The making of a protest movement in Turkey
Subtitle: #occupygezi
By: edited by Umut Özkirimli, Lund University, Center for Middle Eastern Studies, Sweden
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan; Palgrave Pivot
Published: 2014
Place of publication: Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire; New York, NY
Language: eng
Number of pages: 154
ISBN-13: 9781137413772; 9781137413796; 9781137413789
Subjects: Politics and government; Protest movements; History; Authoritarianism
Description: "No one could have predicted that a peaceful sit-in to counter government plans to raze Istanbul's Gezi park would escalate into a country-wide protest movement, arguably the most serious political crisis Turkey, a country often hailed as a 'model' in the region, has faced in the last ten years. The protests left 8 dead, more than 8,000 wounded, and the country deeply polarized. Much ink has been spilled since June 2013 to explain the Gezi protests in the media, most of it based on hasty analogies and banal platitudes, referring to a 'Turkish spring'. Yet no academic analyses of the protests have been published so far and it is in this context that this collection of essays, the first academic book on the topic in English, is both timely and important. This collection offers a preliminary analysis of the Gezi protests and addresses the following key questions: 'How can we account for the protests?' 'Who were the protesters?' 'Why did the Justice and Development Party government choose to suppress the protests instead of meeting the demands of the protesters?' 'Were Gezi protests in any way connected to protest movements in other parts of the world?'." -- Book jacket.
Notes: Includes bibliographical references.
Table of contents: title: Introduction / Umut Özkirimli; title: A moment of elation : the Gezi protests/resistance and the fading of the AKP project / Soliözel; title: Brand Turkey and the Gezi protests : authoritarianism in flux, law, and neoliberalism / Asli Igsiz; title: Gülenism : the middle way or official ideology? / Cihan Tugal; title: Can the spirit of Gezi transform progressive politics in Turkey? / Onur Bakiner; title: White turks, black turks, and negroes : the politics of polarization / Michael Ferguson; title: Occupy Gezi as politics of the body / Zeynep Gambetti; title: Cruising politics : sexuality, solidarity and modularity after Gezi / Emrah Yildiz; title: Urban utopias and how they fell apart : the political ecology of Gezi park? / Ömür Harmansah; title: In lieu of conclusion : rallying for Gezi, or metaphors of aporia and empowerment / Spyros A. Sofos; title: Timeline of Gezi protests.