After the Protest: Istanbul Park Forums and People's Engagement in Political Action

Abstract

This article presents an overview of the Istanbul park forums that emerged in parallel with the Gezi events - social protest movements that took place in summer 2013. Despite the criticism that Gezi events were short-lived, impulsive, and ineffectual I argue that they have a long-lasting influence on democratic consciousness and new forms of political action. Istanbul park forums, the street and urban squares have become an important link between those who wish to transform the qualities of both democracy and the regime at large with efforts to create influence over local and national policy-making processes through engagement in political action. Drawing from the political theory of Hannah Arendt, this study assigns the capacities of 'deed and speech' to redefine 'politics'. Analyzing the politics of the park forum process through the lens and concepts of Arendt's political theory suggests an alternative way of evaluating the eventual dissolution of the Gezi events: rather than suffering from the inability to organize themselves within the conventional format of party politics, I show that the Gezi community deliberately created a new manner of engagement through political action, and thereby cast its influence as a historic landmark in the future of Turkish politics.