Urban Social Movements in Turkey

By Emrah Akyüz

Many Turkish cities have witnessed increasing micro and macro-spatial dimensions in urban social movements, shaping urban space over recent decades. Typical Turkish urban

social movements have generally shared the same goals, been based on actors’ lower-class backgrounds and locally-rooted associations, and have employed similar types of action and strategies against authority. However, the Gezi Park protests were of a singular and different character. This book aims to explore the Gezi Park protests, and discusses their role in changing the character of urban social movements in Turkey, by asking the following questions: What social, political, and economic forces changed the structure of the protests over the years in Turkey? In turn, how has the Gezi Park movement shaped our understanding of new Turkish urban social movements?

• Language: English
• Publisher: Academica Press
• Release date: May 1, 2023
• ISBN: 9781680538328

Book preview

CHAPTER I:

INTRODUCTION

1. RESEARCH BACKGROUND

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Many cities around Turkey have witnessed increasingly micro and macro-spatial dimensions in urban social movements, shaping urban space over recent decades.²,³ Typical Turkish urban social movements have generally shared the same goals, been based on actors’ lower class and middle class backgrounds and locally rooted associations, and have employed similar types of action and strategies against the authority.⁴,⁵, ⁶ However, the Gezi Park protests were of a singular and different character. This research asks: What made the Gezi Park protests unique, and different from their earlier counterparts? In what ways did the Gezi Park protest trigger a new era in Turkish social movements? It also aims to constitute a theoretical framework, through which to discuss new urban social movements, comparing them with the collective actions of earlier eras. The Gezi Park movement will be compared with the 1 Mayıs Mahallesi incident, and their similarities and differences with be discussed. This research also critically reviews the process by which the nature of protests, their symbols, strategies, activists, protesters, mobilisation and the character of social class changed between 1 Mayıs Mahallesi and the Gezi Park protests.

The number of social movements emerging in Istanbul has increased over recent decades in conjunction with the rise of neoliberalism, which has brought about a major transformation to the city. These movements have acquired a new dimension, not only in terms of quantity, but also in quality. Most contemporary social movements in Turkey have developed in direct response to the increasingly violent politicisation of urban space, and urban redevelopment projects.⁷, ⁸, ⁹ In particular, Istanbul has increasingly found itself at the centre of mass social mobilisations, which have dealt with urban affairs and urban matters,¹⁰ and have applied great forces for social, political and economic change, as a response to the commodification of urban land. In this way, urban social movements have emerged as a new means of questioning the current social, political and economic systems, leading to urban crisis in Istanbul.¹¹, ¹² These crises are the responses from city dwellers to the neoliberal urban development projects,¹³, ¹⁴, ¹⁵ such as the destruction of green parks for shopping centres. Since urban social movement has increased in Turkey’s more cosmopolitan cities, where processes of urbanisation have brought people together, the questions, ‘How has Istanbul turned into a central hub for growing urban social movements,’ and ‘How and Why did the Gezi Park protests emerge?’ have increasingly triggered academic debate among scholars and observers in Turkey.

Urban social movements have gained new vision since 2013, and the Gezi Park movement is a specific case study illustrating this change in Turkish politics, and a new era in history of the nation’s social movements. This new type of social movement differs from earlier examples of social movement; i.e. from those motivated by class conflict, social movement, democratisation and economic demands, between the 1970s and 2000s. In order to understand the changing nature and structure of urban social movements accurately, this research focuses on two case studies: firstly, the 1 Mayıs Mahallesi incident (which represents urban social movements between 1970 and 2000), and secondly the Gezi Park movement, in references to all dimensions of the long history of Turkish social mobilisation. These are useful strategic case studies, which demonstrate the unique role that city dwellers play in urban uprisings in general, and in Istanbul against Turkish governments.

The 1 Mayıs Mahallesi incident illustrates the character of social movements in the 1970s, although the significant role of Turkish urban social movements has frequently been forgotten or distorted by time and the academic environment. It can be said that the incident offers valuable insights into the various factors of influence, including: the values of urban dwellers; political and collective attitudes of urban poor against urban affairs; ideological conflicts in the city between different classes, groups and the state; and urban trends and basic urban issues, such as housing problems.¹⁶, ¹⁷

Despite these urban movements generally sharing the common goal of heightening awareness of an issue and protesting and making demands for changes to the urban environment (e.g. to improve poor living conditions, urban services or individual liberties, or access to urban resources), since 1 Mayıs Mahallesi the profile of activists and their levels of participation, forms of mobilisation, the concept of protest, and the tools and strategies used within social movements have all considerably changed. The Gezi Park movement is completely different from its older counterpart in many respects.¹⁸, ¹⁹ It encompasses many unique dimensions and characteristics not present in previous social movements.²⁰ By examining these two case studies, this paper argues that the Gezi Park movement introduced a new era in urban social movements, in which the city dweller’s demands evolved from individualised claims for basic urban services to ‘the right to collectivised rights’ for political participation in urban development.

This research aims to explore the Gezi Park protests, and discusses its role in changing the character of future urban social movements, by asking the following questions: What social, political, and economic forces changed the structure of the protests over the years? In turn, how has the Gezi Park movement shaped our understanding of new Turkish urban social movement? We will frame our approach around theories of urban social movements and the right to the city, as set out by Manuel Castells,²¹ Henri Lefebvre²² and David Harvey.²³ In spite of the fact that Gezi Park is a relatively recent incident, there have been many academic researches focusing on it, due to its unique role in mobilising millions of people against the neoliberal urban policy pursued by the Turkish government.

On the other hand, it seems that there are a number of unanswered questions about Gezi Park, which needs to be argued by academics. These are: (1) What makes the Gezi Park protest unique, and different from its older counterparts? (2) In what ways did the Gezi Park protest trigger a new era in Turkish social movements? (3) How has the character of urban social movements (including aspects of social class, symbols, structure, dynamics, purpose etc.) in Istanbul changed between the 1 Mayıs Mahallesi incident and the Gezi Park movement?

There are currently two main approaches to evaluating the Gezi Park movement: One approach favours the Gezi Park protestors and the other one favours the AKP. They generally focus on the political dimensions of the movement²⁴, ²⁵ rather than the fact that the Gezi Park movement succeeded in ushering in a new era that would entirely redefine urban social movements. By indicating a gap in the previous research, one of the main objectives of this research is to develop a new approach (a third one) to the interpretation of Gezi Park, which deals with the movement based on wider perspectives, including theoretical, historical and sociological aspects in order to argue the new urban social movement accurately. This will draw on the idea of the right to the city, and the study will focus on the new social movements in Istanbul, and form a comparative study of two milestone protests. To begin this discussion, we first need to identify the following questions: (1) What is the context of the theory of the right to the city at an international level? (2) How is the right to the city applied by city dwellers for urban social movements?

This research has two fundamental objectives: Firstly, it begins by briefly discussing the right to the city and urban social movements. The research will constitute a theoretical framework that can provide a particular perspective through which to argue the concept of a new Turkish urban social movement. This theory will aim to outline a new conceptual model of the relationship between urbanisation, neoliberal urban policy, the right to the city and urban social movements. Secondly, the Gezi Park movement will be compared with the 1 Mayıs Mahallesi incident, and their similarities and differences will be argued, by critically analysing and reviewing previous research in the area. The study also aims to discuss how new urban social movement has forced the Turkish government to change their neoliberal urban policy and their traditional attitude to urban social movements.

2. METHODS

In this section, the method used in the study is discussed. In this study, comparative case study method was used. The 1 Mayıs Mahallesi incident that occurred in 1978 and the Gezi Park movement were compared. In the comparative case study method, the data were collected by semi-structured interview. Interview texts were analyzed using thematic analysis method.

Comparative Case Study Method

Case study research is one of the methods widely used especially in the field of social sciences.²⁶, ²⁷ The subjects covered in the case studies are the cases whose boundaries, scope and dates have been determined. It usually takes a certain geographical area and a certain number of people as the subject of research.²⁸ For this reason, the generalizability of the findings addresses a limited area.²⁹ As a result of the literature review, two main cases were identified in this study. The first case is the urban mobilizations of 1 Mayıs Mahallesi, which took place in Istanbul in 1978. The second case is the Gezi Park protests that took place in Istanbul in 2013. The reason for choosing these cases is that there are two events with data that can give the most appropriate answer to the research question.³⁰

The first step to be taken in identifying cases in comparative case study is to formulate research questions.³¹ The main research question in this study is as follows; What are the similarities and differences of urban social movements between 1970 and 2020 in Istanbul? Since both cases were the largest urban movements that occurred in Istanbul and there were no previous scientific studies that compared and analyzed these cases, it was used as a case study in this study.

Case study is a method used to collect data about a multidimensional and complex case that has occurred or is taking place in real life.³² It is an empirical method that is preferred in cases where the boundaries or scope of the research subject are not fully or sufficiently known.³³ In this method, the answer to the question of why and how the case that is the subject of the study is sought.³⁴ The case study that takes place in real life is handled within the theoretical framework³⁵ created in the research and it is tried to be interpreted. In this study, a case study was used as the similarities and differences between the 1 Mayıs Mahallesi and Gezi Park events in Istanbul were discussed within the framework of urban social movements theory.

Another reason for using case study in this research is that this method allows researchers to have in-depth and detailed information about an event or phenomenon.³⁶ Because with this method, the researcher can discover the experiences, ideas, expectations, problems or opportunities of the people involved in the event. At the same time, it allows the researcher to make observations