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The Curious Case of ‘Gezi’: A Democratic Crisis in a Neoliberalising Country

Dr. Ali Bilgic, Bilkent University, Department of International Relations

The beginning of December 2015 was controversial for Turkey’s policy making circles, when one of

the most popular public intellectuals, Slavoj Žižek, turned the spotlight onto Turkey’s ‘war on terror’,

or lack thereof, against ISIS.1 Criticism from government circles provoked him to write a reply with a

strong focus on human rights violations in Turkey during the latest operations in Kurdish-populated

areas. The title of his follow-up piece was more provocative: ‘Is something rotten in the state of

Turkey?’2 Yes, there is something rotten in the state of Turkey; but, interestingly, this is both not

simply about Turkey and solely about Turkey. There is something rotten in the neoliberal Empire that

sullies democracy, freedoms, solidarity, and all types of communal feelings that progressively link

people to each other. Indebted, insecure, and marginalized individuals and singularities have been

resisting in Turkey as well as in the United States, Spain, Greece, Egypt, and so on. At the same time,

it is about Turkey’s historically constructed political, economic, and social context, which was opened

up the social fault lines to neoliberalism since the early 1980s. The continuous attempt to render

Turkey a part of the global financialization and commodification processes has had direct

implications for Turkey’s complex political realities. Empire is indeed global, inclusionary; there is no

outside to it.3 However, as Judith Butler argues, ‘the context seeps into the forms of neoliberal logic

giving them their rhythms, mechanisms, and dynamics’.4 This hybridity and its complex implications

for democracy in Turkey is the subject of this discussion.

This paper is an attempt to situate the mass protests of 2013 in Turkey within the historically

constructed Turkish political context in relation to the neoliberalization mechanisms appropriated in

this local context. It will be argued that the ongoing democratic crisis in Turkey since the launch of

neoliberalization in a securitarian nation-state in the 1980s shaped not only the Gezi Park protests

(causes, the formation, content, and methods of resistance), but has also been affecting what type of

legacy the Gezi protests may have. ‘Democratic renewal’ implies that once-democratic societies that

have lost these democratic characteristics due to the neoliberalization of politics can re-find their

democratic principles, but in a different way from conventional liberal democracy. However, in the

case of Turkey, the once-lost-now-found approach is not applicable. The Gezi Park protests were only

1 http://www.newstatesman.com/world/middle-east/2015/12/slavoj-zizek-why-we-need-talk-about-turkey 2 http://www.newstatesman.com/2015/12/slavoj-i-ek-something-rotten-state-turkey 3 Michael Hardt and Anthony Negri, Empire (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2000), p. 186. 4 Judit Butler, ‘Foreword’ in Umut Özkırımlı (ed). The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. viii.

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one episode in Turkey’s ongoing democratic crisis in which contending social forces clash, interact,

and confront, while the country is in the process of neoliberalization.

The discussion starts with giving an account of pre-Gezi politics and economy in Turkey in order to

contextualize the protests. Then, the Gezi moments of conflicting social forces will be discussed with

a specific focus on the deep fault lines among them: Gezi as democratic resistance and Gezi as an

attempt to annul democracy. Based on this discussion, the potential legacy of the Gezi protests will

be questioned.

The Blast from the Past: Pre-Gezi Politics in Turkey

The country-wide protests erupted in May–June 2013, following the raid of the environmentalists in

Gezi Park by the police, caught many by surprise. For some, such mass protests were unexpected in a

country that had finally achieved a degree of political stability and economic growth following the

chaotic 1990s.5 The country was indeed being presented as a ‘model’ for the Middle East by the

West, especially in the post-9/11 global politics. Others, who were aware of the authoritarian

tendencies of the decade-old ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party), immaturely argued that

Turkey was joining the democratization waves of the ‘Arab Spring’.6 ‘The Turkish Spring’, as West-

centric and misleading as ‘the Arab Spring’, did not turn into summer. Although the AKP went into a

period of turmoil to reinstitute its political and social hegemony, which had been seriously

challenged by the Gezi protests, the ruling party re-achieved its single-party majority in the 1

November 2015 elections. Does this mean that the Gezi protests ‘failed’? Is it possible to talk about a

legacy of these country-wide protests? What is the status of democracy in Turkey in the post-Gezi

period? Answers of these questions can be generated if the Gezi protests are placed within the

Turkish political context in relation to its thirty-year long neoliberalization process.

The analysis will start with the 1980 military intervention that paved the way for launching the

neoliberalization process in Turkey. However, in order to understand the conditions that led to the

coup, a sketch of Turkish politics is necessary. During the 1960s and 1970s, Turkish politics was

strongly shaped by Cold War politics. On the left of the political spectrum were situated the

Republican People’s Party (CHP), also the founding party of the modern Republic, as well as the

newly formed Turkey’s Workers Party (TIP). Both were competing for the bourgeoning urban working

class, intellectuals, university students, and the middle and upper middle class. Although Third World

nationalism sometimes shaped their discourses, the CHP and some segments of the left adopted a

5 http://www.dw.com/en/turkeys-image-problem-after-gezi-park/a-17665508 6 http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2013/may/31/istanbul-park-protests-turkish-spring ; http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/professor-alp-ozerdem/turkey-gezi-park-protests-_b_3402710.html

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pro-independent position. The right was divided more deeply. The centre right was dominated by the

Justice Party (Adalet Partisi, AP), which claimed to be the successor of the Democrat Party that had

been toppled by the 1960 military coup. The AP governments would be toppled twice more in 1971

and 1980 by the military, and this created a discourse of ‘national will’, represented solely by the

centre right against the establishment (namely the CHP, military, judiciary, the universities). In

addition to the AP, the right was a stage for extreme nationalist (Nationalist Action Party, MHP) and

Islamist (National Salvation Party, MSP) parties. Both were competing for conservative sections of

the society both urban and non-urban areas.7

In this period the country was going through an economic and political transformation. Following the

1960 coup, successive governments adopted the ISI model, which led to the creation of a certain

level of local bourgeoisie that formed organic relations with the AP. Because of industrialization,

migration to urban centres increased, especially to Istanbul. Shanty towns emerged and expanded

during this period. However, high inflation and unemployment were exacerbated by a lack of basic

commodities and a growing black market of consumable goods. Economic problems trickled into

societal cleavages. In a societal background where the expansion of shanty towns hosted conflicting

ideologies, the CHP became more populist; the petty ‘Anatolian’ bourgeoisie was getting closer to

nationalist-conservative-Islamist parties; the urban bourgeoisie was wary of the mismanagement of

economy but keeping close to the AP.8 On 24 January 1980, Turgut Özal, who ran for Parliament with

the political Islamist MSP in the 1973 elections and was later appointed as undersecretary of the

State Planning Organization, declared the infamous ‘Decisions of 24 January’, which reflected the

Washington Consensus that was to be coined in 1989. Empowering ‘the invisible hand of the market’,

the Turkish lira was devalued, the fluctuation of interest rates was allowed, measures were taken to

encourage imports and exports, and shocking increases in the price of public goods were

introduced.9 Eight months later, the military intervened in politics.

While the AP, the CHP, and other political parties were shut down and their leaders were banned

from politics, new parties under the close scrutiny of the junta were formed. Among them, Turgut

Özal’s Motherland Party (Anavatan Partisi, ANAP) won the 1983 general elections. The coup finally

engendered the non-conflictive political environment that the neoliberal policies could have

implemented without any sort of opposition. As a panacea of divisive ‘party politics’, and clearing the

left from the political arena, the State launched an aggressive campaign to reshape society along the

7 Doğu Ergil, ‘Class conflict and Turkish transformation 1950–1975’, Studia Islamica, no. 41 (1975), pp. 138–141. 8 Çağlar Keyder, State and Class in Turkey: A Study in Capitalist Development (New York and London: Verso 1987), pp. 197–222. 9 Tevfik Çavdar, ‘Adalet Partisi’, in Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türkiye Ansiklopedisi Volume 8 (İstanbul: İletişim, 1996), p. 2100.

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lines of a ‘Turkish–Islamic synthesis’. The synthesis constructed multiple ‘others’ within the

essentialized Muslim-Turkish society with regard to the strong emphasis on Turkishness and Islam.

The ‘grotesque and inflationist use of Atatürkism’10 by the new regime created a cult of Atatürk that

was supposed to represent national unity by subsuming differences and ‘taking precedence over

ideological issues’.11 The general interest defined by the new elite required a homogeneity that

subsumed ethnic, religious, and class differences. This was very different from the AKP’s neoliberal

social engineering project (see below).

Simultaneously, ideas about the Kurdish people as an ethnic group in Turkey were suppressed.12 In

1983, a law was passed stating that ‘it is forbidden to express, diffuse, or publish in any language

other than the [first] official language of the states recognized by the Turkish state’.13 The post-coup

policy makers discursively constructed the separatist Kurdish movement, which had emerged in

1984, as a ‘tool’ of ‘international sources’. They created the position of governors with extraordinary

powers, who were appointed by Ankara to provinces that were highly populated by Kurds. While the

‘state of exception’ became the daily rule in South-eastern Turkey, a common practice was to drop

leaflets from planes that included verses from the Qur’an that suggested obedience to authority. 14

As ‘ethnic differences’ were not accepted in the statist and nationalist discourse, the neoliberal ANAP

governments considered the issue as an underdevelopment problem of the region. ‘The regions with

priority in development’ were defined and most were in South-eastern Turkey. In these regions the

State was expected to be involved in economic activities: public investment in 1985 in these regions

was around 25 percent, along with irrigation projects, construction of village roads, investments in

electricity, etc.15

The Turkish–Islamic synthesis, whose objective was to create a ‘democratic’ but highly conservative

Turkish ‘market man’, was operationalized during the neoliberal ANAP governments. In order to

understand the Özal period, Kalaycıoğlu is worth quoting at length:

10 Tanıl Bora and Ümit Kıvanç, ‘Yeni Atatürkçülük’, in Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türkiye Ansiklopedisi Vol.13, (İstanbul: İletişim, 1996), p. 777. 11 Ahmet Evin, ‘Changing patterns of cleavages before and after 1980’, in Metin Heper and Ahmet Evin (eds), State, Democracy and the Military: Turkey in the 1980s (Berlin: Walter de Gruyter, 1988), p. 212. 12 Demet Yalçın Mousseau, ‘An inquiry into the linkage among nationalizing policies, democratization, and ethno-nationalist conflict: the Kurdish case in Turkey’, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, vol. 40, no.1 (2012), pp. 52–3. 13 Metin Heper, The State and Kurds in Turkey: the Question of Assimilation (Hampshire: Palgrave Macmillan, 2007), p. 164. 14 Oran, ‘Dönemin Bilançosu 1980–1990’, p. 23. 15 PM Özal’s 1984 speech in the Parliament about the PKK incidents were mainly about economic development plans to address the problem, for the speech see TBMM Zabıt Ceridesi, Dönem: 17, Cilt: 7, İçtima: 13, (17 October 1984).

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He [Özal] seemed to argue for a traditional society, a social structure that [would] still be dependent upon moral-religious (Sunni) values of the past, while simultaneously proposing dramatic changes to the economy and prosperity of the country. The majority would still be Allah-fearing, mosque-attending souls, taking pride in the competitive strength of their companies in the international market, and caring for the downtrodden through charitable contributions to the newly established autonomous funds of the state. Özal wanted a modern society held together by conservative values.16

The citizen subjectivity of this neoliberal authoritarian model was politically subordinated but

economically pragmatist, proactive, and enterprising, not bound by bureaucratic formalities and/or

political considerations. The export-oriented neoliberal model underlined by the political

authoritarianism of the securitarian nation state required this type of citizen; those who lacked

economic means to pursue their interests were constructed as ‘consumers who have the right to buy

higher quality goods at cheaper prices’.17 Privatization also started during this period (Table 3). For

the financialisation of the economy, the ANAP governments removed the obstacles for non-Turkish

bank investments in Turkey. The share of the Saudi capital in the Turkish banking system increased

through institutions such as Al Baraka Türk (Özal’s brother was one of the board members) and Faisal

Finance, which funded more than 50 Islamist publishing houses, journals, and newspapers.18

Furthermore, ‘liberal reforms along Reaganate and Thetcherate lines stumbled unprecedented

economic activity outside the urban centres’ such as Istanbul.19 Ozal’s preferential treatment of

small-and-medium-sized entrepreneurs, who traditionally supported nationalist and Islamist parties,

strengthened their status in relation to ‘Istanbul capitalists’ and they overwhelmingly supported the

AKP’s processor, the Welfare Party (Refah Partisi, RP).20 The national security State with its

homogenous ‘Turkish’ nation, Atatürkist ideology, and ostensibly apolitical population was taking the

first steps towards Empire with its politically, socially, and economically divided society.

In the 1990s, Turkey was at a stage of political and economic chaos. The short-lived coalition

governments were accompanied by back-to-back economic crises. Three subsequent crises (1994,

1998, and 2001) resulted in economic contractions, higher foreign debt, and considerable foreign

capital exit. Coupled with corruption (especially in the banking sector), the IMF, World Bank, and EU

pushed Turkey to adopt strong economic measures, starting from adopting an extensive privatization

16 Ersin Kalaycıoğlu, ‘The Motherland Party: the challenge of institutionalization in a charismatic leader party’, in Barry Rubin and Metin Heper (eds), Political Parties in Turkey (London: Frank Cass, 2002), p. 46. 17 Alev Özkazanç, ‘Türkiye’de yeni sağ’, in Cumhuriyet Dönemi Türkiye Ansiklopedisi Volume 15, (İstanbul: İletişim, 1996), p. 1221. 18 Hasan Köni, ‘Saudi influence on Islamic institutions in Turkey beginning in the 1970s’, Middle East Journal, vol. 60, no.1 (2012), p. 102. 19 Clemens Hoffmann and Cem Cemgil, ‘The (un)making of the Pax Turca in the Middle East: understanding the social-historical roots of foreign policy’, Cambridge Review of International Affairs, DOI: 10.1080/09557571.2015.1119015, p. 10. 20 Ibid.

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program.21 Prospective membership to the EU became an economic necessity. In the 1990s, as

Turkey’s policy makers realized that EU membership unquestionably depended on freedom of

expression, the ban on the Kurdish language in the press was lifted, although the Anti-Terror Law

remained effective and continued to criminalize expressions of ‘propaganda against the indivisible

unity of the State’.22 The 1990s witnessed a new phase in Turkey’s press freedom. Many holdings

bought newspapers and opened TV channels. These new media, owned by big business, developed

patronage relations with the State. Similar media in the form of ‘alternative-Muslim broadcasting’

also emerged, or in self-referential terms, ‘nationalist-moralists’, ‘nationalist followers of the Holy’,

or ‘conservative Muslim’, which appealed to mainly low income classes who had migrated to urban

fringes.23 Holdings that were close to different religious orders established their own TV channels and

newspapers. Channel 7, for example, established close ties with the political Islamist Welfare Party

(RP).24 The party was shut down following the 1997 post-modern coup. From successive political

parties, the AKP emerged, and replaced political Islamist identity with conservatism and a pro-EU,

pro-West orientation.

A close caption of Turkish politics before the AKP’s election victory in 2002 shows the dominance of

the military in politics, Atatürkist and nationalist ideological hegemony at both State level and in

important segments of the society (media, civil society), marginalization of political Islamists

(whereas the Anatolian capital was building up) and the Kurdish movement, and a failed bureaucracy

(as the 1999 Marmara earthquake and 2001 economic crisis pointed out). Society reacted to this

overarching dominance by giving the AKP the mandate to form a single party government in the 2002

elections, and pushing other major parties below the election threshold, except the CHP.

It is difficult to make generalizations about the AKP period. It is a fact that, especially until 2005 and

2006, very important democratic reforms were performed with an EU membership perspective.

National security courts were abolished; the status of the National Security Council was reduced to

advisory; the Press Law was liberalized; and radio and TV were allowed to broadcast in languages

other than Turkish.25 In addition, there was progress in returning the assets of the minority

21 Baskin Oran, ‘Dönemin Bilançosu 1990–2001’ in Baskın Oran (ed.), Türk Dış Politikası: Kurtuluş Savaşından Bugüne Olgular, Belgeler, Yorumlar 1980–2001 Volume II (İstanbul: İletişim, 2013, 18th edition), pp. 215–8. 22 Şahin Alpay, ‘Two faces of the press in Turkey: the role of the media in Turkey’s modernization and democracy’, in Celia Kerslake, Kerem Öktem and Philip Robins (eds), Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity: Conflict and Change in the Twentieth Century (Hampshire: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2010), p. 376. 23 Ayşe Öncü, ‘Rapid commercialization and continued control: the Turkish media in the 1990s’, in Celia Kerslake, Kerem Öktem and Philip Robins (eds), Turkey’s Engagement with Modernity: Conflict and Change in the Twentieth Century (Hampshire: Palgrave and Macmillan, 2010), p. 398. 24 Ibid., p. 399. 25 Zeynep Alemdar, ‘Modelling’ for democracy? Turkey’s historical issues with freedom of speech’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 50, no. 4 (2014), pp. 578–9.

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foundations, which had been previously confiscated by the State. The liberal-democratic dimension

of neoliberalism was operationalized in the first years of the AKP regime. In 2005, Prime Minister

Erdoğan recognised Kurdish identity in his speech in Diyarbakır. For the first time in Turkey’s

republican history, the State started a dialogue with the Kurdish movement in 2009 widely known as

‘the Resolution Process’. The headscarf ban for women working in the public sector was revoked and

irtica (religious fundamentalism) was removed from the list of threats to national security. Not only

did the military’s role in politics significantly diminish, but also two main domestic threats (Kurdish

separatism and religious fundamentalism) were de-securitized.

Despite the above, human rights violations continued: the national security courts were replaced by

Special Courts (which were also abolished in 2013); Armenian journalist Hrant Dink (assassinated in

2007) and Nobel laureate Orhan Pamuk were tried for ‘insulting Turkishness’; the European Court of

Human Rights continued its rulings that sentenced Turkey on account of freedom of expression; and

restrictions on websites such as YouTube and Google were intensified.26 According to a New York-

based watchdog, Turkey surpassed China regarding the number of journalists in prison and became

number one in the world.27 Meanwhile, although the post-coup institutions that provided military

oversight in politics were reformed, other institutions stemming from the 1982 Constitution, such as

YÖK and the 10 percent national election threshold, remained intact. In 2012 and 2013, the AKP

politicized two issues in a way that was considered as an intervention in the private lives of citizens.

The first issue was the regulation concerning restrictions on alcohol sale, and the second concerned

the attempt to illegalize abortion. Both acts were strongly defended by PM Erdoğan and both ignited

street protests. A few weeks before the Gezi protests, an incident occurred at an Ankara subway

station, where a couple that was kissing was urged through a megaphone announcement to act

‘morally’. This resulted in a ‘kissing protest’ in the Ankara subway.

Although it is often discussed as a foreign policy strategy, neo-Ottomanism is a project of

constructing societal identity and model citizens in domestic politics.28 Starting from the Özal period

and in parallel with the Turkish–Islamic synthesis, this line of thinking has pursued

Ottoman pluralism, which entails the peaceful coexistence of different ethno-religious and cultural groups under a political community. Ottoman pluralism in line with neoliberal politics of promoting individual freedoms was constructed as a part of neo-Ottomanism, combining the traditional Ottoman form of pluralism and modern

26 Ibid., pp. 579–84. 27 Baskin Oran, ‘Dönemin Bilançosu 2001–2012’, in Baskın Oran (ed.), Türk Dış Politikası: Kurtuluş Savaşından Bugüne Olgular, Belgeler, Yorumlar 2001-2012 Volume III (İstanbul: İletişim, 2013, 18th edition), p. 118. 28 Onur Bakıner, ‘Is Turkey coming to terms with the past? Politics of memory and majoritarian conservatism’, Nationalities Papers: The Journal of Nationalism and Ethnicity, vol. 41, no.5 (2013), p. 698.

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liberal multiculturalism with the perspective of formulating ‘a common, superior identity encompassing all Turkish citizens within a religio-ethnic affiliation’.29

This neo-Ottomanist project was operationalized in the neoliberal context. In other words, the AKP

aimed to perform a truly neoliberal turn in Turkey’s domestic politics.

When contextualized within Empire, neo-Ottomanism seamlessly corresponds to how neoliberalism

co-opts differences. Hardt and Negri call this ‘the triple imperative of Empire’, consisting of inclusive,

differential, and managerial imperatives.30 The inclusive imperative does not reject differences, but

includes and integrates them into Empire in a universal way so that there will no ‘outside’, an area

where Empire cannot reach out and regulate. The differential imperative controls the differences not

as biological essentials, but in the context of celebration of cultural differences. The AKP’s highly

culturalist narrative, which shapes its domestic and foreign policy, promotes cultural differences,

especially ethnic and religious ones. This strategic move has enabled the AKP to be the liberator of

masses that had been previously supressed by the nationalist republic. The third way of control is

through a ‘hierarchy’ of cultural differences. In the case of the AKP, the Sunni-Turkish culture, whose

roots had already been laid by the Turkish–Islamic synthesis of the Özal period, occupies the highest

level, and therefore, reproduces the Ottoman experience in neoliberal context. Different ‘openings’

towards Kurds, the Alevi population (Anatolian Shia), the Rum (Anatolian Greeks), Armenians,

Romanis, and Jews were all conducted against the backdrop of a cultural hierarchy where the Sunni-

Turkish state is reproduced as a paternalistic protector of cultural differences. The point hereby is

that the AKP was addressing (or giving the impression of addressing) the ongoing democratic crisis in

Turkey.

In the economic realm, the AKP reintroduced Özal’s neoliberalism more aggressively. With the

political stability provided by single party governments, the economy seemed to recover: the GDP

increased (see Table 1). This economic ‘miracle’, however, is neoliberal par excellence. The service

sector’s share has been increasing (more than 50 percent as in 2014) and the share of construction

has sharply increased (Table 2 and Figures 1 and 2). The housing industry has been expanding (Table

3). The Housing Development Administration (TOKİ) has been the main institution to offer affordable

apartment flats to low and middle income groups that used to live in shanty towns.31 Privatization

29 Yılmaz Çolak, ‘Ottomanism vs. Kemalism: collective memory and cultural pluralism in 1990s’ Turkey’, Middle Eastern Studies, vol. 42, no.4 (2006), pp. 587–8. 30 Hardt and Negri, Empire, pp. 198–200. 31 “The social housing program of TOKİ targets low- and middle-income people who cannot own a housing unit under the existing market conditions. (Considering the distribution of the housing projects realized by TOKİ, 15 percent of the same consists of “Fund Raising by method of Revenue Sharing” and 85 percent of “Social Housing” projects.)”. TOKI determined three groups: the poor group houses constructed with the cooperation of the Ministry of Family and Social Policies; houses with an area of 45–65 m2, with instalments starting from

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was aggressively pursued (Figure 3). Shopping malls were built all around Turkey to attract more

consumption (in 2011 there were 279 in Turkey, 109 only in Istanbul).32 The neoliberal state’s way of

controlling the low-income and poor classes was the ‘Social Aids Program’. Only in 2014, around 14

percent of Turkey’s GDP was allocated to social aid (from coal aid to food aid), amounting to 250

million TL (approximately 85 million USD).33 Urbanization plans including the construction of ‘satellite

cities’ and gentrification through urban transformation projects as commodification of urban and

rural spaces have been important parts of the new neoliberal economy.34

The neoliberal State has been reorganized in order to ensure the interests in the new neoliberal

economic agenda. Aslı Iğsız gives a detailed account of how the State has been legally reframed to

this aim: ‘decree laws’ (granting the authority to the government to pass a law without submitting it

to the Parliament, another legacy of Özal) were issued in order to give full authority to different

ministries to decide what may be considered as ‘natural and historical site’, national parks, forests,

and how they can be managed; to pass the authority of the Chamber of Engineers and Architects

(which was instrumental in stopping many developmentalist projects) to the Ministry of Environment

and Development; and to annul the independent commissions, ‘whose task was to protect national

environmental sites’.35 However, the same neoliberal State was expanding the boundaries of

representative democracy in a way that amounted to majoritarianism. The ‘National Will’ narrative

of the AKP (see below) has prepared the foundation for this majoritarian politics. In almost each

election since 2002, the AKP increased its votes by obtaining the support of previously destitute

groups.

Before Gezi, society was significantly divided: Turkish nationalists were divided into left and right; the

CHP, claiming the left wing nationalism, was considered as militarist, anti-Islam and anti-Kurd; the

100 TL from the delivery of house without down-payment, with a maturity of 25 years. For the low-income group, houses with an area of 65–87 m2, with instalments starting from the delivery of the house with a down-payment of 12 percent and a maturity of 15 years. For the narrow- and middle-income group, houses with an area of 87–146 m2, 10–25 percent of the house price in advance are offered to our citizens in need with a maturity of 8–10 years.” Available at https://www.toki.gov.tr/en/housing-programs.html 32 Turkiye’nin AVM haritasi aciklandi, http://www.evagyd.com/WebSite/HomeItems.aspx?HomeItemID=24 33 Please see http://www.tuik.gov.tr/PreHaberBultenleri.do?id=18856 34 A good overall analysis (in Turkish), Refet Gürkaynak, ‘Gezi olayları ve Türkiye ekonomisi’, Bilim Akademisi Derneği, vol.34, pp.179–148 (2013). Available at http://bilimakademisi.org/wp-content/uploads/2013/08/Gezi-Olaylari-ve-Turkiye-Ekonomisi.pdf; for the ‘construction fetishism’ of neoliberal Islamists in Turkey, see Ismail Doğa Karatepe, ‘Islamists, state and bourgeoisie: the construction industry in Turkey’ (paper presented at World Economics Association (WEA) Conference, No. 4, Neoliberalism in Turkey: A Balance Sheet of Three Decades, 28 October– 16 December 2013). Available at http://turkeyconference2013.worldeconomicsassociation.org/wp-content/uploads/Karatepe_wea_application.pdf 35 Aslı Iğsız, ‘Brand Turkey and the Gezi protests: authoritarianism in flux, law and neoliberalism’, in Umut Özkırımlı (ed.), The Making of a Protest Movement in Turkey: #occupygezi. (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2014), p. 27.

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AKP was presented as Islamist reactionary by some, and not Turkish enough by others; social groups

such as LGBT and minorities were either completely marginalized or formed uncomfortable alliances

with the AKP, as it was their only option to exist at state-level politics; and the traditionally

marginalized, and securitized Kurdish movement was negotiating with the AKP, yet the nationalist

left and right rejected even the existence of a Kurdish movement. Gezi was the first encounter

among these groups, positive or negative.

The Gezi Moments: War of Positions

When the AKP government announced the Taksim Pediastrization Project in 2011, their plan was to

reconstruct the Topçu barracks in Gezi Park, which, in fact, would be a shopping mall in the cloak of

old barracks. This attempt triggered the mass protests called ‘Gezi protests’, first in Istanbul and then

in other provinces in Turkey as a resistance against the AKP’s neoliberal economic and politically

conservative policies. As discussed above, the AKP as a hegemonic project of appropriation of

political Islam within the parameters of a neoliberal economic model was a social engineering

practice. It reframed society, promoted shopping mall consumerism, reproduced subjectivities along

the new project, and turned bodies, especially female bodies, into political objectives to be

conquered. Surely, an important dimension of this project was (and is) spatial reproduction.

According to Gürcan and Peker, ‘one of the main pillars of the AKP government in the last decade has

been the massive reorganization of space along neoliberal lines through infrastructural investments,

construction projects, and the wholesale restructuring of urban landscapes’ such as Canal Istanbul

(an artificial canal connecting Marmara Sea and Black Sea), TOKİ projects, shopping malls, highways,

etc.36 ‘Islamizing’ Taksim was an integral part of this cultural-economic policy through building

barracks, a mosque, and a mall replacing the republic’s Taksim Square.37

Erdoğan’s first reaction to the protests was to call them ‘çapulcular’ (thugs, drifters, vagabonds).

Instead of rejecting this derogative term, the protestors accepted and reproduced the concept as

their common identity. This was indeed a perfect practice of performative politics. Following this, the

government attempted to frame the protests as anti-Islamic.38 However, religious groups taking part

in the protests (such as the Anti-Capitalist Muslims) immediately countered this rhetoric. The Gezi

protests were a reaction to the political Islamist and neoliberal authoritarianism. It should be noted

that the re-spatialized Taksim Square and Gezi Park were secular spaces where individuals were not

36 Efe Can Gürcan and Efe Peker, ‘Turkey's Gezi Park demonstrations of 2013: A Marxian analysis of the political moment’, Socialism and Democracy, vol.28 no.1 (2014), pp. 70–89. 37 Ibid., p. 77. 38 There were two discursive attempts. One was the PM’s claim that the protestors drunk beer in a mosque where they entered with their shoes; another one was also endorsed by the PM: an headscarfed women with her baby was beaten and pissed on by 15–20 men who are half-naked and wearing leather masks and pants.

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excluded because of their religious identities. In spite of the government’s attempts to present the

resistance along the lines of ‘Islam vs. secularism’, the pluralist collectivity shattered this articulation.

A female protester, Nermin, stated that ‘I am not against Islam. I am for individual freedoms for all. If

a girl wants to wear the veil at the University, I fight so she can do so’. Another protestor from the

‘Anti-capitalist Muslims’ revealed why they were there: ‘We hope for a new social life, based on

solidarity and not on neoliberalism imposed by the government.’

Regardless of economic ‘development’ in some sectors, development without production that was

based on construction and consumerism embodied as shopping mall inflation (in 2011 there were

279 in Turkey, 109 only in Istanbul)39 did not address the unemployment problem, especially that of

university graduates. According to official statistics in Turkey, the recent unemployment rate has

been approximately 9 percent (13 percent in 2009, decreased to 9 percent in 2013, see Figure 4). In

2013, the youth unemployment rate was nearly 20 percent (Figure 5); 10 percent of university

graduates were unemployed in 2013 (Table 4). The unemployment rate in the non-agricultural

sector, which comprised the main participants of the protests, was approximately 10–11 percent

annually.40 Unemployment was a ‘life-shattering experience’. Hatice, a protester, stated that ‘it is

difficult to construct your life when you are unemployed. We cannot show our professional and

creative abilities, and we have no income to live in dignity’.41 The situation was equally difficult for

Ali, an archaeology graduate who felt that his profession was not valued because, in his own words,

‘the neoliberal economic expansion and the urban speculation neglect even the economic

importance of culture’; or Ela, an urban planner, who concurred that ‘even when we get to find work,

for example in a municipality’s planning office, we cannot put into practice our creativity, as the

proposed projects go against the requirements of the financial and real estate speculations’.42 As the

(un)employment condition determined the lives of individuals, joining Gezi became a form of

resistance that transcended the boundaries between the private and public lives of participants. This

is visible in Ali’s statement:

I am fighting for my dignity. I do not want to be controlled by a condition of employment that does not correspond to my aspirations. But I participate in events because I do not want to be told by the government how I should behave in my private life, how I should behave in the street, or when I see my friends.43

39 Turkiye’nin AVM haritasi aciklandi, http://www.evagyd.com/WebSite/HomeItems.aspx?HomeItemID=24 40 Data retrieved from http://www.tuik.gov.tr/UstMenu.do?metod=temelist 41 Antimo L. Farro and Deniz Gulce Demirhisar, ‘The Gezi Park movement: a Turkish experience of the twenty-first-century collective movements’, International Review of Sociology, vol.24 no.1 (2014), pp. 176–189. 42 Ibid. pp. 179–180. 43 Ibid., p. 180.

12

Ali’s words about the ‘private life’ were underlined by the pre-Gezi policies and discourses of the AKP

and pro-AKP cadres. As the objective of reproducing of individual subjectivities and their bodies

according to politically neo-Ottomanist and economically neoliberal ideologies became clearer, the

Gezi moment gave the opportunity to individuals to resist through their creativity and their bodies in

re-spatialized Taksim as a space of freedom. The neo-Ottomanist liberal social engineering project

operated on the principle of constructing multiple ‘others’ such as ‘Kemalists’, ‘the elites’, ‘the

Istanbul media’, ‘international interest lobbies’, ‘feminists’, ‘homosexuals’, and, more generally,

‘non-Muslims’.44 All these singularities, which did not fit into the culturalist hierarchical differences of

the AKP regime, came together in Taksim Square, occupied it, and practised horizontal politics

without an institution or a leader. Identity dichotomies that had been constructed in Turkey over

decades, such as Islamist vs. secular, Kemalist vs. Islamist, Turk vs. Kurd, men vs. women, were

abandoned in that particular space and moment. A protestor, Gündüz, concurred with this point: ‘I

am living a very important experience. I learnt to talk to others, I do not fear them anymore, I do not

need to defend myself, they do not oppress me. We debate in this forum about our freedom to live

as we wish to, without being afraid of the rulers. Even if we are afraid of violence’.45

It must be underlined that the Gezi moment was politically important for some social forces in

Turkey, which have been securitized, marginalized, threatened, and silenced. Some of them, who

used to consider themselves as the hegemonic force in Turkey such as the middle and high-middle

class Turkish Ataturkists experienced what it meant to be marginalized during the AKP period. They

joined other oppressed forces such as the LGBTQ, socialists, workers, unemployed graduates, and

university students. Many segments of society, which had not established any links before, came

together and formed temporal communities in the occupied spaces. They were members of ‘a

corporal assemblage that acts as a living multiplicity’.46 Several of them (such as the LGBTQ

movement) earned their political visibility and power thanks to the Gezi experience.47 However, it

must also be noted that the Gezi moment was not a democratic renewal experience or a resistance

to authoritarianism, but a threat to or an interruption of representative democracy by certain social

forces in Turkey.

44 These are the target groups that then PM Erdoğan often highlighted in his speeches. 45 All three accounts from Farro and Demirhisar, ‘The Gezi Park Movement’, pp. 183–4. 46 Michael Hardt and Thomas Dumm, ‘Sovereignty, multitudes, absolute democracy: a discussion between Michael Hardt and Thomas Dumm about Hardt and Negri's Empire’, Theory and Event, vol.4 no.3 (2000). Available at https://muse.jhu.edu/journals/theory_and_event/v004/4.3hardt.html 47 For more detailed argumentation, see Ali Bilgic, “Non-violent power of collectivities: voices from Tahrir and Gezi”, International Studies Annual Convention, 18–21 February 2015, New Orleans, LA, USA.

13

In the literature, the Gezi moment has been studied from the perspective of the participants with a

strong explicit normative commitment to the radical democratic experience.48 Indeed, as discussed

above, diverse groups conducted non-hierarchical resistance, which was followed by the open-space

forums during the summer of 2013. However, these reflected only partially the population of Turkey,

almost always neglecting the performative politics of the pro-government social forces: the ‘other’

Gezi moment. Following the failed attempts to present the protestors as ‘çapulcu’ and ‘anti-Islamic’,

the AKP government successfully re-monopolized national security state discourse along with the

centre right’s famous narrative of the DP–ANAP–AKP legacy as the sole representative of ‘the

national will’, which had historical capital in Turkey, in order to delegitimize the protests.

Turkish political culture has long been modulated through the national security discourse by

constructing certain enemies in different historical periods: Europe, Communism, the left, Kurds,

fundamentalism (irtica), Greece, Armenia, Cyprus, and so on. Since the Cold War, national security

has always been a central political concern, often used for domestic and foreign policy purposes. The

political movement from which the AKP itself was derived was a ‘national security threat’ in the

1990s. During the Gezi protests, the AKP cadres monopolized this discourse. Then Minister of

European Affairs went far enough to argue that the neglect of the protests by the Turkish media (the

protests were not broadcast by the mainstream Turkish media) was similar to the American media’s

‘sensitive’ approach to national security after the 9/11.49 In 2015, ‘attempts to civil disobedience and

popular rebellions’ were included as a national security threat in 2015 National Security Strategy

Document of the National Security Council.50 The AKP indeed de-securitized many issues including

political Islam, but continued to securitize certain segments of the society as threats to national

security. The securitarian State did not disappear; it has been re-appropriated further to secure

neoliberal authoritarianism.

The second move of the government was to organize public rallies called ‘Respect for National Will’

(Milli İradeye Saygı Mitingleri). This was to remind the people that the AKP was the legitimate ruling

party and successor of the Democrat Party (whose leader, Adnan Menderes, was toppled and

executed by the junta in 1960) and the ANAP (whose leader, Turgut Özal, was claimed to ‘be

poisoned’, albeit never proven). The AKP itself fought against the establishment, mainly the military,

to consolidate its power and always legitimized its position by claiming itself as the sole

representative of the national will. This centre right narrative was revitalized during the protests:

48 For example, İnceoğlu, I. (2014). ‘The Gezi resistance and its aftermath: a radical democratic shift?. Soundings: A Journal of Politics and Culture, 57, 23–34. 49 http://aa.com.tr/en/turkey/turkish-media-behaves-sensitive-on-gezi-park-for-national-security-says-eu-minister/238187 50 http://ilerihaber.org/kirmizi-kitapta-gezi-de-var/13206/

14

after the military and the judiciary, ‘the establishment’ used Gezi to terminate the national will. The

pro-government forces prepared and spread banners that depicted Adnan Menderes, Turgut Özal

and Tayyip Erdoğan, with the following words under each photo, respectively: ‘the Men of the

Nation: You killed him? You poisoned him? We won’t let you have him…’ (see below).

These banners were often on the billboards of Istanbul and Ankara and were used during the

‘Respect for National Will’ meetings, where several men came to the meetings wearing shrouds. This

kind of ‘body politics’ was a direct response to the body politics in Gezi: the ‘real’ people are here to

sacrifice their bodies for Erdoğan, for democracy.

The success of these two discursive performative practices by the government and pro-government

social forces is yet to be determined. However, they are important for this analysis. Firstly, the Gezi

moment in Turkey’s democratic crisis had a different meaning for different social forces. For the

protestors, it was resistance to neoliberal conservative authoritarianism; yet, for the pro-government

forces, who associated themselves with the AKP’s ‘national will’ rhetoric, Gezi was a dangerous

attempt to suppress ‘the nation’ and to terminate ‘real democracy’. The latter forces experienced

representative democracy with the AKP: they were finally represented at the state level thanks to the

AKP. The groups that benefited from TOKİ housing, social aid, and increasing hospital numbers were

not part of the Gezi Park protests. It is true that the Turkish neoliberal State has been re-organized in

favour of capitalist interests while in the same time employing ‘the national will’ discourse effectively

and without marginalizing the middle- and low-income population. These groups’ economic status

has been elevated through the neoliberal restructuring of economy, yet not through an increase in

their income level, but rather through debt (Table 4). Secondly, the government’s response to the

15

protests was derived from Turkey’s two powerful discourses on national security and national will.

This enabled them to reproduce themselves not simply as the protector of the State and/or the

nation, but also as the saviour of democracy that was finally freed from the vested interests of ‘the

establishment’, ‘the elite’. The Gezi protestors could not produce counter-discourses to address

these two powerful narratives. And, finally, although the Kurds joined the protests individually, the

Kurdish movement did not take part in the Gezi community, as the AKP was the first government

that opened the communication channels with the Kurds. Another blast from the past created by the

securitarian nation state but addressed by the AKP most likely changed the destiny of the protests. In

fact, these three reasons are crucial for discussing any possibility of legacy of the Gezi protests.

The Legacy of Gezi?

Hardt and Negri define four subjectivities of the neoliberal crisis. The first subjectivity is ‘the

indebted’. The indebted is the one whose life is determined by the cycle of debt. Whether a farmer

who has to get a loan to ‘modernize’ their farming and increase the competitiveness, or a university

student who is expected to pay the ‘college fund’ when s/he secures a job, or a mortgage payer, the

modern subject is in debt, which shapes its life choices and freedoms. Neoliberal capitalism controls

its subjects through debt. The second subjectivity is ‘the mediatized’, who is expected to share

his/her views by using extensive communication technologies. Social networking media, online news

channels, personal blogging, and photo-sharing are united with one purpose: to increase the quantity

of ideas, but not their quality, because that could lead to the transformation of the status quo. While

the mediatized individuals experience ‘participatory democracy’ via ‘liking’ a link, their physical

proximity, which is required for political action, is hampered. Furthermore, the mediatized are

recorded and are under scrutiny.

‘The securitized’ is another subjective figure of the ‘crisis’. They are the ones whose personal data,

fingerprints, eye retinae, daily habits, and every public moment is recorded, collected, and stored for

‘security’ purposes. The object of the modern politics of security is also its subject, because fear

unleashed on the securitized encourages them to act like ‘security officers’. Agamben’s ‘state of

exception’ becomes the norm, not simply because the security institutions ‘securitize’, but because

the objects of the politics of security reproduce the normality of the exception (for example, the

current curfew state in France, detention centers for refugees, acceptance of personal data

collection, and storage by international bodies). The final one is ‘the represented’, whose political

power is reduced to the democratic golden objective of representative politics. Representative

politics is a powerful mechanism that disciplines the indebted, mediatized, and securitized subjects,

so that their mirage of participation in politics through voting, lobbying, or joining ‘civil society’ can

16

be reproduced. In fact, the one who is in debt, or experiences fear, or is alienated cannot practice

politics.

However, these four subjectivities do not necessarily operate similarly in Empire within the same

country, or even universally. In order to understand how they perform politics, it is necessary to look

into how neoliberalism is appropriated in the country’s historically constructed political context. In

the case of Gezi protests, these four subjectivities were already ‘out on the streets’, but other

indebted, securitized, mediatized, and represented individuals were ambivalent towards the protests

or joined the pro-government forces. This was mainly because of the Turkish political context, which

has long been shaped by democratic crises. Since the 2002 elections, the AKP successfully

reproduced itself as the only party that was against the political status quo previously dominated by

the military, corrupted centre-right parties, and nationalist left. It claimed that it had opened

representative democracy to the wider public, and supported this discourse through multiple

‘openings’. The party was represented as the only one signifying the national will and real

democracy. Those whose life standard had increased were indebted to the party: they had a good

house, a smartphone, a car…

The legacy of Gezi does not depend on founding a political party, creating a social movement with

clear objectives, or finding a leader. It first and foremost depends on the extent to which the

problems originating from the historical democratic crisis upon which the AKP established its political

and economic hegemony and capitalized can be addressed by the Gezi protestors. It goes without

saying that the Gezi moment is a crucial first encounter for the four subjectivities, but it is

questionable how the momentum of Gezi has been furthered among these singularities. Moreover,

unless the two conflicting Gezi moments start to conflate, it will be almost impossible to discuss, or

even imagine, a legacy. The first task of any progressive individual against neoliberal authoritarianism

is to stop romanticizing Gezi and focus on ‘the other Gezi moment’. Only this way can radical

democracy be practised in Turkey.

Conclusion

The ongoing democratization crisis in Turkey has developed interesting relations with the

neoliberalization process, which has been defined in this paper as the gradual integration of Turkey

into the neoliberal Empire, as put by Hardt and Negri. In some instances, Turkey’s policy makers and

society formulated a powerful alliance and showed a willingness to steer the country towards liberal

democracy, as in the AKP’s early years. However, in some cases that are peculiar to the Turkish

political context, authoritarian tendencies prevailed. Unsurprisingly, the 30 years of neoliberalization

process facilitated democratization while the national security State received important hits from the

17

democratic forces. That said, the national security State has been insistent to reproduce itself in the

AKP’s neoliberal body according to a certain national citizen subjectivity: the conservative, Turkish,

and Sunni market man that occupies a hegemonic position. This ostensibly conflictive situation is, in

fact, a product of the dynamics of Turkish politics enmeshed with changing economic structures in

the country.

This paper has highlighted that it is crucial to avoid two hindrances when conducting an accurate

political analysis about the Gezi protests. Primarily, each political context appropriates the neoliberal

Empire in its own ways, and neoliberalism does not necessarily produce the same results in every

country. Although it is possible to argue that financialization, aggressive privatization, and

commodification can be observed globally, what these processes politically engender is highly

context-specific. Furthermore, it is crucial not to romanticize the protests. Rather, it is best to

consider them as a moment when some social forces or segments in the multitude constructed a

counter-hegemonic position. It is true that singularities came together to form a chain of

equivalences during the protests, and also conducted performative and horizontal politics. However,

it should not lead to the problematic argument that there was only one ‘Gezi’ that represented the

entire Turkey. There were multiple Gezi moments among contending social forces. Their war of

positions is still continuing.

18

Figure 1. Sectoral employment shares (% per year).

Source: Statistical Institute of Turkey.

Figure 2.

Source: http://www.sistematikrisk.com/2014/03/17/erdogan-ekonomisi/

19

Figure 3. Privatization per year.

Source: Statistical Institute of Turkey.

Figure 4. Unemployment rates.

Source: Statistical Institute of Turkey.

20

Table 1.

Source: Institution of Turkish Statistics

Yıllar

Years

Büyüme Büyüme

Değer Pay Hızı Değer Pay Hızı

Value Share Grow th Value Share Grow th

Rate Rate

(%) (%) (%) (%)

1998 70 203 147 160 100,0 46 668 560 688 66,5

1999 104 595 915 540 100,0 49,0 71 641 318 309 68,5 53,5

2000 166 658 021 460 100,0 59,3 117 499 253 311 70,5 64,0

2001 240 224 083 050 100,0 44,1 164 299 066 648 68,4 39,8

2002 350 476 089 498 100,0 45,9 238 399 082 778 68,0 45,1

2003 454 780 659 396 100,0 29,8 324 015 751 233 71,2 35,9

2004 559 033 025 861 100,0 22,9 398 559 246 208 71,3 23,0

2005 648 931 711 812 100,0 16,1 465 401 758 933 71,7 16,8

2006 758 390 785 210 100,0 16,9 534 849 205 783 70,5 14,9

2007 843 178 421 420 100,0 11,2 601 238 606 907 71,3 12,4

2008 950 534 250 715 100,0 12,7 663 944 251 625 69,8 10,4

2009 952 558 578 826 100,0 0,2 680 768 339 040 71,5 2,5

2010 1 098 799 348 446 100,0 15,4 787 752 785 244 71,7 15,7

2011 1 297 713 210 117 100,0 18,1 923 836 191 859 71,2 17,3

2012 1 416 798 489 819 100,0 9,2 994 395 754 296 70,2 7,6

2013 1 567 289 237 901 100,0 10,6 1 109 722 480 324 70,8 11,6

2014(r) 1 747 362 376 487 100,0 11,5 1 203 897 148 938 68,9 8,5

Harcamalar Yöntemiyle Gayri Safi Yurtiçi Hasıla (Cari Fiyatlarla)

Expenditure on the Gross Domestic Product (at Current Prices)

Gayri safi yurtiçi hasıla

Gross domestic product

Yerleşik Hanehalklarının Tüketimi

Final Consumption Expenditure of

Resident Households

21

Table 2.

22

Table 3.

2008(1)

2009(1)

2010(1)

2011(1)

2012(1)

Konut Satışları

(Toplam)

House Sales

(Total)

İpotekli

Satışlar (2)

Mortgaged

Sales (2)

Diğer Satışlar

Other Sales

Konut Satışları

(Toplam)

House Sales

(Total)

İpotekli

Satışlar (2)

Mortgaged

Sales (2)

Diğer Satışlar

Other Sales

Konut Satışları

(Toplam)

House Sales

(Total)

İpotekli

Satışlar (2)

Mortgaged

Sales (2)

Diğer Satışlar

Other Sales

Konut Satışları

(Toplam)

House Sales

(Total)

İpotekli

Satışlar (2)

Mortgaged

Sales (2)

Diğer Satışlar

Other Sales

Konut Satışları

(Toplam)

House Sales

(Total)

İpotekli

Satışlar (2)

Mortgaged

Sales (2)

Diğer Satışlar

Other Sales

TÜRKİYE 427 105 - 427 105 555 184 22 726 532 458 607 098 246 741 360 357 708 275 289 275 419 000 701 621 270 136 431 485

İllere ve Yıllara Göre Konut Satış Sayıları, 2008-2012

House Sales by Provinces and Years, 2008-2012

23

Table 4

Consumer Loans and Personal Credit Card Debit Balance (Million Turkish Liras) CONSUMER LOANS

Residence Vehicle Other TOTAL Credit Card TOTAL 2002 266 472 1.235 1.973 4.335 6.308 2003 506 1.655 3.169 5.331 7.030 12.361 2004 2.631 4.194 5.906 12.731 13.717 26.448 2005 13.035 6.352 10.212 29.599 17.227 46.826 2006 23.388 6.662 17.470 47.520 21.466 68.986 2007 32.441 6.123 29.064 67.628 26.352 93.980 2008 39.278 5.530 38.411 83.219 33.419 116.638 2009 44.896 4.421 44.002 93.319 36.465 129.784

2010 60.817 5.671 62.593 129.081 43.652 172.733

2011 74.588 7.365 86.476 168.429 54.999 223.428 2012 85.959 8.007 100.068 194.034 70.435 264.469 2013 109.899 8.531 129.304 247.734 83.806 331.540

2014 (January) 111.131 8.374 129.958 249.463 84.149 333.611

Source: Statistical Institute of Turkey

24

Table 5. Youth unemployment rates in Turkey.

2013-12-31 9.42

2012-12-31 9.94

2011-12-31 8.68

2010-12-31 9.95

2009-12-31 11.22

2008-12-31 9.75

Source: https://www.quandl.com/data/ILOSTAT/UNE_DEAP_RT_SEX_T_EDU_AGGREGATE_ADV_M_TUR-Unemployment-Rate-InAdvanced-Education-

Monthly-Turkey