Efe Can Gürcan

Turkey's Gezi Park Demonstrations of 2013: A Marxian Analysis of the Political Moment

On 31 May 2013, a localized demonstration against the destruction of a public park at the heart of Istanbul (Gezi Park) spiraled into a nationwide anti-government protest cycle of unprecedented form and scale in Turkey’s modern history. Before dawn that day, the police stormed into the park to disperse the few hundred protesters who had been occupying the space to prevent its destruction as part of a municipal urban renewal project. By the day’s end, hundreds of thousands of people throughout the country were out in the streets in a spontaneous collective response to what they perceived as the rising authoritarianism and conservatism of the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi [AKP]). A modest urban park thus turned into a bastion and symbol of resistance against the increasingly authoritarian and interventionist rule of the AKP and Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan. Many observers refer to these events as the “Turkish Summer,” a term we use here interchangeably with the “June uprising” or “Gezi Events.” The abrupt and spontaneous nature of the protests cannot be overemphasized. No specialist on Turkey could envisage a collective mobilization of such magnitude and versatility until the very moment it erupted. As the earthmovers started demolishing Gezi Park at 23:30 on Monday 27 May, nothing was out of the ordinary: it was just another urban redevelopment project with relatively little public concern outside of the Taksim region. The first tweet calling people to action for the cause of Gezi Park was tweeted at 23:47; yet the person who wrote it could not have known that this would be the first of millions to come in the following two weeks. On 28 May, more and more people moved into the park with tents, books, and Socialism and Democracy, 2014 Vol. 28, No. 1, 70–89, http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/08854300.2013.869872

A Class Analytic Approach to the Gezi Park Events: Challenging the 'Middle Class' Myth

On 31 May 2013, what began as a localised demonstration against the demolition of a public park in Istanbul escalated into anti-government protests of unprecedented form and scale in Turkey’s modern history. The class configuration of the Gezi Park events occupied the forefront of discussions within and outside the Turkish left. Mainstream accounts branded the events as an uprising of ‘middle classes’ concerned almost exclusively with secularism. Drawing on a Poulantzasian/Wrightian framework, we argue that the Gezi Park events can be reduced neither to a middle-class nor a secularism-centered uprising. They represent, instead, an initiative of various wage-earning class fractions led by service-sector employees and the educated youth, which rests on socioeconomic grievances of proletarianisation under neoliberalism.

Extractivism, Neoliberalism, and the Environment: Revisiting the Syrian Conflict from an Ecological Justice Perspective

ABSTRACT The ongoing Syrian conflict has triggered one of the worst humanitarian emergencies and the largest refugee crisis of the post-World War II era. What are the political-ecological factors leading to the emergence and spread of this conflict? To what extent have ecological injustices played a triggering or accelerating role in the Syrian conflict? The main argument of this article is that one of the most important causes of the Syrian tragedy relates to the outbreak of a political-ecological crisis whose origins are to be found in the long-term consequences of Syrias (a) oil-centered extractivist model of development adopted since the 1970s and its legacy reflected in the governments failure to generate adequate livelihood; (b) neo-liberal restructuring that has widened inequalities and bankrupted the agriculture since 2000; and (c) environmentally blind policies that have neglected the severity of droughts, encouraged water-intensive crops and the over-exploitation of water resources, and failed to address the modernization of the irrigation infrastructure. The environmental aspects of this crisis also concern inter-state and political-cultural conflicts as they apply to the control of Syrias water resources by Turkey and the so-called Islamic State.

The essential guide to critical development studies, by Henry Veltmeyer and Paul Bowles

Development studies continues to increase in importance in the face of combined socio-economic, geopolitical and environmental challenges at a global scale. The current state of global turbulence i...

A Bottom-Up Approach to the Combined Development of Working-Class Capacities in Turkey: Privatization, Flexibilization, and Union Responses

What has been the impact of Turkey’s neoliberal restructuring on the combined development of working-class capacities since the 1980s? Based on interviews with traditional union activists, this chapter reveals that the 1980 military coup and its aftermath have seen a heavy suppression of the labour movement, which ended up paralysing union organizing for decades. In this environment, unions have failed to build a common front coherent enough to stop neoliberal privatizations. Moreover, this chapter documents how privatization has rendered union organizing more difficult and initiated a wave of widespread de-unionization. In regard to the combined effects of labour flexibilization, the authors examine how this situation has affected union organizing in view of the unions’ semi-concessional attitude to cope with flexibility.

The Combined and Uneven Development of Class Capacities in Pre-Neoliberal Turkey

This chapter applies the book’s main theoretical framework on the combined and uneven development of class capacities to the historical context of Turkish trade unionism. The combined character of structural class capacities makes itself felt in the crippling effects of the late Ottoman Empire’s integration into world capitalism on its nascent industrial sector. World wars, regional conflicts, and global economic crises restrained structural class capacities in the late Ottoman and early Republican era, which added to Turkey’s alignment with US imperialism. The uneven character of structural class capacities is manifested in Turkey’s late and slow industrialization period without experiencing any revolutionary economic leaps. Economic differentiation between the late Ottoman ethnic groups and the dispersed state of the predominantly small-sized early Republican industries can be seen among other factors that marked the uneven development of Turkey’s structural class capacities. As for the combined character of Turkey’s organizational working class capacities, we discern the political alignment of most labour and socialist forces with capitalist–imperialist invaders against the Anatolian National Liberation Movement and TURK-ISṃ’s alignment with US imperialism in the Cold War. Unevenness in organizational working class capacities includes the late disappearance of centralist guild structures permeated by traditional authority relationships and low levels of differentiation of workers from employers; cultural and ideological fragmentation of labour movements dominated by non-Muslim workers in the late Ottoman era; the mixed effects of Turkey’s military coups starting from 1960; and TURK-ISṃ’s co-opted top bureaucracy versus DISK’s increasing militancy, accompanied by closer alignments with left-wing and student movements.

The Increasing Relevance of the Working Class: Global Movements and the Case of Turkey

The frictions between EĞITIM-SEN (a KESK affiliate) and EĞITIM-IŞ are exemplary of the ways in which the over-articulation of identity politics can lead to the fragmentation of unions. As Huseyin Tosu of EĞITIM-SEN asserts, “EĞIT-SEN [Egitim ve Bilim Emekcileri Sendikasi, or Education and Science Workers Union, a predecessor of EĞITIM-SEN] was a union formed by leftists, socialists, and Kurdish patriots from the very first day it was organized, whereas EĞITIM-IŞ was represented mostly by social-democrat, leftward civic nationalists [ulusalcilar in Turkish]” (Interview with Huseyin Tosu). In Tosu’s words, the main focus of EĞITIM-SEN on the Kurdish question has been the struggle for the “co-existence of differences, different colours, different languages, and different cultures in the name of a scientific, democratic education in one’s own vernacular language.” Therefore, for the most part cultural rather than mere class grievances were considered when organizing EĞITIM-SEN.

Turkey’s Social Unionism from a Combined and Uneven Development Approach: Labour Flexibility and Working-Class Identities

In this chapter we address the combined and uneven development of class capacities in social unionism. The interview data demonstrate that labour flexibility exerts a dual pressure on structural class capacities by dividing the working class along the regular-atypical labour distinctions and fragmenting flexible labour from within itself. These combined factors related to the advance of neoliberalism in the area of labour revolve around the increasing prevalence of high turnover rates, short-term contracts, lack of social insurance, and other informal practices. From the point of view of uneven development and its negative impacts on class capacities, the already fragmented structure of social unionism is consolidated by a set of public policy-related and cultural factors. The state’s interference with union choice—on top of cultural fragmentation along the lines of geographical differences, Islamo-conservative and paternalistic attitudes, white-collar/blue-collar distinctions, and social unions’ exclusion from traditional unions—does nothing but strengthen intra-class fragmentation.

Turkey’s Neoliberal Restructuring and Class Capacities: A Macro-Level Assessment from a Combined and Uneven Development Perspective

How has Turkey’s modern period of neoliberalization shaped the combined and uneven development of working-class capacities? Regarding the combined development of class capacities, a main consequence of trade liberalization in Turkey has been the accentuation of low-added-value, export-driven, and foreign-currency-generating sectors, in which structural class capacities have been undermined by the prevalence of flexible forms of labour. In turn, from the perspective of uneven development, class capacities have been eroded upon by the deployment of Islamic and paternalistic values on the part of ascending conservative export businesses. Likewise, the relevance of privatization for class capacities emanates from its adverse effects in terms of the intensification of labour market competition, undermining of the working-class solidarity, and de-unionization. Furthermore, the main pillar in the combined development of neoliberalism in the area of labour has been the anti-labour regulatory environment that was inherited from the 1980 military coup and ANAP governments in the 1980s. The AKP governments have taken neoliberal anti-labour practices to a higher level by entwining them with Islamic and charity-led social assistance networks. The uneven implications of these practices for organizational class capacities are strongly reflected in the escalation of religious, sectarian, and ethnic divisions within the Turkish working class.

The Uneven Development of Working-Class Capacities in Turkey: Clientelism, Paternalism, and Politics of Identity

Based on semi-structured interviews with traditional unionists, this chapter examines the uneven development of working-class capacities in the context of neoliberalism since the 1980s. Organizational working-class capacities have been undermined through the AKP’s colonization of trade unions, which draws its strength from clientelistic conservative organizations such as HAK-ISṃ and MEMUR-SEN. In turn, combative unions that do not express allegiance to the AKP government are heavily suppressed. From the perspective of how uneven development shapes class capacities, the interview data help to trace back the cultural roots of union clientelism in the Islamo-paternalistic legacy of the Ottoman Empire, especially in the public sector. Then, this chapter sheds light on identity formation patterns within the working class in order to assess how cultural factors play out in the uneven development of class capacities. Turkish nationalist-conservative ideologies exert significant influence on union constituencies, which have become more open to the AKP’s clientelistic manipulations. In addition, the authors revisit the revival of Kurdish nationalism and the way the Kurdish nationalist movement grows in eminence to the extent that it drives the political agenda of many combative unions away from leftward class politics, to the detriment of organizational working-class capacities.