The afterlives of the Gezi uprising: learning from failure

Abstract

This article situates the Gezi uprising of 2013 in AKP-era urban enclosure and argues that occupation-based commoning produced a pragmatic Gezi spirit, later resurfacing in neighbourhood forums and assemblies, capable of jumping scales in crises yet difficult to reproduce in ordinary time under repression and militarization. It traces the state's counter-lesson: reorganizing neighbourhoods for consent and surveillance, repurposing local authorities and charity networks as top-down 'stately commons.' Finally, it reflects on how the idea of self-management reverberated at the level of municipalism, performed by political parties and institutional actors such as the Kurdish political movement and the Republican People's Party.