Nec Spe Nec Metu

Ahmet Özcan writes that the Gezi uprising is “more than an explosion of accumulated resentment against the present semi-democracy of Turkey” and adds that “it is a new collective and spontaneous act that attempts to re-conceptualize politics and power by performing freedom in public spaces.”

jadalliya.com

The eruption of the Gezi events was unexpected and shocking for all Turkey’s political actors. The AK Party government’s self-confidence has been at a peak after more than a decade’s unprecedented political power, and local resistance to its policy of neo-liberal urban transformation had remained near-invisible in the mainstream media. Nonetheless, it was this resistance that constituted the core of Occupy Gezi, triggering a chain of countrywide protests against the government.