Eken’s essay contends that the mass insurrection that resulted in a fifteen-day occupation of Gezi Park in Istanbul in June 2013 can be seen as a response to the ongoing implementation of new forms of social control in Turkey. Itself the result of a process of convergence with global capitalism, the new regime of domination capitalizes on culture as a site for monitoring social desire. In Turkey, “memory” and “minorities” emerged as two privileged topics of cultural discourse through which the state seeks to achieve real political effects. The Gezi resistance is best seen as the autonomous organization of social desire against the politics of these cultural discourses. It is mainly in its embodiment of this antagonistic, anticapitalist desire that the value of the Gezi Resistance lies.
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