Protester-police fraternization in the 2013 Gezi Park uprisings

ABSTRACT

The 2013 Gezi protests still remain the largest to have arisen in the AKP era of governance in Turkey. In light of substantial interdisciplinary attention attributed to this case, this study analyses a previously neglected, yet salient activist strategy known as fraternization that arose during protester-police interactions. We argue that when entrapped in situations marked by confrontational tension with police, protesters strategically attempt to overcome outgroup divisions by getting state forces to sympathize with opposition through fraternization. Utilizing video data analysis (VDA), we assess a sample of 147 publicly available videos featuring protester-police interactions and complement our assessment with semi-structured interviews with protesters. Results reveal that significant levels of fraternization occurred between heterogeneous groups of activists (age, gender, identity) and police. In some cases fraternization attempts contributed to a positive dialogue being established with police, while other attempts had no effect in reducing repression. Although activists were ultimately unsuccessful in convincing police to defect, this inquiry presents new implications for our understanding of the situational dynamics underlying fraternization.

KEYWORDS:

• Protest
• social movement
• repression
• Turkey
• fraternization

Acknowledgments

We would like to thank reviewers for constructive feedback to this study which contributed to the improvement of its theoretical premises as well as to feedback given by Zoha Waseem at the ECPR General Conference in 2020.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1. See the following link to our Appendix for three files – containing 1) a list of videos as well as 2) interviewee information and 3) interaction dialogues. https://www.dropbox.com/sh/7hj20gl2zvvpshc/AADjg6Ip06T5UYEGxSxdVWe-a?dl=0

2. Linking the data to phenomenon under attention ‘fraternization’ was not an easy task and we admit that our inquiry was in some moments limited with regard to video duration, the angle of the footage, and to the intentions of those who recorded and uploaded the videos – all of which are important conditions that researchers using VDA methodology must be transparent about (Nassauer & Legewie, 2019, p. 100).

3. Taksim Solidarity webpage is available at: https://www.taksimdayanisma.org/

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Alexei Anisin

Alexei Anisin (PhD, Government, University of Essex) is a Research Associate in the Institute of Political Studies at Charles University Prague. His current research focus is based in comparing protest-police interactions and the collection of cross-national data on digitalized forms of collective action.

Pelin Ayan Musil

Pelin Ayan Musil (PhD, Bilkent University, Department of Political Science) is a Senior Researcher in the Institute of International Relations (Prague, Czech Republic). She specializes in Turkish politics, institutionalism, and comparative studies on authoritarianism.