Introduction

Abstract

No one could have predicted that a peaceful sit-in held by a handful of environmental activists on 28 May 2013 to counter government plans to raze Istanbul’s Gezi Park in order to make room for the construction of a replica of the 19th-century Ottoman Artillery Barracks would escalate into a country-wide protest movement – arguably the most serious political crisis Turkey, a country often hailed as a “model” in the region, has faced in the past ten years. Triggered by violent police crackdown and precipitated by Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s defiant and polarizing rhetoric, the demonstrations quickfy spread to other cities (there had been more than 200 protests in 67 cities across the country by 3 June, according to the then Interior Minister Muammer Güler; see also “Timeline of Gezi Protests” at the end of the book), turning Gezi into a hub of diverse grievances, mostly directed at what was widefy perceived as the ruling Justice and Development Party’s (AKP) growing “authoritarian” tendencies.