In May and June 2013 Turkey witnessed one of the longest and biggest social unrests in its modern history. Protesters all around the country rebelled against the government's authoritarian tendencies and police violence, exemplified by the hars treatment of activists resisting the reshaping of Istanbul's favorite Taksim Square and the adjacent Gezi Park. This essay address the origins, development and outcomes of the Turkish "Occupy Gezi" movement. It seeks the roots of the movement on three interdependent levels centered around the uses and misuses of public space and the instrumentalization of civil society in the hegemonical political discourse. Accordingly, the demonstrations are analyzed as (1) a critique of neoliberal developmentarism in Turkey, reflected in the marketization/commodification of public space and the destruction of the envoronment; (2) as a critique of the majoritarian, non-inclusive concept of democracy that accompanies neoliberal economic policies in Turkey and has manifested itself in the attempt to appropriate public space and to gain effective control over "disloyal" elements of society; and (3) finally as a critique of state paternalism, its most palpable effect being the imposition of conservative values, the distaste for alternative life-styles and the construction of a homogeneous mass of "Turkish citizens" adhering to similar values. We argue that the alleged Islamism of the ruling AKP played only an accessory role in the outbreak and development of the protests. What was an ecological protest and outcry at non-participative urban transformation in the beginning turned into a widespread popular happening whose participants tried to create an alternative to the bureaucratic machinery of the neoliberal state and the increasingly authoritarian behavior of its representatives who are unresponsive and unsensitive to the frustrations of oppositional voices, non-religious classes and different life-styles., Petr Kučera., and Obsahuje bibliografii
Comparisons of the recent protests in Turkey to the Arab Spring are met with negative responses among representatives of the Turkish governmnet as well as those criticizing the govemment. The attitudes of political opponents emphasizing the difference between Turkey and the other Middle Eastern countries show the impact of Orientalism on Turkish identity as well as perceptions of Turkey's role as a model for (not only) Middle Eastern Muslim countries., Jitka Malečková., and Obsahuje bibliografii