Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)

Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)

Leaving İstanbul Bilgi University on 22 May 2013, conveners of the İstanbul Seminars could not have guessed that less than a week later the arguments they had debated would be revisited under a new light. For little did anybody know that in the summer of 2013 İstanbul would become the stage of one of the most intriguing of urban uprisings in Turkish, if not world, contemporary history. In this article I would like to take up some of the challenges brought (...) up by Gezi resistance to rethink the concept of democracy through the changing ways in which people engage with urban public spaces in Turkey, and beyond. (shrink)

This article is based on an ethnographic investigation of the Gezi Park events in 2013. Starting from the much acknowledged characteristics of Gezi as being its cultural and political pluralism and its commitment to non-violence, in this article we are engaging with two interlinked questions: How has the plurality of participants and orientations been possible to attain, and how could this pluralism be contained without any major conflict at Gezi? We propose to provide an answer by focusing on the manners (...) of everyday life at Gezi Park during the time of dissidence, which we conceptualize as ‘manner of contention’. It was the manner of contention that characterized the specific ways in which contentious politics took place at Gezi and prevented the formation of clashes among the plurality of contenders. The ethnographic research delineates at least 4 components of manner of contention in the case of Gezi: an ethos of collective work; a spirit of exchange and gift-giving; politeness; and non-violence. (shrink)