636902

research-article2016
EUC0010.1177/1477370816636902European Journal of CriminologyAtak and della Porta

Article

European Journal of Criminology

Popular uprisings in
2016, Vol. 13(5) 610­–625
© The Author(s) 2016
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DOI: 10.1177/1477370816636902
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dialogue-oriented policing in
Gezi Park and beyond

Kıvanç Atak
Stockholm University, Sweden

Donatella della Porta

Scuola Normale Superiore, Italy

Abstract
The policing of riots and uprisings poses severe challenges to the police. Yet the police are
often culpable in the disturbances touched off by a precipitating incident of police violence or a
crackdown on a peaceful protest. The Gezi Park uprisings in Turkey also broke out shortly after
excessive force by the Istanbul police against a handful of peaceful activists in Taksim Square.
In the aftermath of the mobilizations, however, a drift towards a ‘zero-tolerance’ approach
has prevailed over protest control strategies. Drawing on field notes, interviews with activists,
excerpts from the news media, protest event analysis and secondary literature, we argue that
the chances of dialogue-oriented policing are hampered by two major predicaments in Turkey.
The first pertains to the negative biases in police perceptions about protests and protesters that
serve to justify and perpetuate a conflict-driven understanding of policing. The second is rooted
in the institutional and policy realm and stems from the prevalence of a law-and-order approach
to crowd control and public order.

Keywords
Backfire, flashpoint, Gezi, protest policing, Turkey, uprisings

Corresponding author:
Kıvanç Atak, Department of Criminology, Stockholm University, Room C610, Universitetsvägen 10,
SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden.
Email: kivanc.atak@criminology.su.se

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Atak and della Porta 611

Introduction
Riots and uprisings can be considered as rare events. In comparison with institutional-
ized forms of protest, these occurrences are erratically fluid, multifaceted and confronta-
tional. The maintenance of public order in such conflictual situations is certainly a
daunting task for the police in any jurisdiction. Yet on many occasions police forces
themselves may prompt the outbreak of revolts and riotous assemblies. A precipitant
incident of police violence or a crackdown on a peaceful protest, most commonly, might
spark off a stormy reaction on the street. In turn, public outrage often involves eventful
features that, together with police culpability, yield opportunities for the police to draw
lessons for future practices of crowd control. The nature of lessons, if any, is, however,
contingent on the dominant political discourse on public order and on police perceptions
about citizens’ engagement in street-level politics as such.
The June 2013 mobilizations in Turkey also ensued after fierce police intervention in
a protest encampment resisting the demolition of Gezi Park as part of the municipal plan
to pedestrianize Taksim Square in Istanbul. Even though the protests originated from a
longstanding struggle by urban activists and professional organizations, police aggres-
sion played out a flashpoint and backfired to an unprecedented level. We expect that this
historic episode had transformative effects not only on the subjects of the protests but
also on the Turkish police. The grave consequences of police overreaction could be taken
as a warning for law enforcement to adopt less repressive styles of public order manage-
ment. Nevertheless, protest policing in Turkey has shown a discernible drift towards a
‘zero-tolerance’ approach in the immediate aftermath of the uprisings. We argue that the
chances of developing consensus-based policing are constrained by two major predica-
ments. The first problem relates to the inherent negative biases in police perceptions
about street-level politics and protesters that serve to justify and perpetuate conflict-
driven approaches to policing. The second concerns the prevalence at the institutional
and policy level of a law-and-order approach to crowd management and public order.
Our article bridges concepts and theoretical perspectives from an interdisciplinary
literature on public order policing, riots and social movements. In empirical terms, our
discussion draws on participatory field notes, interviews with protesters, excerpts from
the news media, protest event analysis and secondary literature. For the interviews, we
followed a dual strategy of snowballing and purposive sampling. We used snowballing
to conduct written interviews with non-activist, young and highly educated protesters.1
For the purposive sampling, we contacted activists from organizations involved in the
uprisings reflecting the diversity in structure and political orientation.2 Last but not the
least, our quantitative scrutiny of protest events is based on an original dataset created
from the digital archive of Anadolu Agency, the official press agency in Turkey, and cov-
ers the period between 2011 and 2013.

Riots, mass revolts and uprisings: Rethinking police

culpability
There is no doubt that riots and uprisings pose severe challenges to police forces in main-
taining control and restoring order on the street. It is also hard to deny that the police can

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612 European Journal of Criminology 13(5)

become lead actors in the architecture of disorderly situations. Police actions are often
culpable in engendering mass outrage and ‘activating boundaries’ (Tilly, 2004) that serve
to stimulate the formation of collective identities and their mobilization. The literature on
urban riots suggests that in particularly disadvantaged, segregated neighbourhoods a cer-
tain trigger event instigated by police mistreatment, aggression or violence against the
members of the community is likely to precipitate public disturbances (Benyon, 1987;
Schneider, 2014; Waddington et al., 2009). Similar patterns can be seen in recent exam-
ples of civil unrest in the United States, France (Schneider, 2008), England and Sweden
(Benyon, 2012; Schierup et al., 2014).
Uprisings and riots may also be sparked off by police mismanagement of an otherwise
non-violent protest. Excessive or indiscriminate force against protesters, mass arrests
and an inability to isolate transgressive individuals often lead to a flashpoint (Waddington
et al., 1989). This concept originates from the six-level analysis of public disturbances
– structural, political/ideological, cultural, contextual, situational and interactional –
proposed by David Waddington and his colleagues. Flashpoints tend to emerge at the
‘interactional’ level when certain actions are perceived as ‘breaking the unwritten rules
governing behaviour between groups’ (Waddington et al., 1989: 162). Therefore, ‘an
uncompromising police arrest or forcible attempt to move the crowd’ might be perceived
as breaking those rules of the game (Waddington, 1992: 19). To illustrate, the Poll Tax
riots in London in 1990 were incited by the loss of police control over a peaceful march
on Downing Street. ‘Having perceived the potential for serious disorder,’ it is said, ‘the
police chose to act against the crowd. Although the police were aware that only a minor-
ity were engaging in conflict, as the consensual account demonstrates, the police force-
fully pushed the crowd as a whole north towards Trafalgar Square’ (Stott and Drury,
2000: 261). Several protesters reacted to the police by verbal abuse, throwing objects and
damaging police cars. The peaceful protest thus culminated in a riotous situation.
Police culpability in such cases encourages scholars to reflect upon underlying
structural and institutional forms of injustice embodied in police conduct. Admittedly,
this embodiment is not confined to the realm of protest policing but is reproduced
through everyday practices of the police fraught with intimidation or discrimination.
Hence one can hardly disentangle the agency of the police from the broader social and
political origins of the riots in urban ghettos (Abu-Lughod, 2007; Fassin, 2013;
Schneider, 2014). Coercive police intervention in peaceful protests, on the other hand,
might backfire because of ‘a public reaction of outrage to an event that is publicized
and perceived as unjust’ (Hess and Martin, 2006). Especially when there is a strong
presence of an audience that ardently condemns the repression of a legitimate non-
violent event, and if the information about the repressive event is ‘communicated
effectively to receptive audiences’ (Hess and Martin, 2006: 250–1), the likelihood of
backfire would increase. It can take several dynamic forms of what Charles Tilly called
‘broken negotiations’ (Tilly, 2003).
This debate offers some insight into the culpability of the riot police in the outbreak
of the uprisings in Turkey. Yet we go one step further and investigate the potentially
transformative effects of such events on subsequent protest policing practices. From a
policing perspective, riots and uprisings are markedly different from institutionalized
forms of protest. Their distinct character might also comprise elements of ‘eventfulness’

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Atak and della Porta 613

(Della Porta, 2008) in terms of the ‘cognitive, affective and relational impacts’ on the
very subjects of the protests, including the police. Some events may indeed turn into
‘watershed’ episodes – usually marked by policing failures – that are likely to foster
changes in public order management systems (Wahlström 2016). These rare but reveal-
ing professional experiences yield opportunities for the police to draw lessons – and also
constraints on such learning. Regarding the interactive nature of police-versus-protester
innovations, one may expect the police to self-reflect through a multi-stage process that
Della Porta and Tarrow (2012) call promotion, assessment and theorization. The direc-
tion of any lesson would vary according to, among others, the type of police knowledge
about protesters and street-level politics as such and the dominant political discourse on
public order in institutional and policy realm.
To begin with, the dominant political discourse on public order affects police organi-
zational lessons and policy adjustments after outbreaks of public disturbances. A pow-
erful law-and-order coalition often constructs negative images of civil unrest and
conveys public messages that stress how it grossly debilitates society (for a historical
discussion on the USA see Flamm, 2007). As a result, such a political campaign would
serve policing to become tougher on actual and potential perpetrators of public disorder.
The nature of police perceptions about protest and protesters is yet another important
factor affecting how the police reflect on mass revolts, uprisings or riots. Perceptions
are essential aspects of ‘police knowledge’ and are partially conditioned by the notion
of crowd theory intrinsic to police education and training (Reicher et al., 2004; Stott and
Reicher, 1998). Previous research has shown that the police differentiate ‘troublemak-
ers’ from ‘good’ protesters, yet mostly treat them as homogeneous groups (Della Porta
and Reiter, 1998; for a notable exception see Holgersson and Knutsson, 2011). Above
all, if they are overridingly cynical and negatively biased towards street-level politics as
such, the chances of establishing long-term trust with protesters would be imperilled.3
Trust is a prerequisite for dialogue-oriented management of crowds and is more capable
of averting tensions and confrontational encounters (Gorringe and Rosie, 2011;
Waddington, 2014). With a Le Bonian mindset, however, police self-reflections are
more likely to perpetuate and justify conflict-driven approaches at the expense of con-
sensus-based, facilitative policing.

Caught up in tear gas: Gezi Park resistance in context

The Gezi Park uprisings were born of an urban struggle against the municipal pedestri-
anization plan on Taksim Square in the heart of Istanbul. Urban social movements and
professional organizations had already taken a stand against the plan after it became
official in 2011. But the municipal project to transform Taksim was by no means novel
in its ‘aesthetic’ approach to urban renewal. On the contrary, it was deeply ingrained in
the broader framework of neoliberal urban transformation driven by multiple actors, that
is, market forces, municipalities and state institutions such as the Housing Development
Administration (TOKI). As a common thread these projects beget large-scale property
transfer, gentrification and the social purging of the poor from the profitable neighbour-
hoods of the city (Kuyucu and Ünsal, 2010; Lovering and Türkmen, 2011). More often
than not, these ventures also involve formidable environmental risks, as in the case of the

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614 European Journal of Criminology 13(5)

construction of a third bridge over the Bosporus. Therefore, the demolition of Gezi Park
and its intended replacement with a mall should be conceived in conjunction with the
neoliberal politics of urban development writ large.
Although rooted in urban discontent, the uprisings evolved into a multifaceted social
and political phenomenon. Fierce police intervention in a protest encampment galva-
nized the masses to rebel and ironically united opposition to the different manifestations
of power – authoritarian, conservative, neoliberal and patriarchal – exercised by the
dominant-party government of the Justice and Development Party (AKP). Therefore,
both congruent and dissonant political subjectivities shouted out their mutual resent-
ment in an unusual accord. Kemalist youngsters, Alevi organizations, environmental-
ists, feminists and LGBTQ activists, the Kurds and organizationally unaffiliated crowds,
to name but a few, merged in the mobilizations. In terms of social background, the
presence of young and educated middle-class participants stood out especially in the
early stages of the protests. Over the whole course of the protests, though, people from
all social strata were represented roughly in proportion to their ratio in the population
(Yörük and Yüksel, 2014).
It was the authoritarian proclivity of the government that fuelled, if not determined,
public outrage in the run-up to Gezi. The relatively liberal rhetoric that the AKP had
adopted during its first term had been celebrated with enthusiasm by a grand coalition
of conservative and liberal milieus. Its self-proclaimed image as a forerunner of democ-
racy, rights and freedoms, however, faded into an increasingly illiberal rule, once the
party had secured huge public support through consecutive elections. By partially curb-
ing the ascendancy of the Kemalist elites and the military tutelage, and by capitalizing
on economic stability, the AKP further entrenched its political leverage. Drawing on
‘national will’, the government did not steer the regime towards democratic consolida-
tion but championed repressive policies clamping down on miscellaneous oppositional
actors. While doing so, it derived legitimacy from the myth of a formerly deserted
nation (millet) ‘whose religious/conservative identities and values have been suppressed
by the secular republicanism of the Kemalist elite since the founding of the Republic in
1923’ (Karakayalí and Yaka, 2014: 121). The Sunni Muslim majority is deified as ‘a
carrier of an “ontological justice”’, and ‘any kind of criticism is marginalized not only
as hostile and dangerous, but also as “foreign, materialistic and Western” exactly
because it is not recorded on the basis of the common traditional values of the nation –
millet’ (Moudouros, 2014: 184). Hence, it came as no surprise that, immediately after
the eruption of the Gezi protests, ‘Erdoğan began to refer to the protesters as “drunk-
ards” and “alcoholics”, two popular Islamic allusions to the laics’ (Öncü, 2014: 172).
The police are inextricably woven into this political narrative. In the past decade,
police powers have been increased by virtue of legislative adjustments under the rubric
of public order. The 2007 amendments to Law No. 2556 on Police Duties and Entitlements
granted the police extensive powers in stop-and-search, taking fingerprints and using
lethal force,4 and stringent revisions in 2006 in the Anti-terror Law No. 3713 paved the
way for a wave of paramilitary operations against a wide spectrum of dissidents, not just
political subversives in society at large. Meanwhile the Turkish National Police (TNP),
subordinate to the Ministry of Interior, underwent a dramatic growth in manpower and
coercive capacity. It is little wonder that those who took issue with government policies

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Atak and della Porta 615

and projects in the urban sphere often faced police conduct that hindered the right to
freedom of assembly.5 Prior to Gezi, for instance, the way the police handled the tobacco
workers’ strike in 2009, mass protests against the educational reform in 2012 or the May
Day demonstrations in Istanbul in 2013 proved to be, to varying degrees, harsh and
punitive.

Flashpoint and backfire

The outbreak and policing of the Gezi revolts can thus be better grasped in terms of con-
tinuity rather than rupture. Several mechanisms set the stage for the uprisings at that
particular point in time. Based on convergent accounts by protest participants, our dis-
cussion focuses on two concepts mentioned in the previous section. We suggest that the
moment the activists’ tents in the park were set ablaze after the police crackdown on the
sit-in and the encampment can be conceptualized as a flashpoint. The transformation of
the ongoing urban resistance into a mass upheaval, on the other hand, can be considered
as a backfire.
Between 28 and 31 May 2013 the unwritten rules of the game were broken as a
result of the police coercion targeting the resistance in Gezi Park. Once the bulldoz-
ers arrived and started uprooting the trees, several activists entered the park to
impede its eventual demolition. Protesters staged sit-ins and put up tents for an occu-
pation. The police response was harsh as they fired tear gas on the activists to break
the resistance. Around 5 a.m. on the 30th, protesters’ tents were set on fire.6 In the
midst of the mayhem some people were seriously injured. They found themselves
squashed on the park steps and the concrete banisters collapsed with appalling con-
sequences. Skirmishes continued throughout the day, as the riot police used pepper
spray and beat protesters who were trying to obstruct the machines. Media footage
and activist accounts indicate that, prior to the forceful intervention, there was
little attempt by the police to negotiate with the unarmed and peaceful encamped
activists.7 Videos and photos of the early incidents went viral on social media. In the
evening of 31 May, tens of thousands flooded onto the streets and gathered in Taksim
Square following a call by Taksim Solidarity, an umbrella platform dating back to
the early days of 2012 and that was later joined by more than 100 civil society and
social movement organizations.
Our field notes and interviews with the protest participants verify that those who did
not have a personal record of activism decided to take to the streets once they found out
about the police attack on the encampment. The repressive handling of the resistance in
the park touched off an extraordinary mass reaction. ‘The police raid on the tents was the
very last straw,’ says a professional employee who found out about the incidents with her
colleagues in the office, cancelled her evening plans and rushed to Taksim (written
Interview R, 21 October 2013). A self-employed protester similarly confessed that he
decided to participate ‘when police violence came out that night and the footage showing
tents set on fire began to circulate’ (written Interview B, 12 October 2013). ‘The level of
police brutality was absolutely unacceptable’, adds an executive in an advertising com-
pany, ‘considering the nature of the protest, which was unmistakably peaceful’ (written
Interview E, 18 October 2013). Deep frustration with the police violence was in fact

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616 European Journal of Criminology 13(5)

Figure 1.  Number of protests per week in Turkey (May–September 2013).

Note: The size of the circles varies in relation to the number of participants per week.
Source: Authors’ protest event data from the Anadolu Agency.

much more often cited by first-time protesters. One of them admits: ‘In general I have
zero interest in protests. Even those in good faith like this one, I usually tend to think are
useless. But when my friends shared on Facebook those horrific things the police were
doing that first day, I said “what the hell” and joined the demonstrations’ (written
Interview Z, 13 October 2013).
The results of a survey conducted in Gezi Park at the end of the first week of June also
lend support to these observations. Almost half of the respondents confirmed that they
decided to take part in the protests because of strong anger at police aggression (KONDA,
2014). The ‘unwritten rules of the game’ had therefore been broken and provoked large
numbers of people to mobilize in Istanbul as well as in other cities.
Drawing on our event data from the archives of Anadolu Agency, Figure 1 illustrates
the weekly distribution of the Gezi Park protests, together with the entire sample of pro-
test events in Turkey from May until the end of September 2013. It shows how the pro-
tests skyrocketed at the end of May, continued at a slower pace throughout June and
ebbed in the late summer. The Turkish Ministry of Interior reported that, during the first
week of the uprisings, 603 events occurred in 77 out of 81 provinces in the country
(Milliyet, 2013b). The TNP stated that between May and September, 5532 Gezi Park
related protests brought altogether 3.5 million people onto the streets (Şardan, 2013b).
Table 1 presents a different picture and focuses on the confrontation between the police
and the protesters. Compared with the rest of the events between 2011 and 2013, the Gezi
Park protests are clearly marked by the diversity of action repertoires, the intensity of
clashes with the police and the severity of police violence. As regards the last aspect, the
Turkish Medical Association (TTB) compiled data from 11,155 responses to an online

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Atak and della Porta 617

Table 1.  Selected characteristics of the protests in Turkey (percent).

Deviation & diversity Proactive or reactive Coercion & violence

in action repertoires violence by protesters by the police
Gezi Park protests 43.4 24.3 48.0
(N = 173)
Other protests,  3.2  3.9  7.4
2011–13 (N = 3293)

Source: Authors’ protest event data from the Anadolu Agency.

questionnaire designed to gauge the physical effects of anti-riot chemicals and less lethal
weapons on individuals.

Of those who were affected by tear gas, 30 percent were exposed within less than a 1 metre
distance, and 38 percent within a 1–5 metre distance. In other words, 68 percent of the
respondents were in physical contact with tear gas within a diameter of 5 metres. Moreover, 33
percent of the respondents were exposed to tear gas uninterruptedly for more than five minutes
while they were physically closest to the source of the tear gas. (Turkish Medical Association,
2013)

TTB also reported that, between 31 May and 24 June 2013, 4 people died, 8000 people
were injured (60 seriously), 11 people lost an eye and 103 people experienced head
trauma.

Towards a zero-tolerance approach

In the aftermath of the Gezi Park upheaval, the police seem to have adopted a zero-toler-
ance approach to public protests in Turkey at large and in Istanbul in particular. Since the
forcible evictions from Gezi Park on 15 June, there has been a constant riot police pres-
ence in Taksim Square. On 8 July 2013, the park was reopened to public access with an
official ceremony by the Governorship of Istanbul. Ironically, only three hours after the
reopening the police began to evict people as Gezi was once again barred to the public.
The governorship decision came after a call by Taksim Solidarity for a peaceful gather-
ing in the park (Akten et al., 2013). Since then, any attempt to protest is used as a pretext
for closure of the park. However small in size or however peaceful, and regardless of
whether the aim is to deliver a speech or a press declaration or to commemorate the loss
of lives in the course of the uprisings, undertaking protest became strictly forbidden in
and around Gezi Park.8
What also seems to be a consequence of the June uprising is the constant show of
force by the police in Taksim Square and in Istiklal Street. Even several months after the
mobilizations had faded, the overt presence of riot police units in Istiklal declared a de
facto state of exception. Especially at the weekends, when public demonstrations regu-
larly take place, riot police are deployed in front of the francophone Galatasaray lycée, a
common gathering point halfway between Taksim Square and the Şişhane end of Istiklal
Street. Police on foot carrying rifles and wearing bullet-proof vests are commonplace
and are often escorted by a water cannon tank. If a public rally embarks on a march

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618 European Journal of Criminology 13(5)

towards Taksim, it usually encounters a police blockade in front of the lycée. A heavy
police presence is also strengthened by the stationary deployment of riot police behind
the small mosque across from the French Consulate at the start of Istiklal Street.
Underlying this measure is a motive to expedite police intervention by mobile units. In
an informal conversation with one of the authors of this article, a police officer stated that
in big cities the riot police should be stationed in close proximity to where public distur-
bances are most likely to occur, in order to ensure instant control (personal communica-
tion, 17 April 2015). Such reasoning might nevertheless induce the treatment of every
demonstration almost indiscriminately as a potential riot, a dangerous situation and an
act of subversion.
Zero tolerance to protest is also hinted at by the mass procurement of less lethal weap-
ons for the arsenal of the TNP. In fact, militarized protest policing is not a recent develop-
ment in the Turkish environment (Atak, 2015). After the Gezi uprisings, however, tear
gas and water cannon purchases by the police rose sharply (Katmerciler, 2014; Ünker,
2014). The dramatic proliferation of less lethal weaponry at the disposal of the police
hardly indicates a conciliatory mindset that would have otherwise prioritized dialogue-
oriented approaches. On the contrary, it lays bare a determined commitment to contain
civil unrest by – ever stronger – means of coercion.

Constraints on dialogue-oriented policing

In this context, it is deterrence and incapacitation, rather than negotiation and facilitation,
that have driven protest policing in Turkey ever since the Gezi upheaval. In this last sec-
tion, we discuss two major factors that impede the growth of a more facilitative form of
protest policing in Turkey. The first is police officers’ negative perceptions of protest and
protesters,9 and the other is the prevalence of a law-and-order approach to crowd control
and government policies on public order.

Police officers’ negative perceptions of protest and protesters

Police knowledge about protesters is chiefly shaped by classical crowd theory in Turkey
(Atak, 2015; Uysal, 2006). Police perceptions are negatively biased and tend to stigma-
tize protesters as irrational, dangerous crowds. These perceptions are nurtured by the
instructions in police training manuals. The Gezi uprisings confirmed these observations
to a large extent. There was a sweeping and commonly shared cynicism about the legiti-
macy of the upheaval. ‘Why were these people not out on the streets when our soldiers
were martyred last year?’, asked an officer in a random dialogue with a group of citizens
in Taksim Square soon after the outbreak of the uprisings.10 His question implies that, in
the mind of police officers, people’s conflictual reaction lacked moral justification.
Elaborating his disapproval of the protests, at one point he asserted that democratic rights
should be exercised by the ballot box rather than by clashing with the police. A rank-and-
file policeman made a parallel statement: ‘As if there were not enough political parties
these people pour onto the streets and shout. If you enjoy politics so much just form a
party. What do you want from the police? What are you doing in the streets?’ (quoted in
Koca, 2015). In response to a protester who approached a group of riot policemen and
said ‘We feel suffocated because that man [Erdoğan] is pounding our heads’, another

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Atak and della Porta 619

policeman interrupted: ‘You might be right, but you cannot deal with it like this. We have
elections ahead. That is how you must show your reaction.’11 Such statements embody
the generally negative attitude that police officers adopt with respect to street-level
politics. The self-evident cynicism about the legitimacy of the protests serves to alienate
police officers and protesters from each other.

I do not enjoy working for the riot police because whenever I come across this type of [protester]
person I feel disillusioned with this society. I start questioning my faith in my nation for which
I would sacrifice myself. It looks like these people are so distant from us and come from very
different places. Then I ask myself if I am really able to risk my life for them. (Quoted in Koca,
2015: 74)

Police officers’ narratives also displayed a discernible us-and-them divide, where the ‘us’
stands for the national, the local, the sacred, the religious, the ‘authentic people’ of soci-
ety, and the ‘them’ represents the arrogant, privileged ‘other’ who are alien to his/her
own people and culture.

I just realize that these people do not have kids to take care of and do not worry about the future.
Maybe they do not have concerns about the future but we protect the future of this country. We
try hard to prevent the present from destroying the future. But they are ready to vandalize the
past, the future and everything for the sake of the present. These people have issues with the
values of this country. Gezicis are like travellers.12 They like wandering around, dancing and
playing. What a festive world! They are not from here. They are not from us. Whatever is
national and religious antagonizes them. They do not value national and local people as much
as they value the environment and trees. If they had looked closely, though, they could have
seen how policemen became like ‘trees’ eventually. For days we stood, hungry and thirsty. But,
in turn, we were branded as dishonourable and fascist. They are also arrogant people. They may
come from different leftist ideologies but they share the same arrogance. I do not understand
how one can be a socialist, humanist and humane while belittling the right wing, the national
and the religious. (Quoted in Koca, 2015: 77–8)

Previous research on the social background of police officers and on police culture in
Turkey have emphasized the strength of conservative authoritarian values and indicated
that the vast majority of police candidates were raised in lower-middle- or low-income
families from villages and small towns (Çağlar, 2000). This picture seems to contrast in
particular with those urban middle-class Gezi protesters with high cultural capital and
claiming to be liberal and anti-authoritarian. But it is worth remembering that the victims
of police brutality throughout the uprisings were mostly members of the socially disad-
vantaged groups rather than the ‘privileged others’.
At any rate, some police officers also expressed a deep frustration with Gezi protest-
ers who blamed the police for merely serving the interests of the ruling elites.

In fact they are the true oppressors. They find ways to oppress those who are not like them.
They think they are superior and try to dominate and oppress us in their own way. You must
have seen how they looked down on us. They chanted a slogan saying ‘Sell bagels, live
honourably’, if you remember. They posted it everywhere. Their idea was, ‘instead of becoming
complicit in government’s dirty affairs, you better sell bagels’. Perhaps they really thought that
way. But it also implies that, for those people, police officers are not even worth as much as a

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620 European Journal of Criminology 13(5)

bagel seller on the street, and it shows how they look down on people who vote for the AKP.
Because they are good at reading and writing and know how to speak well, they assume that
they can belittle everyone arrogantly. (Quoted in Koca, 2015: 89)

The prevalence of a law-and-order approach to crowd control and public

order
The second major constraint is the prevalence at the institutional and policy level of a
law-and-order approach to crowd control and public order. In Turkey, police use of force
is often conditioned by protesters’ alleged breach of law, irrespective of the orderly
nature of the protest. If a public demonstration fails to meet legal requirements such as
prior notification or if it relays political messages and slogans with criminal content, a
coercive police response is likely even if that demonstration is completely peaceful. In
the past, Turkey has been recurrently convicted by the European Court of Human Rights
of violating the right to freedom of assembly on the evidence of violent police dispersion
of peaceful protests (for an illustrative case see DISK and KESK v. Turkey, 2013).13
Recent rulings by the Constitutional Court (Ali Rıza Özer and Others, 201514) and a local
court in Istanbul (Kaya, 2015) also laid down that even if the organization of a public
protest fails to meet the conditions prescribed in law this does not automatically qualify
the event as non-peaceful. Thus, as long as a protest retains its peaceful character police
use of force to disperse the crowd would not be legitimate and infringe the right to free-
dom of assembly. However, the manner in which the Istanbul police dealt with the non-
violent resistance in Gezi Park confirmed the rule rather than the exception.
The law-and-order approach also prevails in governmental discourse and the institu-
tional evaluation of police officers’ performance. In both respects, excessive use of force
by the police was applauded rather than being condemned. After the forcible evictions
from Gezi Park, government authorities stated that the way the police handled the mass
demonstrations was ‘epic’ (Milliyet, 2013c). The Gezi protests were demonized as a
malevolent plot against the government, orchestrated with the assistance of foreign
allies, and those ‘looters’ were successfully policed. Similarly, the TNP’s Commission
for Rewarding Personnel decided to reward 13,000 riot police officers in five large cities
for their highly regarded efforts to contain and control the protests (Şardan, 2013a). Thus
the policing of Gezi has been officially treated as a professional success story.
The criminal investigations into police killings of protesters also created the impres-
sion that state officials and politicians were reluctant to hold security forces accountable
for their fatal violence. One of the most woeful cases concerned the murder of 19-year-old
Ali Ismail Korkmaz, who was lynched to death in the west-central Anatolian town of
Eskişehir. Following Korkmaz’s death, in which several policemen were involved, the
provincial authorities in Eskişehir rebutted the complicity of the police in the murder, and
accused the protesters themselves. Some of them, allegedly, beat up their own fellows on
purpose and put the blame on the police (Milliyet, 2013a). During the prosecutions, law-
yers and activists seeking a fair trial and organizing justice marches in Eskişehir were
officially discredited and criminalized on the basis of their suspected ties with under-
ground organizations (Saymaz, 2013). Even though two policemen were eventually sen-
tenced to 10 years in prison, the entire course of the proceedings attested to an institutional/
bureaucratic lack of interest in bringing justice to this case and others.

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Atak and della Porta 621

Lastly, the government’s policy on public order has continued to be shaped by a tight
law-and-order approach. The legislative proposals that later became law in the parliament
aimed to increase police powers with heavy-handed implications for the control of civil
unrest. For instance, the police have been authorized to use firearms, that is, lethal force,
against people hurling or attempting to throw petrol bombs at public demonstrations.15 In
addition, criminal charges for covering faces at protest events – already prescribed as
illegal – have been increased.16 This amendment inevitably concerns protesters who might
cover their faces for reasons other than disguising their identity, namely to protect them-
selves against exposure to tear gas. In brief, these measures are characterized by a domi-
nant logic of deterrence in dealing with civil unrest and disorderly protest.

Conclusion
The Gezi Park revolts that erupted in Istanbul and spilled over to the rest of the country
were emblematic of how police culpability and escalation can lead to riotous situations.
Our observations are therefore consistent with previous findings on the key role of police
behaviour in the outbreak of civil disorder. In this particular case, the police crackdown
on a protest encampment that was essentially peaceful, taking place physically and sym-
bolically at the centre of the cultural and economic capital of the country and enjoying a
high level of public legitimacy, broke the unwritten rules of the game and acted as a
flashpoint. It unwittingly helped an ongoing urban struggle on a relatively minor scale to
evolve into an uprising. In fact, public outrage did not come out of the blue and resent-
ment against the government had already been present prior to the uprisings. Sweeping
to landslide victories over consecutive elections in the past decade, the right-wing AKP
became more authoritarian and less inclusive in both rhetoric and practice. Meanwhile,
consolidated support had gone hand in hand with increasing opposition and even hostil-
ity to its rule. In these circumstances, police violence in Gezi Park was decisive in setting
off a mass reaction not only against the police but also against the government at large.
Had the police not aggressively intervened in the early stages of the resistance, public
disturbances would have been a less likely scenario.
We started this article with the claim that eventful episodes such as the Gezi Park
revolts may produce transformative effects not only on social movement actors but also
on the police. By reflecting on the consequences of their overreaction, the Turkish police
could have drawn lessons in the direction of less repressive methods of control. Yet the
aftermath of Gezi seems to be a harbinger of zero tolerance to civil unrest rather than bear-
ing witness to the advent of consensus-based policing. Negative police perceptions about
protesters and street-level politics as such remain as cognitive barriers to grasping the
legitimate reasons behind the mobilization of the masses on the streets. These biases are
both cultivated through police training on crowd behaviour and more broadly embedded
in police culture, which, certainly not as an exception, is dominated by conservative
authoritarian values in Turkey. In the long run, these cognitive barriers jeopardize the pos-
sibility of mutual understanding between police and protesters. The institutional resilience
of a law-and-order approach to crowd control and public order characterizes a state that
aims to tame public dissent by means of deterrence and coercion. We have analysed these
questions as two constraints on the development of a dialogue-oriented protest policing in

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622 European Journal of Criminology 13(5)

Turkey. But our findings also have implications for crowd control and public order man-
agement in a larger geographical scope.

Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Tim Newburn, Sophie Body-Gendrot, Magnus Hörnqvist and the anonymous reviewer
for their valuable comments on and contributions to earlier versions of our article. We also thank Ahmet
Erkan Koca at the Police Academy of Turkey for his assistance throughout our fieldwork.

Funding
The author(s) received no financial support for the research, authorship, and/or publication of this
article.

Notes
  1. Our decision was due to the notable presence (in Gezi Park) of young middle-class partici-
pants with high cultural capital but mostly lacking political engagement in the past.
  2. The following organizations were contacted: Halkevleri [People’s Houses], EMEP [Labor
Party], Şehir Plancıları Odası [Chamber of Urban Planners], Mimarlar Odası [Chamber of
Architects], DISK [Confederation of Progressive Trade Unions of Turkey], TGB [Turkish
Youth Union], Kapitalizmle Mücadele Derneği [Association for Fighting against Capitalism],
Sosyalist Feminist Kollektif [Socialist Feminist Collective], İstanbul Kent Savunması
[Istanbul Urban Defense], HDP [People’s Democratic Party].
  3. Similarly, uncompromising protesters would also make it difficult to establish dialogue with
the police.
  4. Altıparmak and his colleagues (2007) critically discuss the amendments from the perspective
of rule of law. The Human Rights Foundation of Turkey reports on a number of examples of
police ill-treatment in relation to the recent changes in police laws (Özer and Türközü, 2012).
  5. In Turkey, protest policing tasks are mainly undertaken by the public order and riot police
branches. Public order officers in plain clothes monitor the lawfulness of a protest and com-
municate with its spokespeople. Riot police officers, on the other hand, lead the physical
intervention and decide on the tactics and devices of coercion. Although enjoying a certain
level of discretion on the ground, the officers are accountable to the chief administrative
bureaucrats – the governors – at provincial level. In the case of mass protests, the decision-
making process and the relationship between police leadership, provincial public authorities
and political actors at local and central levels becomes more complicated.
  6. By the time of writing, those responsible for the fire had not been identified. Seven munici-
pal security personnel were acquitted, and the trial of one chief police officer who allegedly
ordered the fire continues.
  7. See the footage available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XBL6JnMgrJw (accessed 20
February 2016).
  8. The governorship justifies its decision on the basis of Article 11 of Law No. 5442 on Provincial
Administration. The provisions of the law entitle governors to ‘take necessary measures to
prevent crimes, and to preserve public order and security’.
  9. Here we do not imply that members of this profession are homogeneous and would share the
same knowledge and perceptions. Rather, we acknowledge that there is variation due to hier-
archical differentiation and departmental specialization. The empirical findings we discuss
for the most part draw on a secondary source (Koca, 2015) that benefited from participant
observation and field notes from informal conversations with police officers.

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Atak and della Porta 623

10. See the footage available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Dgr1ED_9_OY (accessed 20

February 2016).
11. See the footage available at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yMPcfB6D_00 (accessed 20
February 2016).
12. Gezici is used pejoratively to demonize participants in and sympathizers of the Gezi Park
uprisings. Gezi as a noun can be literally translated as ‘travel’ or ‘trip’. The suffix ‘ci’ converts
its meaning into ‘traveller’ or someone who likes to travel.
13. DISK and KESK v. Turkey, 2013. App no 38676/08, European Court of Human Rights.
14. Ali Rıza Özer and Others, 2015. App no 2013/3924, Constitutional Court of the Republic
of Turkey. URL (accessed 20 February 2016): http://www.kararlaryeni.anayasa.gov.tr/
BireyselKarar/Content/8f680799-94b4-4f13-bf22-fe1b7c169346?wordsOnly=False.
15. Additional clause to Article 16 of Law No. 2559 on Police Duties and Entitlements.
16. Article 33 of Law No. 2911 on Public Assemblies and Demonstrations.

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