Focusing on the intense aftermath of the Gezi park episode, this book scrutinises the ways in which activists pursued a rugged journey of radical democratic mobilisation in Istanbul, including public parks, neighbourhoods and squat houses. Synthesising the findings of field research carried out during 2014-2016 in Istanbuls Yourtçu Park Forum with archival documents and secondary literature, this book weaves the voices of the activists into the narrative. Kaan Aartan offers a critical analysis of the initial force of the Gezi uprising and its subsequent unravelling in reconstituting a more egalitarian society and democratic citizenship in Turkey.
Arvustused
This book is a wonderful and strong addition to an emerging body of literature on this time period. It will make a unique contribution in the reconceptualising of social movements something desperately needed in the field of sociology. -- Marina A. Sitrin, Binghamton University
Introduction
The Road to Gezi
Mobilisational Democracy: Gezi Episode as Social Movement
Spatial Democracy: Gezi Episode as Urban Insurgency
Radical Democracy: Gezi Episode as Building the Common
Trouble in Paradise?
Conclusion
Bibliography
Index
Kaan Aartan is Associate Professor of Sociology at Framingham State University. His authored and co-authored publications appeared in New Global Studies, Global Labour Journal, Journal of Balkan and Near Eastern Studies, Sociology Compass, European Journal of Turkish Studies, Journal of International Affairs, New Perspectives on Turkey, and Capital and Class. He is the co-editor (with Aye Bura) of Reading Karl Polanyi for the Twenty-first Century: Market Economy as a Political Project (Palgrave, 2007). In 2023, he was awarded a Visiting Fellowship by the British Academy. During this fellowship he spent three months at the University of Huddersfield (UK) and co-authored a book manuscript (with Camilo Tamayo Gomez) titled Reimagining Radical Democracy in the Global South: Emerging Paradigms from Colombia and Turkey which is currently under contract with Cambridge University Press.
