Silence.

The protesters have been cast out of Gezi Park, using too much force, justified by the global fetish-fear of "terrorism." I still check the news every evening, but fewer and fewer articles are being written and now the blogs are reflecting on the past instead of current events. It is as if by going back to the beginning in their thoughts people are putting the period on the protests. Still, there are the standing people (A protest that officials consider "pleasing to the eye.") and rumors of people making plans in their neighborhoods. But mostly it feels like things in Istanbul are back to normal. All of my pessimistic aquaintences were right in assuming that nothing would change. I had thought that something would change. I thought that with the force of international media something had to change. But the thing is that the international media never cared about WHAT the people in Turkey were protesting. They only cared about the violence. Now that the violence (physical) has stopped it is no longer considered an important topic. Really it is no longer interesting, and no longer "easy." It is easy to tell a story of an authoritarian regime. The pictures spoke for themselves. But now the journalism would get messy. It would get involved, and westerners don't have the patience to get involved in their own affairs, let alone those of people thousands of miles away.

What is most unsettling to me these days is reading the reaction of the officials. The smugness of the Prime Minister, and the foreign ministers. They are trying to spin everything into dominant history, and I fear that it is working. This will go down in history as a peaceful protest that got hijacked by militant, violent, terrorist groups. Within a year the government will actually look like it was protecting the Turkish people and come out in a positive position from these protests. But every statement that they release just seems too condescending, and too smug for people to accept. Yet people are accepting them, or at least no longer speaking out against them. I don't really blame them. It must be hard to speak when your supposed leader has cut off your head and virtually made it illegal for anyone to disagree with him.

I love one of the official's statements regarding the standing man protests. He said that they are pleasing to the eye, but people should only stand for five minutes and then on the sixth minute go about their business. I think he misunderstands what a protest is. A protest is supposed to disrupt society strongly enough to make people consider their actions and beliefs. But now any disruption is considered violent and any dissent is considered an attack. Five minutes is not a protest, it is a brief memorial to the death of something that was once beautiful. Okay, beautiful is maybe a dramatic and incorrect choice of word. Not beautiful, but living. Pulsing. Messy.

I think the biggest loss here is going to be the forgetting of who is considered Turkish, and who is not considered Turkish by the sovereign. He made it very clear that he represents only the AKP, and not all people of Turkey. He attempted to strip the minority of their national identity. Real Turks support the party in power. Real Turks don't dissent. Real Turks don't protest, he seems to say. What does that make all of the thousands of people who protested? They are NOT some fringe group. They are not social deviants. They love their country, aand are proud of their heritage. They just want to be heard and represented.

It started about trees, but grew into so much more, and in the end it seems like it to will once again be only about trees.

Silence.

Foucault's Police

Last night, watching Gezi Park be "evacuated" by the Turkish police (Online, from the safety of my home) I finally began to physically comprehend Foucault's ideas regarding examination and visibility. Today, reading the strong propaganda line that the prime minister is following regarding what is and isn't legal, and what is and isn't happening, I am beginning to understand more clearly the concept of the sovereign and homo sacer. Watching a counter-rally march down my street today and hearing my husband ask how anyone can still support the current Turkish government I am finally beginning to understand the gravity of the state and the stateless. It is as if last semester frothed up perfectly into this resistance, giving me almost too many platforms for understanding what is going on in Istanbul. At the same time I feel clueless, and all of my studying of the social sciences can not prepare me to fully comprehend the mess that is still happening.

Still happening. I know the world moves on, every morning, to the next 'big' thing, but for the people living here it is continuing, day after day.

Last night what was visible, from the few camera angles available, was a wall of completely anonymous police, covered in gas masks, dressed in black, saying absolutely nothing and imbued with the power of the 'state.' Against them was a large group of individuals, each dressed differently, each shouting their own individual opinions, each banding together with different groups, and each risking their individual lives. What was on display was the individual. What was hidden was the power of the state. Granted, each of those officers has an individual beneath those masks, and each of those individuals must make the choice to follow orders, but the very issuing of these orders takes away the risk and responsibility from the individual police. Notice that they have nothing to say- they are just doing their job. They retreat and buy a snack or a tea. They take off their masks, talk with people passing by, and then they show a bit of personality, but every action of brutality is sanctioned, asked for, by the government. You would think, then, that the government would be held responsible for the injuries on the streets, and the continuing of the riots. Granted, the government is harder to pin down than an individual, but still, there should be some level where accountability can be found. But, in the modern nation state that accountability can apparently be spread to the people. From what I understand is that about 50 percent of the vote went to AKP last election, and what Erdogan apparently thinks this means is that he can act in the interest of these 50% and call the rest of the people minority, marginal, riff raff. Basically the law he set was that all "good" citizens would evacuate the park and anyone who was left there could only be a terrorist or a member of a "marginal" organization that does not represent "Turkey." Maybe the question should not be whether these groups and even individuals represent Turkey, but whether Turkey is representing them. From what I can understand, the later is not happening. The sovereign power just blatantly created a state of homo sacer (someone who is outside of protection, who can be killed without consequence or ritual).

Okay, killing might be a bit far. But people ARE being injured, and arrested, for expressing dissent.

Now, the question that my husband asked of how these people could walk proudly down the street today, carrying banners for the AKP, when this is obviously just going to make things worse, and no one is handling this situation well? The answer is obvious to me. If the sovereign has the power to declare a state of wild homo sacer, then the only 'safe' place to be is with him. If he is going to favor only the people who support him then they benefit by supporting him more, because they will ultimately get more at the cost of everyone else getting less. It isn't honorable, but it is unfortunately how the modern state seems to work.

Tonight there is a thick cloud of smoke hovering over Taksim. Small skirmishes and the banging of pots and pans, what has become the symbol for this resistance. It is somehow heartwarming to see the continuance today after the brutality last night. It could have, honestly, began to end this weekend. But now, it has the potential to drag on for quite some time, and hopefully, not be forgotten. 

Romancing Resistance: the takeover

How long does it take before a motion of resistance is hijacked? Two, three days? Maybe it can live for a week. I am more skeptical than that though. I think that on the moment of action, the motion becomes more than its intention. Because, the truth is, that for most of our actions we actually lack any intention whatsoever. Those actions- the yelling in the streets, the camping out, the throwing of stones, had very little intention, and in some ways they were quite pure. But then groups started coming in, trying to make sense of things. The communists, the anarchists, the i-am-not-sure-who-but-they-definitely-have-a-flags. I guess that is the problem with a platform- everyone wants to stand on it.

Last night Nikola and I were walking home from dinner when we were hit by a particularly strong sensation in the air. I described it as if someone was cutting onions directly in front of me. He was a bit more accurate, saying that it felt like hot peppers. For about a minute we were genuinely confused, and I was looking around for some sort of barbecue. I saw two boys pass by in the guy fawkes masks that have become standard street gear, and a small girl about to be sick. It was then that we realized the wind was blowing down from Taksim, and what we were experiencing was a very mild form of the dissipating tear gas. I just re-measured the map and realize that as the crow flies we are only 4km away from Taksim (The 7km that I originally stated involves streets and bridges- I had never stopped to think about how freely air moves within such a constrained grid), but 4km still seems rather removed from the heart of the activity to me. I never expected to be hit with tear gas so far away. Within five minutes the irritation, which came in light waves, was getting to be unbearable. I can't imagine how thick and painful it was in Taksim. So I went online to see what had happened. I had thought the protests in Istanbul were peaceful and the police were out of the square.

Apparently this week two things happened:

1. The prime minister agreed to meet with the organizers of the protests. 
2. The prime minister claimed that the protests would be over by the weekend, called the protesters vandals and swore that the square would be open to, "the people." 

Now, I consider both of these things to be tragedies as far as resistance is concerned. First of all, meeting with the organizers of the protests is problematic as the protests are very organic. He can meet with the organizers of the original Gezi park protests, but it is obvious this has gone well beyond the construction of a shopping complex, and if he hears only those complaints he is missing a LOT of the public grievance. Similarly, any already formed group that steps forward to claim this protest is going to cause the exclusion of some protesters. Figuring this out through the leadership of the protests requires some sort of coalition to be formed and sorted out- a large gathering of ideas and possibilities, and a continuation of the open forum that the park floor has become. By allowing the prime minister to choose the group he wishes to work with in formal discussions much of the general, organic process of this protest is lost. Maybe this coalition leadership has already been formed, although I am very interested to see how these discussions play out, and who will be there. 

The second point is just offensive. The prime minister is basically claiming that everyone at the protests is destructive and a public nuisance. It is true that there have been many acts of vandalism, some in response to police brutality and some from the sheer glee of chaos. Some people believe that the more violent protesters have been placed by the government to incite riots and to legitimize the use of force. I am not sure about that. I know there are plenty of people who have a lot of pent up anger and are probably destroying public property of their own volition. But the fact is that the majority of the protesters remain peaceful. The park fills with students, children, parents etc. These people are sitting and talking. They are singing. They are dancing. They are drinking and eating. They are living there, in a public space, peacefully. What is particularly offensive is that the PM claims the space will be open to the people by the weekend. The space IS open to the people, now. The PEOPLE are there!!! What people could he possibly be talking about? Tourists? Only the people who elected him? They are all welcome to go down there. I was there several evenings and did not feel threatened or uncomfortable. It was exhilarating. The space was open to the people, and by denying that he basically is denying that those people, occupying the park, are actually Turkish citizens, thus confirming that he only works for his own constituents, and is not representative of the whole country. Add to that the force used to empty the park last night? It was supposedly unexpected, and if it came so strongly all the way here all that I can think it must have been like there is the fumigation of rats. Tragic, bad move on the part of the Turkish government. 

Romancing Resistance: Reflections on Istanbul Protests in 2013

One of two buses destroyed at the entrance to Gezi Park, Istanbul. 

On Saturday night every street leading up to Taksim square was barricaded by protesters to prevent the entrance of riot-trucks armed with water cannons. Barricades were made of the fences that had once surrounded the restoration project in Gezi Park, cars, and bricks from the sidewalks. 

It should feel differently.

As I walked down Istiklal Street, crowded for a Wednesday evening, the words floated into my head, more of a concept than a thought of my own. At that moment I had a small epiphany- a moment of understanding regarding the three months of resistance and social movements that I had been studying. Resistance shouldn't FEEL any different. In fact, it shouldn't feel at all. Resistance simply is. The torn up streets are not excited. The graffiti on the buildings does not move. It is people who must make a constant effort to feel. It is not the excitement of resistance which breathes life into people, but the emotions of people which laces resistance with excitement.

Everyone that I talked to, on Friday, on Saturday, even on Monday, was excited about the protests spreading from Istanbul to the furthest reaches of Turkey. Not one of them thought that anything in Turkey would actually change, but they were excited to be part of something, and to express themselves (many for the first time) in the political arena. But after a week of protesting things began to change. The police violence stopped- Taksim square had been taken- and with the uneasy peace that settled in Istanbul people began to lose the excitement that they had expressed the week before. The resistance had taken on the feel of a festival. Music, speeches, workshops. My friends wanted to act. As one put it, "I need to be there. Nothing will change, but I need to yell and scream and throw things." Another told me that things had changed, and now it was just a festival, with people drinking and no more resistance. When that excitement is taken away, when the rolling wave of indignation is taken away, when the physical form of police officers is extracted and you have nothing left to push against, then how can you continue to resist? I wondered how long the protests would continue, certain that people would trickle off, back to their jobs and their homes, and the moment of resistance would be forgotten.

For most of my adult life I have valued social movement over acts of resistance. I thought I was quite logical, asking what the point was in constantly acting to deconstruct something without building something to take its place. Before I even knew who Gramsci was, I was a solid supporter of counter-hegemony as the only viable path towards revolution or, as my peaceful mind liked to put it, "change." When the protests began in Istanbul, grew, and turned into forceful physical conflict, I was skeptical more than impressed. What's the point in destroying a city? It was easy, as an outsider, for me to dismiss the people participating in the protests as a bunch of boys who just wanted to be a part of something, anything, violent and had very little political motivation. Seeing the destruction in Taksim- graffiti as high as the hands could reach, sidewalks torn up, buses and cars overturned and burnt out, I was not impressed. As I walked by the two buses blocking the entrance to Gezi Park and watched two young teenage boys, masked with the face of Guy Fawkes, climb victoriously on top for pictures my first reaction was awe, but my first thought was that the very people who destroyed these buses would be the same ones grumbling about the lack of adequate public transit in Istanbul during rush hour within the next month. I watched countless people approach the men selling aspiration masks and swim goggles for 5tl a piece, and wondered if they expected it to turn violent again, or if they were just purchasing souvenirs- a fashion statement to say that they were there. I couldn't help but be sadly amused at the irony of defacing one of the seats of consumerism in Istanbul, while protesting the turning of a public space into a capitalistic private space, and at the same time participating in a replacement capitalism without a second thought.

What changed my mind didn't take place in Taksim of Besiktas. It wasn't at ground zero. It had happened on Saturday evening, in my neighborhood seven kilometers away from the protests. Friday and Saturday my husband and I kept a close watch on twitter and facebook, overloading google-translate in the hopes of understanding the protests. We kept our windows open to hear and see signs of the protests, most shocked by the number of planes lined up to land at Ataturk airport with, what we rightly assumed, was police support from Ankara. Around eleven on Saturday evening the banging of pots and pans began. It echoed up and down my neighborhood, over and through, then back again. I poked my head out the window of my fourth floor apartment and for the first time I saw my neighbor, a young woman about my age, also looking out with curiosity. Until that moment I had not even realized that I had a neighbor living in the room that shared a wall with mine. Her apartment entrance was on a different street, and I had never seen her. We looked at each other, smiled shyly, and then quickly darted our heads back in. Throughout the evening we saw each other peeking out several more times. At one point the rumbling of pots and pans grew louder. I looked down and saw about 25 women walking up my street. In a neighborhood where there were no protests and no police these women had joined together, going from nowhere and to nowhere, simply to express themselves. It was the one moment during the night that I could not hold my composure, and a few tears slipped out in support of these women, some with bare heads, and some wrapped in scarves.

So when my friends lament the festival atmosphere in Gezi Park and fear that they have missed the revolution, I have to say that it's unfortunate, because this is the moment of resistance that excites me. Now that the park has been 'secured' by the protesters there exists a platform. That platform hosts academic workshops, political speeches, and cultural performances. At the moment intellectuals are trying to create some sense of coherency in the park, and they may succeed or they may fail, but what is important is that people are out of their houses, connecting with one another. The benefit of the platform is not only in its potential to create cohesion, but in its ability to accommodate expression. It is that expression that has finally made me appreciate resistance in and of itself, apart from creation, movement, and change. Sometimes people really do need to be part of something. I can't help but thinking that it is no fault of the streets or collection of workshops at the park if nothing changes. The change starts with a very simple inward realization, not 'it,' but:

We should feel differently. 

An Interpretation of Istanbul’s Gezi Park Protests: Four Modern Social Theorists

What I have posted here is a paper for my modern theory course. I definitely see some areas where the paper is lacking and could be expanded, but there are some points that are beginning to flesh out there. I figure since this is currently going on I would post the un-revised version in order to continue the thought and consideration regarding the current state of Turkey. As always, comments, corrections, and intelligent conversation is welcomed. 

An Interpretation of Istanbul’s Gezi Park Protests: Four Modern Social Theorists 

After a year of living in Istanbul the most that I can offer regarding the current civil unrest is an external perspective. For the past week social media has been filled with pictures and videos of downtown Istanbul and the current protests taking place there. During the days the protests at Taksim square take on the feeling of a festival, with music, dance, joyful encounters, and excited youth sharing discourse. Thousands of people cover Gezi Park, where the protests started on May 28, 2013. The protests, which began against the deconstruction of the park to re-build a military barracks which would ultimately be used as private housing and either a mall or museum, have grown so large in both numbers and geography that a single objective can no longer be neatly given to them. The protests have spread through Istanbul and to other major cities in Turkey, and have grown into general political unrest. I cannot make any claims of intimate knowledge of these activities, but I can draw some conclusions that require physical observation, and hopefully offer some perspectives as to the progression of these protests. This paper utilizes the work of four prominent modern social theorists: Antonio Gramsci, Michel Foucault, Giorgio Agamben, and Walter Benjamin, in order to explore the Gezi Park protests more in depth and begin to offer social discourse regarding the movement which has become known as, “Occupy Gezi.”

Gezi and Gramsci

Antonio Gramsci’s theory concentrates on the production of power through consent rather than force, and the ways in which superstructure is maintained in civil society through the production of hegemony.  Gramsci claims that with modern hegemony revolutions based on violence and force, such as the October Revolution of 1917, will no longer be successful. Because of this view Gramsci theory can best be applied to three areas of the Gezi Protests. First, the way in which the government responds to the protests can be argued as potentially blurring the line between rule by force and rule through consent, which demands closer examination about the production of hegemony and level of consent of Turkish citizens. Secondly, Gramsci would be concerned about whether the protests are based on force, or have an adequate foundation of counter-hegemony to effect social change. Lastly, and related to the establishment of counter-hegemony, Gramsci would examine the traces of consciousness, and how they can be found both at the protest site, and through social media.

The concept of hegemony involves the basis of power being created through consent, wherein the dominate group defines the world for the oppressed group so much so that they can no longer even recognize their own will. Their will is dominated through cultural indoctrination and they willingly, or at least without struggle, give their consent to the rulers. In a decadent hegemony, which includes both Turkey and the global hegemony of capitalism, this consent is centered around allocation of resources. On May 28 the protests regarding Gezi Park mostly concerned the allocation of a well-known public space. People feared that the public space, which was slated to become a reconstruction of the Taksim military barracks, would ultimately be turned into a shopping mall. This takes a resource which is precious in a city as crowded as Istanbul, space, and allocates it to the private, capitalist sphere, away from public use. Gezi park, which is iconic to Istanbul, was an allocation that could be said to be beyond the umbrella of the dominant hegemony. When the protests began the government responded with force, removing protesters through the use of pepper-gas. At the same time the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, tried to maintain that his political position was achieved through consent, and that the reallocation of the park would continue despite the protests. This creates a dissonance between the experience of the protestors, and the government’s claims to legitimacy. In this case the use of force served to escalate the protests, drawing in a wider group of support, and potentially creating a platform to examine and deconstruct the dominant hegemony. However, the deconstruction of the dominant hegemony is impossible to imagine unless it is accompanied by the construction of a counter-hegemony.   

Although the use of police force is important to understanding the depth of the attack on the Turkish government, the use of force on the part of the protesters is important to understanding the potential for achieving social change. Gramsci advocates against a war of manoeuvre, which seeks to physically remove the people in power, and instead insists that a war of position, and the establishment of a counter-hegemony, is the only way to bring about change. Although the protests started as a challenge to the allocation of resources, they have since grown in numbers so quickly that their complexity, and various reasons for participation, is indisputable. This creates a critical point, when a counter-hegemony can be constructed, and needs to be constructed in order for the protests to turn into a social movement. The establishment of counter-hegemony has been attempted through various university professors, and NGOs hosting discussion groups at the protest site. However, whether these attempts will be successful depend on the motivation of the protestors, and whether they are prepared to engage in constructive discourse, or simply continue to protest in force as an unorganized display of general frustration. The success of establishing a counter-hegemony also depends on the methods that the budding social leaders of this resistance implement.

Gramsci believes that the production of a counter-hegemony is reliant on the materiality of subalterns, as well as traces of consciousness found in folk wisdom, song, stories and memory. Intellectuals are charged with basing counter-hegemony on the already existing fragments within society in order to create an integrated form of resistance. I would argue that the contemporary place to look for these traces of consciousness is social media. The pictures that people are posting on facebook, and the 140-character tweets being posted on twitter supply a rich source of anxiety, hopes, and desire that could be formulated into the beginnings of a counter-hegemony. However, to leave these fragments in their raw form, or even to collect them on the internet is not enough. Counter-hegemony would be formed by processing these fragments, and reflecting them on the people who have created them, using them as a point of discussion to form a construction of society with the people who are currently gathered, potentially ready to listen and create.

Gezi and Foucault

Michel Foucault was a materialist, interested in the ultimate destinations of power rather than the intention and decisions of individuals. He was not interested in the source or descent of power, nor was he interested in ideology. He was against the concept of social evolution and interested in the production of expertise, to the point that for Foucault the problem of modernity was not economics, but the ways in which truth was produced. Foucault would most likely be interested in the materiality of the Gezi protests, the production of power in the moment of resistance, and how knowledge regarding the protests is produced and spread.

The protests in Istanbul have left a strong physical mark on the city. The main shopping street, Istiklal, has been covered in graffiti, and Taksim square has been barricaded using bricks torn out of sidewalks, fences, and incinerated vehicles. These material traces show a breakdown in the discipline created by society. Foucault argues that in a state of discipline subjects are always seen, and constantly placed in a way that they may be observed. (Discipline and Punish, 187) Everyday life in Istanbul involves a certain level of discipline, created by the constant observation of fellow citizens, as well as a limited presence of official authority. However, as protesters have pushed police out of Taksim square that level of discipline has been lost. People within the borders of the barricades can be thought to be loyal to the protests, and not supportive of government rules and punishment. For this reason people feel safe to flout certain laws. This can especially be seen in the act of graffiti, an act commonly restrained due to discipline. During the protests young men can be seen tagging the streets and buildings in the middle of the day. They spray paint slogans and symbols slowly and without masks, obviously not concerned with being caught. However, the material evidence also shows that the graffiti has been covered over at least one time with a layer of plain, grey paint. This layering of paint and graffiti shows a constant struggle to maintain a state of discipline, which the government has been unable to achieve in Gezi.

If the usual standard of social discipline is not currently in effect that does not mean that no discipline exists. Power is constantly produced by people, and that includes the protesters currently in Gezi Park. Foucault highlights the notion of exercise, stating that it is a graduation of tasks that are performed by the body, used to create discipline. (Discipline and Punish, 161) The protests can be seen as a jump in physical tasks, not adhering to acceptable amounts of graduation, and completely unexpected. This has the potential to create a space that lacks discipline, but only for a moment before people begin to create new forms of exercises that will create a new regime of discipline. This can be seen in the schedules slowly beginning to develop around the protests. People protest in shifts, either at the park during the day or at night, and a schedule of speakers and workshops is beginning to emerge, slowly producing a system of power and discipline within the society of protesters.

The final area of the Gezi Protests that would concern Foucault, and perhaps the most strongly related to his theories, is the production of knowledge regarding the events. According to Foucault power and knowledge directly imply each other, and power produces knowledge. (Discipline and Punish, 27) This speaks to the reification of expertise, and how only people specifically trained within the realm of science can participate in the production of knowledge. Subjugated knowledges are those which have been disqualified as inadequate or insufficiently elaborated. (Power/Knowledge, 82) The production of knowledge regarding the Gezi protests is occurring on three fronts: the official perspective produced by the Turkish government through Turkish media, the unofficial perspective produced by protesters through social media, and the tentative perspective produced by international media without firsthand experience of the events. The Turkish media has covered very little of the protests, and the government, while not denying the protests, has downplayed their extensiveness and legitimacy. This has aggravated protesters, and countless people have posted about the protests on twitter, facebook, and on personal blogs. The majority of protester-produced content involves pictures, short videos, and tweets, and focuses on the use of police force against the protesters. The internet has made it possible for individuals to share experiences, but the question is whether those experiences are capable of being turned into knowledge. Perhaps recognizing this, protesters have made calls for assistance through various forms of social media, asking for international news to recognize the protests. This call for international recognition shows that media expertise is still valid in the production of social knowledge. Protesters fear that if the only official representation of the protests is controlled by the government and Turkish media, then the events will be both weakened and eventually forgotten. International media, and the expertise given to external, supposedly unbiased reporters trumps the expertise claimed by local reporters, having the potential to produce a knowledge that could eventually be sympathetic to the protesters. Most interesting is that the internet has created a platform that has the potential to be used in the creation of knowledge, but it is still controlled and limited by the social preconceptions of expertise and traditional forms of knowledge production.

Gezi and Agamben

Giorgio Agamben focused on the origins of bio-power, claiming that power turns life into an object and therefore creates politics. His general themes included the exploration of bare life as opposed to good life, thresholds as spaces of intersection, the creation of homo sacer and sovereignty, and legal violence. Agamben’s work may be best used to explain the use of police force in the Gezi Park protests.

In order to understand how police force against the Gezi protesters can be legitimized by the Turkish government it is important to understand Agamben’s concepts of sovereign and homo sacer. According to Agamben these two concepts are mirror images of each other. The sovereign sphere is the sphere in which it is permitted to kill without committing homicide and without celebrating sacrifice (Agamben, 83) and the homo sacer is the person who is set outside of human jurisdiction without being placed beneath the protection of divine law. (82) The sovereign acts by legally placing himself outside of the law while simultaneously declaring that nothing is outside of the law. (15) This allows the sovereign to encite bans, which does not only place someone outside of law, but leaves them exposed and threatened. (28) In contemporary society violence is considered illegal, and also socially unacceptable. However, police are given the right to use force without it being considered violence due to being imbued with power from sovereignty. Prime Minister Erdogan is able to decree that protesters are acting outside of the law, turning them into homo sacer, which justifies the use of police violence. Similarly, police are given the individual power to declare people as acting illegally and use force against them. At the same time protesters are restricted from using violence because they lack the power of the sovereign to declare their actions as legal. Agamben claims that the ban as the original political relation calls into question the theories of a contractual origin of state power based on citizens belonging to a popular, national, religious, or other identity group. (181) Because the sovereign is able to ban any action, by any person, every person is turned into a partial homo sacer and left exposed and vulnerable to violence. However, what was seen at Gezi park did not follow this model. Although Erdogan did try to declare the actions of the protesters illegal, and issue a ban on them, people refused the ban. Protesters declared their actions, and use of force legitimate, while calling international attention to the use of police force, and were able to turn the “legal force” into a state of unacceptable violence. This does not point to a dissolution of sovereign power, but instead points to the power of Erdogan no longer being recognized by Turkish people, and the formation of an international state of sovereignty.

Gezi and Benjamin

Like Foucault, Walter Benjamin was a materialist. He worked to critique social theory by an intense, close examination of everyday objects, and viewed criticism as the cutting of history in order to create space for newness to emerge. He rejected the idea that history is progressive and argued that modern history is actually a natural cycle of catastrophes, and real history cannot begin until a messianic judgment redeems society by naming things by their proper names. The location of the Gezi protests in the heart of Istanbul provides two places that would lend themselves to a Benjamin-inspired examination: Istiklal Street and Gezi Park.

Istiklal Street is a phantasmagoria which can easily be compared to the Paris Arcades in the Arcades Project by Benjamin. As the main shopping street in Istanbul Istiklal is lush with the practice of commodity fetishism. There, labor and violence are removed from public view and fetish objects, such as the latest clothing and technology, promise people anything that they desire, from happiness to freedom. During the protests Istiklal Street was covered with graffiti, from one end to the other, as high as people could reach, whereas other streets received much less physical destruction. Upon initial consideration this can be thought to show a rejection of commodity fetishism, however, when looking at the continuing festival nature of the protests the cycle of history becomes evident. Although the stores on the street are rejected it took only days for men to set up boxes of respiratory masks, swim goggles, and Guy Fawkes masks. These can be seen as replacement fetish objects, fetishizing the concepts of freedom and resistance while continuing the history of commodification.

At the end of Istiklal Street is Gezi Park, the park where these protests began. Protests began against the re-construction of a military barracks which had been torn down in the 1940s. The destruction of the park and continual updating of Istanbul can be seen as a type of deification of progress. Deconstruction is deemed to be necessary to continually modernize the city. The question of why it was important to reconstruct the military barracks brings up the concept of Benjamin’s wish image, an object that sits at the cross between an ur-past and the mythic stage, imbued with the dreams of the past which were never brought to light, while still being an object of the progressive narrative. At the same time the park, a green space, was in the process of being sanitized into something more modern and progressive. In this light the protests at Gezi park can be seen as a protest against the deification of progress and a desire to keep unsanitized, wild space.

One more concept of Benjamin’s that is applicable to the protests involves his concept of catastrophe and shock. Benjamin believes that in modernity we are unable to feel any deep sense of tragedy and to grieve. Instead all that we have are brief states of shock and a continued state of melancholy. I believe that these protests are a prime example of that. People all over the world are curious about the protests, and express shock at the police violence that has happened, but there is very little room, or time, given to actual grieving for the violence and injuries being sustained. For this reason it is very likely that these protests will be written into the myth of progression as necessary defeat (depending on the outcome), and not serve in the preparation for the day of public judgement.

Conclusion

The four perspectives that I have used in this paper to help begin discussion regarding the Gezi Park protests are at times complementary, and at times contradictory. One of the main conclusions which may be drawn from all four theorists is that the protests have created a possibility for action, and for creation. Whether that creation takes the form of constructing a counter-hegemony, creating new forms of power through discipline, examining a global scheme of power, or taking time to examine tragedy and feel grief, I believe that if anything lasting is to come of these protests, the possibility must be acted on soon. Currently in the protests there are various organizations and individuals leading discussions, and acting for these changes, and the coming weeks will show if any actual lasting changes are possible, and will be achieved by the people of Turkey.

References

Antonio Gramsci. “The art and science of politics,” and “Philosophy, common sense, language and folklore,” in David Forgas (ed.) An Antonio Gramsci Reader: Selected Writings 1916-1935. Schocken Books. (1988).

Giorgio Agamben translated by Daniel Heller-Rosen. Homo Sacer: Sovereign Power and Bare Life (Meridian: Crossing Aesthetics). Werner Hamacher and Devid E. Wellbery (eds). Stanford University Press. (1998).

Joseph Fernia. “The Concept of Hegemony,” in Gramsci’s Political Thought. Clarendon Press. (1981).

Michel Foucault. Discipline and Punish: The Birth of the Prison. Vintage Books.(1990).

Michel Foucault. History of Sexuality. Vintage Books. (1990).

Michel Foucault. “Two Lectures” and “Truth and Power” in Power and Knowledge: Selected Interviews and Other Writingsw, 1972-1977. Pantheon Books.

Michael Lowy. Fire Alarm: Reading Walter Benjamin’s “On the Concept of History”. Verso. (2006).

Susan Buck-Morss. The Dialectics of Seeing: Walter Benjamin and the Arcades Project (Studies in Contemporary German Social Thought). MIT Press. (1991).

Sending my voice.

Everything that I am about to write is just rumors and hearsay. I don't actually KNOW what is going on, and perhaps that is the intrigue and intensity of this moment- no one really knows. People are more or less just acting. It is a weekend of action, bubbling all over Istanbul.

About twenty minutes ago the protests reached my neighborhood (7 kilometers from Taksim, where Gezi Park is located). Tonight it takes the form of noise. People banging on pots and pans, yelling, whistling, cheering, playing music. At some moments I cannot tell if it is angry or a party. But coupled with live footage streaming on the computer from Besiktas of tear-gas still being set off, and streets being destroyed it begins to take on the sound of protest. Last night it was the flickering of lights, moving from apartment to apartment, up and down the coastline.

Here's the story, as far as I can tell:

There is a park in the center of Taksim, called Gezi Park. It is an iconic park in Istanbul, perhaps the only large area of greenery up in Taksim. The city decided that it would tear down the park in order to build a shopping center of some sort. Of course some people must have liked the idea, but the people who live there didn't, and over the past few days a sit-in type protest has been arranged at the park, under the name occupy Gezi. Thursday evening we heard light sounds of protest in our neighborhood, but didn't really understand what was going on. By Friday things had taken a turn for the worse. Friday morning (from what a friend told me) there were protesters in the metro station at Taksim. At one point they were told by the police that it was safe to come up. When they reached the top of the stairs tear gas was thrown down into the metro and the door was shut on their face, leaving protesters trapped with tear gas. The government responded to the protests by saying that the people could do whatever they wanted, the decision had been made and would not be changed. At that point the protests shifted to a more general protest, and people from all sorts of groups (football fans being a large number) joined together in Taksim, Besiktas, and Kadikoy to protest.

Friday night I met with Nikola at his work, while things were just beginning, and I talked with one of his co-workers who planned to go down to the protests. When I asked him why he told me that nothing like this had happened in years, and that he needed to be a part of it. He needed to do something. He needed to shout and scream and throw things. When I asked him if he thought anything would change he said absolutely not, without a second thought. After work Nikola and I had dinner with his boss and his bosses wife at their home, and throughout the evening we kept the television turned to the station controlled by the opposition party in Turkey, where they showed footage of protesters being sprayed with water cannons and tear gas. We continuously checked Twitter for updates, of where people were and what the police were doing. Apparently they were using jammers on the 3G networks to limit communication but people and businesses had opened their wifi networks for people to be able to post updates and communicate, as well as left out food and water for the protesters. Sometime during the evening the flickering of the lights started and his boss' wife turned out the lights to show her solidarity. I asked them why, and whether they thought anything would change, and they said the same thing- that there used to be large protests in Turkey in the 80's, but this generation was raised not to protest. They needed to be part of it, for it was the first really large protest under this regime, but, no, they didn't think things would change.

In the morning we saw that a group had taken over the bridge to kadikoy, where pedestrians are no longer allowed due to a large amount of suicides in previous years. There are very few events during the year when pedestrians are allowed on the bridge, and it was amazing to see so many people walking across the channel. Nikola's boss dropped us off at the metro, and we learned that the last two stations of the metro, Taksim and Osmanbay, had been closed due to the protests. The metro, which is almost always full to capacity, was nearly empty on a saturday afternoon. We took the metro two stops where we could catch a bus home, in a roundabout way. We considered going down to the center, just to see, but it seems like a morbid thing to just watch, if you aren't going to participate, and I am not sure that I could or should participate.

When we got home we met up with our flatmate, who had been at the protests all night, uploading pictures to facebook. He excitedly told us that we should go- that it is fun. He seemed to actually hope that something would change, but that did not seem to be his focus as much as the excitement of the actual event. From him we learned that people who had been protesting all over the country, in Ankara and Izmir, were on their way to join the protests. Tonight was slated to be much more intense, with more protesters, and more police. All I know is that it is definitely loud, and the pictures are intense.

I am not sure how long this will continue. Will it last the weekend and then fizzle out? Will it continue until the people get a response from their government? I don't think that anyone knows. This has gone beyond being a protest. It seems to be about participation- about taking part in something, and making your voice heard. I see the windows on my street open, people leaning out of their houses, connecting together, if only for a moment, through the banging of pots and pans and flickering of lights. The energy swells throughout the city, ripples through neighborhood in waves, like some sort of festival of protest. It is bizarre. Just a second ago I saw a group of about 30 women outside my window, going down the streets, banging on pots and shouting. Just women, all together. The sound echoing out of the houses in support of them, and the sight of these women made me cry.

I wonder what my role in all of this is as a foreigner. I have not attached to Istanbul in the past year, and I don't feel engaged in these events. But at the same time I feel a deep sense of sympathy for this city that is rising up these past nights, and I feel the desire to support them.

While usually I am opposed to all of the voices that clamor for attention on the internet tonight I understand the need to post these pictures, write these blogs and let the world know what is happening here. I might not be out on the streets, but at least I can act as a witness, and send my voice out into the noise, to join into some sense of history and awareness. That the people of Istanbul are here, are alive, and are acting today.