The Visual Emergence of the Occupy Gezi Movement, Part One: Oh Biber!
During June 2013, the Occupy Gezi Movement emerged as the greatest challenge to Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdoğan’s decade-long rule in Turkey. In the streets and in Gezi Park, as well as through its widespread use of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, the resistance movement has produced images in both real and digital spheres. Much of the visual output strikes at Erdoğan’s hubris and verbal threats, his attacks on personal freedoms, his brutal crackdown against the protests, and his pressuring of mainstream media into self-censorship. Although they conveyed serious concerns, the movement’s rhetorical and pictorial messages were often humorous, witty and intellectually alluring in their use of wisecracks and satire. Such levity offered biting commentary on the obscenity of police violence while also building group cohesion for an array of oppositional constituencies.
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