The Gezi Park movement: a Turkish experience of the twenty-first-century collective movements

Based on the results of a field study conducted during the summer following the wave of mobilizations in Gezi, this article analyzes the development and the social, cultural, and political meanings of this collective movement, which began in Turkey at the end of May 2013 and has been evolving during the summer. The first part of the article addresses the subject of these mobilizations that are opposed to the planning policy, implemented by the government in a process of neo-liberal economic development. The second part discusses the subjective engagement of the protesters and the meaning they give it, by considering alternatives not only to this policy but to the influence exerted on the individual and social life by the technostructures of the systemic forces. The third part analyzes, on the one hand, the methods of direct and online communication for organizing protests and, on the other, the creation of new living constructs, where protesters experiment with the alternatives to the dominations they contest. It is through protest, but also creative and performative actions, that the individuals try to become subjects of their own lives, against these dominations in which the Turkish dimension is part of a global systemic context.