excerpt of the TEACHING GUIDE for “Resistance Everywhere”: The Gezi Protests and Dissident Visions of Turkey
While putting together this volume, we had the broad base of our readership in mind. First of all, as an act and product of archiving, we hope our JadMag issue will be useful to researchers, academics, journalists, and readers interested in social media, as well as curious general readers. In addition to providing a diverse array of analyses and a variety of perspectives, the essays included in the volume also speak to some of the most hotly debated historically and regionally specific research questions, while engaging with some pressing analytical debates in contemporary social theory.
This volume aims at providing a basic introduction to recent and interrelated sets of events in Turkey, which have already made history. It also works to situate these events in their global and local contexts and strives to contribute to ongoing debates about state-citizen relations, regimes of state control, and forms of dissident and collective political action that continue to generate tectonic transformations in the region that is commonly referred to as “the Middle East.” In academic settings in particular, we hope that the texts, combined with select literature from the resources bibliography, will prove interesting to undergraduates and graduate students alike: be it as part of graduate-level seminars, or as a unit as part of introductory and advanced undergraduate classes. The articles are divided according to topic, so the whole issue can be assigned to provide an overview of recent events in Turkey, or particular sections can be introduced into classes with a particular focus: for example, the clusters of articles dealing with the peace process, with sexing and bodying the resistance, with neoliberalism, and with struggles around the right to the city.
A number of questions can be raised after reading each section of the book. Here are some suggestions:
Background / Understanding the Peace Process
The Nature of the Gezi Resistance
b. Were the Gezi Protests a conspiracy of “marginal groups”?
4. What does “areligious” refer to, as distinct from “religious” and “secular”?
5. How has the term “marginal” been used in the Turkish political context, and specifically, during the Gezi Protests?
6. How did the Gezi Protests utilize visual images? What were the main slogans, symbols, and targets of protest? How did visual images help different groups become visible in Gezi Park?
7. How would you define the some of the main characteristics of the Gezi Protests?
Sexing and Bodying the Resistance
Resistance to Neoliberalism and the Struggle for the City
After reading this material, students could be encouraged to research several different topics. This collection provides background to the Gezi Protests, focusing on Turkey’s evolving foreign policy in the region, as well as on the peace process and its connection to the protests; either of these larger topics would be ripe for further research. Another would be the larger topic of neoliberalism—specifically, the relationship of neoliberalism to law, to public spaces and private spaces, to the city, and to the family, among other areas that students can further investigate. A second set of topics might concern state, law, and violence. A third set of topics could be the politics of gender and law, or related topics involving the gendering and sexing of various discourses around the Gezi Protests, by both the government and by the protesters themselves. Finally, the material provided in this collection could equip students to do further research on politics and visuality, with the use of visual culture in the Gezi Protests as a case study.
The resources provided as an appendix to this collection are intended to be of use to a variety of readers, from those who may already have some knowledge of Turkey to those readers looking for introductory or background information. It includes a bibliography of secondary material, with sections devoted to the topics of state formation; nationalism, citizenship, and subjectivity; Islam, religion, and secularism; political economy and neoliberalism; urban geographies; women, feminism, and gender; and Kurds and Turkey’s “Kurdish Question.” It also includes a list of feature and documentary films dealing with many of the issues covered in the collection. For readers wishing to do further research on many of the contemporary issues covered by this special issue, there is also a list of online resources for a variety of organizations; general and specialized websites and blogs, in both English and Turkish; a list of newspapers, journals, and alternative sources of information; and maps, all of which are available online. For those wishing to pursue information related to social media, the resources include links to key bloggers, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts.
[See more inside...]
This volume aims at providing a basic introduction to recent and interrelated sets of events in Turkey, which have already made history. It also works to situate these events in their global and local contexts and strives to contribute to ongoing debates about state-citizen relations, regimes of state control, and forms of dissident and collective political action that continue to generate tectonic transformations in the region that is commonly referred to as “the Middle East.” In academic settings in particular, we hope that the texts, combined with select literature from the resources bibliography, will prove interesting to undergraduates and graduate students alike: be it as part of graduate-level seminars, or as a unit as part of introductory and advanced undergraduate classes. The articles are divided according to topic, so the whole issue can be assigned to provide an overview of recent events in Turkey, or particular sections can be introduced into classes with a particular focus: for example, the clusters of articles dealing with the peace process, with sexing and bodying the resistance, with neoliberalism, and with struggles around the right to the city.
A number of questions can be raised after reading each section of the book. Here are some suggestions:
Background / Understanding the Peace Process
- How has Turkey’s foreign policy changed in relation to the Middle East? To what extent has it remain the same in light of unfolding events?
- What does “politicide” mean and how is it applied to Kurds in Turkey?
- How has the use of drones changed the ways in which governments practice and legitimize violence?
- What does “the peace process” in Turkey refer to and what is its background?
- How are the Gezi Protests and the peace process linked?
The Nature of the Gezi Resistance
- What are some of the different reasons behind the Gezi Protests?
- Who participated in them?
- What are some of the ways in which the Gezi Protests have been explained in the media and by analysts? What is the grounding of these explanations?
b. Were the Gezi Protests a conspiracy of “marginal groups”?
4. What does “areligious” refer to, as distinct from “religious” and “secular”?
5. How has the term “marginal” been used in the Turkish political context, and specifically, during the Gezi Protests?
6. How did the Gezi Protests utilize visual images? What were the main slogans, symbols, and targets of protest? How did visual images help different groups become visible in Gezi Park?
7. How would you define the some of the main characteristics of the Gezi Protests?
Sexing and Bodying the Resistance
- How was the rhetoric used by Prime Minister Erdoğan against protestors masculinist? Give some examples.
- How did the protestors utilize a gendered discourse against the government? Give some examples.
- How was the familial idiom used by the government during the Protests? What did this idiom accomplish? Give some examples.
- How did protesters subvert the meaning of “family”? Give some examples.
- How do the state and the protestors encounter each other in terms of body and technology?
- What does a “politics of the body” refer to in relation to the Gezi Protests?
Resistance to Neoliberalism and the Struggle for the City
- What might be a liberal interpretation of the causes behind the Gezi Protests?
- What might be a Marxist interpretation of the causes behind the Gezi Protests?
- How did the Gezi Protests reveal the limits of Turkey’s neoliberal success?
- What is the link between neoliberalism and law? Give some examples.
- How was law used in Turkey to restrict protest and dissent?
- What are some results of recent changes in Turkey’s legal framework?
- Why did the governments in Brazil and Turkey respond differently to the protests in their respective countries?
- Can the Gezi Protests be regarded as a movement for the right to the city?
- How did Turkish government’s urban imagination give rise to the Gezi Protests?
- How did the Gezi Protests help to create and enact new public spaces in Turkey?
After reading this material, students could be encouraged to research several different topics. This collection provides background to the Gezi Protests, focusing on Turkey’s evolving foreign policy in the region, as well as on the peace process and its connection to the protests; either of these larger topics would be ripe for further research. Another would be the larger topic of neoliberalism—specifically, the relationship of neoliberalism to law, to public spaces and private spaces, to the city, and to the family, among other areas that students can further investigate. A second set of topics might concern state, law, and violence. A third set of topics could be the politics of gender and law, or related topics involving the gendering and sexing of various discourses around the Gezi Protests, by both the government and by the protesters themselves. Finally, the material provided in this collection could equip students to do further research on politics and visuality, with the use of visual culture in the Gezi Protests as a case study.
The resources provided as an appendix to this collection are intended to be of use to a variety of readers, from those who may already have some knowledge of Turkey to those readers looking for introductory or background information. It includes a bibliography of secondary material, with sections devoted to the topics of state formation; nationalism, citizenship, and subjectivity; Islam, religion, and secularism; political economy and neoliberalism; urban geographies; women, feminism, and gender; and Kurds and Turkey’s “Kurdish Question.” It also includes a list of feature and documentary films dealing with many of the issues covered in the collection. For readers wishing to do further research on many of the contemporary issues covered by this special issue, there is also a list of online resources for a variety of organizations; general and specialized websites and blogs, in both English and Turkish; a list of newspapers, journals, and alternative sources of information; and maps, all of which are available online. For those wishing to pursue information related to social media, the resources include links to key bloggers, Facebook pages, and Twitter accounts.
[See more inside...]
