Emotional withdrawal and political apathy of the post-Gezi period is slowly giving way to renewed engagement in Türkiye.
On March 19, 2025, something shifted in Türkiye. Ekrem İmamoğlu, the mayor of Istanbul and a leading opposition figure, had his diploma canceled — and the next day, he was sent to prison. What followed was unexpected: after years of political silence, people began returning to the streets. This moment of rupture raised a crucial question — what emotional and political dynamics make such reactivation possible?
The recent wave of protests in Türkiye signals a major emotional and political rupture: after more than a decade of fear, repression, and political apathy. To understand this renewed momentum, we must return to the emotional and narrative landscape of the 2013 Gezi Park protests. This means not only exploring how people remember the protests but also revisiting how they first began and why they resonated so widely.
To understand the emotional legacy of the Gezi protests, it is important to recall how they began. In May of 2013, Türkiye witnessed an unexpected wave of resistance. What started as a small sit-in by a group of environmentalists trying to protect a park in central Istanbul — Gezi Park — quickly transformed into a massive nationwide uprising. People rose up against Recep Tayyip Erdoğan — then Prime Minister and leader of the ruling AKP (Justice and Development Party) — and his increasingly conservative and repressive regime.
As part of my doctoral research, I conducted 52 one-time retrospective interviews in late 2019 and early 2020 with individuals who participated in Gezi. These interviews explored how participants recalled and narrated the pre-Gezi grievances, the emotional transformation during the protests, and the aftermath shaped by increasing authoritarianism.
Drawing on the work of sociologists Francesca Polletta (narrative), James M. Jasper (protest and emotions) and Randall Collins (emotional energy) , the study examines how emotions and storytelling practices shaped participants’ political memory and post-Gezi disengagement. Participants reflected on these periods through a rich emotional vocabulary — mistrust, worry, fear, anger, hope, joy, disillusionment — showing how emotions structured both their memories and responses.
These emotional patterns are not just analytically useful but politically vital. Recent research highlights that hope is central to sustaining democratic life. As political scientists Mikko Leino and Katariina Kulha argue, democratic deliberation can spark hopeful and compassionate emotions, supporting long-term, future-oriented engagement. Similarly, another political scientist Antonin Lacelle-Webster suggests that hope is not a result but a condition of democratic action — an emotional foundation for imagining and striving toward alternatives.
The findings reveal that while the state’s harsh repression led to widespread withdrawal and self-censorship, the emotional memory of Gezi persisted as a latent force. Today, as fear begins to subside, this suppressed emotional memory is being reactivated — reigniting not only resistance, but also a renewed belief in the possibility of democracy.
Tensions That Paved the Way to Gezi
The protests were not organized by a single group or ideology. Instead, they drew in people from across the political and cultural spectrum: secular and religious, leftists and nationalists, feminists, LGBTQ+ individuals, students, workers, and even anti-capitalist Muslims.
Despite their differences, they were united in their opposition to the Erdoğan regime’s authoritarianism and its steady erosion of democratic institutions. It was an eruption of accumulated frustration — over moral policing, police brutality, the shrinking of civic freedoms, and the narrowing of public life. Many had already been feeling pushed out of public life.
What made Gezi remarkable was not a single unified demand, but a shared emotional threshold — the collective sense that democracy was slipping away, and that people could no longer accept the way things were.
There was growing anxiety over political Islamism, the narrowing of personal freedoms, and an increasing sense of being watched, judged, and silenced. What made Gezi remarkable was not a single unified demand, but a shared emotional threshold — the collective sense that democracy was slipping away, and that people could no longer accept the way things were.
Long before tents were pitched in the park, the pressure was mounting. A young woman from Ankara described how she adjusted her personal life: “I stopped wearing short skirts and didn’t invite my boyfriend over anymore. People in the building stared. I felt like I had to hide.” Another participant pointed to broader mechanisms of control: “The alcohol bans, the mosque sermons about how women should behave — all of it felt like an attempt to reshape how we live.” These were not merely private discomforts. They reflected a deeper collective fear — that the secular and democratic foundations of the Republic were being steadily replaced by a more intrusive, moralistic, and authoritarian regime.
During the Protest: Togetherness
When the protests began, something shifted. It was not just about saving a park anymore. People who had never joined a demonstration before found themselves standing next to seasoned activists. “We weren’t all the same,” one man said. “But we all said: this is too much.”
Despite their differences, people were drawn together by a shared anger toward Erdoğan’s regime. This collective anger served as a bridge — allowing people from different ideological and social backgrounds to unite and express a common refusal. At the same time, many still held on to the hope that Erdoğan’s increasingly authoritarian rule could be stopped and that the erosion of democratic institutions might be reversed. When this hope became collective during the protests — shared by thousands in the streets — it grew stronger, transforming into a powerful emotional force that fueled mass mobilization.
Rather than forming a collective identity in the traditional sense, protesters built a sense of commonality grounded in shared emotions — especially anger, urgency, hope and mutual recognition. These emotional bonds created a strong sense of solidarity and togetherness, even among those who had previously kept their distance or distrusted each other. Drawing on sociologist Laurent Thévenot’s idea of commonality in the plural, the protests became a space where people did not need to share the same political views — they just needed to feel the same intensity of rejection.
The protests became a space where people did not need to share the same political views — they just needed to feel the same intensity of rejection.
In the square, people shared food, medicine, songs — and moments of joy, even under police violence. For many, this was the first time public space felt like it belonged to everyone. One participant said: “Just being there, refusing to leave, was our way of saying — we exist.”
A woman from the Anti-Capitalist Muslims recalled how people who previously used to keep their distance — especially Kemalists — approached their stand in the park and said things like, “You’re actually really kind people.” She added, “Every day, 300 to 400 people visit us. They asked questions, they stayed, and they listened. People who used to see us as backward in the past were suddenly getting to know us.” Protest made unlikely connections possible — not by forcing sameness, but through simple presence and shared care.
Gezi did not end in victory. The park was eventually emptied by force, many were detained, and Erdoğan’s regime came out stronger than before. “Gezi taught me that we are not alone,” one participant told me. “It gave us a memory — and that memory still gives us strength.”
Repression and Retreat: The Post-Gezi Landscape
After the Gezi protests, the state launched a systematic campaign of repression. Protesters were detained, beaten, surveilled, and marked as “terrorists” or “traitors.” Many were fired from public sector jobs or blacklisted, especially those working in education, media, or civil society. Universities were purged of critical voices, and cultural or political gatherings were closely monitored or banned altogether. Fear, anxiety, and mistrust replaced the hope and solidarity once felt in the square.
Many participants withdrew from visible political life, feeling that any form of resistance could lead to punishment. As a result, some turned inward — either disengaging entirely or finding quieter, more localized ways to resist. The emotional toll was heavy: a mix of grief, disappointment, hopefulness and unresolved longing for the sense of unity they once shared.
The fear of state retaliation has fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of collective action. The burden of responsibility no longer lies solely in moral or political conviction — it now carries legal and personal risks.
One participant explained: “Now, I think three times before posting anything on social media. I’ve stopped sharing anything political. Even when I retweet something on Twitter, I pause and wonder — could this get me into trouble later?”
Another participant, who was a member of a political party, explained: “We can’t invite people to protests anymore. If something happens to them, we’re the ones held responsible. Because of that, our calls for action have almost completely stopped.”
These two accounts reflect how the fear of state retaliation has fundamentally reshaped the dynamics of collective action. The burden of responsibility no longer lies solely in moral or political conviction — it now carries legal and personal risks. As a result, political engagement has become not only emotionally taxing but also strategically constrained. Even those in organized political structures feel paralyzed, leading to a visible decline in public mobilization efforts. The space for collective dissent shrinks not just through direct bans or police force, but also through internalized fear and anticipatory self-censorship.
Moreover, one participant even said, “If something as massive as Gezi didn’t change anything, then nothing will.” These findings suggest that emotions like hope are not merely reflective of political conditions — they are constitutive of whether democratic participation can flourish or fade.
The Return of Democratic Hope
The wave of protests that began on March 19, 2025, still continues today and carries an uncertain future — it is too early to say whether they will lead to democratic restoration or end in disappointment, as Gezi once did. But one thing appears to have shifted: the deep sense of defeat and fear that had settled after Gezi seems to be breaking. People are returning to the streets again, despite years of repression, which may indicate that the emotional withdrawal and political apathy of the post-Gezi period is slowly giving way to renewed engagement.
While the Gezi protests emerged from a hopeful belief that democratic backsliding could still be stopped, today’s protests reflect a more urgent demand — not just to defend democracy, but to reclaim what has already been lost. The hope that once united people in resistance has reawakened, shaped by a clearer understanding of what is at stake and what it means to act together under authoritarian rule.
The emotional memory of Gezi — especially the experience of solidarity, shared anger, and political awakening — continues to resonate, even though my data predates the most recent protests. This legacy may help explain why, in this new moment, people are once again finding ways to raise their voices — perhaps this time with more clarity, purpose, and a renewed hope for democratic change.
Tülay Yılmaz is Doctoral Researcher at the Faculty of Social Sciences, University of Helsinki, and Member of the Centre for the Sociology of Democracy (CSD) research group.
Article image: Mstyslav Chernov / Wikimedia Commons_CC BY-SA 3.0
