Gezi Protests
June of 2013, the height of Turkey's Gezi Protests, was an amazing time to be conducting fieldwork. Outrage over the violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators in Istanbul's Gezi Park and the state-influenced media's blackout on coverage of the events swelled to unprecedented, nation-wide protests against the increasing authoritarianism of AKP rule.
Standing in front of a colorful wall of protest in Ankara's Kugulu Park. The graffiti includes a caricature and a crossed-out face of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, a wordplay on the pepper spray the police used with abandon, and a reference to capulcu - the word meaning "hooligan" or "looter" that Erdogan used to criticize the protesters, but that was rapidly turned into a term of pride and solidarity by the protesters themselves.
Park-goers pose for pictures with the newly graffiti-filled wall's peace sign in Kugulu Park.
As the day wears on in Kugulu Park, protesters gather with a festive spirit, holding signs reading "Capulcus Uniting Can't Be Beaten."
|
The carnivalesque mood is punctuated by reminders of the reason for protest, including a banner reading "An End to Police Violence!"
|
In defiance of the "hooligan" meaning Erdogan attached to protesters by calling them capulcus, these volunteers, one in a Turkish flag, serve free food and water to those gathered.
|
The crowd of protesters spills into the streets off Kugulu Park and fills parts of Ankara's Tunali district as night falls.
|
A sign on the food station mocks PM Recep Tayyip Erdogan's (RTE) call for women to have at least three children, asking "Do you want 3 children like us, RTE?"
|
In line with thousands of witty puns used during Gezi as a non-violent form of resistance recalling James Scott's Weapons of the Weak, this Game of Thrones reference suggests PM Tayyip Erdogan's end is near.
|
A more direct criticism of government-endorsed police violence: "If tyranny is legitimate, rebellion is a right."
|
Perhaps most direct of all: "Resign"
Protesters begin to assemble in the Nisantasi neighborhood of Istanbul, blocked by a police barricade from marching to Taksim Square
|
By mid-June, nearly all protesters were coming equipped with protective gear ranging from surgical masks and scarves to professional gas masks and construction hardhats.
|
Protesters boo the police for ordering the crowd to disperse and putting on their own protective gear.
|
A protester climbs onto a make-shift barrier of recycling containers, urging the crowd to remain peaceful.
|
Protesters alternate between taking photos and adjusting gas masks as police aim tear gas canisters at the crowd just before firing.
|
Gezi protesters spanned socio-economic, religious, and generational identity categories.
|
Gezi protests spread to individual neighborhoods as well as city centers - I took this in the Dikmen neighborhood of Ankara.
|
After CNN Turk broadcast a penguin documentary while the police were cracking down in Gezi Park (CNN International was providing live footage of the violent measures used), the clever use of penguin symbols from t-shirts to balloons became a poignant and effective form of mocking the government-imposed media silence.