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      Gender, Public Space and Resistance

      research-article
      Architecture_MPS
      UCL Press

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          Abstract

          On May 27, 2013 at 11:30 pm bulldozers drove into Gezi, a central park in Taksim, Istanbul, to uproot five trees in preparation for future construction. Plans for the redevelopment had been announced two years before by the Prime Minister, Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, and in response, two local activist groups had been formed: ‘Taksim Solidarity’ and the ‘Society for the Preservation and Beautification of Gezi Park’. Founded to to publicise the historical status of the park and protect what remains a symbolically important site - and one of the few recreation areas in the central area of Istanbul - members of these groups were amongst the first to protest as the bulldozers rolled in. Within hours, a group of twenty to thirty activists had begun a sit-in.

          In the coming days, as the number of demonstrators increased to hundreds, the ‘resistance’ spread to other neighbourhoods in Istanbul. It also manifest itself in other cities across the country. The small scale sit-in that commenced in the night of May 27th had become a catalyst for a nationwide movement with global repercussions. It subsequently became known, interchangeably, as the Gezi movement, the Gezi resistance and Gezi events. The space of the protests was no longer bounded by Gezi Park itself, and the movement was no longer limited to a specific and local planning agenda.

          Taking criticism of the renovation plans for Taksim as their starting point, the protesters also raised their voices against what they considered the authoritarian policies of the the conservative government and, more specifically, the social pronouncements of the Prime Minister. The governmental response was violent police intervention. Within a month, five protesters and one policeman had died, hundreds of others were injured, and many protestors were arrested across the country. In the midst of what the government defined as anarchy and subversive acts, multiple social and cultural assumptions were overturned and, in Deleuze and Guattari’s terms, events and behaviours were deterritiorialized. Transient actions in established spaces smoothed the striated spaces of government planning and, equally significantly, a radical and momentary reconceptualisation of gendered roles and spaces was established.

          Most cited references10

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          Sözcü. “Erdoğan: Erkek kız aynı bankta oturursa”

          (2024)
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            “Erdoğan’s masculinity and the language of the Gezi Resistance.”

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              “Dişi direniş”

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                Author and article information

                Journal
                Amps
                Architecture_MPS
                UCL Press
                2050-9006
                September 2014
                : 5
                : 1
                Affiliations
                [1]Yaşar University, Izmir, Turkey
                Article
                10.14324/111.444.amps.2014v5i3.001
                99ca0fd0-735c-4eab-b0c6-5d29400c6b61
                Copyright © 2014 The Author(s)

                This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 2.0 Generic. To view a copy of this license, visit https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/

                History
                Page count
                Figures: 1, Tables: 0, Equations: 0, References: 15, Pages: 13

                Sociology,Political science,Political & Social philosophy,Urban studies,Architecture,Communication & Media studies

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