What is new in Gezi?

The Gezi Park protests are a new social phenomenon that will be talked about at length and awaits being understood; there is no doubt about this. Not only in terms of the new sociology, or the new cultural and political discourse, in which the new generations, the 90s generation, have come or been brought to the fore. This is undoubtedly a dimension that must in no way be neglected. It is not with this event that the sociological difference of the newly raised generations in Turkey, and the new cultures they produce or are raised in, is being noticed for the first time.

In fact, it had long been said that the generations born in the nineties and living their youth in the 2000s were of a diversity that would leave classical sociological approaches helpless and force them to produce new explanatory frameworks. The event in the 2002 general elections, when Cem Uzan, with his legendary campaign and a discourse that was empty to older generations and whose appeal to anyone was unknown, took 7 percent and strained the threshold, was also a completely new event and still has not been fully explained. Moreover, the generations who voted in those elections were not yet even using the internet properly.

Then in 2007 came a generation that rushed, as a social movement, to the mobilization of "those aware of the danger." If you open and read the comments made about that generation today, you will find a surprising parallel with what is said about the Gezi movement today. That too was, for a series of sociologists, columnists and political scientists, a very, very new movement. It was an uprising of liberation against the repressive government in order to protect the lifestyles of the developing middle class.

Yet those who took part in that movement were not demanding rights and freedoms for themselves; on the contrary, they wanted others' freedom to be restricted. In this respect, it could perhaps truly be considered new. But had its extremely old sides been wanted as much as its new sides, they could just as well have been brought to the fore. In that case everyone would more easily see the fact that there is nothing new under the sun. There have been movements in every period that call the army to duty and that are symbols of resisting, for various reasons, the periphery's march on the center. In every period, academic, aesthetic and sociological eulogies similar to those of such movements are never lacking, just as all manner of eulogies of today's movement are being made.

So, is there nothing new? How could there not be? Every movement, every event, is unique in its own scale, in its own context. Undoubtedly each event must be given its own due separately. Where did the stirring that has emerged today begin? At which stages is it articulated with which components, and where is it evolving? A social phenomenon with a series of dimensions and facets emerges. No one can reduce this to a single analysis, a single assessment.

It is certain that the Taksim protesters have an originality in terms of the segments they could bring together discursively and the new social relations they rest on. But that is only if what is at issue is truly just the formation in Taksim Gezi Park. Everyone knows that the movement's link with its reflection outside Taksim is increasingly on the verge of breaking. The great majority of those who eulogize this movement are players we know from earlier scenes. Those who say "no no, these are very different" are the same ones we remember making the same analyses for the Republic rallies 6 years ago. All the social and class analyses made of those attending those rallies heralded as if a veritable popular uprising were under way. Yet a completely different people emerged from the ballot box that was revealed afterward. Where had those middle classes, youths, women gone?

So, even if there is such a youth being raised here, there is also another youth that does not come here, wanders elsewhere, has completely different feelings, and moreover is open to the same means of communication, witnesses the same media world and breathes the same culture.

What would the analyses that have been explaining for days that society, especially its new generations, has completely changed, been reformatted as it were, say about the youths who, with no preparation beforehand, organized within just 1-2 hours and went to welcome Prime Minister Erdoğan at the airport at 2 o'clock at night? What emotional, semantic, cultural dynamics might this welcome be a manifestation of? They too use Twitter in the finest way, and they have wit too. So, in analyzing the new youth, taking such a sample and imprisoning it within a political camp is not political analysis. Such explanations are candidates to miss what is going on once again, as they have missed it many times before.

Even this is not the only way of analysis. One can also look from different angles. But another original dimension of this form of action that deserves examination is its mode of organization. It must be admitted that at one stage of the movement, the tremendous social pressures produced by those who controlled the movement drew many people on the margins into the movement. Open pressures to participate in this process were seen to be applied separately among academics, among artists, among journalists, among televisions. The kind that some call neighborhood pressure. A pressure that starts with treating anyone who stays outside the event as crazy, traitor, reactionary, bigot, and extends further to attempts to discredit utterly even those who were somewhat passive.

Where does this pressure get its power? This is a matter that needs to be examined in its own right, but we have no room left to get into it. Perhaps we will continue later.