Gezi Insurgency as ‘Counter-Conduct’

Download
2022-07-01
This article defines the Gezi insurgency as a case of ‘counter-conduct’ with a heterotopia in a Foucauldian sense and compares it with similar movements to underline its peculiarity. It argues that Gezi cannot be defined as an ‘anti-austerity’ or ‘anti-dictatorship’ movement. Rather, it was a struggle against the neoliberal-cum-neoconservative conduct under AKP rule and its leadership taking the form of a pseudo-presidential regime. Gezi not only was a search for a different conduct but also a possible self-conduct through self-invention in prefigurative experimentations with different ways of being and practicing direct democracy in the reclaimed public spaces that characterized the action process. What sustained this counteraction process was the spontaneous constitution or deployment of certain platforms like Blok and C¸ars¸ı which did not, in themselves, express or represent any given social or political organization nor a corresponding form of a generic identity. In the Gezi insurgency, actors tended to outflow their defining social categories and become a part of the series of performances in which a sense of self-transformation has been common.
Middle East Critique

Suggestions

AKP's neo-conservatism and politics of otherness in Europe-Turkey relations
Ertuğrul, Kürşad (2012-03-01)
This study uncovers the neo-conservative "style of thought" informing the ideology of the Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi (Justice and Development Party, AKP). The AKP's politico-cultural strategy in pursuing Turkey's goal of full membership to the EU is constituted on this ideological ground. Based on critical constructivism, this article argues that the AKP constitutes a domestic-foreign policy nexus of change characterized by a neo-conservative "style of thought" that aims to redefine the identity of Turkey. ...
GEZI PARK PROTESTS FROM A BADIOUAN PERSPECTIVE AND ITS EFFECTS ON THE POLITICAL SUBJECTIVIZATION OF LGBTIQ+ PEOPLE
Yok, Kıvılcım Kardelen; Birler, Reşide Ömür; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2022-2)
This thesis investigates the possibility of interpreting the Gezi Park protests, that took place in 2013 and which was one of the most important resistances in Turkish political history, through the lens of contemporary French philosopher Alain Badiou and his theory of event to the evaluate its effects on the political subjectivization of LGBTIQ+ people. It provides the demonstration of the history of transnational LGBTIQ+ movement alongside the history of the LGBTIQ+ movement in Turkey. To interpret the Ge...
Arab spring and Qatar: big role of a small state in Libya
Sarıtarla, Burak; Şen, Mustafa; Department of Middle East Studies (2014)
This thesis aims to analyze the relevance of the Nasserist ideology in the post-Tahrir Egyptian political scene by looking into its formation and transformation to date. It attempts to respond to the central question as to how come Nasserist ideology, which is thought to have fulfilled its mission at the end of the 1960s, seems to have been resurrected in the contemporary Egypt whether at the regime level in the embodiment of a military figure General Abdal Fattah Al-Sisi or at the oppositional level in the...
Turkey and its relation to the European Union from a radical nationalist perspective: the Nationalist Action Party from the early 1990’s until the present
Korkusuz, Şermin; Özdalga, Elisabeth; Department of Sociology (2008)
The objective of this study is to analyse the discourse (from 1990s onwards) of the radical nationalist perspective about Turkey-EU relations. The EU is discussed as an actor within the globalization process. Therefore, in a broader context, the study presents the situation of the radical nationalist perspective in Turkey within the globalization process. In the study, the Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi/MHP (Nationalist Action Party) has been selected as the political representative of radical nationalism in Tu...
Turkish modernity and Kurdish ethno-nationalism
Ökem, Mekin Mustafa Kemal; Ayata, Ayşe; Department of Political Science and Public Administration (2006)
This dissertation analyzes the context and discourse the Kurdish ethno-nationalism have emerged in modern Turkey. In a critical survey of a selected Kurdish nationalist theories, it tries to analyze the historical and contextual trajectory the nationalist discourse have assumed vis-à-vis Turkish modernity. A particular emphasis is given on how and on what basis Kurdish nationalism has questioned the formation and the sources of the legitimacy of the Turkish state and its role in the making of Turkish modern...
Citation Formats
K. Ertuğrul, “Gezi Insurgency as ‘Counter-Conduct’,” Middle East Critique, vol. 31, no. 3, pp. 1–20, 2022, Accessed: 00, 2022. [Online]. Available: https://hdl.handle.net/11511/98534.