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In Search of Free Spaces to Breathe: Turkey's United June Movement, Social Uprising, and Spatial Maintainability

In Search of Free Spaces to Breathe: Turkey's United June Movement, Social Uprising, and Spatial... This study examines the socio‐spatial practices of the United June Movement (UJM), a grassroots movement that drew inspiration from the neighbourhood forums of the Gezi Park protests. We argue that the counter‐sites of politicisation and symbolic places engraved on the social movements’ memory formed the socio‐spatial base of solidarity networks and the long‐term political organising of UJM. Secondly, we suggest that in an authoritarian context, activist organisations nourishing from full‐scale protests such as UJM need to form, reshape, and sustain free spaces where they feel protected. For testing these arguments, we designed fieldwork around UJM with an ethnographic approach. We concluded that the desire for social change has the potential of generating alternative visions in a spatiotemporal context, but in the medium term, it can turn into a feeling of self‐enclosure or being besieged. Even so, such attempts leave a perpetual legacy, tagged to certain spaces and geographies. http://www.deepdyve.com/assets/images/DeepDyve-Logo-lg.png Antipode Wiley

In Search of Free Spaces to Breathe: Turkey's United June Movement, Social Uprising, and Spatial Maintainability

Çömlekçi, Mehmet Fatih; Güney, Serhat
Antipode , Volume Early View – Mar 2, 2023
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21 pages

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Publisher
Wiley
Copyright
© 2023 Antipode Foundation Ltd.
ISSN
0066-4812
eISSN
1467-8330
DOI
10.1111/anti.12936
Publisher site
See Article on Publisher Site

Abstract

This study examines the socio‐spatial practices of the United June Movement (UJM), a grassroots movement that drew inspiration from the neighbourhood forums of the Gezi Park protests. We argue that the counter‐sites of politicisation and symbolic places engraved on the social movements’ memory formed the socio‐spatial base of solidarity networks and the long‐term political organising of UJM. Secondly, we suggest that in an authoritarian context, activist organisations nourishing from full‐scale protests such as UJM need to form, reshape, and sustain free spaces where they feel protected. For testing these arguments, we designed fieldwork around UJM with an ethnographic approach. We concluded that the desire for social change has the potential of generating alternative visions in a spatiotemporal context, but in the medium term, it can turn into a feeling of self‐enclosure or being besieged. Even so, such attempts leave a perpetual legacy, tagged to certain spaces and geographies.

Journal

Antipode – Wiley

Published: Mar 2, 2023

Keywords: free spaces; United June Movement; social movements; ethnography; social change

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