A Moment of Elation: The Gezi Protests/Resistance and the Fading of the AKP Project

Abstract

Soli Özel situates Gezi in a broader, more global, context and offers insights into the societal dynamics that might have led to the June protests. Pointing to the commonalities between social movements in countries as dissimilar as Thailand, Brazil, Ukraine and Greece (or indeed the Arab world), Özel stresses the role of the impoverished middle classes, who try to turn these protests into an opportunity to produce participatory and democratic political spaces. What was put into practice with these demonstrations in Turkey is a search for a new definition of citizenship, Özel argues, as well as “an attempt to enlarge the liberal democratic space in Turkish politics”.