Cultural Anthropology: The What of Occupation, “You Took Our Cemetery, You Won’t Have Our Park!” – Alice von Bieberstein and Nora Tataryan

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Retrospectively it became a foreboding. Or, in other words, reality came to grimly echo the creative intervention of an Armenian youth group in Gezi Park. Shortly after setting up their association’s tent in the middle of the park during the first days of the occupation,Nor Zartonk stapled together two pieces of grey Styrofoam resembling a gravestone and marked with the line, [...] → Read the full article…

Cultural Anthropology: Masculinized Power, Queered Resistance – Salih Can Açıksöz and Zeynep Korkman

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On the morning of July 1st, exhausted from the first night of clashes with the riot police but still upbeat, the crowd of young male soccer fans with eyes red from tear gas chanted, “Go on, spray, go on, spray. Go on spray tear gas. Strip your helmet, drop your baton. Let’s see who is the real man!” This would [...] → Read the full article…

Roads and Kingdoms: Soccer and the Street in Istanbul – Izzy Finkel

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Istanbul’s streets hosted a new kind of violence this summer: a civil uprising that extended beyond hooligans to environmentalists to young people who feel sidelined under what they see as the government’s increasingly authoritarian rule. The protests unleashed a polarization of the kind the country had never seen outside of the football… So it was one of the unlikeliest of [...] → Read the full article…

Radical Philosophy: Smells like Gezi spirit – Democratic sensibilities and carnivalesque politics in Turkey – Meyda Yeğenoğlu

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A small protest in Istanbul, which began by aiming to protect the urban greenery, was rapidly turned into a full-blown nationwide resistance. The protests should be regarded as the most important outcry of the Turkish people since the 1980 coup, and herald a new period in the history of Turkey. But it would be a mistake to try to understand [...] → Read the full article…

After GEZI PARK and GULSUYU the struggle continues at METU: Let’s protect our urban habitat against violation and abuse!

Our living spaces are perpetually threatened by all institutions of the governing political logic. Not long ago, this logic had shown its dark and revanchist face through the clouds of tear gas during Gezi and it’s now re-surfacing on bumpers of bulldozers destroying the Middle East Technical University (METU) campus, one of the few remaining green spaces of Ankara. What [...] → Read the full article…

Bianet: Censored Magazine Issue Published As Book in Turkey

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Metis Publishing House released the book version of “Gezi Resistance” issue of NTV Tarih, a popular history magazine that was closed down due to its attitude towards Gezi protests. Metis Publishing House released the book version of “Gezi Resistance” issue of NTV Tarih [History in Turkish]. Doğuş Group’s NTV Tarih magazine was halted before the aforementioned issue came out. Metis [...] → Read the full article…

Ottawa Gezi Platform: illustrated message of solidarity with ODTU Resistance

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We stand shoulder to shoulder with our friends in Oslo, Berlin, New York, London, Boston, Goteborg, Metz, Paris, Amsterdam, Dresden, and Frankfurt to offer this symbolic act of tree planting to ODTU faculty and students in Ankara. We stand by OTDU’s right to follow through all political and legal means of dissent and appeal as outlined by the decision of [...] → Read the full article…

AFP: Ankara students revive dormant Turkish protest movement

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Four months after protests against the planned redevelopment of an Istanbul park devolved into a violent national uproar against the government, Turkish students are taking to the streets once again to fight an all-too-familiar scheme. Turkish riot police fired on students with tear gas and water cannon as workers broke ground last week on a road that will intersect the [...] → Read the full article…

Bianet: 11 Detained at METU Solidarity Protest in Istanbul

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Police detained 11 individuals who gathered in Istanbul to protest the cutting of trees for a road construction on METU campus in Ankara. While 4 were released briefly after, the remaining 11 detainees will testify before a prosecutor today. Police detained 11 individuals who gathered in downtown Istanbul to protest the cutting of trees for a road construction on METU [...] → Read the full article…