realm of youth citizenship in such regimes is a nascent area warranting deeper exploration. This study draws on the case of Turkey to address these gaps by investigating why political parties, which previously marginalised young voters, have fervently mobilised youth during elections that paradoxically coincided with the process of autocratisation. We employ a content analysis of party programmes, election manifestos, and social media campaign content of major political parties, as well as secondary sources on Turkish and youth politics spanning from 1983 to 2023, to address this puzzle. Our analysis unveils three key findings. Firstly, transformative events such as the Gezi Park Protests and digital activism have invigorated youth political involvement, compelling both government and opposition parties to prioritise youth electoral engagement. Secondly, the shift from a parliamentary to a presidential system has heightened political parties’ focus on securing the youth vote to win elections. Lastly, political parties strive to align youth political values with their own ideologies, and the process of election campaigning provides ample opportunities for such a goal.

Wear it like armor and it can never be used to hurt you: Reappropriation, identity change, and collective action

AbstractReappropriation has been discussed as an identity management strategy as a means to reevaluate oneself in a context that will not allow for large‐scale social change. There are, however, numerous examples of reappropriation of stigmatizing labels as connected to political movements. This research examines whether reappropriation of stigmatizing labels can function as a precursor to collective action. In Study 1, we conducted semi‐structured interviews on the reappropriation of çapulcu identity with 20 Gezi Park protesters in Turkey. Interviews focused on how they recall the reappropriation of the word to have started, how they gave subsequent meaning, and how çapulcu identity predicted their protest participation and their broader politicization during and after the protests. In Study 2, we conducted a cross‐sectional survey on the reappropriation of fat identity by collecting data from fat liberation and body positivity activists in North America (n = 479). Reflexive thematic analysis (Study 1) and structural equation modeling (Study 2) showed that reappropriation of stigmatizing labels among activists is associated with a greater willingness to participate in collective action through increased agency, empowerment, and identity change. Findings provide important insights on identity management strategies and social change, and open new avenues to discuss reappropriation as a possible political strategy that might mobilize oppressed groups.

Kardeş Türküler as ‘art action’: The multiple cultural heritages of Anatolia

Abstract This article focuses on Kardeş Türküler, a band that reflects the multiple cultural heritages of Anatolia in its concerts and albums. Kardeş Türküler has taken a unique stance in choosing to express itself from a culturally pluralistic perspective rather than following a single language or identity. Referring to Kardeş Türküler as ‘art action’, and utilising the non-reductive methods of John Street that focus on the two-way interaction between music and politics, I conducted in-depth interviews in 2017, 2020 and 2021 with the core members and the former coach of the group regarding its intellectual roots and internal modus operandi. There are three main reasons for Kardeş Türküler's deep engagement with music as protest: being against the cultural–artistic policies of the Republican period; the political meaning of making multilingual music in Turkiye; and Kardeş Türküler's engagement with post-neoliberal street protests such as the Gezi Park movement.

‘Homegrown and national culture’: the cultural policies of Erdogan’s ‘New Turkey’

ABSTRACT The events that have happened since 2002, when the Justice and Development Party (AKP) came to power, contain rich research topics that need to be examined for many years by social scientists who work on Turkey. However, AKP’s cultural policies have not yet received sufficient attention in academic studies. The dissolution of the moderate atmosphere created by the EU accession negotiations and liberal policies in the early 2000s had a direct impact on AKP’s cultural policies in the 2010s. This article argues that the cultural policies implemented in the last decade, which I will define as yerli ve milli (homegrown and national) cultural policy, emerged intending to fill the cultural hegemony gap that manifested after the conservative art debates (2012), Gezi Park Protests (2013) and the termination of the Turkish-Kurdish peace process (2015). By analysing the formation and implementation levels of the yerli ve milli culture, the article shows that this unofficially implemented yerli ve milli cultural policy seeks to construct a neoliberal cultural space in which the Islamic elements are integrated into the traditional national cultural policies centred on Turkishness.

DIY under Authoritarian Politics: Indie Music Scene in Istanbul

The ongoing political turmoil in Turkey is reflected in many areas of the cultural landscape, including the processes of music-making. With its immensely rich musical and cultural legacy that combines a rural and urban heritage, Istanbul has become home to many subcultures revolving around a variety of ethnicities and political acts. While the neoliberal urban control and gentrification agenda of the AKP (Justice and Development Party) government is reshaping the cultural life in the city; a do-it-yourself (DIY) attitude in the music scene removed the barriers of a hierarchy of production while creating unique performance spaces and a sense of belonging and solidarity among its participants. This essay intends to examine the influence of authoritarian politics on the formation of DIY initiatives in Istanbul’s indie music scene. I will concentrate on the period of 2013–2020, the start date signifying the paradigm shift that the Gezi Park protests (May 27–August 20, 2013) fostered, and the end date signifies the decline of the active music scene, with the COVID-19 pandemic preventing live music altogether. This project is a result of fieldwork conducted as a participant-observer of the scene, in addition to structured and semi-structured interviews. The results of the research will be discussed with a focus on the influence of the Islamist, neoliberal, and authoritarian politics of the government on the indie music scene of Istanbul.

Water and fluidity in İz Öztat’s heterochronic imaginaries in the aftermath of genocide

Between the years 2013–2016, the artist İz Öztat created four distinct bodies of work, all of which engaged aspects of water. This period was marked in Turkey by the heightened tensions around the neoliberal (re)distribution of public space and public resources, which escalated in the aftermath of the Gezi Park Protests of 2013. In this article, the author argues that, beyond its immediate critique of contemporary capitalist appropriation, Öztat’s engagement with water builds relations across time, space, and species to recall histories of the Armenian Genocide, challenging the denials of official historiography. By tapping into the linguistic, cultural, and material imaginaries of water, and learning from the present-day water protection movements, Öztat engages the diverse histories carried across waterways. Water becomes a nexus through which the artist locates and articulates the physical and epistemic violence of modernity, particularly as it indexes community, conscience, and ecology from the late 19th century to the present.

Dynamics of Disruption: Ethnographic Practice in Contemporary Turkey

This roundtable explores how recent social and political upheavals in Turkey have impacted ethnographic research in and about the region. We propose that an analysis of ethnographers’ experiences in contexts of disruption and uncertainty can offer important insights into both research methodologies and contemporary politics and society in Turkey. The past twenty years have been a time of transformation and, arguably, disruption in the Republic of Turkey. In 2003, the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi; AKP) rose to power under the leadership of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. As the following decade heralded a period of rapid economic growth and development, social and political changes also began to reshape institutions in consequential ways. In 2008, top military leaders were charged with participating in a conspiratorial deep state in what would come to be known as the Ergenekon trials. While these prosecutions were framed by the ruling party as critical to securing democratic governance in Turkey, they also marked a turning point in the AKP's efforts to secure and consolidate its hold on the state. After the AKP won its third general election in 2011, their efforts to consolidate power grew, and over the following decade Turkey would devolve from being recognized as a model Middle Eastern democracy to an illiberal democracy and finally an authoritarian regime. This political transformation was punctuated by key events, from the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the attempted coup of July 2016 to the resumption of armed conflict with the Kurdistan Worker's Party (Partiya Karkerên Kurdistanê PKK) in 2015 and the government's crackdown on Academics for Peace.

From the Gezi Park Protests to the Akbelen Forest: Care in the Context of Democracy and Political Dissent

ABSTRACT In this essay, a brief history of environmental protests in Turkey will be followed by a discussion connected to two central frameworks: the logic of extractivism and care. Specifically, we argue that analysis of events such as the recent protests in the Akbelen Forest, just as the Gezi Park protests over a decade ago, need to account for the fact that a great deal of environmentalism and environmental activism is linked to broader social and political critique, particularly in countries such as Turkey with what is described as a “neo-authoritarian” or “new authoritarian” administration. We argue that these events and the ways in which they have materialized point to the need to pay further attention to intersections such as narrated space and spaces of narrativity, in this particular case, vis-à-vis care, democracy and political dissent.

URBAN ACUPUNCTURE IN TAKSIM GEZI PARK: IMPROVING SOCIAL LIFE FOR COMMUNITIES

Urban acupuncture provides an adaptive framework for the design and regeneration of neglected public spaces (urban voids, lost places) to strengthen the social infrastructure of a city. Urban acupuncture believes urban design and regeneration should occur through a bottom-up, democratic, pluralistic, inclusive, innovative and interdisciplinary approach. Small-scale, low-cost, fast implementable, innovative and problem-solving idea projects are developed using this new planning approach to produce fast and punctual solutions to urgent needs against the slow traditional planning processes and create exceptional places by making small touches in the urban landscape. This study aims to improve the social life of communities in Taksim Gezi Park in Istanbul, Tu?rkiye, developed through an urban acupuncture idea project. This paper introduces urban acupuncture and the explanation of the study area. Data were collected by case study and observation methods and analysed using document analysis, visual material analysis and SWOT analysis methods. The paper introduces the urban acupuncture approach and then the information of the case study -Taksim Gezi Park. A SWOT analysis of Gezi Park based on fieldwork and observation is presented. From spatial analyses, the site-specific urban acupuncture idea projects were developed to improve Taksim Gezi Park to be more comfortable and beneficial for social communities, including plants and animals.

Contesting State-Led Patriarchy—The Drivers, Demands and Dynamics of Women’s Participation in the Gezi Uprisings in Turkey 2013

The Gezi Park protests in Istanbul (Türkiye) gained worldwide attention in 2013. Both men and women took part in the protests, which were heavily cracked down on by the government. The present study examined 273 Turkish women’s attitudes and motivations for taking part in the protests. The results show that the following variables had a significant impact on protest participation: lifestyle threats posed by religious values/norms and by the government; feelings of marginalization as a woman; political dissatisfaction; gender discrimination; and affiliations with feminism. Regarding the impact of attitudes on women’s political participation and discrimination, this study provides insights into the state of research on gender discrimination and feministic identity.

Digital Archives: How Western Newspapers Frame Our Remembrance of the Gezi Park Protest

Abstract We analyze the coverage of the Gezi Park protests by two major Western newspapers—The New York Times and The Guardian—through the lens of media framing, rhetoric, and collective memory. We argue that these digital archives frame Turkey’s Gezi Park protests as a challenge to an authoritarian government by promoting the themes of unrest as a conflict of ideologies, oppression of citizens, and the park as a site of memory. In a concluding section, we focus on the significance of digital archives as repositories of collective memory and the role of media framing in shaping these reconstructions of events in the past.

SOSYAL MEDYA PLATFORMLARINDA DEZENFORMASYON FAALİYETLERİ VE CEZA HUKUKU BAĞLAMINDA SORUMLULUK: TWITTER PLATFORMUNDA BİR VAKA İNCELEMESİ

Sosyal medya kanalı olarak isimlendirilen birçok farklı uygulama geliştirilmiştir. Günümüzde, bu uygulamlardan bazılarının hem kamusal alanda bireysel fikirlerin yazılı ve görsel ifadelerle paylaşılabildiği hem de güncel gelişmeleri takip etmeye imkân sunan bir platform halini de aldığı görülmektedir. Bu platformalar arasında bu amaçla en çok kullanıcı sayısına sahip olanı ise Twitter’dır. Bu çalışmanın amacı, Twitter özelinde bir vaka incelemesi gerçekleştirerek gerçek verilerin analiziyle birlikte sosyal medya platformları üzerinden paylaşılan suç unsuru taşıyan ifadeleri tespit etmek, tanımlamak, sınıflandırmak ve ceza hukukuyla ilişkilendirmektir. Bu çalışmanın araştırma metodu olarak açıklayıcı vaka incelemesi tercih edilmiştir. Çalışmamızın amacına uygun vaka incelemesi olarak sosyal medyada dezenformasyon paylaşımlarının gerçekleştirilebileceği öngörülen Türkiye’nin son 8 yıldır gündeminde olan ve yargıya intikal etmiş olan Gezi Parkı olaylarına yönelik Twitter Platformunda tespit edilen ilgili hastagler kullanılarak yapılan paylaşımlar ele alınmıştır. Bu vaka analizinde verilerin elde edilmesi ve analizinde de sosyal medya analizi yöntemi kullanılmıştır. Böylece, belirlenen amaçsal örnek vakada ceza hukuku sorumluluğu gerektirebilecek dezenformasyon paylaşımları tespit edilip sınıflandırılacaktır. Akabinde ilgili paylaşımlar Türk ceza mevzuatındaki düzenlemelerle ilişkilendirilecektir. Bu çalışma, amaçsal olarak belirlenen vaka inceleme olayına yönelik Twitter platform paylaşımlarıyla sınırlı bir şekilde Türkçe ifadelerle yanıltıcı sosyal medya paylaşımları ve ceza hukuku sorumluluğunu ele almaktadır. Çalışmanın bilime ve topluma sağladığı katkılar, sosyal medyada dezenformasyon faaliyetlerini ceza hukuku sorumluluğu kapsamında ele alan, söz konusu faaliyetleri sınıflandıran ve ceza mevzuatının ilgili düzenlemeleriyle ilişkilendirildiği bir içeriğe sahip olan, alan yazındaki ilk çok disiplinli ortak çalışma özelliğini taşımasıdır. Çalışmada elde edilen ve sunulan bulgular, yürütme ve yasama organları için konuya ilişkin yasal düzenlemelerin gözden geçirilmesinde fayda sağlayabileceği gibi diğer ilgililer bakımından da farkındalık oluşturabilecek ve alan yazınına katkı sağlayabilecektir.

Reimagining the Istanbul Encampment of 2013

Abstract This article rests upon two kinds of deductions: first a lack of scholarly engagement within cultural constructs of religion in mainstream social movement studies; and the second, the quasi-religious aspects of occupy-like movement. These two problematics, one theoretical, and one ethnographic, are drawn together through Edith Turner’s conceptualization of communitas in light of the fieldwork findings derived from the encampment established at Istanbul’s Gezi Park in 2013.

Critical Mass Theory and Participation in Social Movements: The Case of Gezi Protests in Turkey

The meeting organized in Gezi Park on May 27th, 2013 to protest the construction of a mall in the historical park has turned into a nationwide collective movement with a gradual increase in the number of participants from different ages, classes, and political backgrounds in an era in which the young were claimed to be apolitical in comparison to the 1968 generation of Turkey. The phenomenon did not only draw the attention of the international press and news during those times but also turned into an outstanding and popular topic for academic studies. Therefore, there are several publications analyzing the Gezi Uprising and the profile, psychology, and motivation of Gezi participants. Using critical mass theory to analyze the data collected through literature review, this study examines the collective action and interdependence of the heterogeneous participant profiles with different motivations in order to understand how the Gezi protests of 2013 emerged as the largest social movement of Turkish political and social history. This study does not aim to fully answer why there are no large-scale demonstrations despite the rate of discontent in today’s Turkey being much higher than that of 2013; however, critical mass theory certainly provides sufficient background to interpret participation in social movements en masse in the post-Cold War era when there is no political leader and organization leading the uprisings.

Civilizational Populism in Domestic and Foreign Policy: The Case of Turkey

This article investigates whether Turkish populism has undergone a ‘civilizational turn’ akin to what Brubaker, Haynes, Yilmaz, and Morieson have described occurring among populist parties in Europe and North America. The article applies Yilmaz and Morieson’s definition of ‘civilizational populism’ to Turkey under the rule of the governing Justice and Development Party (AKP) in order to determine whether the party conforms to this definition. The article investigates how the AKP, an Islamist and populist political party lead by Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, has increasingly incorporated what we term ‘civilizational populism’ into its discourse. The article shows the impact of civilizational populism on Turkey’s domestic and foreign policy under the AKP rule. The article finds that the AKP has increasingly, and especially since the 2013 Gezi Park protests and the mysterious coup attempt in 2016, construed opposition between the Turkish ‘self’ and the ‘other’ not in primarily nationalist terms, but in religious and civilizational terms, and as a conflict between the Ottoman-Islamic ‘self’ and ‘Western’ other. Furthermore, the article finds that the AKP’s domestic and foreign policies reflect its civilizational populist division of Turkish society insofar as the party is attempting to raise a ‘pious generation’ that supports its Islamizing of Turkey society, and its nostalgic neo-Ottomanist power projections in the Middle East. Finally, the paper discusses how the AKP’s civilizational populism has become a transnational populist phenomenon due to the party’s ability to produce successful television shows that reflect its anti-Western worldview and justify its neo-Ottoman imperialism in the Middle East.

Türk Toplumunun Sosyo-Politik Yapısının Gelişim Sürecinde ve Azerbaycan-Türkiye İlişkilerinde Sosyal Medyanın Rolü

Social Networks play an effective role in setting the agenda, making social and political decisions, bringing about changes in the governance system and in many other sectors in Turkey. In 2013, social media was used as the main means of communication to spread the events that started in Taksim Gezi Park of Istanbul to the whole country. President Erdogan of Turkey, invited the citizens to go to the streets on social media to prevent a military coup attempt, that changed the fate of a society on June 15, 2016. Social media, at the same time, comes to the fore in terms of cross-country relations to the agenda of citizens. For example, it is possible to clearly see the reflection of historical friendship and fraternal relations between Azerbaijan and Turkey in the posts of social media users. In particular, the support provided at the state level during the Second Karabakh War by ordinary citizens on the agenda through social media has taken on special significance at a time when information warfare is seen as one of the most important elements of winning the war. The study clarifies the role of social media in communication, evaluates the prospects for the development of Turkish-Azerbaijani relations, and studies the role of social media in the formation of Turkish society and the development of Turkish-Azerbaijani relations using specific examples.

Correlates of deforestation in Turkey: evidence from high-resolution satellite data

AbstractDuring the last decade, environmental issues have gained saliency in Turkish politics, especially after the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations. This article is on the relationship between politics and deforestation in Turkey. It combines possible major drivers—political, economic, and climatic—of deforestation in Turkey with high-resolution satellite data on deforestation to conduct a systemic empirical analysis. The results show that districts in which Justice and Development Party mayors are in power have higher deforestation. The effect is around an average combined area of forty-two football fields in a given district. The article also shows that increased mining activities and newly built hydropower plants positively correlate with deforestation.

In Search of Free Spaces to Breathe: Turkey's United June Movement, Social Uprising, and Spatial Maintainability

AbstractThis study examines the socio‐spatial practices of the United June Movement (UJM), a grassroots movement that drew inspiration from the neighbourhood forums of the Gezi Park protests. We argue that the counter‐sites of politicisation and symbolic places engraved on the social movements’ memory formed the socio‐spatial base of solidarity networks and the long‐term political organising of UJM. Secondly, we suggest that in an authoritarian context, activist organisations nourishing from full‐scale protests such as UJM need to form, reshape, and sustain free spaces where they feel protected. For testing these arguments, we designed fieldwork around UJM with an ethnographic approach. We concluded that the desire for social change has the potential of generating alternative visions in a spatiotemporal context, but in the medium term, it can turn into a feeling of self‐enclosure or being besieged. Even so, such attempts leave a perpetual legacy, tagged to certain spaces and geographies.

İstanbul Street Rhythms: A Field Guide to Short Expressive Ensembles

This article presents the field guide as an alternate format to the anthology in documenting short literary expressions. Anthologies often isolate, collect, and remove literary forms from their habitats by representing them in a book, altering the context by which short literary expressions can be interpreted. After the Gezi Park protests in İstanbul in 2013, several print and electronic anthologies documented public expressions, yet these books offer no or only vague mention of location. Through Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis: Space Time and Everyday Life, I emphasize the rhythms of the street that are interrupted by public expressions. After a review of Lefebvre’s work on rhythms, I offer digital annotation techniques to map the material and medium of public inscriptions of one neighborhood of Kadıköy, İstanbul called Rasimpaşa, a district historically called “Yeldeğirmeni” or “The Windmill.” The focus on public graffiti, street art, posters, signs, stickers, or other verbal traces in public space allows for an expansion of the concept of “short literature” to include their lived habitats as rhythmic ensembles.

Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict

Turkey’s State Crisis: Institutions, Reform and Conflict