Three Surprises of the Gezi Park Protests

Starting on May 28, 2013 and still continuing as this article goes to press, Turkey has witnessed the several-week occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul and huge protests, which have spread to 78 out of Turkey’s 81 provinces. The protests, which originated in reaction to plans for replacing the park with a shopping mall, were not simply about this park, but became a lightning rod for grievances against the policies of the governing party, the AKP. Those policies promoted unfettered neoliberal growth—including “urban renewal”—with creeping Islamization, conservative regulation of lifestyles, political repression, and police brutality that choked political dissent. The scope of protests have exceeded what anyone even imagined in the initial days of action in the park. The largely unplanned protests, especially those in Gezi Park and the adjacent Taksim Square, offer three surprises that may promise a better future for Turkish politics.