Protests in Taksim Square: Defining Civic Space Through Public Intervention (original) (raw)
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Genie in the bottle: Gezi Park, Taksim Square, and the realignment of democracy and space in Turkey
Leaving _ Istanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the _ Istanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 _ Istanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond.
The Scale of Public Space: Taksim Square in Istanbul
A B S T R A C T This article aims at following the traces of the transformation of public sphere in Turkey through its manifestations on urban public spaces with the case study of Taksim Square. In this attempt, the article illustrates how Taksim square, as a public space, has been shaped by struggles between different ideologies, discourses, political decisions and daily activities taking place at personal, interpersonal, local, national, supranational and global scales. Through this way this article also aims at understanding how these contestations at different scales are affecting people, individually and collectively, from daily life practices to political integration. The article also discusses that our daily life practices and preferences are political decisions and our participation in public sphere occurs through those daily actions of the personal spheres. Therefore, the article suggests that a paradigm shift is needed in the design and production of the built environments that will facilitate the coexistence of multiple counter publics.
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The year 2011 saw unprecedented waves of people occupying key locations around the world in a statement of public discontent. In Egypt, the protests which took place between 25 January and 11 February 2011 culminating in the ouster of former Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak have now come to be known as the Egyptian Revolution. Media reporting of the revolution often portrayed it as a ‘spectacle’ playing out on the stage of Tahrir Square which was dubbed ‘the symbolic heart of the Egyptian revolution’. Tahrir Square quickly became a space serving various functions and layered with an array of meanings. This paper explores the relationship between the discourse of protest messages and the space of Tahrir Square during the January 25 revolution, demonstrating how the two were mutually reinforcing. The messages are drawn from a corpus of approximately 2000 protest messages captured in Tahrir Square between 25 January and 11 February 2011. The analysis is presented in the form of six conceptualising frames for the space of Tahrir Square which take into account both its geographical and social context. The conceptualisation draws from the field of geosemiotics, which posits that all discourses are ‘situated’ both in space and time (Scollon & Scollon 2003), and on the Lefebvrian principles of the production of space which provide a useful framework for interpreting urban space (Lefebvre 1991).
Space and protest: A tale of two Egyptian squares
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Protests and revolts take place in public space. How they can be controlled or how protests develop depend on the physical layout of the built environment. This study reveals the relationship between urban space and protest for two Egyptian squares: Tahrir Square and Rabaa Al-Adawiya in Cairo. For analysis, the research uses space syntax method. The results of this analysis are then compared with descriptions of the protest behaviour. As it turns out, the spatial properties of Tahrir square seem more effective for protesters to succeed than Rabaa Al-Adawiya. Protesters seem seek spaces with a high degree of accessibility on a local scale as well as on a city-wide scale and a high degree of symbolic value. Furthermore, the number of alternative routes, access points, shorter block lengths, and increased visibility are spatial factors affecting where and how demonstrations take place.
Cambridge University Press eBooks, 2006
Purpose-The purpose of this paper is to explain how abstract space of the Stateuniversally and specifically within the context of Middle Eastern citiesaims 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 theyin a contradictory mannermay 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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This article discusses the politics of public space through the particular example of Taksim Square in Istanbul. Tracing Taksim’s history since the early twentieth century, the article analyzes the instrumentalization of public space in nation-building, the socialization of politics within the context of postwar rapid urbanization, and the (re)politicization of public space under neoliberal Islamism. Finally it arrives at an assessment of the nation-wide antigovernment protests that centered on Taksim Square in May–June 2013.
Space and Politics: Changing of Social Activities in Tahrir Square, Egypt
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Urban space is a component of a city that changes during the history of a nation over several periods. While public spaces must provide users with a sense of attachment and identity, both emotionally and visually, certain urban public spaces seem to embody the cities in which they are found. Tahrir Square is considered one of the most significant spaces in Egypt. It was originally named “Ismailia Square” after the 19th-century ruler Khedive Ismail, who built the new downtown district’s “Paris on the Nile” design. After the Egyptian Revolution of 1919, the square became known as Tahrir (Liberation) Square. Public space is taken by many to refer to things like the media, the internet and networks of citizens in civil society, such that “the literal meaning has almost been wiped out” (Hénaff & Strong, 2001). Thus, this paper aims to examine the dramatic changes in the daily social activities in Tahrir Square over the past few years following political events. To achieve this, the study will start with an overview of the urban context and its historical development for the square up to its recent form, taking into account all the political events which occur there. Following this, the study will monitor all the added social activities and behavioural maps through various tools to reach the main conclusions, which in turn will clarify the direct link between how people react to the space and the significant political events.
History of Protest Spaces in İstanbul
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Main aim of this thesis is to examine evolution of protest spaces in İstanbul. While examining these spaces, I asked how social movements establish a relationship with the city and whether searching for particular spaces in which this relationship materialized can provide a new way of looking at the history of city and its transformation. For these purposes, a database of manifestations in İstanbul’s public spaces have been collected from newspapers and other periodical publications. News from 1960s which can be considered as the era of new wave in street manifestations chosen as start point for archival research whereas 2010 which marks a turning point because of May 1st celebrations in İstanbul marked its ending. This data provided a base for locating distinctive protest spaces in city’s borders. By using multi correspondence analysis, protests as well as their spaces, actors, dates and topics have been clustered. In order to understand the continuity and transformation, protest spaces and factors affecting their mobilization singularly examined according to location and in relation to turning points in Turkey’s political history. This helped to understand mobilizations of different groups and their relation to particular protest spaces.
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This chapter aims to discuss the public agency of Çarşı (the fan group of the Istanbul football club Beşiktaş) and its role in the Gezi movement by examining Çarşı’s interactions with other actors of the movement. In addition to their vehement support for their football team, Çarşı is also known for promoting and developing welfare projects, and the group was a central figure in Gezi. Although the group clearly displays leftist tendencies, they do not adhere to a particular political agenda. In Gezi, they found themselves in the middle of the protests, clashing with the police. Çarşı became “muscle” in the movement by engaging in physical conflict and guiding less experienced protesters as well as first timers. My main argument is that Gezi, as a public square movement, created a stage for interaction and performativity where actors came together and co-constructed not only a collective defence but also a different way of living and relating to each other in the occupied public place of Gezi. By examining how a soccer fan group interacts with the actors of Gezi protests, this paper focus on the new forms of public agency that emerged out of the Gezi movement.