• DOI:10.1017/S0896634600002077
• Corpus ID: 14845142

“Resistance everywhere”: The Gezi revolt in global perspective

@article{Tual2013ResistanceET,
  title={“Resistance everywhere”: The Gezi revolt in global perspective},
  author={Cihan Tuğal},
  journal={New Perspectives on Turkey},
  year={2013},
  volume={49},
  pages={157 - 172}
}

• C. Tuğal
• Published 2013
• Political Science
• New Perspectives on Turkey

One of the slogans of the Gezi revolt, “Everywhere is Taksim, resistance everywhere,” is a condensed expression of its global significance. Another slogan in the Brazilian uprising further emphasized the linkages and underlined the centrality of Gezi: “The love is over, Turkey is right here.” A wave of revolt had started with Greece, Iceland, and other Western countries in 2009. Revolt then spread to Tunisia and Egypt, and then back to the West in 2011, with the United States, Greece, and Spain at the center. As the wave seemed to subside, Turkey and Brazil erupted in 2013. Even mainstream journalism recognized the significance of Gezi’s connectedness with this global wave. The Economist put the image of a young Turkish woman carrying a smart phone on its cover. It also remarked that, unlike the more regionally restricted “global” revolts of the last centuries, the 2009-2013 revolt had spread “everywhere.” Since the countries shaken by this wave of revolt display starkly different dynamics, it appears that it is technology (and more broadly style) rather than social factors that link the uprisings to each other. However, even the apparent stylistic commonalities, such as the occupation of town squares, expose a common political and sociological denominator. In the case of the current revolutionary wave, if not in all cases, the form is the content. 2011 is a symptom (and has the potential to be the precipitator) of the crumbling of the current world order. This order has two major driving forces which are contingently articulated to each other: neoliberal capitalism and American leadership (in coordination with regional leaderships). I will take up each respectively in the following two sections. 147