'We Will Not Look Down': A Student's Notes on Current Resistance at Boğaziçi University

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Feb 23, 2021 Turkey
Turkish police officers stand at the main gate of the Bogazici University during a protest against the appointment of the new rector (Istanbul, 6 January 2021). Photo by IV. andromeda via Shutterstock. Turkish police officers stand at the main gate of the Bogazici University during a protest against the appointment of the new rector (Istanbul, 6 January 2021). Photo by IV. andromeda via Shutterstock.

"We Will Not Look Down": A Student's Notes on Current Resistance at Boğaziçi University

By : C.M.

Three days after the seemingly usual appointment of a rector to Boğaziçi University on 1 January 2021, a wave of protests burst out, the first of which happened in front of the university’s gate. The protests have neither stopped nor really even slowed down ever since. For any observer of Turkish politics, this resistance, which has lasted 50* days and counting, was unexpected. After all, President Erdoğan’s oppressive methods had apparently been successful in preventing the expected protests or demonstrations in response to his government’s most recent anti-democratic policies, such as the appointment of trustees to the municipalities governed by the pro-Kurdish Halkların Demokratik Partisi [Peoples’ Democratic Party (HDP)].[1]

For more experienced observers of Turkish politics familiar with the politicization of the universities of Turkey since the influential student movements of 1968, the Boğaziçi resistance is not only unexpected but shocking.[2] Boğaziçi has generally been known for its liberal environment, and has never had a highly politicized populace of students, as compared to Istanbul University or Middle East Technical University.

How can we understand why this determined resistance against the AKP-MHP government started at Boğaziçi University? The answer cannot be found via a perspective that sees Erdoğan as an omnipotent leader who renders the opposition against him desperate; if that were the case, this magnificent regime would have stopped the protests of feeble unorganized students even before they began.

In fact, throughout the resistance, the government has not figured out a way to scare, repress, or come to an agreement with the protesters. Their ludicrous attempts at each of these outcomes have proved so bad, they worked in reverse: every new move of the government has accelerated the protests.

For example, on the first day of protests, the police were ineffective in dispersing the crowd. The next morning, seven peaceful protesters were taken into custody by a dozen heavily armed officers wearing camouflage; the government declared that those protestors were terrorists or were “affiliated with terrorist organizations.” So what then happened to those dangerous terrorists? They were released after the regular duration of custody, without any charges.

A very similar type of contradictory behavior could also be observed after the police entered the university campus and apprehended 51 students. The public prosecutor demanded the imprisonment of 30 students; the court decided to release them all. Of course, there were also decisive moves made by the Erdoğan government, such as the eleven imprisonments of protesters. But these imprisonments were totally arbitrary: first, because the charges were ridiculous, and second, because the imprisoned protesters were not “leading” figures whose imprisonments would stop the resistance in any way.

These bumbling decisions have had an encouraging effect on the protestors. Since the first day of the protest, fear of the “dictatorship” has been an important element within the resistors. But as days went by and the government could not take decisive action, people became more and more active in a more comfortable manner.

The government thought it could turn the tide with the imprisonment of Doğu and Selo, the two students who were first arrested.[3] The populist charge of disrespect against the holy Kaaba was very useful for them in two ways: first, it utilized the accustomed secular-Muslim dichotomy, and second, it aimed to stir up the angry masses by demonizing the LGBTQI+ community. But the arrests of these students led to the biggest crowd since the first week of protests, who demonstrated in front of the appointed rector’s office, saying they would not leave until he came out and gave an account of the imprisonments.

The police reacted harder than ever before, as 500 police raided the campus and arrested 51 students. But these led to a mass embrace of the Boğaziçi protestors, first with 1.5 million tweets for #aşağıbakmayacağız (“We won’t look down”), then with solidarity protests in different cities.[4] Protestors thought they were helpless, living in a fascist regime, on the 3rd of January. Forty-five days later, they are far more determined and encouraged.

Now we see that the government is not omnipotent, but rather desperate in its struggle against social movements. The regime in Turkey cannot be described as a fascist regime: it detains or imprisons its opposition without doubt, but it is hesitant and heterogenous. Thus, the question is not why did the protests break out because of the rector appointment to Boğaziçi, but why have there not been any determined social movements against anti-democratic policies, corruption, or the economic crisis since the Gezi Park demonstrations in 2013? If it is not the government, who is stopping social movements?

In many cases, those of us who are protestors saw that the one doing the stopping is in fact the united opposition against the AKP, in both its mainstream and “revolutionary” forms. Whether from members of parliament or radical activists, there was a unanimous demand: stop the protests in the streets and confine these actions inside the campus. The leader of the main opposition party, Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu, has long been arguing that any social movement or protest would increase polarization and thus help strengthen Erdoğan. So the statement from Istanbul Mayor Ekrem İmamoğlu, another prominent CHP politician, on constraining the protest action to campus was no surprise. But not having adequate support from “revolutionary” parties or organizations was not expected, as this shows that they have resigned themselves to the alliance project of the CHP, which unites the opposition block under most conservative agenda possible, as they think it is the only way to beat Erdoğan in elections. This plan contains absolutely no street action, of course.

A situation extremely similar to the Turkish opposition’s waiting for the next election is explained in Marx’s The Eighteenth Brumaire of Louis Bonaparte, so similar that it proves the opening passage of the book right. As Marx states:

“For the rest, every fair observer, even if he had not followed the course of French developments step by step, must have had a presentiment of the imminence of an unheard-of disgrace for the revolution. It was enough to hear the complacent yelps of victory with which the democrats congratulated each other on the expectedly gracious consequences of the second Sunday in May 1852. [This was the day of elections when Louis Bonaparte’s term was to expire] In their minds that second Sunday of May had become a certain idea, a dogma, like the day of Christ’s reappearance and the beginning of the millennium in the minds of the Chiliasts. As always, weakness had taken refuge in a belief in miracles, believed the enemy to be overcome when he was only conjured away in imagination, and lost all understanding of the present in an inactive glorification of the future that was in store for it and the deeds it had in mind but did not want to carry out yet.”

The predominantly Gen-Z Boğaziçi protestors have seen how the government, which had appeared to be a massively strong entity, was far from omnipotent. Then they saw that the opposition alliance with all of its fractions not only failed to help their cause, but in fact tried hard to contain their protests and demands to the campus rather than the streets. Looking from this perspective, one thing that seems clear is that this resistance will enlarge the rift between traditional political actors and the youth population of Turkey—but not because of the apolitical nature of the latter, as was claimed before. The next election plans led by the CHP may be accepted by almost all of the political parties on the opposition side, but they will not persuade the youth population easily.

___________________

Editors’ Notes:

[1] In the local elections held on 31 March 2019, the HDP won the representation of 65 municipalities, while the AKP lost the local governance in the biggest cities of Turkey, including Istanbul and Ankara. Unsatisfied with the electoral results, the AKP government claimed fraud and enforced another election for Istanbul on 23 June 2019, which the AKP lost by a landslide. As for the predominantly Kurdish inhabited cities, the AKP has targeted them differently, undoing the electoral results by deposing or arresting the democratically elected officials of the HDP, thus seizing the municipal governance undemocratically, and appointing AKP representatives as mayors in place of the democratically elected HDP mayors. These AKP assigned mayors are appointed as “trustees” [“kayyım” in Turkish]. According to the news reports, by October 2020, because of the undemocratic pressures from the AKP, the HDP had lost 59 of its municipalities, with only six of them left under an HDP mayor. By referring to the appointed rector as a “trustee,” Boğaziçi students are likening his undemocratic appointment to the appointment of trustees to the HDP municipalities.

[2] At the time of the 1968 student movement, Boğaziçi University was still not founded, and its historic campus still hosted the boys section of Robert College—an American missionary high school founded in 1863. The University was founded in September 1971, at a time when the military had seized power. Later, in the 1970s, when a new wave of student movements grew in Turkey, Boğaziçi University remained apolitical in its outlook. Even if there might have been some individual students involved with student movements outside, the university maintained this reputation of being nonpolitical, today addressed as “liberal.”

[3] On Saturday, 30 January, two students were arrested and two others placed under house arrest on charges of “inciting hatred and insulting religious values” in response to work displayed as part of an exhibition of protest-related art at Boğaziçi. On the following Monday, police forces in riot gear patrolled the university entrance, along with at least one sniper unit set up with direct aim on the protesters.

[4] “We won’t look down” became a resistance statement after the police attacked peacefully walking students and allegedly asked the students too look down, not up, so as not to have any eye contact with the police. The police disputing this by arguing that the police officer said “walk down”—asking the students to take the path leading down—but a video released demonstrated the police attacking quietly walking students. Hence, regardless of whether the police literally asked the students to look down or forced them to metaphorically do so by brutalizing them, “We won’t look down!” became a symbolic statement of student resistance against police brutality.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 
Jul 9, 2013 Lebanon
Zeynep Gambetti By :
Zeynep Gambetti

Occupy Gezi as Politics of the Body

Since the Gezi resistance started with bloodshed on 31 May, it has had an “anti-depressant” effect, as a friend of mine puts it, as much as it has been nerve-racking. During this period where each day has been prone to new crises and normalcy was completely disrupted, we simultaneously experienced the peaks of ecstasy and the depths of sorrow.

Analyzing such an intense event naturally requires taking some distance. Pending systematization, however, the vivid memory of each day impels one to put on paper multifarious ideas that resonate well with the resistance. Each morning, many bodies with sleep deprived eyes wake up in Istanbul, Ankara, Antakya, Urfa, and Denizli to take to the streets once again, after having quickly checked the latest news in the social media. They are astonished and impressed that they can still walk, run, stand up, and carry provisions for those in the parks. Exhausted bodies rejuvenate with every new threat that the government utters, and with thousands, tens of thousands of others they begin flowing to Taksim, Kızılay, Kuğulu Park, Gündoğdu, Abbasoğlu, and Yeniköy Park carrying home-made gas masks, swimmer goggles, anti-acid solutions, and whistles.

No one does or can govern these bodies. The masses that gather in public spaces are not formed by virtue of transferring tax money into the wallets of partisans. No one provides shuttle buses for them; no one gives them flags, or feeds them with sandwiches. No one assigns them the slogans they shout out during the demonstrations. Bodies that take heart from knowing that they are not alone do not count, or count on, numbers to meet with others in communal or virtual spaces. One standing man suffices for thousands of others to take to the streets. After all, “one” is also a number…

The government, whose tactlessness prompts these resisting and standing bodies to convene again and again every single day, could not have missed the significance of this body politics. These bodies naturally do have a language, even a few languages that are at times congruent and at others incongruent; however, as a whole, they constitute a politics of the body. The rage and dreams that have been embodied in tweets and graffiti since 31 May turn into material realities through the physical existence, visibility, and endurance of the bodies. If history is being rewritten, then its subject is the body.

Four of these bodies lost their lives during this war that the government has waged on society. Thousands of bodies have been beaten up: some lost their eyes, some received irretrievable injuries. Skins were burnt under the water from the cannons, “laced” with chemicals for maximum harm; lungs were choked with tear gas. Pounded arms, legs, and heads got crushed and broken. The long-term effects of the tons of chemicals dumped on bodies are still unknown. What is known, however, is that these chemicals killed hundreds of cats, dogs, and birds, and that they did harm to countless insects, butterflies, and other smaller organisms.

The apparatuses of the state, and the vehicles of death that responded to Gezi’s politics of the body, attempted to imitate the life force that they failed to extort. In response to the huge numbers that filled the parks and squares and astonished everyone without exception, they hoped to gather partisans together in scripted rallies. They began comparing head counts; they calculated representative percentages. When the calculations did not match, they increased the number of police in body armor and helmets and moved them from protest to protest. They built walls of flesh and steel against the wave of resisting flesh. When that did not work, they offered these bodies—which have been in contact with each other physically and virtually through meetings, banners, and tweets—a mise en scène of dialogue, the conditions of which were more or less already determined. They could not even wait for this attempt to yield fruit; two warnings and a command were enough to launch an assault to remove the bodies that produced an alternative sociability from the park, from the space in which physical resistance could be transformed into a life style. They freed the public space of the public. They collected all the banners, pictures, and colors one by one to erase them from social memory. They stripped all the trees, each dedicated to victims of state violence; they appropriated the barricades that were named after tens of people who had undergone physical and psychological torture, and they tore them to tatters. They destroyed the efforts to keep alive the memories of Fikret Encü, who was a victim of Roboski; Metin Göktepe, who was tortured and killed in detention; Dicle Koğacoğlu, who could not take all the sorrow inherent in this society any more; and the Surp Hagop Armenian Cemetery, which was destroyed by Turkish racism.

The only thing that remains is a politics of the body—but the bodies that produce this politics differ from what Giorgio Agamben calls “bare life.” They are not “mere” bodies that the arbitrary will of a sovereign can isolate from society, oppress unceremoniously, or push to the margins of the symbolic world. Rather, they evoke what Ernst Bloch calls “the upright man,” the collective Prometheus. Bloch writes:

Nothing is more fortifying than the call to begin from the beginning. It is youthful as long as it is; to it there belongs a young and aspiring class. It is innocent of the bad things that have happened, for it has never had a real opportunity to be guilty. When this happens, justice has the effect of a morning; it opposes itself to that eternal sickness which was handed down before it. Beginning anew is freshness through and through; it is a first if it appears completely ahistorical, and if it seems to lead back to the beginning of history….It carries the image of the pastoral mood, of the shepherd, of the simple and upright man; one can play with it even in the dark.[1]

Gezi is the struggle of disorderly bodies, those who do not have any dispositif other than their own bodies, against the death machines. If the machines are regulatory instances that follow commands and extort public spaces of mobility with force and violence, then the force they face is the resistance of life itself. Life flourishes at the most unexpected moments and places, just like weeds that crack the concrete and spring out of it. No apparatus of the state can succeed in dominating life absolutely.

The state seeks order; it can control only those whom it orders. It cannot cope with the demand of "freedom"; it has to ask questions such as “freedom for whom,” “freedom for what,” or “freedom under what circumstances” in order to tuck freedom into neat boxes. Order draws borders, fixes identities, and defines. It attempts to establish a hierarchy. By telling parents to take their daughters and sons home from the park, it both brands the resisting bodies as "children" and tries to trigger into action the nucleus of society: family. Through its rhetoric of security, it attributes the risks of its own making to the resisting bodies. It hangs its own flag or banner on the bodies that it prefers knocking down rather than protecting. It punishes those who do not obey; it uses punishment as retaliation. It operates through censorship, threats, and propaganda.

Life, on the other hand, is a constant flux. It challenges borders and moves beyond them. It opens up to circulation those spaces that are closed off due to construction; it paints such destructive vehicles as bulldozers pink; it transforms steps into tribunes, pieces of iron into wish trees, and trees destined to be cut down into monuments. It walks on highways and bridges that are closed to pedestrians. It does not like the empty and the sterile; it covers them up with banners, slogans, tents. It leaves its mark on every surface. It disrupts silence at times with pots and pans, and at other times with a tune from a piano. It plays with identities and definitions; it makes them fluid; it renders them indistinguishable. It can make fun of both itself and the established order thanks to its humor. By changing one single letter in a word, it can ridicule the heaviest of symbolisms. When the state apparatus sends a riot-intervention vehicle to pour tear gas on it, life stops to catch its breath for a while and goes right back to resisting. When a body grows tired, it gets replaced by a reinvigorated one. Life turns into thousands of fingers that tweet and take photographs when the state apparatus sends down vehicles of propaganda. It stops its wheelchair to grab the flag that fell on the ground while escaping from tear gas. It apologizes when it steps on someone`s foot while running; it calms down those who panic.

It is obvious that these bodies that fascism wants to militarize will not assume any ideological identity. When they do not drink alcohol, they ridicule conservatism; when they lie under a TOMA, they make fun of liberalism, which claims that life is the most valuable good. Orthodox Marxism cannot decide under which class struggle these "çapulcu" bodies are to be subsumed. As long as they stay in physical contact, as long as they remain as collective Prometheuses, as long as they—have to—continue the resistance, they grow accustomed to each other`s colors, languages, and genders. They disrupt the behavioral rules that ideologies and institutions expect from them. The natural or moral instinct of protection that has been attributed to mothers loses ground when female bodies participate in the resistance alongside their children. The nationalist and the Kurd exchange anti-acid solutions in gas-filled hotel lobbies. The upper-class college kid drinks the water handed over by the kid with an Anonymous mask without needing to ask what neighborhood he’s from. Soccer fans save their curses for the police rather than for their rivals.

What comes out of all this is trust, not chaos. That`s why the bodies multiply with every gush of tear gas, spaces expand with every police attack, and the quality of contact among the bodies increases with every propaganda speech. The life woven together by bodies born in Gezi is so tenacious that the government is right in fearing it. The power of these bodies stems from their capacity to mutualize endurance, rather than vulnerability (as Judith Butler envisioned they would). One would need to look into the extensive interstices of this politics of the body, rather than into macro-level discourses, to begin deciphering it.

NOTES

[1] Ernst Bloch, Natural Right and Human Dignity (Cambridge: MIT Press, 1987), 61.

[An earlier version of this article was published on 26 June 2013 on BIA ("Independent Communication Network"). The link to that version can be found here. This article was translated from Turkish by Gülfer Göze.]