IR Departmental Seminars: Reading Gezi Protests as a “Moment”: A Collective Frame Approach

Date: December 28, 2015 Monday
Time: 15.00 
Place: santralistanbul Campus, Board of Trustees Room

Speaker: Umut Özkırımlı (Professor of Political Science at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Lund University, Sweden)

The seminar is organized by İstanbul Bilgi University Department of International Relations. 
The language of the seminar  is English; there will be no translation. All interested people are invited.
 

Abstract:
Much ink has been spilled since June 2013 to explain the Gezi protests, most of it based on hasty analogies and platitudes, speaking of a “Turkish Spring” or portraying the events as a manifestation of the global occupy movement. Taking issue with these interpretations, this article approaches the Gezi events as a moment in a protest cycle which could best be understood through an emphasis on collective action. We suggest that Gezi constituted a laboratory of experimentation looking for a new type of politics “away from politics”. Our interest here is twofold: to both work towards a more systematic and theoretically informed empirical approach to Gezi and to suggest ways of enriching framing approaches through combining them with anthropological work on liminality and work on discursive articulation premised on Lacanian theory.

Prof. Umut Özkırımlı:
Umut Özkırımlı is Professor of Political Science at the Center for Middle Eastern Studies (CMES), Lund University. He is also an Honorary Professor in Europe, Nationalism and Globalization at the Center for Modern European Studies (CEMES), University of Copenhagen; and a Senior Fellow at Istanbul Policy Center, Sabanci University. He is the author of Theories of Nationalism: A Critical Introduction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2000); Contemporary Debates on Nationalism: A Critical Engagement (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005); Tormented by History: Nationalism in Greece and Turkey (with Spyros A. Sofos, Hurst & Co. and Oxford University Press, 2008); and the second revised and extended edition of Theories of Nationalism (Palgrave Macmillan, 2010). He is currently editing a book series on “Islam and Nationalism” (with Spyros A. Sofos) for Palgrave Macmillan. He is also working on the third, revised and expanded, edition of Theories of Nationalism and a monograph called “In Search of Model for the Middle East: A Comparison of Turkish and Nordic Experiences”. His latest book, The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi (edited collection), is published by Palgrave Pivot in May 2014.