Ilkin Mehrabov
Researcher
The Lessons of the Gezi Park Protests in Turkey
Author
Summary, in English
The mass mobilization and the collective political engagement of the Gezi Park protests of 2013 came as a surprise for many in Turkey. What was new about these large-scale demonstrations was not only the sheer number of people taking place in them (more than 3.5 million), but rather the expansive range of the protesters.
This presentation looks into the Gezi events through a research question of How does the empirical conceptualization of Gezi Park protests in Turkey helps to scrutinize the heterogeneity of the actors and the repertoire of activist practices within similar protests in the Middle East? and investigates the protests through the lens of a new concept: rhizomated subactivism.
Rhizomated subactivism is defined as an instantaneous phase, where the realm of the online merges with the realm of the offline, and is coined in accordance with the concepts of rhizome (a term borrowed from biological sciences by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari) and subactivism (derived by Maria Bakardjieva and based on the writings of Ulrich Beck).
Using data, obtained from visual content analysis (of approximately 19 hours of documentary films; 101 hours of unedited video footage; and 8,000 photos of the protests), interviews (two accounts of the electronic correspondence and long-distance open-ended interviews as well as five cases of face-to-face semi-structured interviews conducted with activists of different social movements and political organizations), surveys (KONDA consultancy survey (4,411 face-to-face interviews) and Istanbul Bilgi University’s online questionnaire, filled in by 3,008 participants during June 3-4, 2013), and observations of protest-related Facebook pages, the presentation addresses the various aspects of the proposed concept in relation to the Gezi Park protests – i.e., the five main tenets of rhizomated subactivism which are defined as the spatial, cognitive, connective, temporal and emancipating dimensions.
Consequently, the presentation aims to provide a novel way of analyzing multi-faceted dimensions of protest movements in the Middle East in general, and in Turkey in particular – thus, contributing into a more nuanced understanding of contemporary protests and demonstrations in the Middle East, offering further theorization on their present and possible future outcomes in terms of human rights.
This presentation looks into the Gezi events through a research question of How does the empirical conceptualization of Gezi Park protests in Turkey helps to scrutinize the heterogeneity of the actors and the repertoire of activist practices within similar protests in the Middle East? and investigates the protests through the lens of a new concept: rhizomated subactivism.
Rhizomated subactivism is defined as an instantaneous phase, where the realm of the online merges with the realm of the offline, and is coined in accordance with the concepts of rhizome (a term borrowed from biological sciences by French philosophers Gilles Deleuze and Félix Guattari) and subactivism (derived by Maria Bakardjieva and based on the writings of Ulrich Beck).
Using data, obtained from visual content analysis (of approximately 19 hours of documentary films; 101 hours of unedited video footage; and 8,000 photos of the protests), interviews (two accounts of the electronic correspondence and long-distance open-ended interviews as well as five cases of face-to-face semi-structured interviews conducted with activists of different social movements and political organizations), surveys (KONDA consultancy survey (4,411 face-to-face interviews) and Istanbul Bilgi University’s online questionnaire, filled in by 3,008 participants during June 3-4, 2013), and observations of protest-related Facebook pages, the presentation addresses the various aspects of the proposed concept in relation to the Gezi Park protests – i.e., the five main tenets of rhizomated subactivism which are defined as the spatial, cognitive, connective, temporal and emancipating dimensions.
Consequently, the presentation aims to provide a novel way of analyzing multi-faceted dimensions of protest movements in the Middle East in general, and in Turkey in particular – thus, contributing into a more nuanced understanding of contemporary protests and demonstrations in the Middle East, offering further theorization on their present and possible future outcomes in terms of human rights.
Department/s
- Department of Strategic Communication
- Centre for Advanced Middle Eastern Studies (CMES)
- MECW: The Middle East in the Contemporary World
Publishing year
2024-06-26
Language
English
Document type
Conference paper: abstract
Topic
- Media and Communication Studies
Keywords
- Turkey
- Gezi Park
- Middle East
- human rights
Conference name
ICA (International Communication Association) 2024 Post-conference: “Media Sociology: Global Communication and Human Rights in BRICS and Beyond in the Digital Age.”
Conference date
2024-06-26 - 2024-06-26
Status
Unpublished