Abstract
The momentous uprisings classified under the epithet of the Arab Spring and the Gezi Park protests in Turkey have spawned a considerable interdisciplinary academic literature that strives to account for the origins, evolution, and gradual dissolution of the social mobilizations that shaped these events (Yom 2015). While the initial response to both events, in academic circles as well as in press outlets, was shaped by a significant degree of surprise and disbelief, the emergent literature has already provided important sets of analytical and conceptual tools to contextualize and explain the uprisings (Patel et al. 2014, p. 57; Gause 2011). Insights from critical strands in international relations (IR) and international political economy (IPE) as well as economic and political sociology have helped fashion refreshing lenses through which the events have been analyzed. Viewed from such perspectives, these episodes of popular struggle have been contextualized as “a concatenation of political upheavals” that were triggered by a growing discontent with neoliberalism, though the Arab uprisings’ roots in the inner contradictions of neoliberalism have arguably received a more sustained analytical scrutiny than the Turkish case so far (Anderson 2011, p. 5).
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Notes
- 1.
- 2.
- 3.
- 4.
See, for example, the discussions of the authoritarian character of the Turkish state in the following works, which—regardless of their serious methodological conflicts—conceptualize the present-day authoritarianism as a remnant of a past configuration of the state power wherein the military reigned supreme: Bedirhanoğlu and Yalman (2010) and İnsel (2003).
- 5.
For a critique of the methodological justifications of the neoliberal model espoused by the AKP, see Tansel (2015).
- 6.
Karaçimen (2014, p. 174) notes that “consumer credit has been increasingly used by lower income people and wage earners” as “around 42% of consumer loan borrowers are people who earn less than 1000 TL per month.”
- 7.
While there were intermittent increases in the subsidy levels in the 2000s, especially in response to the global market fluctuations, “the present subsidy levels are still much lower than they were in the 1970s and early 1980s” (Frerichs 2015).
- 8.
The estimated wage cut was $250 p/m; see Özuğurlu (2011, p. 180).
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Tansel, C.B. (2018). Ties that Bind: Popular Uprisings and the Politics of Neoliberalism in the Middle East. In: Işıksal, H., Göksel, O. (eds) Turkey’s Relations with the Middle East. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-59897-0_5
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