It’s worth remembering that Erdogan’s mystique first showed cracks over his virulent reaction to the Gezi Park protests. That too was about huge building projects. There’s something about construction that seems to matter a lot to Erdogan’s grip on power. The fact is, no other industry does the same job that banks do of dispersing money throughout the economy, while [...] → Read the full article…
The drive to reclaim a people’s right to their city led to the revival of Turkish civic identity and highlighted the growing importance of social capital. Why did it take so long for Turkey? Before the summer of 2013, Turkey was considered one of the few success stories of the post-2008 global political economy. Within the last decade the country [...] → Read the full article…
A crackdown on anti-government protests forced the art show to abandon its more edgy ideas. But the spirit of Taksim Square is not entirely absent For the time being, the days of “art for art’s sake” are over in Turkey. A police crackdown on a fresh protest in Taksim Square threatened to overshadow the opening of the Istanbul Biennial, the country’s most important [...] → Read the full article…
What made Gezi Experience particularly striking is that through the commoning of Taksim (that is, its ‘enclosure’ against the state), and collective production of space, people were already actively producing a different kind of urban life. The Gezi struggle therefore was not simply about the conservation of an existing commons, but the defense – through production – of a future urban commons. [...] → Read the full article…
Two part interview with Mücella Yapıcı, Secretary of Taksim Solidarity and General Secretary of Chamber of Architects, Istanbul Branch. Subtitles and translation provided by translators’ platform Translate for Justice. PART I PART II 28 June 2013 Source: translateforjustice.com
It is with alarming regularity that I read coverage of the protests and ensuing police brutality that erupted in Gezi Park and Taksim Square, Istanbul that emphatically insists that the confrontations are about “so much more than a park.” Reassuring their readers that the protests are not about something as silly or simple as the defense of a small park [...] → Read the full article…
Tens of thousands of demonstrators flooded the streets of Turkey’s four biggest cities on Sunday, braving tear gas and rubber bullets on the third day of the fiercest anti-government demonstrations in years. They were protesting a violent crackdown by the government against initially peaceful protesters trying to halt the demolition of a park next to Taksim Square – the heart [...] → Read the full article…