Saturnalia Revisited: Gezi Park Protests and Carnival Today

Abstract

The present article conjoins the history of Taksim district from the 19th century to the early years of the Turkish Republic, up to the events of May 28th, 2013, known as Gezi Park protests. In trying to determine whether a shared memory of displacement cuts through such different historical layers of the Republic, the article seeks answers for the provenance of the protests and its deployment on the public and private spheres. The analysis borrows from Bakhtinian carnival and carnivalesque, and posits the question whether a different carnival sense of the world, diverging from that of Bakhtin, is predominantly becoming the rule in national and international movements of dissent.