Thousands of women filled the streets and squares in Ankara and took them back: spraying anti-teargas solutions in someone’s eyes, picking up the trash, advising people not to use swear words, but still talking, screaming, not keeping silent, swallowing, and walking, and walking again.
The Gezi Park protests can be, and are being, analyzed in multiple ways. Meanwhile, on its nineteenth day as this piece is being written, the protests and the solidarity of the protestors continue to advocate for a life in which resisting and acting with creativity and humor transform human existence.
Women of different generations and walks of life have participated in this resistance and solidarity, which started in Istanbul, but has spread over many cities. First and foremost among these was Ankara. For the women protestors, there are different reasons behind their resistance; a significant number of these reasons overlap with resistance to government interference with the female body. That is precisely why the resistance has moved away from the banality of everyday life, creating new kinds of public relations in urban parks, walking anew through old neighborhoods. Considering that women rarely take to the streets, besides on 8 March [International Women’s Day], what can be said about being a woman engaged in resistance and on the street in this new state?
It is likely that only few of the women on the streets would identify themselves as feminists, but this popular uprising constitutes a process of resistance, whose language, form, and ethics are produced on the streets. As such, it provides opportunities for political engagement and exchange, which are also educational. A new kind of language and solidarity has been developed, not despite religious, ethnic, sexual, political, cultural, and generational differences, but precisely by way of such differences. The passive resistance and community built in Gezi Park has already provided us with various examples of this new language. Here in Ankara, too, people are resisting in solidarity in similar ways, and yet the proximity of the state and the concreteness of its presence make the physical struggle here more continuous. Both Kuğulu Park, which the Ankara Metropolitan Municipality attempted to demolish in the past, and Güvenpark, which went through a series of alterations, have great symbolic value.
The most recent of these alterations was undertaken in 2003 by, once again, the Metropolitan Municipality, in the form of a de-pedestrianization project for the central Kızılay area, where Güvenpark is situated. This project became relevant again in the context of the military barracks proposed for the site of Gezi Park, because the prospect of the Kizilay project was once subject to a plebiscite, similar to that which is being suggested for Gezi Park. Traffic lights were uprooted and pedestrian crossings were blocked in Kızılay. Later on, however, following the reactions of Ankara residents and local NGOs, the Metropolitan Municipality took a step back. The Kızılay plebiscite, which was already viewed as shady, was declared invalid. Having these memories in mind on 31 May, thousands of Ankara residents gathered in Kuğulu Park and walked down to Kızılay. For this reason, the central role played by Güvenpark and Kuğulu Park in the resistance is especially meaningful. Add to that the ghost of Kızılay Park, which used to extend across from Güvenpark in the 1930s; in its place now stands a giant shopping mall.
Of course, for women, being able to go out is an issue. On the one hand, thousands of women did take to the streets, filling the squares and avenues of Ankara. On the other hand, women with kids have had to make arrangements: to go with or without the kids; to plan to first feed the kids and put them to bed and then leave; to share the babysitting responsibilities with the fathers and the grandparents—all in a persistent effort to find a way to get to the street, the park, the square. Spraying anti-teargas solutions in someone’s eyes, volunteering to work at the temporary libraries established in the parks, picking up the trash, advising people not to use swear words, talking about the real addressee’s of swearwords, debating, but still, talking, screaming, not keeping silent, not swallowing, and walking, and walking again.
One action in Istanbul that was of marked importance in terms of female participation was the arrival in Gezi Park of mothers, whose children may or may not have been there on the eve of 13 June. They went out on the streets to turn the tables on the call from the Mayor of Istanbul for mothers to “come and fetch your children,” and, more generally, on the government’s political discourse, whereby women are recognized in and defined through the domestic sphere. In doing so, they made it clear that motherhood cannot be instrumentalized as the sole legitimization of identity politics, and they enabled us to imagine motherhood as a liberating experience and identity.
In addition, Taksim brought the mothers of the so-called marginal and slacker “Children of Gezi” together, if only symbolically, with another group of mothers. They shared Taksim Square with the so-called Saturday Mothers, who gathered last Saturday, as they do every Saturday, for the 429th time in Taksim, to ask—not for their children’s right to life, but for justice for their unresolved cases, most of which involve state violence against political or Kurdish activists. They also shared Taksim Square with the mothers whose children, having been murdered by the state in Roboski, were called terrorists.
The historiography of feminist movements in Turkey maintains that the second wave of the feminist movement post-1980 consists of the daughters of the first generation of Kemalist mothers. The Gezi Park resistance is not a feminist protest, but it might be considered as having important outcomes for women. The fact that the middle class constitutes the main social base of the Gezi resistance increases the number of Kemalist women participating in it. Despite that, many more women, other than just Kemalists, are part of this resistance. What is truly novel is that “even” the Kemalist women are getting beyond their ordinary hang-ups, the demons of Kemalism: the Kurdish people and the covered women.
The silence of the media has had a significant role in this. Another significant role has been that of the Prime Minister and his paternalist jargon. Women are raising their voices against a male power figure, who does not miss any opportunity to rule over the morality of “maidens” and the sexuality of women at large, while at the same time trying to sugar-coat with the idea of freedom his jargon about “my covered girls.” Moreover, it is heartening that women, especially Kemalist women, are rising against the real and symbolic fathers who have constantly told them how to live. I am excited to transform the street into a place of resistance and solidarity alongside the women of my neighborhood. Given that the shopping malls have been the most “secure” areas to take children in these days, it seems all the more vital to me that we should lay claim to our neighborhoods.
[This article was originally published on 14 June 2013 on BIA ("Independent Communication Network"). The link to that version can be found here. This article was translated from Turkish by Zeynep Oğuz.]