Urban Utopias and How They Fell Apart: The Political Ecology of Gezi Parkı

Harmanşah, Ömür

doi:10.1057/9781137413789_9

Cited by 13 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 7 publications

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Section: The Gezi Park Movement and Alienation Of Spatiality Of Politmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As Harmanşah (2014) indicates, the State approaches Gezi Park and Taksim Square through a lens of uncritical historicism, to reinvent the Turkish and more so Istanbul's identity in line with its neoliberal and Islamic ideology: Any kind of uncritical historicism about public space is susceptible to appropriation by today's neoconservative, authoritarian discourse of the capitalist state that would not hesitate to put a blanket over painful memories of that space, marginalize opposing voices from the public sphere and exercise greater control over city's thus gentrified and commercialized spaces. (p. 129) The space around the Taksim area and Gezi Park during and after the movement was inscribed by anti-market and anti-state graffiti and sentiments.…”

Section: Radical Spatiality In Tehranmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The abstract space and the alienation of political public space in the Middle East

Zamani

Mehan

2019

ARCH

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Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explain how abstract space of the State – universally and specifically within the context of Middle Eastern cities – aims to homogenise the city and eliminate any anomaly that threatens its power structure. Design/methodology/approach Through a historical and discourse analysis of these policies and processes in the two case studies, this paper presents a contextualised reading of Lefebvre’s concept of abstract space and process of abstraction in relation to the alienation of political public spaces. Findings The paper proposes that regardless of these homogenising strategies being applied universally, they fail to respond to contextual particularities and therefore they – in a contradictory manner – may themselves produce a space of resistance and difference. Originality/value This paper focusses on Iran, the case of Tehran and Turkey, the case of Taksim Square and Gezi Park in Istanbul. Recent policies and strategies have been proposed and implemented to reduce, alienate and possibly neutralise the impacts of urban and political protests in these cities and socio-political contexts.

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Section: The Gezi Park Movement and Alienation Of Spatiality Of Politmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Radical Spatiality In Tehranmentioning

confidence: 99%

The abstract space and the alienation of political public space in the Middle East

Zamani

Mehan

2019

ARCH

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“…There is a great effort on the part of the government to align itself on the side of the Ottoman world, as if Ottoman Empire is repeatable and as if there had not been an eight-five-year Republican history in-between. Governance of space/time/historical victories (and/or losses) and common memories as a resurrection of a glorified Ottoman-ization reveals itself in many other areas (Karaosmanoğlu 2010;Harmanşah 2014). Refugee integration has also some traits of this governing ideology.…”

Section: A Short Review Of the Literature And The Background Of The Cmentioning

confidence: 99%

Metamorphosis of educational understanding: Temporary integration regarding Syrians in Turkey

Samuk

2018

Border Crossing

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The integration of refugees in Turkey has been realized in the field with the help of DGMM (Directorate General on Migration Management), Kızılay and UNHCR mainly, and by many more international and non-governmental organizations that have supported refugees by answering their short-term needs such as giving them cards for shopping, clothes, preparing them for winter (“winterization”) and providing educational assistance. I conducted 15 interviews with state officials, various NGOs and a few refugees. During my research many interesting points about integration policies (to-be-formed) at the moment in Turkey were discovered. One interesting finding was that the state officials do not like to use the word “integration”, as it is reminiscent of the way Turkish migrant workers were treated in Germany, where assimilation and integration were understood as the same concept. I use the term “temporary integration” for the case of all refugees, but this article will focus mostly on the Syrians. Within the context of temporariness, this article’s central attention will be the educational integration of Syrian refugees in Turkey. I argue in the paper that the temporariness and the nostalgia with the Ottoman past are two main elements mostly present regarding the educational integration of Syrians in Turkey.

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“…Environmental concerns (protection of the park and the trees); issues of urban space (destruction of a park to build a shopping mall – inside the artillery barracks; the way in which decisions concerning the transformation of urban space have been taken, i.e. top‐down, without citizen consultation) (Harmanşah, ); perceived interference with ways of life and creeping moralism (the ban on the sale of alcohol after 10 pm); Erdoğan's paternalistic rhetoric and antagonistic style; general frustration with the political system, including the opposition; fantasies of regime change, in particular on the part of the Kemalist old guard and the radical left, all mix and give expression to a wide gamut of grievances, fears and aspirations and, interestingly leading those who utter them to listen to others doing the same.…”

Section: A Difficult Democracymentioning

confidence: 99%

A momentary lapse of reason? Gezi in social‐historical perspective

Sofos¹

2018

J Historical Sociology

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Through the social‐historical contextualization of Gezi protests and drawing on the works of Badiou and Turner this article conceptualises the protests as a ‘happening’ or ‘event’ characterized by rupture and liminality. Without underestimating their importance as a meaning creation process, it is argued that the visions inspiring Gezi have been/are in sharp contrast to the version of democracy shaped by the fears and aspirations of at least a plurality of the country's citizenry and enacted by the Justice and Development Party (AKP). At the same time, these visions remain largely incomprehensible to the Kemalist and nationalist opposition. The paper therefore suggests that Gezi should be located outside the linear time and conventional topography of Turkish politics and interpreted as a brief, powerful moment of rupture in a political system where both the incumbent political forces and the opposition and their constituencies are resisting change and consider extra‐institutional ‘antipolitics’ as a threat.

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Urban Utopias and How They Fell Apart: The Political Ecology of Gezi Parkı

Cited by 13 publications

References 7 publications

The abstract space and the alienation of political public space in the Middle East

The abstract space and the alienation of political public space in the Middle East

Metamorphosis of educational understanding: Temporary integration regarding Syrians in Turkey

A momentary lapse of reason? Gezi in social‐historical perspective

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