Do Popular Assemblies Contribute to Genuine Political Change? Lessons from the Park Forums in Istanbul

By engaging with the ‘Gezi/June’ Uprising in Turkey and the popular assemblies formed in its aftermath, this article foregrounds the notion of agonistic pluralism as advanced by William E. Connolly and Chantal Mouffe for understanding the emerging forms of direct democracy and their outcomes in Turkey. Via participant observation in four park forum sites in Istanbul, in-depth interviews with the participants, and a virtual ethnography on related Facebook sites, it scrutinises the degree to which popular assemblies resist and subvert the existing political order and create alternatives for radical political change.