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Temporality and Social Movements: a Political Ethnography of Activism in Contemporary Turkey (2016-2018)

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Temporality and Social Movements: a Political Ethnography of Activism in Contemporary Turkey (2016-2018) TEMPORALITY AND SOCIAL MOVEMENTS: A POLITICAL ETHNOGRAPHY OF ACTIVISM IN CONTEMPORARY TURKEY (2016-2018) by Birgan Gokmenoglu A dissertation submitted to the Department of Sociology of the London School of Economics for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy, London, September 2019 1 Declaration I certify that the thesis I have presented for examination for the MPhil/PhD degree of the London School of Economics and Political Science is solely my own work other than where I have clearly indicated that it is the work of others (in which case the extent of any work carried out jointly by me and any other person is clearly identified in it). The copyright of this thesis rests with the author. Quotation from it is permitted, provided that full acknowledgement is made. This thesis may not be reproduced without my prior written consent. I warrant that this authorisation does not, to the best of my belief, infringe the rights of any third party. I declare that my thesis consists of 75,505 words. 2 Abstract While social movement studies have developed extensive frameworks for studying the emergence, maintenance, and decline of social movements, temporal orientations and futurity have not been systematically mobilized as necessary explanatory dimensions of activism. This dissertation argues that activists' temporal orientations and future imaginings are crucial to understanding action, including organizational form, movement trajectories, and long-term projects. Futurity is particularly relevant and amenable to theorization in uncertain, politically volatile, and urgent times, when activist debates revolve around predictions, expectations, possibilities, and scenarios. I take grassroots activism in Istanbul, Turkey between 2016 and 2018 as a case in point to examine the changing dynamics of activism during regime change. Based on participant-observation at a local assembly that was established to campaign for the “no” vote in the constitutional referendum of 2017 supported by semi-structured, in- depth interviews with activists, this study follows the changes in activists' temporal orientations and their relationship to different aspects of activism. The dissertation begins with an examination of the organizational structure of the local “no” assembly as a product of activists' critical engagement with the past and the future, by looking at their re-reading of the Gezi protests of 2013. The analysis then moves on to the period around the 2017 referendum, when future imaginings, in the form of anticipatory scenarios about the near future, played a constitutive role in the decision-making processes of the assembly, and contending futures resulted in its disintegration. Lastly, as the referendum was left behind and as activists were faced with defeat at the 2018 presidential and general elections, their engagement with the distant future came to the fore, in the form of hope, which enabled and was enabled by a future-oriented narrative of historical embeddedness. To conclude, I argue that scholars of social movements should pay more attention to the role of possibilities and future imaginings in political action, as well as the open-endedness inherent in activism, especially at times marked by uncertainty and urgency. 3 Acknowledgments It is difficult to express my gratitude to all those who have been with me through this long journey. I want to thank my mother and my father for granting me the privilege and the countless opportunities without which I could not even begin to pursue this path. I want to thank my interviewees, my friends, my comrades, and everyone I worked with during my field work. I learned so much from your diligence, perseverance, resilience, camaraderie, enthusiasm, joy… Thank you for sharing them with me. A special thanks goes to my dear friends and flatmates, Melis and Kâmile, for opening their home to me and making it my own. Thank you, Sidar, for thinking with me when I struggled to wrap my head around my own thoughts and for believing in me. Yasemin, cheers to our long skype sessions. Thank you to the Writing Club, our meetings have been the best Sundays: Adélie, Leon, and especially Jann as a neighbour, co-convenor, and dear friend. And last but not least: Kristina, Alejandro, Rong, Babak, Sophie, Özgün, Maria, Maria-Christina, and Tory. I feel lucky to have met such brilliant people with such great hearts. I could not have done this without your love, kindness, companionship, generosity, and patience. 4 Table of Contents Chapter 1 Introduction ...................................................................................................................... 7 Political Context ......................................................................................................................... 13 Temporality in Social Movement Theory..................................................................................... 27 The political process model ..................................................................................................... 28 Cycles of contention and waves of contention .......................................................................... 32 Frames and narratives .............................................................................................................. 34 Recent work on temporality in social movements ..................................................................... 36 Transitions and Social Movements .............................................................................................. 50 Outline of the Dissertation........................................................................................................... 64 Chapter 2 Methods .......................................................................................................................... 67 Part One ..................................................................................................................................... 69 Ethnography and participant-observation ................................................................................. 69 Data and theory ....................................................................................................................... 73 Interviews ............................................................................................................................... 77 Part Two ..................................................................................................................................... 79 The first phase of the fieldwork (July 2016 – January 2017) ..................................................... 79 The second phase of the field work (January 2017 – September 2017) ...................................... 85 The third phase of the field work (December 2017 & January 2018; May 2018 – September 2018) ............................................................................................................................................... 90 Writing-up .............................................................................................................................. 92 Part Three ................................................................................................................................... 94 Temporalities of activism and research .................................................................................... 94 Being an activist researcher ..................................................................................................... 96 Risks and ethics .................................................................................................................... 101 Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 102 Chapter 3 Re-reading the Past, Engaging the Future: The Local Assembly ..................................... 104 “Gezi was ages ago!”: Gezi and its Aftermath............................................................................ 105 From the Gezi Spirit to the Ills of Gezi: Adapting Organizational Structure ................................ 109 Contestations ............................................................................................................................ 123 The Campaign: Activities .......................................................................................................... 133 Social media campaigns ........................................................................................................ 134 Offline activities.................................................................................................................... 136 The night of the referendum .................................................................................................. 140 Conclusion................................................................................................................................ 142 Chapter 4 Future Imaginings and Disintegration: The 2017 Referendum ........................................ 145 The Referendum ....................................................................................................................... 146 Social Movements, Future Projections, and the Imaginary ......................................................... 149 The Future: A Dystopian Temporal Landscape .......................................................................... 157 Scenarios: Competing Anticipations, Trajectories, and the Disintegration of the Assembly
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