Remaking the public through the square. Invention of the new national cosmology in turkey (original) (raw)

This paper examines the formation of authoritarian populism in Turkey by analysing mass mobilization and its repercussions in the 10 symbolic and imaginary realms as authoritarian right-wing popu-lisms have gained global popularity. It scrutinises the AKP government's mobilization of the masses in the so-called 'democracy watches' after the coup attempt on 15 July 2016. During the demonstrations that took place in various locations in Istanbul, 15 authors carried out participant observation fieldwork and field interviews. The paper concludes that democracy watches constitute a significant means of constructing and consolidating a new authoritarian regime, thereby endowing this consolidation process with a popular legitimacy. On 15 July 2016, a coup attempt took place in Turkey for which the Fethullah Gülen Community (FGC) 1 is still being held accountable. This event was a caesura with substantial implications for the democratic process and transformation of the public sphere. A state of emergency was declared immediately after the attempted coup and has been in effect until now. Since then, we have witnessed hundreds of thousands of public 25 officials having lost their jobs on the grounds of being members of the FGC or other oppositional 'political' organizations. These expulsions from public offices were enforced by decree. 2 Custodians were assigned to many companies affiliated with the FGC, whose assets were later confiscated by the state. Furthermore, the elected cadres in the Kurdish