Reappropriation and Parody in the Gezi Protests

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Abstract

The study examines certain strategies of communication and dissent employed by activists during the 2013 Gezi protests in Turkey, with particular emphasis on the street art (posters, graffiti). The Gezi protests were notable for the imagery that featured in the visual recording of and commenting on the events, which the BBC referred as an “explosion of expression.” The differences between the Turkish protest movement and the events of the Arab Spring are outlined, and it is suggested that the parallels between Gezi and the May 1968 events in Paris are closer in terms of ambience and expression. The role of the social media in the proliferation of dissent was central to the Gezi protests, as it was in Tunisia and Egypt, but emblematic and metaphorical elements were especially characteristic of the Turkish events and there was an ironic/parodic quality in the street art that appears unique. The most influential of the Gezi images—the Penguin, the woman in a red dress, the whirling dervish with gasmask, the standing-man protest—as well as the most often reproduced graffiti, especially of the kind associated with “çapul/çapulling,” are examined within the framework of visual metaphors in communication strategies and considered in terms of their impact in the articulation of dissent. It is argued that “reappropriation” and “recontextualization” constitute a common thematic element that assist in explaining the unusually good-humoured and pacifist nature of the countrywide protests.