International audienceIn June 2013, Istanbul and many cities across Turkey became stages of massive demonstrations and occupations, which were sparked by a conflict over Gezi Park in central Istanbul. For many, the ‘park issue’ was simply the last straw, and it led to unprecedented revolt, reflecting a huge number of grievances against the government for some, while for others it emphasized the impoverishing consequences of the Justice and Development Party’s (AKP’s) urban policies. Instead of disentangling causes and effects, we think that a productive way of approaching the oppositional surge that erupted in Gezi Park is through the political work that space does in the context of the increasing prominence of speculation-driven and authoritarian interventions in urban spaces. Gezi, as an event, not only disrupted the routinized scripts of an increasingly autocratic government and defied the presumed consensus over real-estate and infrastructure-led economic growth policies, but also helped to articulate a series of political agendas across the urban–rural continuum that came before it. Even after the occupation, the Gezi spirit continued to politicize space through various de-localizations. By elaborating on a particular phrase popularized during Gezi, namely yaşam alanı (life space), the article discusses how the riot’s political impact deepened and expanded not only through defending a space but also by creating new ones, both materially and conceptually
Twenty-first century Turkey has been shaped by two conflicting trends: all-encompassing reform in almost all aspects of law that were transformative if not altogether progressive, and an increasing erosion of the rule of law, which finally culminated in a nation-wide emergency regime and the April 2017 constitutional referendum. The pressing question for many is why the promising reform era was abandoned for crude repression? In this essay, we answer this question by challenging its very foundation and pointing instead to an alternative line of inquiry concerning Turkish politics and society, one that focuses precisely on the interplay between reform and repression. The constitutional referendum of April 2017 compels observers and scholars of Turkey to reevaluate the interplay between reform and repression. Rather than reading contemporary Turkey as a case of relapse from reform into repression, as many commentators do, we suggest approaching reform and repression as concomitant and complementary modes of government.
This chapter traces the multiple trajectories of neoliberal politics in Turkey from 1980 onward by putting economic and sociological dynamics of neoliberalism in dialogue with ethnographic and anthropological analyses of its political configurations. The first two sections trace the two formative moments of neoliberal politics in Turkey as responses to the crisis conjunctures of the 1970s and 1990s. These sections provide an account of neoliberal politics informed by class struggles at the macro-historical level. The subsequent two sections analyze the same historical periods at the level of micropolitics from two perspectives: (a) the formations of violence characterizing the enactment of neoliberalization processes, and (b) the subjective processes through which neoliberalism harnesses economies of desire. The final section returns to the macro-historical level and offers critical reflections regarding the direction of the economic politics that is emerging as the institutional architecture of neoliberal governmentality is being dismantled under Erdoğan’s “new Turkey.”
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