Turkish elections, 2015. Demotix/Alexandros Michailidis. All rights reserved.Turkish democracy is in better shape than we thought. The Gezi Park protests of 2013 saved a park from reconstitution as a shopping mall, but in demonstrating Turkish defiance at the style of government employed by Recep Tayyip Erdoğan, so too did it seemingly lay the grounds for further abuse of power: the corruption allegations against the President and the brutality with which they were crushed, the mysterious power cuts that not so mysteriously sabotaged local elections in 2014, endeavours at reshaping the constitution so as to empower the office President Erdoğan would wish to make permanently his own.
Surveillance increased, intimidation of journalists increased and much as Gezi was a victory, it seemed to have unleashed a power too strong for the brave but small Turkish civil society that had won their Istanbul park and sparked protests nationwide. At times it was almost as if, hopelessly and with some contradiction, a success had brought about the defeat of those who orchestrated it.
But the elections of 2015 should rightly be seen as the final act of the Gezi protests. They are testament to the scale of the triumph Turkish protesters then won – a thing that is perhaps only now apparent. In conversations on Turkish politics, the time clauses “before Gezi” and “since Gezi” have become commonplace, lingual evidence for the watershed then reached.
