Criminalization of the Streets: The Case of Gezi Protests in Turkey

• In Event: Policing Global Issues: Dimensions and Challenges

Abstract

Over the past ten years, we have witnessed an intensifying criminalization of street protests both in so-called “authoritarian” contexts and Western democracies. This paper focuses on the case of Turkey especially since the 2013 Gezi protests when the streets in Turkey transformed into an inaccessible space for the demonstrating protests and demonstrations. Extreme police violence on protestors, widespread police custody, spectacular trials, imprisonment have been regularly utilized for the protests. The current literature on the transformation of protest policing speaks of a militarization of policing as the cause without investigating the specificities and political history of the countries. This paper aims to understand contemporary criminalization of streets and protests and its transformation by considering a whole series of factors such as temporality, territoriality, and social actors. In turn, it aims to provide an explanation as to how and why such systematic intensification of criminalization of protests is taking place, and how social actors are resisting such criminalization.

Authors

• Zeynep Gonen, Framingham State University

• Aysen Uysal, Dokuz Eylul University/ Sciences Po-CERI