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ABSTRACT
This article presents an overview of the Istanbul park forums that emerged in parallel with the Gezi events – social protest movements that took place in summer 2013. Despite the criticism that Gezi events were short-lived, impulsive, and ineffectual I argue that they have a long-lasting influence on democratic consciousness and new forms of political action. Istanbul park forums, the street and urban squares have become an important link between those who wish to transform the qualities of both democracy and the regime at large with efforts to create influence over local and national policy-making processes through engagement in political action. Drawing from the political theory of Hannah Arendt, this study assigns the capacities of ‘deed and speech’ to redefine ‘politics’. Analyzing the politics of the park forum process through the lens and concepts of Arendt’s political theory suggests an alternative way of evaluating the eventual dissolution of the Gezi events: rather than suffering from the inability to organize themselves within the conventional format of party politics, I show that the Gezi community deliberately created a new manner of engagement through political action, and thereby cast its influence as a historic landmark in the future of Turkish politics.
Disclosure statement
No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.
Notes
1. Istanbul staged big street protests three times during the winter months following the Gezi events: about internet censorship, government corruption and during Berkin Elvan’s funeral.
2. The Taksim Solidarity Platform announced the list of park forums in Istanbul neighborhoods on its webpage; accordingly: 4. Levent: Sporcular Parkı Alibeyköy: Karadolap ParkıAtaköy: Atrium Karşısı Ataşehir: Ataşehir Parkı & Deniz Gezmiş Parkı Avcılar: Marmara Caddesi Bahçelievler: Egemenlik ParkıBahçeşehir: Gölet-Atatürk Heykeli ÖnüBakırköy: Bakırköy Meydan Bebek: Bebek Parkı Beşiktaş: Abbasağa Parkı Beykoz: Paşabahçe Meydanı Beylikdüzü: Beylikdüzü Meydanı Beyoğlu: Cihangir Park Büyükdere: Çelik Gülersoy Parkı Caddebostan: Migros Önü Elmadağ-Harbiye-Nişantaşı-Kurtuluş-Feriköy: Maçka Parkı Esenyurt: Akasya Parkı Etiler/Akatlar: Sanatçılar Parkı Fatih: Saraçhane Parkı Göztepe: Göztepe Parkı & Özgürlük Parkı İkitelli: Atakent Kadıköy: Yoğurtçu Parkı Eyüp: Karadiler Parkı (Eyüp) Kartal: Kartal Parkı Kireçburnu/Ömürtepe: Çamlık Piknik Alanı Kocamustafapaşa: Meydan Koşuyolu: Koşuyolu Parkı Kozyatağı: Kriton Curi Parkı Maltepe: Maltepe Meydanı Maslak/Sarıyer/Yeniköy/Emirgan: Yeniköy Parkı Bahçelievler: Milli Egemenlik Parkı Okmeydanı: Sibel Yalçın Parkı Pendik: Kuşluk Parkı Rumelihisarüstü: Duatepe Park Sarıgazi: Meydan Tuzla: Tuzla Atatürk Büstü Ümraniye: Çarşı Parkı & Fethi Paşa Korusu Üsküdar: Doğancılar ParkıWebpage (http://taksimdayanisma.org/?s=forumlar)
3. They were namely: Abbasağa, Maçka, Levent(Sporcular), Etiler(Sanatçılar), Şişli Gülbağ, Şisli Tatavla, Yeniköy, Uğur Mumcu, Maltepe, Büyükdere, Üsküdar, Yoğurtçu, Cihangir, Merter, Deniz Gezmiş, Koca Mustafa Paşa.
4. Arendt uses men instead of man to point out the futility of individual life against life in a community.
5. Hannah Arendt’s The Human Condition was first published in 1958 by the University of Chicago Press.
6. John R. Parkinson, Democracy & Public Space: The Physical Sites of Democratic Performance (Oxford, UK: Oxford University Press, 2012), p. 6.
7. Arendt, The Human Condition, p.198.
8. Jürgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: And Inquiry into a Category of Bourgeois Society (Cambridge, Massachusetts: The MIT Press, 1989).
9. Ibid., p. 3.
10. Parkinson, p. 10 (Saward, 2003).
11. Ibid., p. 10.
12. The Ministry of Internal Affairs stated that 3,545,000 people were involved in Gezi protests that took place in all but one cities of Turkey.www.etha.com.tr/Haber/2013/09/20/guncel/icisleri-bakanliginin-gezi-raporu/
13. Interviews with Füsun and Nevin.
14. Interviews with people who participated in the Gezi protests and experienced twelve days of communal life in Gezi Park. The Gezi commune was the name given to the twelve-day process of the life set-up that was created by Istanbul urbanites in Gezi Park; in which citizens achieved an exquisite communal life of public joy, solidarity and consciousness. Yet, the dream-like urban experience was terminated when the riot-police raided the Park.
15. Hannah Arendt defines politics as vita activa, the spontaneous action of a plurality of men as distinct and equal citizens. The Human Condition (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998), pp. 176–178. The Promise of Politics, Edited and introduction by Jerome Kohn (New York: Schocken Books, 2005), pp. 93–94.
16. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 193.
17. Interviews with Nevin and Füsun.
18. Interview with Sabahat Tuncel, former MP and member of the Kurdish PDP, People’s Democratic Party, who was convicted in 2016 for being a member of the PKK, Kurdish terrorist organization
19. The Çarşı (Bazaar) Group is comprised of hard-core fans of the Beşiktaş soccer team. They were at the forefront of the resistance against the riot-police during the Gezi protests, due to their resilience and experience with police gained from attending soccer games over the years.
20. The Gezi demonstrations included acts of passive resistance inspired by performance artist Erdem Gündüz, ‘the Standing Man,’ who attracted international attention for standing quietly in Taksim Square for eight hours to protest the police crackdown in the Park.
21. http://takethesquare.net/2013/06/24/assemblies-emerging-in-turkey-a-lesson-in-democracy-occupygezi/
22. Vietnam Syndrome is a psychiatric term to describe the psychosocial consequences of active participation in the Vietnam conflict, e.g., substance abuse, depression.http://medical-dictionary.thefreedictionary.com/Vietnam±syndrome.
23. Gezi’s aftermath witnessed the process of the rise of a new Kurdish political party which started as a movement first under the name of People’s Democracy Congress, to encompass many issue-based and identity-based minority social groups. With a strategy to address these diverse movements the Kurdish party carried itself to the National Parliament, by winning 13% of the votes in June 2015 General Elections. Today the party is under the name People’s Democratic Party while many of its deputies are in jail.
24. Arendt, The Human Condition, p. 29.
25. John R. Parkinson, Democracy and Public Space, p.10
26. Arendt, The Human Condition, p.69
27. Çapulcu(lar), meaning looters, was the term the Prime Minister used to label the protestors during the Gezi resistance. Yet the protesters found pride in being a çapulcu for taking action in protecting their park.
28. The No Assemblies started as cellular opposition groups in 2017 to mobilise the Turkish electorate to vote against Erdogan’s referendum proposal for the Constitutional change bringing an end to the conventional parliamentary system of the Republic and introduce the presidential system in its place.