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

Julkaisu Breaking the Wall of Fear and Hopelessness: Protest, Memory, and Resistance in Contemporary Türkiye ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.

Turkey is currently facing two contradictory and interrelated political processes: seemingly promising peace negotiations between the state and the PKK, and a determined drive by President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan to crush the main opposition party, the CHP.

The dominant view among the researchers has underscored that the Kurdish question can only be solved within a larger democratization framework, thus making the ongoing process highly uncertain. Due to these highly contradictory tendencies, it is difficult to escape the conclusion that we are witnessing a new round of divide and rule strategy by President Erdogan – creating a wedge between the Kurdish and Turkish opposition blocs to secure his own rule.          

From the founding of the Republic until the 1990s, the Turkish state sought to manage the Kurdish question through assimilation and repression, both domestically and in the region. While this approach maintained control for decades, the rise of Kurdish political and military mobilization eventually rendered it unsustainable. However, the early 2000’s marked a new phase in the state’s approach under the Justice and Development Party (Adalet ve Kalkınma Partisi, AKP) rule. 

Sociologist Mesut Yeğen explains that after coming to power in 2002, the AKP initially maintained the traditional repressive policies toward the Kurdish question but introduced small reforms like lifting the emergency rule and easing restrictions on the Kurdish language. Although then-Prime Minister Erdoğan made a historic speech in 2005 promising a democratic solution, deeper recognition of Kurdish identity was limited, and tensions quickly resurfaced.

During this period, pro-Kurdish parties like HADEP and DTP gained regional strength, but it was with the founding of Peoples’ Democracy Party (Halkların Demokrasi Partisi, HDP) that the Kurdish movement moved toward building broader, leftist alliances and became a key national opposition force. It was within this evolving political landscape that the HDP emerged as a new force.

The Rise of the HDP

Under the leadership of Selahattin Demirtaş, HDP embraced a pluralist and rights-based agenda, aiming to represent not only Kurds and other marginalized communities but also progressive Turks through democratic reforms and decentralization. According to a recent study by Matthew Whiting and Zeynep Kaya HDP draws inspiration from socialist ideas of “radical democracy” (a political notion that emphasizes grassroots participation and minority rights) and PKK-leader Abdullah Öcalan’s concept of democratic confederalism. Based on this, the HDP positioned itself as a challenger to both the AKP and Turkey’s long-standing one-nation model, redefining the meaning of democracy and political representation in the country.

As Whiting and Kaya further explain although initially open to cooperating with the AKP during the peace process, the HDP later distanced itself as Erdoğan’s government grew increasingly authoritarian. The HDP’s electoral strategy, especially after 2014, aimed to broaden its base beyond Kurdish voters by appealing to secular, liberal, and urban constituencies across Turkey.

While the HDP has emerged as a key advocate for radical democracy and minority rights in Turkey, its ambiguous relationship with the PKK has consistently undermined its democratic credibility.

This strategy paid off in the June 2015 elections when the HDP not only surpassed the 10% electoral threshold but also secured 13% of the national vote, significantly influencing the balance of power in Turkish politics and marking a milestone for pro-Kurdish representation at the national level.

Matthew Whiting & Zeynep Kaya note that while the HDP has emerged as a key advocate for radical democracy and minority rights in Turkey, its ambiguous relationship with the PKK has consistently undermined its democratic credibility. Despite officially rejecting ties to the PKK, symbolic connections and local-level controversies, particularly during the 2015–16 conflict, have fueled state repression and public distrust, limiting the HDP’s broader political appeal beyond its Kurdish base.

HDP’s growing influence led to intensified state repression after the 2016 coup attempt, resulting in the arrest of many of its leaders, including Selahattin Demirtaş and Figen Yüksekdağ, on terrorism-related charges. Facing the risk of closure by the Constitutional Court, HDP contested the 2023 elections through the Green Left Party (Yeşil Sol Parti), preserving its political space.

Following the elections, the movement reorganized itself under the DEM Party (Demokrasi ve Eşitlik Partisi), which now carries forward HDP’s legacy, continuing to advocate for decentralization, minority rights, gender equality, and environmental justice. In this way, DEM has become the primary representative of the Kurdish political movement within Turkey’s legal political framework.

CHP Facing the Kurdish Question

Historically, the Republican People’s Party (Cumhuriyet Halk Partisi, CHP) approached the Kurdish question through a nationalist, state-centric perspective, viewing minority demands as a threat to national unity. As Mesut Yeğen also notes later in his analysis, the Turkish state’s discourse historically marginalized Kurdish identity by framing the Kurdish issue not as an ethnic or political matter, but as a problem of “backwardness.” As the founding party of the Republic, the CHP played a central role in constructing and maintaining this state-centric narrative, which shaped its longstanding reluctance to engage with Kurdish political demands.

This rigid stance began to shift during Kemal Kılıçdaroğlu’s leadership, as CHP gradually recognized the legitimacy of Kurdish political actors like the HDP. Although formal alliances were avoided due to nationalist sensitivities, the strategic support of HDP voters in the 2019 local elections, which enabled CHP to win key cities like Istanbul and Ankara, underscored the growing necessity for a more inclusive and democratic approach within the party.

Turkish state’s discourse historically marginalized Kurdish identity by framing the Kurdish issue not as an ethnic or political matter, but as a problem of “backwardness.”

After Istanbul mayor, CHP’s Ekrem İmamoğlu’s arrest on 19 March 2025, public protests erupted, and discussions around a renewed Kurdish peace process gained momentum. In this context, the relationship between the CHP and the DEM Party became increasingly significant yet complicated.

While CHP leader Özgür Özel attempted to build democratic solidarity by reaching out to Kurdish actors, figures like Ankara Mayor Mansur Yavaş reflected the party’s strong nationalist tradition by using exclusionary rhetoric towards Kurds during public events.

Although Özel later apologized to Kurdish voters, these incidents exposed the ongoing challenge for CHP: to reconcile its nationalist-leaning base, historically close to MHP, with the need to secure Kurdish support. This tension highlights the deep structural difficulties within the party as it seeks to lead a broader democratic front.

The Evolving Agenda of the PKK

Abdullah Öcalan founded the PKK in Turkey in 1978 as a Marxist-Leninist Kurdish nationalist organization. The original goal was to create an independent Kurdish state and crush the conservative and traditional Kurdish social organization and replace it with a secular-nationalist society. The method for achieving this involved the use of violence against all representatives of the Turkish state, whether these were ethnically Turks or Kurds. The PKK’s foundational programme called for the establishing of a single united independent state called “Kurdistan”.

However, this line changed considerably in 2005 as the PKK announced that it now considered the nation-state a hindrance on the road to freedom. As explained by rural sociologist Joost Jongerden, Öcalan declared that the PKK had abandoned its objective of establishing a state and now aimed to create a network of councils as the basis of self-determination.

The PKK since the early 2000s can best be described as a party-complex that in fact comprises several parties, more specifically the sister parties in Iraq (PÇDK), Iran (PJAK) and Syria (PYD), that are all accompanied by a platform institution called the Association of Communities in Kurdistan (Koma Civakên Kurdistan, KCK), a network of village, city and regional councils. 

To almost everyone’s surprise, in autumn 2024 Devlet Bahçeli, the leader of the ultra-nationalist Nationalist Movement Party (Milliyetçi Hareket Partisi, MHP) inaugurated a new “Peace process” with the PKK, calling its leader Abdullah Öcalan to come to address the Turkish parliament and declare the end of the organization, also signaling the Kurdish party HDP as a legitimate actor. This happened after a near decade of security-centred approach by the state during which not only the PKK but also HDP were repeatedly declared as treacherous separatists.

While the key message of PKK ending its armed struggle and dissolving itself was received positively and raised hopes for a brighter future, it was also obvious that there were many question marks regarding the next steps.

After a short while, it was made public that Öcalan was in fact willing to contribute, and even adhered to same narrative, emphasizing, together with Bahçeli, the Turkish-Kurdish brotherhood and the need to overcome all dichotomies in order to secure Turkey’s position in the increasingly volatile Middle East, that was in a danger of becoming the playground of “imperialist powers” – reference to the US  and Israel in particular.

Finally, on 27 February 2025, the Kurdish DEM-party’s leading figures read Öcalan’s written statement before cameras in Istanbul’s Elit World Taksim Hotel, the venue crowed with Kurdish activists, representatives of NGOs, international and domestic media, and academics.

While the key message of PKK ending its armed struggle and dissolving itself was received positively and raised hopes for a brighter future, it was also obvious that there were many question marks regarding the next steps, in particular regarding the judicial process and the state’s response. In terms of Syria, PYD figures and some DEM party members were quick to argue that Öcalan’s message was about the PKK’s activity within Turkey and as such did not determine the future decisions of the Syrian branch.     

A Peace Process or a Tactic of Divide and Rule?

It is not known what the PKK leadership is promised in return for laying down the arms and dissolving the organization. However, there are also some intra-PKK factors that probably play a significant role in Abdullah Öcalan’s calculations. First of all, there are some indicators that the state repression of recent years has not generated a more radical Kurdish generation as expected.

The recent public opinion polls also indicate that a significant segment of HDP voters are of the opinion that a crucial prerequisite for solving the Kurdish conflict in Turkey is the PKK laying down its arms unconditionally,  that is, not after a bargaining or dialogue with the state, but as a first step. As recently underscored by Murat Yetkin in his Yetkin Report blog posts, according to a report published in November 2024 by Istanbul Ekonomi Araştırma, around 30 percent of the pro-Kurdish HDP voters share this view.  

A rather bizarre process is currently shaping Turkey’s political landscape: the Erdoğan regime has embarked on a determined project of getting rid of genuine competitive politics.

Lastly, in recent years the new drones and other high-tech military equipment have enabled the Turkish Armed Forces to gain a rather dramatic upper hand in its fight against the PKK guerillas, having also been able to remove operations almost entirely beyond Turkey’s borders, to Iraq and Syria.

All in all, we argue that a rather bizarre process is currently shaping Turkey’s political landscape: the Erdoğan regime has embarked on a determined project of getting rid of genuine competitive politics, crucially aiming to restrict the political power created during the last five years by the CHP through its municipal base.

Yet at the same time, the PKK, Peoples’ Equality and Democracy Party (DEM, formerly HDP), and the state are seriously negotiating. The PKK has now officially declared that it has dissolved itself and ended the armed struggle against the Turkish state. The most contradictory figure in all this is PKK’s leader Abdullah Öcalan, who repeatedly speaks about the end of PKK’s armed struggle being secured by wider democratization, at the time when the suppression of the opposition has been taken to unprecedented levels.

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).

Doctor of Social Sciences Toni Alaranta is a Senior Research Fellow in the Finnish Institute of International Affairs (FIIA). 

Article image: Ekrem Osmanoglu / Unsplash

Julkaisu Current Uncertainties in the Kurdish-Turkish Peace Process ilmestyi ensimmäisenä Politiikasta.