Vernacular Utopias: Worker Protests of 2009 in Turkey as a Precursor of the Gezi Protests

• In Event: 397 - Section on Labor and Labor Movements Roundtable Session (one-hour).
  In Refereed Roundtable: Table 03. Labor Movements and Protest

Abstract

The protests of June 2013 in Turkey attracted a great deal of attention around the world. This paper looks into the question of how people managed to form a political collectivity that summer, even though there was no strong former organizing. The paper argues that this was the outcome of a collective learning process, which started in 2009 with a nationwide spectacle that the international audience mostly missed: worker protests in Ankara, the capital city of Turkey. Protestors in 2009 took the first steps to build a new repertoire of contention in Ankara. Protestors in 2013 followed the path.

In 2009, workers of a recently-privatized company began protests in Ankara that later turned out to be the longest public space occupation in Turkish history. This article focuses on the relevant dramaturgical dynamics for a wider conceptual discussion about the on-site factors that contribute to the occupation movements’ access to the public. Protestors in this case were initially not familiar with the notion of occupation, the site of occupation was a politically peripheral location in the city, and workers were not acquainted with Ankara’s citizens. Nevertheless, particular on-site dynamics about the narrative, space, and agency turned these disadvantages to protestors’ favor. First, protestors adopted a mimetic performance representing a political ideal. Second, this performance produced a vernacular utopia embodying this ideal. Third, this vernacular utopia blurred the distinction between actors and the audience and bypassed the reflexive-repressive tolerance perpetuated by social and mass media.

Author

• Utku Balaban, Ankara University