Explaining different orientations to the 2013 Gezi Park demonstrations in Istanbul, Turkey

Abstract

Although a notable minority orient to real‐world demonstrations by actively participating, other less involved, safer, orientations are more frequent. Thus, in the context of anti‐government demonstrations in Gezi Park/Taksim Square in Istanbul, Turkey, in 2013, we distinguished between the orientations of participating, visiting, and watching. Study 1 (N = 359) and Study 2 (N = 327) confirmed that participating was characterized by greater experience of police violence and feelings of collective empowerment (Drury & Reicher, European Journal of Social Psychology, 35, 2005, 35) than visiting and watching the demonstrations. Expanding upon and replicating the findings from Study 1, Study 2 examined identification with protestors and left‐wing ideology, along with constructs (social support, anger at the government, protestor's efficacy, endorsement of protestors) from the dynamic dual pathway model (van Zomeren et al., Personality and Social Psychology Review, 16, 2012, 180) as predictors of the three different orientations to the demonstrations. As expected, the dynamic dual pathway model predicted reported participation via endorsement of protestors, independent of identification with protestors and left‐wing ideology.

Formation of an emergent protestor identity: Applying the EMSICA to the Gezi Park protests

“…The Gezi Park protests have been internationally recognized as a milestone in the history of collective action in Turkey (see Acar & Uluğ, 2016; Arat, 2013; Bee & Kaya, 2017; Demirdağ & Hasta, 2019; Farro & Demirhisar, 2014; Gürcan & Peker, 2014, 2015; Stewart et al, 2019). On May 28, 2013, a small group of environmentalists camped out in Gezi Park, one of the few remaining green spaces in the center of the European side of Istanbul, when bulldozers entered to start cutting down trees.…”

Collective Action in Turkey: What Do We Know and Where Do We Go Next?

“…In the context of Turkey, previous work on the association between identification and collective action confirm the significant role of ingroup identification in offline collective action (e.g., Acar & Uluğ, 2016;Bükün, 2014;Özkan, 2014;Stewart et al, 2019) and online collective action (Odağ, Uluğ, & Solak, 2016;Varnali & Gorgulu, 2015). In addition, Odağ et al (2021) have demonstrated that social identity concerns, such as uniting for a common cause or being a part of something larger (i.e., a larger protest movement), are particularly important motivators that drive activists to participate in collective action.…”

“…Combing through this burgeoning literature on collective action in Turkey, we identified three defining features. First, the majority of social psychological research conducted in the last ten years on collective action has mostly focused on the Gezi Park protests (e.g., Leach et al, 2016;Stewart et al, 2019;Uysal & Akfırat, 2021a). Only a few studies have been conducted on protests against sexism (e.g., Fischer et al, 2017;Uluğ, Odağ, & Solak, 2020), protests related to women's issues (Okuyan & Curtin, 2018), protests related to LGBTQ+ rights (Uysal et al, COLLECTIVE ACTION AND SOCIAL CHANGE IN TURKEY 7 2021), protests supporting religious groups' rights (e.g., Acar et al, 2021;Bükün, 2014), protests for improving the current conditions of one's ethnic group and for ethnic justice Bagci & Turnuklu, 2019;Tropp et al, 2021) and protests favouring freedom of expression (Solak et al, 2021).…”

“…With regards to the operationalization of social identification, research has focused on identification with a variety of groups such as identification with protesters of movement (Ayanian et al, 2021;Leach et al, 2016;Stewart et al, 2019;Uysal & Akfırat, 2021a, ethnic identity Bagci & Turnuklu, 2019;Çakal et al, 2016), gender identity (Özkan, 2014), feminist identity and heterosexual identity (Uysal et al, 2021), women's rights defender identity (Uluğ et al, 2020), religious identity (Baysu & Phalet, 2017;Bükün, 2014), university identity (Bükün, 2021) or an emergent social identity developed in the contexts of crowds such as çapulcu identity in the Gezi Park protests (Odağ et al, 2016;Uluğ & Acar, 2019;Uluğ & Solak, 2021). However, the majority of work (e.g., Bükün, 2021;Uluğ et al, 2020) drew on social identity theory, particularly the social identity model of collective action (SIMCA; van Zomeren et al, 2008).…”

Hawker Centres: A Social Space Approach to Promoting Community Wellbeing

“…A socially shared experience can support processes that enable coaction with like-minded others (Radomskaya & Pearce, 2021;Stewart et al, 2019). A coaction effect is a phenomenon whereby task performance can increase as a result of the presence of others (social facilitation, see Harkins, 1987).…”