Crisis in Turkey, Crisis in Ankara

On May 27th 2013 excavators attempted to demolish Taksim Gezi Park, an urban green space in Istanbul city center, as part of the so-called ‘Taksim Pedestrianization Project’. The aim of the government was to replace the Gezi Park with a reconstruction of the historical Halil Pasha Artillery Barracks that would host shopping malls, residences, etc. It was one of the typical assaults of the AKP Government turning the entire country into a great building site in line with its neoliberal urban policies.
The protest to save the park and Taksim Square that was started by a group of environmentalists, turned into a nationwide uprising with almost 3 million participants, with protests in 79 cities across Turkey. According to the Turkish Medical Association report dated July 10th 2013, there were five deaths and 8000 injuries in 13 cities. These included 61 severe injuries and 104 head traumas, and 11 people lost their eyesight.

The most interesting aspect of these protests was the diversity of participants: socialist groups, secular nationalists, left-wing Islamists and members of the Alevi population; football fans supporting opposing teams, LGBTT organizations, large masses of people with no particular party or group affiliation and people from different professional backgrounds. Old and young went out into the streets, chanted slogans, clashed with police, occupied parks and acted in solidarity with one another.

The rich repertoire of contention, the various forms of solidarity actions, protest props, witty slogans, songs and images produced also reflected this rich diversity. What was behind this diversity? Why were the mainstream political parties unable to represent this large and diverse mass of people? What were the factors that united such different and apparently contradictory sections of society like Kurdish and Turkish nationalists or Islamists and LGBTT groups?

The Failure of the AKP’s Total Transformation Project
Since the beginning of its rule in 2002, the AKP Government has been pursuing overtly regressive labour policies. Following the 2007 General Election, larger sections of society have also faced such aggressive attacks and there appears to be a total transformation project taking place that is tailored to the geopolitical and economical interests of domestic and international finance capital.
This multidimensional project includes urban transformations, rising job insecurity and poverty, legal transformations in line with the post-9/11 global anti-terror logic, constraints on the freedom of the press, as well as bans on and threats to artists and intellectuals. This project has also included ideological and political transformations and oppression in the education sector among others.

Representatives of the AKP used to legitimize the party’s aggressive policies by emphasizing that they won 50 per cent of the votes in the 2011 General Election. Yet, following the mobilizations in June and July this year, it is evident that this project has been turning large and diverse sections of society against the ruling party. That is why it is important to understand the scope of the damage created by the government’s neoliberal policies and to make sense of the diversity of protesters.

From Total Transformation to Total Crisis
This project of total transformation laid the ground for a total crisis. The 2013 Uprising in Turkey made the class-based and cultural gaps vis a vis the establishment more visible. Throughout the Uprising, mainstream politics and the mainstream media were unable to contain the protesters, lost their hold over the people in the streets and became the target of protests. Unfettered police violence and the legal impunity provided for them, forced many to reconsider their opinions about the legitimacy of the police and the judiciary.

Strangely, these mobilizations also showed that conventional left-wing and labor union politics were unable to keep up with the protesters and their different forms of resistance. Likewise, those liberal intellectuals who had been the ‘standard bearers’ of AKP policies so far, began to criticize the government. Our presentation will also point to the various crises within the establishment triggered by the uprising and will look at the responses to them on both sides of the barricades.

Clark Kent during Daytime, Superman at Night
“It’s the first time I’ve experienced protests that begin at night. People come home from work, change, eat, discard their ties and get ready”, Tariq Ali wrote after witnessing the protests in Ankara. This was why some social media users referred the protesters as “Clark Kents during the day and Supermen at night”. At the same time, we should not be too quick to subscribe to the shallow discourse of ‘professional and secular white Turks vs. poor and pious black Turks’ coined by the German news magazine Der Spiegel. In our presentation, we will also discuss how the 2013 Uprising included people from various sections of society, such as white-collar professionals and the unemployed along with people who are secular as well as those who are religious. The diversity of the participants brought with it a diversity in the repertoires of contention. From occupations to the setting up of alternative living spaces, direct clashes with the police, assemblies, standing protests and funeral ceremonies for the martyrs of the uprising, protesters used a rich repertoire to express themselves.

The 2013 Uprising in Turkey created some unprecedented forms of solidarity as well. Residents of certain neighborhoods provided free wifi for the protesters on the street, doctors volunteered in the make-shift hospitals just two streets behind where clashes took place, pharmacists gave out free drugs and equipment for the protesters, truck drivers carried rubble to the barricades and computer science students developed mobile apps that enabled protesters to identify the location of safe zones or hidden make-shift hospitals.

Social media occupied an important place in the 2013 Uprising to such an extent that the Prime Minister Erdogan called Twitter a ‘menace’. The number of active Twitter users in Turkey rose from 1.8 million on May 29th to 9.5 million on June 10th, indicating the central role played by social media. So-called ‘hashtag wars’ between pro-opposition and pro-government users were fought over Twitter and Twitter was also used to spread news about confrontations with police and to distribute reports by independent journalists. Moreover, online broadcasting websites like ustream.com and livestream.com were actively used by the protesters who broadcasted clashes live on channels followed by thousands of spectators.

Some Words on the Methodology
The 2013 Uprising is a very recent and very large-scale phenomenon in the history of social movements in Turkey. Its resonances will leave their mark on the future of the country. The fact that the ashes of the Uprising are still warm, prevents social scientists from producing early meta-theoretical conclusions. Furthermore, the uniqueness of some of its aspects makes it difficult to map the events onto existing explanatory templates. However, there are some texts that have been useful for us in making sense of the events and their contexts.

Given the limited time frame we have been working within, it has not been possible for us to follow a strict methodology. Although we have gathered a very rich collection of materials in our participant observations of the clashes and of the forums, we only started to think about ways to systematise them after we were invited to participate in the summer school in mid-July, when the situation in Turkey started to become relatively stable. The rest of our material was collected through an extensive study of the archives, articles and texts like reports or declarations from the forums.