RESISTANCE OF IMAGINATION BY THE NEW GENERATION:
THE CASE OF TAKSIM GEZI PARK PROTESTS, ISTANBUL
Urban transformation’s creepy face prevailing Turkey’s many cities in the last decade resulted in explosion of public’s subdued discontent: Gezi Park protests occurred in May and June of 2013, the largest revolt in republican history for civic rights. Well before the protests, the state authority was accustomed to controlling the public opinion by solid architecture projects and voicing them in media as they were urgent for progress. Urban transformation in Turkey has launched a period that environmental values, historical and cultural heritage have been slowly sacrificed without notice. This urban change has dominated the country so drastically that even major decisions could not be discussed neither by professionals nor citizens. The scenario for financial profit of debased political relations was followed for commercial and speculative pressure on land; demonstrating itself especially with high-rise residential projects and massive shopping malls.
Taksim Square of İstanbul as being an emblematic space of Turkish political history, has always been the part of state agenda for restricting the diffusion of movement and its continuous flow, which the authority fails to battle with, in Taksim Square meetings. The procedure followed by the State this time was firstly to propose a new scheme in order to erase the aggregated memory of years and afterwards to re-write the codes of the physicality with its own favored codes. Departing from this fact, the attempt of the State to re-structure Square and Park by cutting off the trees and building a massive shopping mall in the heart of Istanbul was confronted firstly with a small environmentalist protest in Gezi Park and following the violent intervention of the police to the young protesters, the revolt was suddenly carried to Taksim Square and the riots fired the whole country. One million people supported the movement despite all severe outcomes. This huge reaction was ignored by the televisions and newspapers with the fear of authoritarian pressure. Although all media was gone blind, youngsters managed to communicate and kept themselves aware of the truths. It was actually the survival of imagination by the new generation who was very acquainted with new communication technologies and power of social media. They were very stubborn about their civic rights with a more globally charged mind compared to their antecedents. Consequently, “OccupyGezi” movement has earned a symbolic meaning with its communicative methods based on the youth’s use of new technologies and resisting imagination despite the censorship and blackout.
#resistance of imagination, #occupygezi, #urbantransformation, #socialmedia, #newgeneration
