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In the summer of 2013, police violence against the protesters resisting an urban renewal project that would transform the Gezi Park into a shopping mall gave rise to arguably the largest wave of protests in Turkey’s recent history. Hailed as the “Turkish Spring” or “Occupy Turkey,” the impromptu protest wave has sparked an intense international debate about Turkish democracy, neoliberalism, secularism, Islam, and authoritarianism, and led to the questioning of the feasibility of the so-called Turkish model for the wider Middle East. This talk aims to present an eventful history of the Gezi protests. Locating the protests within the larger structures of Turkish political life, the talk discusses how and why the Gezi protests transformed or failed to overcome the fault lines of Turkish politics.
Dr. Aciksoz is a sociocultural anthropologist whose main research explores how violence transforms people and communities and gives way to new gender and political identities. He has published articles on the Kurdish conflict, masculinity, disability, nationalism, trauma, social movements, and new reproductive technologies. He is currently working on a book manuscript entitled “Sacrificial Limbs of Sovereignty: Gender, Violence, and Embodied Politics in Turkey.”